Chapter 174. Rescue

The Holstaur gasped and immediately brought her hand up to her throat. When she found the collar no longer there, realization finally dawned on her."Wait. You weren't just talking shit?"

"Nope." I smiled back. "It may be hard to believe I know, but I am here to help."

She was no longer listening to me. Instead, she grabbed the others and pulled them toward us. "I don't care who you are, but he's going to know what you've done. If we don't hurry, we'll lose our chances of escaping."

That was a better outcome than we had started with.

One by one, I sent all the collars into my inventory before throwing them to the side. I kept one for Kettu to play with later, but the rest were of no use to me. I would never use them.

Just as the last collar vanished into my inventory, a chilling dread filled my body down to the very bones, and I froze. It was like I had suddenly taken an ice bath while drinking from a frozen lake.

"Shit, he's being targeted by that bloody spell." The Holstaur called out before grabbing my shoulders. "Don't listen to it. Whatever it says, just ignore it and focus on right here and now." She looked to the others, who all seemed to wince.

"We can't carry him and escape. They'll catch us for sure; we'll barely get away ourselves as it is." One of the others responded, trying not to look at me. "At least this way one of us isn't being targeted."

"I'm sorry, what's meant to be happening to me?" I asked, flexing my fingers as if that would get rid of the chill. It was strange, like an itch I couldn't scratch but the actual feeling of being cold was absent.

The Holstaur's all looked at me with surprise. I could even make out Kettu waving her hands around in her own spell as she tried to figure out what was going on.

"Ummm. Dallas should be whispering words into your head about surrendering to him while your body freezes. It's how he typically catches everyone, as he just walks up to you while you try to fight it. It won't kill you, but it's primarily used to capture." The Holstaur explained, looking at me. She touched my shoulder again and jumped back with a yelp. "Your body is freezing. How are you still able to stand?"

I almost laughed. Thank you, Deeds, for the immunity to rapid temperature declines and mental immunity. Didn't think I'd be using them here, though.

"Magic," I said instead, using jazz hands for added effect. I didn't wait for her to say anything else as I ran towards the Harpies. "Kettu. Take the Holstaur's and go. I'll get the Harpies."

They made a good point that if I was being targeted by whatever this spell was, then all of them would be fine. I was more than capable of holding his attention for a bit, and I could always teleport back home if it became too much. Something they couldn't do.

There was a shriek as one by one they vanished from Kettu's power. Hopefully it was enough to actually get them out, as I could already see people making their way over to me.I was about to get a reputation as a thief... Well, not much I can do about that and I honestly don't care enough about the people that think this is okay.

The Harpies had watched what I'd done for the Holstaur's, so I could skip all the pleasantries. My arrival, however, was ruined by my leap over the fence as I nicked the topmost wire.Lightning coursed through my body, causing my effortless leap over to end in the dirt as I rolled to a stop.

What the hell? Electric fences don't work if you're not touching the ground. Well, ones back in my old world worked that way. Should have known this world played by different rules.

I let out an unheroic groan as I twitched on the ground trying to get my healing spell to work. There wasn't much to heal, so it was doing a piss poor job of fixing my condition.

The Harpies all watched without touching me as I recovered from my own stupidity. Note to self: live wires are still a thing here and infinitely more annoying.

"Are you okay?" One of them with green feathers squawked as I finally came to.

I offered a nod as I didn't quite trust my mouth to not stumble over my words while trying to make a hand gesture to get them to come closer.I was, of course, ignored for the most part.

With one last groan, I finally got my body to respond without spasming and quickly jumped to my feet. Touching an electric fence wasn't anything new to me, though admittedly we didn't keep ones that strong.

"Much better. Now let's get those collars off you girls." They didn't need any additional encouragement and piled into me one after another. If we weren't on such a time crunch, I'd have enjoyed the five of them all stretching their necks up towards me as they pushed their chests out.Not the time, though.

"Can you make us all invisible as well?" An orange one asked when all the collars were removed.

"Nope. That was a friend of mine that did that." I replied, touching my hand to her arm.

"But how are we going to escape?" She almost shrieked, trying to pull away from my freezing touch.

I was a little aggressive in holding onto her as she tried to pull away, but they only had one chance of getting away. They had to fly.

The remaining stems of her cut feathers fell out as new growth pushed its way out of her wing. Her struggles stopped as she felt the change."What?"

When I felt her wing was fully healed, I let her go, and she immediately began preening the limb with her teeth."How did you do that?" She asked, as again the rest of them crowded in for their own chance.

"We can talk later. For now, I need you guys to get out of here. There's another farm in that direction. You'll be safe there." I pointed in the direction I'd previously come from when I was a Dragon as I healed the rest of them. "Or you can take your chances elsewhere if you want."

I mentally changed Trespassing to let in the Holstaur and Harpies, making sure to clarify that it was only them and not their whole species. I want to be welcoming, but there still had to be limits.

"We won't get far. They'll track us down before we can reach the mountains." Another one with blue feathers shook her head. "You promise not to leave us in a small pen like this, and we'll lay you all the eggs you can ever want."

It wasn't much of a question, more of a statement.I could see people getting closer; we were running out of time.

"I promise to treat you like actual people, but you need to go now," I replied, stepping away from them. I couldn't make out Dallas in the approaching group, but there were a fair few of them. "And any chance you guys know where Dallas is keeping his Livestock, the one with magical abilities in their produced resource?"

"In his home." The blue one clucked. "He speaks of her being trapped in his home, though we've never seen her ourselves."

The Harpies all jumped into the air on unsteady wings that I mentally attributed to not having used them in a while.

"Thank you for freeing us, stranger! We'll take you up on your offer for safety." The orange one called out as they flew away.

And then there was one. I joked to myself.If we were correct and the Livestock was only bringing Dallas back because of them, then that was all sorted... Nothing had ever been that simple, so my hopes weren't that high.

I still had to find her.

Dallas's House wasn't hard to spot. It was the biggest thing around and was more of a mansion than a house. There was just one problem. It was past the growing crowd that was belining towards me.Now I could just teleport over, but I didn't know if that would break the spell Dallas had on me. If it did and he decided to target one of the Harpies, they wouldn't survive the fall.

I should really sit down and have a magic lesson with Kettu sometime. That would fill in some of the gaps in my knowledge.

What are my other options?

Could I fight?

Not really. Abelha has been teaching me as well as she can, and I could strip them of their armour and weapons as I did with the Dragon Hunters, but that wouldn't really help with the number of them coming towards me. One or two would be fine, but the ten I could see? Way more than I could handle.

So I did the only thing I could think of... I ran in the opposite direction.

Teleporting was still my best chance of getting to the house, and I could do that at any time because I'd already seen it, so all I needed to do was buy the girls time to get far enough away. There was a lot of hoping the spell of his had a range or some other requirement to activate otherwise this was just a waste of time.

The twang of a crossbow bolt whisked past my head, far closer than I'd have liked. Of course they have range.I didn't wait for the second one as I started to zig-zag, keeping the Harpies in my sight and counting the distance they were gaining.

The second bolt missed my leg while a third one found its home in the back of my shoulder. I didn't get a chance to yell out as a bola wrapped my legs together, and I fell.

With a curse, I sent it to my inventory and returned to running, counting down the seconds until the girls were out of sight. Just as the guards caught up with me.

So close. I almost called out as I teleported onto the front deck of the mansion.

Just as I thought the spell targeting me stopped as I teleported. That would be a handy way of avoiding it in the future.

I reached my shoulder to touch the bolt and sent that into my inventory as well before I healed the wound. Handy trick, as pulling it out would have hurt. A lot.

"You are incredibly hard to get rid of," Dallas said from the doorway as he watched.

I jumped, having not realized he was there.

His response was to curl the edges of his lip up before hiding it as best he could. "You have proven to be adequate at certain tasks, so shall we settle this. Man to man?"