Two days later, a blue shadow moved through the trees around the children's former home. Souei had been transported to the other world via Milim's portal only moments ago, and was already scouting the area.
Strange creatures moved through the woods; pale-skinned monsters unlike anything Souei had seen before. They were tall beings that each had a long, thin face with two eyes arranged vertically, one above the other, and two horns. They also had mouths with sharp canines and long tongues. Their arms were long with six fingers that ended in sharp nails, almost talons. Each had four limbs, like humans, ogres and goblins, and walked on two legs. As Souei looked at them closer, he realised they each wore a mask and a black cape for some reason. He found this most curious, and wondered if it might indicate a weakness. It was also possible that it was merely local fashion. He made a note of it for his report.
They were working in and around the orphanage, making changes and improving security, as best he could tell. It seemed likely they planned to reopen the place, perhaps with a new batch of kids. Or perhaps, that was what they wanted anyone who came snooping to think.
Souei moved in for a closer look, but as he approached the creatures, he noticed them stop moving and look around themselves. He paused for a moment. Was it possible they could sense his presence? They clearly couldn't see him, as their eyes passed over his hiding spot several times, but they kept moving their heads around, seemingly watching for anything.
He waited a short while, unmoving, until the creatures seemed to give up and go about their business. Deciding that he should scout the rest of the area, he made duplicates of himself, which instantly sped off to examine the place.
He followed the creatures to the building that had apparently been the children's original home, if home was the correct word to describe a place where you waited to be slaughtered. Did chickens consider their coops home? Nothing seemed out of the ordinary there. The creatures continued with their work, performing what looked like routine maintenance on the house. After a while, Souei got bored and leapt up into a tree where he could easily stay out of the creature's way. He decided he would wait until nightfall when, hopefully, the creatures would be gone, and he would be able to explore the house properly.
As he settled in the tree, he suddenly received a thought communication from his duplicates. They had scouted some of the land, and had come across a huge wall, which appeared to surround the entire plantation. No doubt this was the one that Krone had already told them about, which was built to contain the orphanage, securing the children inside so they couldn't wander off or escape.
He instructed his duplicates to climb the wall and see what was beyond it. A second later, he received their report. There was a steep cliff just beyond the wall. A fall from it would undoubtedly kill a mere human, but a kijin with his abilities could easily scale it. From what they could see, however, there was nothing but forest. Duplicates searching in other directions had better luck. From their vantage points along the walls, they could make out much more of the overall structure
Souei kept constant contact with all of his duplicates, as they scouted the walls around plant 3 at speeds no human could match. Each report they provided was used to build a mental map that he could later commit to paper. He waited a few minutes for the rest of them to report. When they did, though, he was shocked.
It turned out that the outer wall enclosed a vast territory that was divided into sections. Each of the nearest sections contained plantations, which were almost identical to the one Souei was scouting. Though his clones had only viewed two so far, it was enough to establish a pattern. The duplicates stopped to examine the plantations from the wall, gathering what details they could. Each section followed the same pattern, with the same house and forested area, filled with children and a single woman who was presumably their caretaker. Each section also had a large locked gate on the far side of the plantation from the outer wall. That bore investigating.
'All of the enclosures are identical. Apparently, these demons don't have much imagination,' Souei thought amusedly.
A bit of careful scouting by his duplicates confirmed the three sections searched so far were identical, right down to the buildings housing the children, and were unlikely to reveal anything new. Souei ordered the clones to scout the walls near the gates rather than examine the orphanages. Since the other plantations were literally right next door, and seemed to be joined into one large structure, Souei wanted to know what was beyond the inner wall.
The inner wall was connected to the rest, and seemed to enclose a large area that contained what seemed to be the processing facility, where the children were rendered into meat before being shipped out. There were a large number of demons at work there. The area also had a system of roads that connected the processing facility to the six gates leading into the different enclosures. Each gate had two guards waiting in the inner area, where curious children would never see them, even if they ventured near the gates, something Krone had told them the kids were forbidden to do.
It took a few hours, even at his best speed, but his duplicates managed to circle the outer wall, and infiltrate the lands of four separate plantations. All of the children his duplicates could see, seemed happy and oblivious to the dangers surrounding them.
Souei couldn't believe it, but apparently all five of the plantations that Krone had told them about were connected to each other, separated by simple walls, and not off in separate, remote locations as previously suspected. His first thought was that Krone had lied to them, but Rimuru had said that he could tell the woman was being truthful, and Souei trusted his master's judgement.
He recalled that Krone had mentioned that humans were only told what they needed to know. She had never been outside the plantation containing her home orphanage until she was taken to headquarters for training. It was only recently that she'd arrived at plant 3. Beyond those three places, she had never been anywhere else. The device that she had had in her chest would have killed her if she had tried. She had also mentioned, he recalled, that she had been transported everywhere in a vehicle with no windows.
'She spent her entire life here, and never knew anything beyond the walls of her own section. It wasn't exactly a unique situation.'
Many people, regardless of species, never travelled beyond the town where they were born, but those people usually had the option. The humans of this world were kept isolated their entire short lives. They were safe, happy, and most of all, controlled.
The entire complex appeared to be one massive hexagon, separated into six wedge shaped areas and a central 'hub.' Five of them held orphanages, each with about thirty children. The sixth was the most interesting.
The duplicates made their way over the wall of the northern most section, while Souei kept his psychic link open for any news, and thankfully, the news they brought him was not that of another plant. They reported that the next area they observed had no woods, unlike the previous ones, and looked to be a barren land. There was no vegetation at all, and its main feature was a large building, many times the size of the orphanages.
'It seems we've found the demons' headquarters,' Souei deduced, and instructed his clones to carry on with their surveillance, and to keep their stealth skills active at all times.
From their minds, he learned that the demons' HQ was a massive building, with three floors, and demons patrolling the outside. The demons looked like the ones at plant 3, though he noticed that some of them had a long pipe connected to their masks for some reason. Souei wondered if the demons had some sort of breathing problem, but put it out of his mind for the time being.
The duplicates went around the building, but found that there were many guards actively patrolling, and at least two at every entrance. The demons at the doors looked slow, but they were big, thus able to cover the entrances with their bodies. As he saw it, Souei doubted he would be able to sneak into the building without at least touching one of them, thus alerting them to his presence. The windows were all barred, so breaking in without causing a noise was unlikely. So, for the moment, the duplicates settled for peering in the windows to see what they could find out.
The windows on the first floor appeared to belong to classrooms. He saw several girls of various ages in each one, all of whom were in the middle of a lesson. Some looked to be taking tests, others were learning to crochet, and some were in a gym of some kind, sparring with one another. Souei recalled Krone telling them that girls like her were trained in a number of subjects in order to be moms, including hand-to-hand combat and first aid.
There were undoubtedly more rooms without windows, but he couldn't learn anything about them. For the moment, he had to be content with the ones he could observe.
After seeing all he could on the first floor, his duplicates leaped onto the ledges and balconies outside the windows on the next two floors. The middle floor had almost no windows, but from what he could see, there appeared to be meeting rooms with unusual chairs in them, which were probably built for the demons. He could also see some kind of surgery in one of the other windows. The top floor seemed to be living quarters, undoubtedly for the girls and staff, some of which were being used at the moment.
There were many more girls upstairs, all of whom were either lying asleep or simply sitting on their beds. They looked to be somewhere around their mid-teens to early twenties, and all had vacant looks on their faces, but more importantly, they were all with child! Some of them looked close to full-term, while others didn't look pregnant at all, but seeing as most of them were, he assumed they all were.
'Is this what happens to all the girls who are chosen to be moms?' he thought. 'Is it part of their indoctrination or something? Krone never mentioned anything about...'
It suddenly hit him. It was sickening to contemplate, but in a twisted way he supposed it made sense. Krone had told them what happened to humans in this world, and that only girls were chosen to be moms, while the rest were all eaten. If that was true then where did all the new children come from? The only answer he could surmise was that they came from here.
It explained why the demons took so many girls to be trained into moms, even though there were never that many mom positions available. He guessed that the whole mom thing was just a cover-up, and what they really wanted the girls for was to be breeding stock. They brought the girls here, trained them to be moms for when and if a position ever became available, and until then they would use them to give birth to lots of babies, which they would then send off to one of the plantations here.
The more he followed this line of reasoning, the sicker he felt. These demons were monsters in the truest sense!
He then realized something else. If what he had deduced was true, then the demons would require both female and male humans to bear children. Although Souei did not know all that much about humans, even he knew that to make a baby, you needed a mother and a father. It was so for ogres, and humans couldn't be that different. Krone had said that only girls were chosen to leave their orphanages alive, but then again, she had also said that humans like her were only ever told what they needed to know, and nothing else. Chances were that some boys were chosen to live as well, at least as donors for breeding.
Souei then thought of something else: Did that mean that Krone had also had a baby while she was here? She had never said so, but then again, Souei doubted that such a memory would be pleasant, and Krone had already admitted that she had done everything that was asked of her here in order for her survival.
One of the duplicates then saw another demon enter one of the rooms in HQ. This one was different from the others; bigger, with fine garments, and much larger and sharper talons then the others. It entered the room, along with an elderly human woman. Although he couldn't hear what they were saying, Souei guessed this demon had to be the boss of this place, and the woman might well be the grandmother that Krone had spoken of.
Deciding he had seen enough, Souei sent out a command to all of the duplicates in that section, which caused them all to vanish, as though they had never been there. He still had several traveling along the wall, though he suspected what he would discover. There had to be an exit to the outside world. So far, he had only seen a sheer drop beyond the outer wall. Perhaps at HQ there was a way to the outside world. He tasked one of those running the outer wall to investigate.
Souei looked up at the sky. 'Still another hour to go till sunset. I'll wait here until then.'
Rimuru had sent Souei here to infiltrate and scout the plantation, and told him that in six hours Milim would reopen the portal in the same place where he had appeared, to bring him home.
Settling down in the tree, Souei waited.