In the third district, the atmosphere is surreal, almost deceptive. Hajime looks around, standing on a tall building with Elisa at his side. He decides to head to the slum regions, a place that most visitors of the imperial Capital would rather not visit.
Hajime's objective for dawning his Reaper's Mask was simple, he was curious of what each sibling was doing to inherit the throne of their father. As for what would happen if they did, he didn't quite care.
In the slum region, the injured and the sick lay outside in the cold air of night. Hajime decides to cause a commotion and attract the attention of the boss in the area. He summons Silk from the vampire garden and asks her whether she knows about the slum regions. Silk endulges his request and explains the living situation in the slums.
The leader of the slums, Jack Stewart, also known as the harvenger, has cut a deal with the third prince of the Empire, Prince Akion Roseworth. The deal is simple, Jack would give him information gathered on his siblings and in return, the third prince would allow him run his operations of slave trade secretly.
Hajime was excited all of a sudden and gave a heartfelt thanks to Silk for he information. If it was slave trade, the Hajime knew exactly where to go. He was fascinated about the capital's infrastructure the day he went to the City library. As such, he took notes of the old tunnel system installed by past rebels that claimed the empire from it's former tyrant emperor and give to the Roseworth bloodline. One such tunnel systems, had cells for imprisonment. It just so happened that the same tunnel was underneath these slums. Hajime crunches down and casts his destruction magic. Soon after, the ground caves in, revealing a tunnel built from magic reinforced bricks.
Hajime helps Elisa stand and they walk towards the end of the tunnel ahead. Elisa is curious what kind of monsters the harvenger and the third prince are to promote underground slave trade.
At the end of the tunnel there is an opening. Elisa and Hajime casually stroll in, catching the guards by surprise. They were five in number. Hajime took them out, but refused to kill them, since that would spoil his fun. In the cages, human children were crying out for help.
Hajime asked Elisa to watch over them while he ransacks the base of operations. He dashed in to the darkness and summoned a long sword from his dimension pouch.
The screams of men could be heard, accompanied by the gut-wrenching sound of sword piercing and tearing flesh. Soon after, the sound dialed down. At the place Hajime was, he saw a baffling site. It was a beast girl.
" It was said that 300 years ago, to make powerful soldiers, demons cross breeded with humans and beastmen. It resulted to highly evolved races of demonbeast and human demonoids. The human demonoids were known as elves. There were two types of elves, the dark elves and the flora elves. These names were given based on their magical attributes and physical features. As for the demon beasts, the only differing characteristic between their beastly brethren was the fact that, demon beasts had multicolored hair, whereas a normal beastmen would only have either black or brownish hair or even a bit of both".
Hajime looked the beast girl with sympathy, admiring the beauty of her leafy green hair. He opened the cage for her. The beast girl, still cautious, protruded her sharp claws to scratch Hajime. However, Hajime did not move, and got injured. Taking off his mask, he smiles at the beast girl to comfort her worries.
The beast girl can talk and apologizes for scratching Hajime. Hajime pays her on her head and decides to go on a killing spree for what the harvenger has done to people's children. He asks the beast girl to wait while he confronts the harvenger. In his office, the harvenger is busy looking through files of slaves he had acquired, when his office lights go out. He attempts to cast a light spell to see, when suddenly, the sound of blade cutting flesh is heard, accompanied by gutteral screams. The lights return and Jack notices his left hand is gone. However, he sees no one there. He calls out in vane for the person to show himself. There is no response and he only notices a piece of paper at his door. On the piece of paper, is a message written in Jack's blood.
" A thief who does not respect the life of a person, has his hand cut of like a beast being punished. Tell Prince Akion, the Reaper has come to the capital to claim his life.
By the way, your men are all dead. I've claimed the kidnapped children".
Sincerely,
Reaper.
Jack screams in agony as the scene shifts to Hajime and Elisa, standing in the slums with the children. Most of the children lived in the capital and were kidnapped one way or another. The only one left was the green haired beast girl. Hajime looked at Elisa with sadness in his eyes.he went on to say;
" the poor thing, an abomination to her race of proud beastmen and an outcast to human society. She can't survive on her own".
Lily pops out of the pendant and offers the girl a chance to stay at the garden as a servant. But Hajime retorts, making her his child, rather than a servant. He refused to have such a young girl work.
Elisa was blushing as he realized that this ,add her the girl's mother. Lily reluctantly agreed and Hajime asked for her name. However, the girl had no name. Deciding to name her, Hajime gave her the name Flora. This was because of her leafy green hair.
Hajime had made his first step towards his full scale revenge plot and even managed to gain certain influence through violence. He knew that soon, he would have his cousin at knife point, making him answer for his transgressions.