I looked over all of them for a moment, taking my time as I tried to gauge just how strong they actually were. From what I could tell, none of them were anywhere near strong enough to give me serious trouble, so I didn't really feel the need to do anything myself. Honestly, the whole situation seemed like something that could be handled without me having to step in and make things more complicated than they already were.
While I was still looking them over, Shredica suddenly rushed forward without giving me any warning whatsoever and immediately sliced through the enemies before I could even figure out what she was planning to do. She didn't bother asking what kind of situation I had walked into, whether I wanted them alive, or even whether I had some reason for standing there and doing absolutely nothing.
I just stared at her for a moment.
Holy shit, this girl really needed to chill sometimes.
After killing one of them, she calmly cleaned her blade by giving it a quick swipe through the air, sending the blood clinging to its surface flying away from the shining edge. She looked completely unfazed by what she had just done, almost as though cutting people down was nothing more than another routine task she had decided to finish before lunch.
"Don't you think you could have asked first if I was alright with killing them before you went for the kill?" I asked her, still trying to process how quickly she had decided to handle everything herself.
"I heard the situation," she replied without showing much concern. "I was already aware of what was happening long before you were, so I acted according to my own judgment."
"You knew about the situation?" I asked, raising an eyebrow because that was definitely something I hadn't expected to hear from her.
"Yes," she answered without hesitation. "The person you just killed was a famous trafficker who traffics prostitutes through the black market. I have no idea why someone like him would be operating here, but it appears that he had formed some sort of arrangement with the Republic so that they could work together against the Mermaid Kingdom."
She spoke with the same calm expression she always seemed to have, which honestly made the information sound even more disturbing than it already was.
"From what I heard, they have been preparing a large amount of explosives so that they can destroy the Kingdom from the surface. It seems that the Republic is trying to gain something from this conflict, while that merchant believes he can benefit from it as well by capturing mermaids and selling them as products."
Well, I supposed she knew far more than I did.
I certainly hadn't expected Shredica to have that kind of information, especially when she had apparently figured everything out before I even knew there was a problem. She really did have a habit of quietly gathering information while everyone else was still trying to understand what the hell was happening.
"L-Leon...!" I suddenly heard someone shout from behind me.
I immediately turned around and saw Serune already inside the tent where the merchant had claimed he was keeping a mermaid. Her voice had sounded frightened enough to make me move before I even had time to think about it, and when I looked at her properly, I could see that she was practically on the verge of tears.
I immediately rushed toward her and entered the tent without wasting another second.
The sight waiting inside made me stop almost immediately.
The mermaid was already dead.
I looked toward the tank where she had been kept and quickly noticed something strange around the edge of the glass. There were visible marks along its surface, and after looking closer, I realized what had happened.
It seemed that the mermaid had tried to chip away at the glass using her wrist. She must have kept working at it for quite some time, slowly damaging the edge until the glass became sharp enough to cut her.
After that, she had apparently used the sharp edge to cut her own wrist and began bleeding.
Judging from the state of the blood, she must have remained there for quite some time before finally losing enough blood to die.
She hadn't been trying to escape anymore.
She had been trying to free herself in the only way she believed was still available to her.
Mermaids didn't have legs, after all, so escaping from captivity wasn't as simple as opening a door and running away. Even if she somehow managed to get out of the tank, she would still have to figure out how to move across land while being pursued by people who clearly had no intention of letting her go.
That left her with very few options.
And apparently, she had reached the point where she believed that ending her own life was the only freedom she had left.
Honestly, that was probably the saddest part of all.
"Why...?" Serune asked quietly, her voice trembling as she stared at the dead mermaid. "Why did this happen?"
As the Princess of the Mermaid Kingdom, I supposed it was only natural for her to ask that question.
She was looking at one of her own people lying dead in front of her, someone who had been captured and imprisoned by people who saw her as nothing more than something they could sell.
What kind of answer could I possibly give her?
"If we had come here much earlier," I asked quietly, "do you think we could have saved her in time?"
I wasn't really sure myself.
The blood still looked relatively fresh, so it didn't seem like she had been dead for very long. If we had arrived earlier, perhaps we could have stopped her before things reached this point. Maybe we could have gotten her out of the tank, treated her injuries, and given her another chance to live.
Maybe.
But there was another possibility that I couldn't ignore.
If someone had already given up completely, then there was only so much another person could do for them.
Even if we had arrived earlier and managed to save her physically, that wouldn't mean everything she had experienced would simply disappear. The fear, the helplessness, the humiliation, and the trauma she had endured while being imprisoned would still remain inside her.
Getting someone out of a cage didn't automatically mean that their mind had escaped with them.
Perhaps we could have saved her life if we had arrived sooner.
Perhaps we could have prevented her from reaching that final decision.
But whether we could have truly saved her from the despair that had already taken hold of her was something I couldn't honestly answer.
Sometimes, saving someone's body was much easier than saving what had been broken inside them.
Once someone reached the point where they genuinely believed that death was the only freedom they had left, simply telling them that things would get better wasn't always enough.
That kind of despair didn't disappear just because someone finally arrived to help.
And unfortunately, I knew that feeling far better than I wanted to admit.
Just like my sister from my past life.