The few that do manage to damage me aren’t enough to get through my regeneration, so I ignore them. There is only one spell that manages to actually hurt me and it is from a mage standing on top of the tallest building. He sends a swarm of stone spears at me, it seems he is a powerful earth mage.

  It makes me wonder if he is the one who built this place, but not enough for me to spare him. He does manage to make me shift my focus, so I bathe the center of the town with fire. I’ve noticed that the flames get bigger based on the amount of sins and the mage turns into a bonfire.

  That makes me feel a bit better about the fact that I am not going to get answers to my questions. Next I move to circle the town bathing the edges with my breath to limit those escaping. After that, I just criss-cross the town until I feel like I have covered everything.

  Since the people burn fairly slowly it is easy to tell where I have passed and any spots I missed. The technique is working even better than expected and it is healing those that are innocent. Even when a sinner who is on fire tries to hurt them, the flames spread and heal the one they are trying to hurt.

  Of course, quite a few of the slaves do what they can to get a little payback, but the flames still don’t hurt them. Inflicting harm on a tormentor is certainly not a sin and I would be upset if it counted as one. I am not sure if the technique uses my morality to judge or Krenocia’s, but I should probably figure that out.

  I move back to the center of the town and hover there as I look around for anyone I missed. There are some people still burning, but for the most part all that’s left are the slaves. As I am hovering there looking around, more and more of the slaves gather below me.

  The majority are human, although their skin color would indicate they are natives of the desert. Other than them, there are a few beastmen and to my surprise a couple of elves. They either got missed in previous sweeps, or were captured enroute to me.

  Seeing them makes me realize that there might be another objective for this trip. I already know how to search for elven life signs, I just need to do it over the entire continent. Or at least a big enough area that I can just gate around searching for them.

  Although, with how well the technique ended up working, I am tempted to just fly around using it on every town and city. I am waiting to see if I get experience when all of them are done burning. I also need to test it on monsters to see if it does anything to them, I don’t think they would count as sinners.

  I would think that for it to count as sinning they would have to be sentient enough to know right from wrong. If they are just following their instincts that shouldn’t really count as committing a sin. I also wonder how demons would be affected, or would they be immune?

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  At least these questions are ones that I have a good chance of answering, eventually. For now, I shapeshift into my dragonoid form and land in front of the slaves. Unfortunately, they aren’t all wearing the same kinds of restraints, so I can’t free them the easy way.

  I start removing their restraints one by one, but at least I don’t need to worry about healing them. Instead, I use my cleaning stone on them once they are freed and try to answer their questions. Most of them just want to know what I plan to do with them, but that is understandable.

  I explain that they are free and that I will do what I can to get them back to their people. The ones from the tribes I just plan to take back to the oasis and hope the tribe there can handle it. Those humans from the neighboring kingdoms will be easy enough to return home.

  If they are from Gremshow’s or Mavel’s kingdoms, I can just gate them back. If they are from the other side of the desert, we can probably just take them with us. The ones that I am unsure about are the beastmen, the best I can do is get them close.

  The humans are a mix of male and female, but the beastmen and elves are all female. There are only nine elves, but there are a couple of dozen beastmen from a number of different tribes. For now, I just ask them to move off to the side while I free everyone else.

  I send several groups of those that are already freed to search the town for any slaves that can’t get her on their own. I imagine that there will be quite a few who were locked up and forgotten in the chaos. No matter what condition they were in before, they should be fully healed now.

  That means they just need to be freed and then I can focus on getting them home, or close to it. Other than breaking restraints, I take some time to get a ton of food out of my pouch so that they can all eat. It is obvious, especially after using the cleaning stone, that none of them have had a proper meal recently.

  It doesn’t take long for the groups that were sent out to start returning with more slaves. For some reason they also return carrying all the gold and valuables that they can find. Instead of keeping them, they pile everything up near where I am working on breaking people free.

  1,427 Assorted Humans defeated! 1,260,300 Exp gained!

  It worked! I got the exp for them! I had given up, I guess one of them took a really long time to burn to death. Not that I mind, if he had that many sins then he certainly deserved to suffer. Now that I know I will get exp for it, I am even more tempted to fly around torching people.

  Seronia says “Ash! Whatever you are doing, stop it this instant!!”

  “What are you talking about? All I am doing is freeing some slaves!”

  Seronia says “Don’t give me that! My sister just got a huge bunch of souls and I know you are behind it!”

  “Oh, they went to her? That’s cool! Her getting souls makes her stronger, so what’s the problem?”

  Seronia says “When those souls are stolen from other deities it is a huge problem!”

  “Those I killed were all bandits, pirates, and slavers. Not the kind I would expect to be devout followers of anyone.”

  Seronia says “Just being born in a god’s territory is enough for them to have a claim on the soul. In small amounts it wouldn’t matter, but when hundreds are taken, even the laziest of gods would notice. Not to mention that those kinds of people might worship dark gods. They would notice even a single soul being stolen from them!”