82 82 - Voice

After everyone stopped what they were doing and paid attention to him, Noah continued, "About these dwarfs, what are your thoughts on them?"

The group became deep in thought due to Noah's question. The first to respond was Marcel. "These dwarves in the Fortress are very strange; they keep reminding me of the Fortress that became very famous for having elves. As an RPG player when I was younger, it is very difficult not to relate the two. After all, besides orcs, these two most famous races in games. And orcs are already very common in Fortresses, even Rank C. I don't think this is a coincidence."

Hearing what Marcel said, the other Blessed nodded, representing that they clearly agreed with what he said. As for Noah, Marcel saying that kind of thing was like he was reading his mind.

"Okay, so can I burn those corpses too? I have a bad feeling since we left that corpse in the previous room. I am worried that something bad might happen if we don't get rid of those corpses just like we do with monsters. Since these monsters seem to like dwarf meat or blood quite a bit, leaving them here possibly attracts more monsters by scent. It does not make me feel good. Even though I feel bad about doing this to someone who looks like a human..." Noah used all of his knowledge of body language to try to convey to them consciously and subconsciously that he was feeling bad about doing something like this, since he didn't want to be related to a manic psychopath for burning everyone and not just the monsters. Burning the bodies of monsters and burning the bodies of humans were two completely different things morally.

Hearing what Noah said, the woman who had a cousin who had dwarfism was a little uncomfortable with the situation, but when she thought about the potential danger they could be in because of it and how many times Noah burned the corpses, she swallowed the words of protest she had and just kept quiet, neither accepting nor disagreeing with whatever ultimate decision would be determined.

Looking at the expression of the rest of the Blessed, Noah saw that there was no one there who was particularly against burning these corpses. Even more after they saw that Noah didn't seem to really want to do this, and that he was feeling really bad, which was exactly what Noah wanted.

Having everyone's agreement, Noah created a small fireball and made it come into contact with a dwarf, hoping that another message that said he couldn't burn beings with little sin, like what had happened last time he tried burning a human, would not appear this time.

[Dwarf found. Sin rate: 27% Normal man. Purification granted.]

'So maybe elves also fall into this category? And orcs... and aliens...? Damn, more questions are coming up than answers,' Noah thought, a little frustrated.

Noah burned the corpse to the end but the only thing that happened was that his skill exp grew a little. This clearly disappointed him a little, but as he still had two other bodies left to burn, Noah did not give up and burned another one... which resulted in another failure and he received nothing but exp again.

'Damn it. Maybe I only get something from real humans?' Noah thought frustratedly.

Once he had burned the third dwarf, another message appeared floating in front of him. After so many failures, Noah thought the message was going to say that it would be impossible for him to get something from the corpse of a dwarf, but when he read the message, it was a pleasant surprise.

[The user purified a dwarf. During the purification, a small trace of divine energy was found. This energy was used to amplify the dwarf's strength, a fraction of the essence of which was absorbed by the user. If the user absorbs enough essence, this can be converted into literal force.]

Reading this message, Noah was shocked. He assumed that, at most, he would receive some extra exp points for this, not that he could earn stat points by burning humans. For a second, Noah thought about the bandits and murderers in his city and thought about a possibility, but when calculating the risks and the potential profit he would gain from it, Noah dismissed that idea for now. At least if he were going to do something like that, he would have to have better planning.

Some Blessed Ones felt bad seeing Noah burning those corpses, but they consoled themselves the dwarves were just monsters and threw any godly thought into the back of their minds, while other Blessed Ones didn't care what was going on and just ignored Noah burning the corpses.

Having burned the other three corpses, Noah received two more essences of strength but still his stat points in strength did not go up to 15 points. 'Maybe I need more corpses? I hope there are a few more in the next car, at least enough for me to get another point in strength,' Noah thought.

After everything was cleaned up, the group got together again and went to the next car. When they walked through the door, they walked into a room totally different from the room they had already passed, since apparently the coaches were different from each other, and this time they were not disappointed with that, their assumption was correct. Instead of a wide and spacious vehicle, this coach actually looked like a passenger coach on a regular train, with separate compartments for cabins where passengers would stay along the way. The main difference was that the doors of these passenger cabins were all broken down. None of the doors were intact.

When they passed the booths, they first noticed that clothes were scattered all over the place. In the first booths, they even tried to rummage through the clothes to see if they found anything valuable among the clothes that the dwarves might have brought with them in their bags, but they were disappointed, since they found nothing but the clothes and some personal hygiene items. The same could be said of money, since none was found in suitcases scattered around the booths.

In addition to the messy luggage and destroyed doors, there was also something else that every cabin held in common. Not only was everything messed up, but also at the exit of each cabin it was possible to see a blood trail very similar to the trails they found in the other cars left by the monsters carrying the bodies of the dwarves.

But this time, the scale of the blood trails left on the path was much larger, as more than one dwarf had been removed from each cabin. This meant that at least dozens of dwarves were dragged down this corridor, leaving a large trail of blood that took on such a large volume that it could be mistaken for a puddle.

The Blessed Ones looked a little scared. If only three monsters had managed to create so much confusion among the six dwarfs that they met in the previous wagon, they were worried about how many monsters it would take for a slaughter like this, to cause so much damage to the dwarves and drag literally all the corpses to the other room. They started to doubt if they could handle this mission, since 3 monsters were possible to deal with, maybe even 5 monsters, but they didn't know if Noah would be able to support himself by teleporting from side to side all the time when dealing with possibly 10 monsters. This number was just a low estimate that they had when looking at how many dwarves were dragged from this place; they knew very well that this number could be much higher than they were supposing, possibly being a few times higher.

After rummaging through the fifth cabin and finding nothing again, they finally understood that they would find nothing of value there and gave up looking, deciding to just go to the next car immediately. But what they didn't expect to happen was that as they passed a cabin, a faint voice was heard, apparently muffled in a luggage rack.

When they heard that voice, all the Blessed instantly looked at the cabin and drew their weapons, preparing themselves in case they had to face a monster. In this kind of situation, Jasper was much more capable than Noah, since he was agile enough to attack the monster that could be there before the monster attacked him, whereas if Noah didn't react fast enough to teleport, he might die. With all the guns aimed at the source of the noise, the group entered the cabin while Jasper went in front of everyone and very carefully removed one of the bags that was piled up in one end of the room.

The group really expected that one of the monsters had been trapped inside that place, but when Jasper removed the suitcase that covered this supposed "monster", what was revealed from behind, amid so many weapons pointed at him, was actually a dwarf. And unlike the other dwarves they encountered, who almost always did not have their lower half because of being killed by one of the monsters, this dwarf they met was actually looking at them with wide eyes.

They did not expect this for an instant. The archers had their bows ready to attack at any moment, for fear that the dwarf would attack them and they would have to fight against him just as the Blessed Ones fought against the elves in the other Fortress, but he did not move. Even though all the dwarves were small, they managed to deduce that this dwarf was younger than the others, even from the frightened expression on his face.

"! @ \\ #%% $ \\ #% \u0026% @ \\ # $ @ \\ # \\ # \u0026 \u0026! @ \\ #% ..." The dwarf said in a shaky voice something that none of the Blessed people could understand. It was a language they had never heard anyone speak of on any of the planets they knew, all but one… Among them was a person who understood everything that dwarf spoke.

Noah was looking in disbelief at the dwarf who had said something that he understood very well...

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