Everyone around begins to line up and take the rations, then Fin speaks up again, looking through the people that approach him.
"Alright, who was it keeping notes this time? I forget who's who sometimes, you all look alike to me, it'd be a lot easier if I asked your names before you all went under."
He chuckles to himself and makes a light remark under his breath.
"Oh well... the ones that aren't useful are just going to be left to die out in this desert once we're done clearing this town out anyway."
Then, turns to a woman who approaches him carrying a stack of notes.
She has tan skin, dark black hair cut short just above her shoulders, and looks to be no older than myself. Possibly 20 or 21 if I had to guess.
Despite the eerie lifeless stare everyone has on, her eyes look a bit different. They're light blue, so light that they almost look white, but there seems to be a hint of consciousness underneath them.
Still, the young woman gives the stack of notes to Fin without saying a word.
He takes them in a quick and aggressive manner, turning away, and reading them on his own, muttering under his breath again for everyone to hear.
"Damn, another dud warehouse. A few gold worth of C-Class gear, but nothing too special. Oh well, it's good enough to give as a mid-day report to the Boss."
Then, turns back around to face everyone while stuffing the papers marking down all the tracked inventory in his back pocket.
"Alright. Drink up, eat up, then back to work! I want to see everything cleared out of here before we move onto the next warehouse of the night shift. You got it?"
He looks at the woman that's standing still right in front of him, and a single tear falls from her eye. I watch her lower lip quiver as well, and curiously do a full scan to find she's a fairly high level with a skill I've never seen before.
The man grits his teeth at the sight of her small bit of defiance, then yells in her face.
"That means you too!"
He gets closer to her and a moment of realization hits him.
"Oh right, you're that girl... One of the only ones still useful from that wandering group of villagers we captured in Sector 4, weren't you? Your leader sure put up quite the fight against the Boss."
"It doesn't matter now though, does it? You know you'll just be a mindless pawn for the rest of your life, so drink up and get back to it."
He uses his [Bind] skill to grab an extra bottle from the pile, making it float in the air over to her as she accepts it without question. Then smirks and yells at her again.
"You know what, no food for you, just a double dose of Elixir. That'll teach you. Drink these and get back to work."
He grabs his daggers from his waist, pointing them at her while forcing the drinks into her hands using his bind skill. Then uses the same dark hands to push her elbows to bring the pink bottles closer to her trembling lower lip.
I watch in disgust, but as soon as the bottle touches her mouth, I decide to act.
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"I wanted to stay here and watch how things worked a little longer, but I've seen enough."
I point a single finger at the man from over 10 meters away and let out a blade of advanced wind magic so dense and thin it'd be impossible to see without Ranked-Up perception skills.
It slices through both of his arms and severs the floating purple hand in the air in an instant.
The drinks fall from her grip, hitting the sandy desert floor beside the grunt's severed arms still gripping the crimson daggers.
He yells out in pain, looking around to see who cut off his arms, falling to his knees as a puddle of blood begins to form.
"H-How? How did you do this? You-"
With eyes full of rage and confusion, he turns his head side to side, trying to find who did such a thing to him.
I walk through the small crowd of workers with my arms crossed, staring right at the man who's begun to bleed out on the floor. Then, stand over him and begin asking some questions while activating my telekinesis skill.
"How long have all of you been in business here? Seems like quite the operation you've got, huh?"
I pull the paper notes from his back pocket before they get stained by the pile of blood forming in the sand. He activates his bind skill at the same moment, but I use Plunderer to drain every last drop of MP from his body before the dense purple hands can fully form.
"Come on, tell me something. I was having fun spying on all of you. At least tell me your leader's name. Or am I going to have to find that out for myself when I give him a visit?"
He grits his teeth, and I hear a small crack of glass coming from inside his mouth, then the sour smell of poison hits my nose.
"Oh no, you don't..."
I use the same thin wind slash to cut the man in two.
Skill: Bind [Legendary Grade]
I choose yes and shake my head.
"He was not in the mood to talk at all... At least I finished him off before he killed himself."
Using very condensed advanced fire magic, I burn his remains to ash, even the sand stained with blood melts away beneath him, and all that remains from this entire interaction is a hole in the ground burnt black and the woman with light blue eyes still staring straight ahead, with tears streaming down her cheeks now.
I wave my hand in front of her face a few times and call out to her.
But there's no response. I can see sporadic movements in her small black pupils, but nothing more.
"Stop moving your eyes if you can hear me."
"Now, move them again if you can."
They move again with even more vigor than before.
"How did you all get in this situation...?"
Her eyes don't stop moving, but she doesn't say a word.
I realize she isn't going to be able to answer any complicated questions for a while. So, it would be a better use of my time to go search things out myself. If that elixir lasts for up to 12 hours on people with low mana control, pretty much everyone here will be running on fumes for quite a while.
I turn to all the other drone-like workers and give a command.
"Whatever you do, do not drink another drop of the water given to you by this man..."
I pull one of the crates of E-Class potions out from the storage locker and use telekinesis to empty them all out into the sand. Then, use my new water magic skill to summon pure drinking water into the emptied glass jars and containers. I make a pile of corked clean drinking water.
"Drink from this pile only if you're thirsty."
As they walk over to the clean water, I use advanced fire magic to destroy every last diluted elixir in the area, then turn back to the woman with the wavering eyes. I give her some leftover food from my item storage and a potion bottle full of clean water for herself.
"These are for you, drink and eat up. Go rest inside the warehouse until you come to your senses."
I look up at everyone else drinking clean water one by one in a single file line.
"All of you will do the same. Stay inside this warehouse and rest."
Most of them drank more elixir when Fin told them to moments ago, so they're in for another 12 hours of mindless wandering, but this woman should have far less time under the influence.
"If I'm not back before you come to your senses, listen to her. She'll be in charge here, understood?"
I point to the black-haired woman, and all of the hypnotized workers do exactly as I said, slowly walking back into the empty barn.
The woman turns too, walking back into the barn without saying a word.
As the door shuts, I let out a sigh and use my conceal skill to shift my cloak and appearance into an exact replica of Fin, the Dagger user.
Gripping the notes from the day's work of labor, I smile and turn in the direction of the fountain in the middle of town.
Nearby, I sense the presence of Raze, Fin's partner, making his way toward the middle of town already. Then, expanding my enemy detection skill's range, I find readings of about 8 more people all making similar routes.
No one from the Green Mist changes their formation, but everyone on this side of town in the Crimson Dagger does.
I begin my walk toward the hidden base in the center of town just like everyone else.
"It's time to meet the Boss..."