Samael looked around, entirely unsurprised by the lords' awkward reactions.
On Duke of Oxford's side, they called them caravans to make them sound nice, but in reality, most were notorious slave-catching squads.
Back when the Sword of King Selection had appeared, Kay had subtly reminded him to watch out for suspicious figures around him and to keep a close eye on Bavangshi and the others.
After the ancient serpent casually killed several stalkers who had set their sights on them during the journey, he naturally kept his guard up and learned some relevant information.
Humans were popular in the fairy world, and likewise, fairies were popular in human society.
Especially the beautiful ones, or those with special uses.
Young, beautiful fairy concubines were highly sought after among the extravagant aristocracy.
And then there were the filthy deeds hidden in the shadows: throwing the Fang Clan into gladiatorial arenas, imprisoning the Earth Clan in workshops and making them work day and night, forcing the Wind Clan to produce Magic Potions, using the Mirror Clan to tell fortunes... It was not as if humans had never done such things.
Thus, fairy slaves had quite a market in human society.
For wealth and profit, humans secretly formed slave-catching squads to capture fairies everywhere, then sold them to merchants and nobles on the black market.
As far as Samael knew, any slave-catching squad of significant size was usually backed by local nobles.
A group of slave traders went deep into the Nameless Forest to capture fairies, only to be slaughtered by them. They deserved every bit of it.
And you still had the nerve to go crying to Artoria?
Secondly, the lord whose population had supposedly been "plundered"—his subjects would rather leave their homes, risking being devoured by magical beasts or dying of thirst