Their orders are the same as Muyaun’s, to eliminate the guards and any other soldiers in the camp. Behind them come the ranks of normal troops who spread out to start freeing the slaves. Beastman or human doesn’t matter, all the slaves will be freed and taken through the gate.

  The gate that I opened is over twenty feet wide to allow multiple people through at once. It would take far too long for this many people to pass through a normal gate. The main drawback to a gate this big is that it uses a lot more mana and I have to maintain it.

  That means that I have to stand here and keep the gate open and stable the entire time. However, that is fine, I can trust Leonarr and his people to handle things properly. Even before all of the troops have come through, the first of the slaves are taken back.

  Soon, a steady stream of freed slaves are passing through the gate back to the fort. There are support personnel waiting on the other side to help take care of them. Healing and food will go a long way to helping them start the process of recovering.

  The beastmen who are helping them through the gate have looks of absolute rage on their faces. While that bodes well as far as unifying the beastmen goes, it doesn’t bode well for the humans. It is a good thing that I already planned to engage the humans in combat, because I’m not sure I could stop the beastmen right now.

  It is understandable though, a lot of these beastmen are ones who joined after being rescued themselves. They have a lot of pent up feelings after what they have been through and now seeing it again. If I don’t give them a channel to vent those feelings, I am not sure what would happen.

  Probably something along the lines of packs roaming around killing every human they encounter. Since that would include innocents, I want to avoid that as much as possible. Better that they vent all of that pent up anger on the northern soldiers, who somewhat deserve it.

  Which is why, after the slaves are all saved, I plan to let the soldiers attack the military camps. Of course, I am not expecting things to go smoothly, they never really do. That is just the general plan for the moment, Leonarr will have to work out the details.

  Since I can’t leave the gate at all, I am going to have to leave everything to him. However, he has been leading the troops for quite a while now, I have no doubts about his abilities. Basically, I am just going to sit back, maintain the gate, and watch what happens.

  Maintaining the gate is easy, it just takes a little more mana than a usual gate. Maintaining the barrier is a bit harder, I actually have to pay attention and keep an eye on it. Thanks to that, a while later when something impacts the barrier, I feel it.

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  When I focus my attention on that part of the barrier I find a small group of human soldiers. It is too early for them to be the next shift of guards, so they must have snuck over. One of them is poking the barrier with his sword, but they leave before I can send someone over to deal with them.

  I notify Leonarr that the barrier has been discovered and he does what he can to speed up the evacuation. However, moving that many people, especially when they are injured, isn’t a quick process. It is going to take an hour at least to get the rest of the slaves out of here.

  My job gets quite a bit harder since I have to keep the barrier up no matter what. It doesn’t take long before more soldiers are at the barrier and attacking it with their weapons. This time they don’t run away, in fact their numbers keep increasing.

  Soon there are groups of soldiers on all sides of the barrier trying to force their way through. It looks like all four camps have been alerted at this point and are mobilizing. It only takes a few minutes for the number of soldiers on each side to pass the hundreds.

  Luckily, the barrier is magic based and so it is very resistant to physical attacks. It only takes a little more mana to keep the barrier intact, but that amount keeps increasing. If I didn’t have the crystal, I would already be running out of mana just from maintaining the barrier.

  As it is, the way the needed mana keeps increasing, I am going to run out of mana soon. I can’t even be sure if I am going to have enough to keep the barrier up for an hour. It makes me wish that I had thought to switch out the crystal for a full one.

  Of course, it’s not like I knew I was going to end up in this kind of situation when I left. If I had known, I would have brought Lin along, she is much better at this kind of thing. If she was here, I would be able to leave the spells to her and go join in the fighting.

  Instead I am stuck here maintaining the barrier as more and more humans gather outside of it. Their numbers have already reached the thousands, the camps are probably empty. While gathering them outside was part of the plan, it wasn’t supposed to happen this quickly.

  I was hoping that we would have most of the slaves evacuated before we got to this point. Now it is going to be a race to see if we get the slaves out first, or I run out of mana first. Leonarr has things well organized and has the slaves moving as fast as possible.

  Having thousands of human soldiers attacking the barrier is pretty annoying, it makes me want to fight them. Just standing here while they beat on the barrier does not suit my personality. The problem is that there is no one else who can do what I need to do.

  At least not that is here, Lin could do it, but she has other things to work on right now. Our army still has a severe shortage of mages and that isn’t something that can be fixed quickly. I believe that Nived is working on training more mages, but that takes time.

  For now, we are just going to have to make do with me doing the magic. The steady stream of freed slaves leaving through the gate helps keep me focused. The looks on their faces make the annoyance I am feeling tolerable.

  The thought of what is going to happen to the human soldiers when the barrier goes down also helps. They have only ever dealt with unarmed beastmen slaves, they have never faced warriors. Today is going to be a lesson that they will never forget, if they live through the day that is.