Rise of the Crusader

84 Human Trafficking I

A day had passed since the midterm assessment, and after the elite division students were assigned missions, the seven teams took off the next day.

In the middle of the sea, a blue ship sailed across the area at a rather steady pace.

“There is nothing more beautiful than the sea,” Xavier exclaimed with a smile on his face as he stared at the sea that was buzzing with its dormant strength.

The smile on Xavier’s face continued to widen as the palpating pulse of the sea became even more steady and peaceful.

Xavier suddenly turned towards the middle-aged man who was steering the ship they were on, and said, “What do you think? Isn’t the sea so amazing and delicate?”

When the man heard Xavier and felt Xavier’s hand on his shoulder, his body shook violently and beads of sweat gathered even more on his forehead. The man suddenly lost his balance, and the ship drifted in the wrong direction.

“Do you want to die!!!” Xavier yelled as he would have stumbled on the floor if the man hadn’t regained control of the ship wheel quickly.

The middle-aged man gulped, with tears on his face. “I... I’m sorry.” He muttered in a low voice.

“Sorry isn’t going to cut it, you better don’t make the same mistake again or else you can as well consider yourself dead,” Xavier spoke in an icy voice.

.....

Suddenly, a girl of average height with long blue-tinted silver hair that was styled into a two-braid, and a body that was wrapped with bandages from head to toe appeared in front of Xavier.

“Stop disturbing him, Xavier, let him work,” Sylvia said in a displeased tone.

A not-so-friendly smile appeared on Xavier’s face when he heard Sylvia, “It’s best you quit telling me what you do.” Xavier sneered, “Or else you won’t have a happy ending.”

“The academy might disapprove of any act of violence between us outside the campus, but if you continue to push me, I will forget about the rules and shred you into pieces, Sylvia,” Xavier said.

After Xavier spoke, his body began to exclude an intense amount of killing intent, which made the middle-aged man even more frightened as his body trembled violently. His control of the ship wasn’t as firm as it was, because of his killing intent, Xavier.

As for Sylvia, she didn’t seem to be fazed by the killing intent from Xavier. “I won’t repeat myself, if you make one more move against him, I will cut off your head.” Sylvia declared.

“Hmm...” Xavier sneered, and then shifted his gaze elsewhere.

“Ahhhh~!”

Suddenly, a loud scream of agony rang out on the ship. When Xavier and Sylvia heard the voice, the expression on their faces of both of them changed very quickly, and they immediately rushed towards the direction the scream was coming from.

It took a few seconds, and they arrived at the ship deck.

“What is wrong with her?!” Xavier asked as he stared at Devon who simply shrugged his shoulder at him.

In front of Xavier and Sylvia was a woman who was in a disheveled state. Her hair was messy, and her entire body was covered in dirt. The dirt on the woman’s face made her completely unrecognizable.

“Ahhhh!!!” The woman screamed loudly as she rolled on the deck of the ship. Her body was tied up, so she wasn’t able to move very freely, the least she could do given her situation was roll around the ship.

There were also a couple of other women and men who were tied up and were in the same ragged state as the woman, but they all sat still and maintained decorum.

“Shut the hell up, woman!!!” Xavier yelled as he found the woman’s action to be infuriating. His eyes once again flickered with killing intent present in them.

A second after Xavier spoke, the woman went quiet. She didn’t utter a word and had even stopped rolling around the deck. The woman then glared at Sylvia and Xavier, before saying.

“The three of you will suffer greatly for this!!!! You will burn in hell!!!” The woman yelled, “You kidnapped adults, teenagers, and even children, all for what? Because we are weak and powerless isn’t it?”

“Your families and future generations will pay for the crimes you have committed. You will mourn the death of everyone you care about.” The woman didn’t hold anything back and kept cursing Xavier, Sylvia, and Devon.

It was only after a few seconds that the woman became quiet. The intense glaring however still remained.

“Are you done?” Xavier asked, and then shook his head.

“First, you’re wrong about something. This isn’t kidnapping, instead, this is human trafficking.” Xavier’s eyes were fixed on the people on the ship as he spoke, “There is a difference between the both of them.

“We aren’t just kidnapping you, we are also going to be trading you off. Whether it is the children on this ship, the teenagers, or the adults, every single one of you can say goodbye to your old life because a new adventure awaits you.”

“The buyers are already waiting for us, so you might as well get yourself prepared,” Xavier exclaimed, and as he saw the horrified look on the faces of the people on the ship, he burst into laughter.

Apart from Xavier, Devon, Sylvia, and the middle-aged steering the ship, the rest of the people were all tied up. They were in the middle of the sea, with no idea of where they were.

Suddenly, the woman who had been rolling around the ship yelled. And this time around, her voice was, even more, louder than earlier.

“Ahhhhhh~!!!!!”

“Somebody... Help!!!!!!” The woman yelled at the top of her voice. She had tears oozing out of her eyes as she screamed, but despite all her efforts and cry for help, it was all fruitless.

Xavier’s eyes squinted, and a bone-chilling frown appeared on his face. “Will you shut the fuck up, woman!” Xavier spoke with his hands clenched into tight fists.

“No! You will burn in hell!!” The woman exclaimed.

“Speaking of hell,” Xavier suddenly flashed a cold smile at the woman. And it wasn’t up to a second after he spoke, and the woman was set ablaze.

As golden flames enveloped the woman completely, she wanted to let out a scream of agony from the intense pain that was coursing through her body, but it was difficult to let out a sound not to talk of screaming.

The instant her body was engulfed by the golden flames, it targeted her vocal cord immediately. While it continued to instill catastrophic damage to her body, the vocal cord was its main focus.

And within seconds, the flames achieved their aim as the vocal cord was destroyed.

“Are you insane!!!” Sylvia exclaimed as she saw the woman’s state.

Sylvia was left started by Xavier’s action, and before she could regain composure, and react, what was left of the woman was her ashes. There weren’t even any skeletal bones that were left of the woman.

After the woman’s obliteration, Xavier smirked, and he stared at the remaining people on the ship. “She died because she refused to accept her fate, and was also too noisy.”

“If any of you decide to act foolish, your ending would be even more dramatic than hers. I can assure you of that.” Xavier stated.

Xavier had just spoken when Sylvia stretched her hand forward, and her voice rang out a second after. “We have a problem,” Sylvia muttered.

Xavier and Devon quickly shifted their gaze to the direction that Sylvia was pointing at, and as the both of them set eyes on the ship that was moving towards them, a frown appeared on their face.

The ship that Xavier, Devon, and Sylvia were on wasn’t particularly huge, and neither was it small. It was moderate at best, but when compared to the ship that was heading towards them, the disparity was massive.

The ship was huge.

“What are they doing here?” Xavier mumbled with his eyes glued to the ship in front. “Didn’t the academy say that they are going to be taken care of?”

There was a tinge of rage in Xavier’s voice as he spoke. He had already clenched his hands into a tight fist, as the appearance of the white ship in front of them changed the whole dynamics of their mission.

And because of the bandages which were wrapped around her body, Sylvia’s expression couldn’t be seen, but from the way she placed her hand on the katana beside her, it was obvious that she was also displeased by the arrival of the ship.

“I say, we turn back while we still can, or better still, we forfeit this mission. We can’t go into battle with these people, they are going to shred us into pieces.” Xavier blurted.

Xavier turned towards Sylvia, “As long as we are alive, we can make the setup some other time. Even the academy will agree with us on this decision, we can’t deal with them.”

“What are you still waiting for,” Xavier exclaimed when he saw that Sylvia hadn’t moved from where she was. “I will inform the academy about this, so I won’t have to suffer for your death.”

With that said, and Xavier turned around. He was about to move when Sylvia’s voice rang out.

“It’s already too late.” Sylvia paused, “They are already here.”