Chapter 509 Human Trafficking
After nightfall, Bayam, the "City of Generosity," seemed even more lively than during the day. This largest city in the Rorsted Archipelago, and indeed in the Five Seas, became a gathering place for tourists, adventurers, and pirates from all over the world. Even though a bounty notice was posted at the entrance of the Red Theater, there were always pirates on the list who would put on makeup and walk in with a swagger to enjoy a night of warmth.
Angel waited quietly at the window until the late night. The noisy "Red Theater" gradually quieted down. A thin figure left the side door under the protection of two local guards and walked towards the dock.
Without William's reminder, Angel could see the man's left hand clearly with his dark vision and excellent eyesight. There were only two fingers, the thumb and index finger, and the remaining three were just small bulges on the palm.
That was Mad Captain's contact in Bayam, Maduni, nicknamed "Finger".
"Follow quietly, I'm behind you."
Angel instructed William, who nodded and silently jumped down from the second-floor window, following behind "Finger" and his group of three from a distance.
Passing through alleys and avoiding the tracking of "Finger" Maduni and the guards, William, who was tall but good at hiding, soon came to an area of low-rise houses near the dock area. It was close to the coast, with convenient transportation, and far away from the surrounding primitive forests. It was very popular with the residents who settled here, and the residential areas were connected.
Maduni stopped in front of a two-story house on Beldan Street. His two guards opened the door and went in first, turning on the lights in the living room. Then the short contact man returned to his home.
Seeing him so cautious, William did not approach, but hid in a nearby alley. Just as he was looking around for Angel who was "behind him", the latter lifted his invisibility and his figure emerged from the air.
After taking out the magic mirror and doing a detailed divination beforehand, Angel looked at William and said:
"Two servants and two guards, can you handle this if I leave it to you?"
She brought "Lucky" William into the operation this time, largely to test his abilities. He had been introduced by the Dominican Federation to join Elaine's "Redhead," and would receive a generous salary. As a Beyonder, he would also receive a proportional commission for participating in combat. If he were just a good-looking rookie with no real skills, he would be considered a "salary thief."
"Give me two minutes."
William replied in a hoarse voice.
"I mean quietly, without leaving any trace afterwards." Angel reminded that she only came to gather intelligence today, and did not want to directly wipe out the "Finger" family and alert the enemy.
"That's what I mean."
The bronze-skinned burly man chuckled and replied.
Then, he bent his body and walked silently out of the alley, approached the house of "Finger" Maduni, stretched out his hands, and with the help of his tall body, easily climbed up to the balcony on the second floor, pried open the window with a dagger, and slipped in.
Seeing his skillful movements, Angel nodded with satisfaction, used "Invisibility" again, and disappeared into the street.
A moment later, she appeared in Maduni's bedroom.
"Finger," with short brown hair and a thin, malnourished figure, had already washed and was lying in his bed. According to the Dominican Federation's intelligence, his wife and daughter were not in Bayam, and no relevant information could be obtained. He was alone in the bedroom, making it convenient for Angel to move.
She first activated a "Sleep" spell, allowing Maduni, who had just fallen asleep, to enter a deeper sleep. Then she took out the "Nightmare" extraordinary ability she borrowed from Klein, pinched this dark and deep gem-like ability in her hand, and spread her own spirituality, surrounding it.
Klein had tried this simple method before and successfully invaded the dream of "Lieutenant General of Disease". Today, Angel was going to make a similar attempt.
The illusory darkness gradually spread from before her eyes, covering Maduni who was lying on the bed in front of her, turning him into a hazy human-shaped ball of light. At the same time, the figures of two servants and two guards in the next room and the lounge downstairs also appeared in the darkness. They had all fallen asleep with William's "help".
It's quite efficient... Angel chuckled and spread his spirituality to "Finger" Maduni, entering his deep dream.
The surrounding bedroom scene was instantly shrouded in darkness, and then the darkness faded away, and Angel returned to the bedroom.
Um?
At this moment, she almost thought that the ability of "nightmare" had failed, but after looking around, Angel realized that this bedroom was the scene in Maduni's dream.
Maduni, who had just been lying on the bed and falling asleep, now had a fierce look on his face. He stood by the window, holding a thick whip in his right hand and whipping the thin body on the bed hard.
“Snap—”
Amid the crisp sound of the whip hitting flesh, the thin girl on the bed began to cry.
"What kind of evil is this? His 'beautiful dream' is to bully people weaker than himself?"
Angel complained in his heart, hiding in the hazy and blurred corner at the edge of the dream, and looked at "Finger" Maduni again, and found that the three fingers of his left hand had been restored in the dream.
"He didn't want to face his injuries, so his fingers returned to normal in his dream. He felt inferior about his body, so he bullied thinner women?"
Analyzing the dream of this contact, Angel continued to spread his spirituality, triggering the power of "nightmare", reversing Maduni's dream, and turning the bedroom scene into a basement covered with blood and torture instruments. Maduni, who had just been holding a whip and taking the initiative, was also tied up and hung on a wooden frame.
Angel, who had helped the Dominican Federation solve his local troubles many times during this period and interrogated many pirates and evil adventurers, was already familiar with the relevant procedures. She used her control over dreams to transform herself into "Vice Admiral of Disease" Tracy, whom the other party might have seen and even feared, and appeared in the center of the basement.
Sure enough, as soon as he saw "Tracy" appear, Maduni's face turned pale and he struggled violently.
"Maduni, I'm very disappointed in you," Angel said, adopting Tracy's slightly seductive yet heroic tone. He took a few steps forward and stood in front of the wooden frame where Maduni was tied. He picked up a pair of blood-stained scissors and said, "Because of your mistake, a batch of goods from the 'Mad Captain' arrived in Bayam, but no one accepted them. This is a huge loss."
"No, what? Impossible..." Maduni's voice became sharp due to the fear amplified by the dream. "Victor is very cautious. He wouldn't have come to Bayam before contacting me!"
Angel sneered and said nothing, but the scissors moved towards Maduni's right hand and rested on his fingers.
"Wait, wait!"
The fear in his heart was awakened, and Maduni's whole body began to twitch.
"Yes, yes! I remember now! I, I might have forgotten to pick up the shipment on the afternoon of March 2nd... My fingers, please!"
Satisfied, Angel cut off Maduni's little finger and spared the others.
Amidst the other party's roar, which was half panic and half relief, her figure disappeared from the created nightmare and returned to reality.
On the bed, Maduni's thin figure curled up into a ball, his left arm covering his intact right hand, holding his precious fingers tightly in his arms.
Angel didn't stay for long after getting the information she needed. She picked up the "sleeping" spell on the ground, lit the black curse flame, eliminated the traces around her, then returned to the first floor, found William who was guarding the door, and left.
Tomorrow is March 2nd, the day when "Finger" and "Mad Captain" meet.
————
In the evening, at a hidden dock not far from the "City of Generosity" Bayam.
As the tide surged in, a pirate ship flying the "One-Eyed Skull" emblem quietly approached. If this were the dock in Bayam City, any ship flying a pirate flag that dared to approach within five nautical miles would be discovered by the high-altitude lookout and "warmly welcomed" by the coastal defense guns.
But this was a private port, a "pirate trading place" that Bayam had semi-publicized, but no one would expose.
The city needed the goods they smuggled, needed the pirates to come ashore for consumption, and some bigwigs also looked forward to the "necessities" they brought. Therefore, every time they attacked the local resistance forces, they always tacitly bypassed these small docks, leaving the pirates a passage to enter the island.
On the deck of the pirate ship stood a middle-aged man wearing a tricorn hat and a black eyepatch covering one eye. His one eye was squeezed on a monocular telescope, looking at the dock.
After discovering someone waving a pennant and sending out the agreed-upon flag signal, "Mad Captain" Connors Victor did not let his men approach immediately. Instead, he carefully ordered them to send out the corresponding flag signal for confirmation. After repeated verification, he folded the mainsail and used the waves and tide to slowly approach the dock.
On the shore, "Finger" Maduni, who had a nightmare the night before, was still in shock. He didn't breathe a sigh of relief until the "One-Eyed Skull" approached the dock, lowered the gangway, and the sailors escorted down the girls with their hands tied behind their backs, wearing simple linen clothes.
He was really afraid that last night's nightmare would come true, and that "Lieutenant General of Disease" Tracy would cut off three fingers on his intact right hand!
As the girls who were escorted off the ship walked from the dock, his mind returned from the nightmare and gradually became active. With the help of the lanterns held by the sailors, he observed the faces and figures of the slave girls one by one.
"Most of them will be sent to the Red Theater. That blonde girl has delicate skin and is well-maintained. You can tell she's not a civilian, so she should be kept for the Governor's Office. We should also keep a few for the military, especially the navy. Hey, there's a short one, but no one will want her..."
Before he even approached the pile of slave girls tied together with hemp ropes, Maduni had already divided them up in his mind: some to be sold to the Red Theater, some to be distributed among the powerful, and some to be kept for himself...
It was not until his gaze moved from the string of prey to the "Mad Captain" at the end of the team that his expression became serious.
"Mr. Victor," he said, nodding slightly as a greeting. The two had long since become familiar with each other through numerous transactions, so there was no need for excessive formalities. "Here's the 'payment' from last time, a total of 1,400 pounds."
He handed over a thick envelope, waited for the other party to count it casually, and then handed it to a tall guard with slightly long arms and a hooded cloak behind him.
This kind of "business" occurs every two months and is the main reason for the £3,300 bounty on "Mad Captain" Connors. Of course, compared to the vicious pirates who roam the five seas, Connors's human trafficking is nothing, so it has never been taken seriously by the military and the Church of the Storm. Because the upper echelons of Bayam have enjoyed many benefits, they even acquiesce in this "gray trade."
Only "Finger" himself knows that the actual scale of Connors' human trafficking is dozens of times larger than what is publicly revealed!
With the help of these carefully selected girls, Connors was able to travel around under the name of a "slave trader". However, secretly, more slaves were quietly transported to secret locations and then disappeared without a trace.
Of course, all this has nothing to do with me. As long as I manage my own business well, I can rest easy... Maduni is well aware of the saying "the more you know, the more unfortunate you are". Even if he accidentally learned some truths during years of cooperation, he pretended not to know and just regarded himself as a broker in the transaction of beautiful girls.
Just as he was daydreaming about the "wonderful night" with the girl of his choice, the hooded man behind "Mad Captain" Connors seemed alert, took a step forward, and rudely put his hand on Connors' shoulder and pulled him back.
"Someone's spying!"
His voice was hoarse and low, as if disguised.
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