I wandered a bit through the encampment, but then someone took notice of me and guided me to Yaci's tent.
She's not here, so I have some much-needed alone time.
There are too many things for me to ponder. So much has changed since yesterday morning.
First of all, I'm in a safe place. For the first time since my escape, I can just let my mind wander without the fear of being attacked out of the blue by any random monster.
This alone is an improvement in my quality of life.
Then, there's the thing about what to do from now on.
I need to free my mother and everyone, but I can't just barge in. I mean, I could, if it was just a matter of the guys in the den itself.
But I have to work with the assumption that the city guard itself is also under the command of the Duke.
Slavery is not a crime in that nation. On the contrary, the criminal there is me, the slave escapee.
So it's more than just barging in. I have to get those women to escape the city unharmed and then traverse the Barrens with them. That's a tall call.
Some would be useful in that situation, like Mimby herself and her immeasurable knowledge of the Wilds.
But still, it's around a dozen and a half untrained women traversing hostile territory and then a barren wasteland.
To bring them here. Which means that we need their agreement first to make sure that the girls will have a place that will shelter them.
Yeah, I can already see the holes in the plan.
But if I manage to get the approval and cooperation of the elders, then maybe some warriors of the tribe will be able to help. That would make the traversal easier.
I mean, more people means more mouths to feed. But trained arms to fight the monsters would be really helpful.
If I were to find a way to break Mother's and Cambucy's collars... their magic would come really handy.
Hm, maybe the elders know something about it? The tribe should have dealt with runaway slaves before, so maybe they have some sort of knowledge about it?
I'll be sure to ask them about it next time we talk.
Heh, I used to like collars back in the other life... but those were of another nature. This one I just want to get rid of as soon as possible.
Though at the same time... I know that one of the reasons I'm being treated as a guest here instead of an enemy is the collar itself.
It marks me as an equal, while without it I'm just a human, which would put me automatically on the side of the oppressors, in the beastkin's eyes.
Well, that's not a problem for me to decide right now. So I shelve it for the time being.
I have other matters to look at.
For example, my encounter with Oya in that dreamscape.
She apparently unlocked the Adventuring System for me. She said I was her champion.
Champion for what?
The memories of our conversation are a bit hazy.
Oya is the goddess that governs wind, storms, and thunder and is also responsible for the passage of souls from Earth to the Land of the Dead.
That's the deity that came to talk to me when I was in that hallucinatory state.
Obviously, it could have been only a hallucination. But then, what would explain the unlocking of the leveling system and the knowledge of the ancient magic language?
So it would probably be better if I treated that meeting as something real.
The champion of a goddess from another world, sent to oppose the goddess of this world.
That mission somehow makes the idea of guiding scores of women through the wilderness a simple walk in the park, not gonna lie.
And there are probably other people from Earth here. Or there will be? The heroes will be summoned ten years from now because I was sent to the past. But what about the other people who were caught in the summoning?
And that goddess... Juno, huh? If my memory isn't lying to me, she was the Roman goddess of marriage, like her Greek counterpart Hera.
But in Rome she was more than that, being also the embodiment of the state itself. The synthesis of the three partitions of Indo-European society—sovereignty, war, and fertility—in just one deity.
Somehow what she has been doing here kind of makes sense with the little I know of that mythical character.
She was a summoned human like me, who then managed to ascend to godhood. I assumed she was summoned from Earth because of how gamelike the Adventuring System is.
But if she's a goddess from the Roman era, the timeline gets really weird. Though I don't really know how long she has been around here.
Unless the time gets wibbly-wobbly when traveling between worlds. Like the way I reincarnated seventeen years earlier than the summoning.
If that's the case, then it doesn't matter how much I think about it; I'll get nowhere.
The only thing that matters is that we are both here and now, she's a goddess, and I'm a mortal.
Also, she is an alien who usurped the throne in the heavens from the rightful owners, the dragons, who are now really pissed off.
And then she created the Adventuring System as a way to give cheat codes to the humans. In the process she transformed ancient beefs between races into a systemic regime of structural oppression.
No matter how I look at it, there's no way I can let that slide.
My mother, Oya, wants me to take up arms and rise against that system. Well, I'm on board with that. I was on board with that without her even asking.
But there are steps to be taken. If I just confront her right now, I'll be fried on the spot. I need to come up with a plan.
And I need to rescue Mom before anything else.
Somehow, I think that I might find some answers in the inner workings of that system she implemented. So, let's finally take a look at it.
I say the word 'status,' and a screen appears before me.
Finally, it's time.