After a few days on the sea they finally reached the desired location. They disembarked and were quickly greeted by someone looking like an official trying to rob them blind….
"Hello, to dock here you need to pay a docking tax, it's just 500.000 berries!" the face the official made screamed, you have no choice but to pay and you are such easy prey.
"Hum?? I will give you 100 berries for the tax if you want, and another 100 so you can shove them up your ass so deep it can reach your greedy brain and see if the worthless crap in your head gets forced out. Ew what smell is this… Ho… My bad apparently it's already coming out from your mought…" Ars answered to the official, whose face was now red with anger.
"Get out, we don't need paupers here!!" he said angrily through gritted teeth.
"Hooooo the poor little official, he got angry about people not paying attention to his delusions, I even wonder if there was ever an idiot who paid that value…." Ars kept poking fun of the guy demanding money, and then the guy simply turned back and walked away.
Ars didn't know if he was really an official or someone dressed as one to scam people, but he really didn't care he wasn't going to pay half a million berries just for docking. In the worst case he would just leave and dock somewhere else, close to the island and do what he wanted to do anyway.
Ars was going to shop for provisions, just to be asked an insanely high price… Ars now was convinced this whole section of the island was controlled by some greedy noble pig, since there was nothing to do here, he went back to his ships and left the port before any other idiot asked for money, after leaving the port they went around the island until he found a nice place to anchor.
The place was a small village with a small wooden dock, where a few fishing ships were tied.
Ars decided to let his men and Fierzy in the ship while he investigated the zone and asked for information.
When he reached land nobody seemed surprised, like it was usual for ships to come here to dock their ships, Ars wasn't exactly surprised by it, after all with that price just to dock in the city no sane person would dock there.
He started moving in the direction of an old man, who was just smoking and relaxing in a rocking chair.
"Hi, do you have a tavern around here??"
"Hi, you can go straight down the street, it's the last building on the right!"
"Thank you!"
Ars moved in the direction that the old man gave, and he found it easily, he felt the village was so small not even zorro could get lost here…
It was a small tavern made entirely of wood with a curtain for a door. When he entered, it was mainly empty, so he moved towards the bar counter, and sat waiting for the owner or a servant.
After a while a middle aged lady came out of the kitchen with some snacks in her hands, and took them to the only table in use, where two men were chatting with each other. Then she returned, and questioned Ars.
"What do you need??"
" I would like a beer, some snacks and information, if the lovely lady didn't mind talking for a bit."
She laughed at Ars and asked "Fufufufufu, Would some smoked fish with bread, do as snacks?"
"Sounds good to me!"
Ars awaited while the lady went to prepare what he requested , when she returned she came back with what was requested and an extra beer for herself. She sat besides Ars, looked at him and asked. "You wouldn't mind paying for my beer either right?" too that Ars simply smiled at her and indicated it was fine.
The bar woman took a sip, then looked at Ars, and asked "What kind of information are you seeking?"
Ars looked at her, and explained "A bit earlier today, I was coming to this kingdom to find refuges willing to travel, to take to my city, but when I arrived at the port of the city, it was completely clean, no refugees, no guards, the only thing I found there was a bunch of greedy creatures that somewhat resemble humans…. What's the deal with this kingdom???"
She looked up and moved her head to one side while she thought, contemplating the best way to explain the situation. Once she was done organizing her ideas, she looked at Ars and started explaining with a sad expression "Anyone in this kingdom who is poor, being criminals or not, is kicked out of the city…But it doesn't end there, once someone is out of the city they become prey. The nobles will come from time to time to hunt for slaves to sell to slavers, if you're at the wrong place at the wrong time, it's a nightmarish mistake that will make you suffer for the rest of your life "
She went silent, now looking terrified of what she just had said, even Ars had the chills, he knew most nobles in corrupt kingdoms were corrupt and evil but normally even them would pick a stupid reason, and as long as you stayed away and hidden they wouldn't bother to search for you, here the nobles were actively hunting the refuges for fun and money.
Then she looked at Ars once more "That's why you won't find refuges or poor people near the city,they either got caught or they are hidden as far away as possible from the city hoping they won't be caught and escape the island!!"
Ars felt bad but he was happy that he found people wanting to leave. So he asked her for information on that.
"Do you know how many people want to leave, and where are they located?"
"Yes, why?"
"I might have come to get a few people to live in my city… You see, I'm developing a new city that later on might become a kingdom, but for now we only have a few people, so I came to the sea to find people willing to go back with me… And anyone who would like to leave with me, would be appreciated. " Ars explained his current situation and his intentions to her, she was suddenly very excited about the opportunity to leave.
"Can you give me a few hours to spread the information?" she got up and asked excitedly.
But before Ars could give an answer, one of his men came in a rush, and quickly located and approached Ars.
"Sir, i apologize for disobeying orders but, there's a ship approaching and one of the men recognized their group as slavers!! What should we do? Fight or let them go?" He looked quite eager to fight, probably because in the past he lost friends and family to slavers, and couldn't wait to get revenge now that he was strong enough.
Ars did want to fight them, but at the same time he didn't want to get discovered by the world government, so he was hesitating, and thinking about the best way to destroy them and get away before the enemy realized what was happening and ask for aid, or worst send his face to this kingdom, and then the kingdom would go to the world government and that would be annoying to deal with.
He thought about it and decided to destroy them, but first he needed to make a few preparations.
The bar woman, on the other hand, had a terrified face, Ars looked at her and he was confused. Then he asked "Is everything alright?"
She nodded, but then explained " Yes, but the nobles might come hunting when the Slavers arrive…. "
Ars was confused but then something clicked " You mean they hunt, only after the slavers arrive to buy the slaves?"
" Yes, they consider feeding the slaves a waste of money, so they only hunt after the slavers dock… "
Ars was surprised, he expected that the nobles would hunt randomly when they felt like it, and by this point they already had a group of slaves to sell, but now with this new information he had a change of plans. So the original plan was to let the slavers get the slaves and then attack the slavers to rescue the slaves that had been sold. But this new info completely changed things.
He was worried the kingdom soldiers would come and help the slavers if they didn't wait enough and were still too close to this place, and that would cause the world government to notice him which was troublesome for him, but now he only needed to make sure the slavers never arrived. He then looked at his man and gave the order his men were waiting for.
"Prepare for combat, make sure no slaver escapes and make sure you tell Fierzy to stay hidden, she's not strong enough to fight and stay uninjured" Ars quickly gave his order and then looked at the bar woman and paid for the food, and before leaving he warned.
" Be careful, I will return later, but for now I will go kill the slavers before they get to the docks."
The woman heard him and calmed down a bit, but Ars could still see some of the previous fear, just not as intense as before, he didn't blame her, anyone with no combat strength would be terrified of getting hunted.
He left for his ship and prepared for a fight, the moment he arrived he could hear someone already complaining.
"I want to fight too.. Why do I need to stay out of this fight…" Ars looked at her, who was pouting in the middle of the ship, then approached her, grabbed her and started taking her to his cabin to make sure she wouldn't cause trouble and replied casually "Because you're too weak.". That made her grumble even more but stayed with her mouth shut. At the same time some of his soldiers started preparing the canons, just in case they would be needed, the others started sailing the ship in the slavers direction.
Ars knew that most likely, they would be quite outnumbered compared to the slavers, but at the same time, each of his men were probably quite stronger than the enemies individually, and even in a 2 versus 1 scenario they would most likely win, and with him who should be overwhelmingly stronger than the enemies,this attack shouldn't pose to much of a problem, so he wasn't worried about this fight, the only worry he had was making sure all of the slavers died.
As he expected the morale on his ship was extremely high, the only thing on his men's minds was revenge, and leaving no survivors.