This feeling was even stronger—sharper, colder—than it had been in the absolute darkness and silence of the catacombs above.
The darkness and silence there had been dead.
But the darkness and noise here were alive.
It was brimming with ill intent, like a massive beast suffering indigestion, and I was the alien object that had wandered into its stomach—utterly out of place.
This was the base of Spirepeak City, a world completely opposed to the gilded splendor and solemn grandeur of the cathedral above. A chasm forgotten by light, order, and hope.
Like a ghost, I wandered through this steel rainforest, stumbling and wading through filth.
My mind was blank.
What now?
What am I supposed to do next?
Fear and anxiety seeped through me like cold poison, slowly spreading along my veins: Where was the Lady Inquisitor? Was she still alive? Had she died under the assault of those women in black armour and the shield-bearing warriors? Or had she escaped by sheer luck, only to have no idea where I'd fallen?
Would she even know I was still alive?
Would she come for me?
Or had she already accepted that I died in that fall?
A worse thought pushed its way in—
Maybe she thought I'd already smashed myself to death… or maybe she had simply abandoned me.
After all, I was just an ordinary person with some unclear "special ability." A "Sample β073." A useful tool. And when the cost of recovering a tool far exceeded its value, any rational decision-maker would abandon it…
I shook my head hard, trying to fling those thoughts away—thoughts dark enough to drive me to suicide on the spot.
No. I can't give up.
I have to live.
But… how?
I looked down at myself. All I had was a set of "decent" clothing, now filthy beyond words after the chase. I must have looked like some newborn, ugly creature coated in slime. No money. No weapon. No comms. Not a single item that could prove who I was.
I didn't even know the basic rules of this hellhole.
I was a modern civilian, raised in a long age of peace. I was used to an orderly society. Used to paying by phone. Used to eating in restaurants. Used to taking a car.
All my knowledge—everything I thought of as "survival skills"—was built on the foundation of that peaceful, structured, highly developed modern world.
And here, in a nightmare that felt like Kowloon Walled City scaled up a hundredfold, then blended with the slums of Industrial Revolution London and the present-day shantytowns of India and Brazil into a steampunk hell…
Everything I'd learned in the past decades of my life became worthless.
I felt like a housecat dumped into the Amazon rainforest—incapable of doing anything except tremble and wait to die.
What should I do? Find somewhere to hide?
Or try to climb back up to where I'd come from?
Climb up?
Looking at the layers upon layers of piled construction overhead, dense as a steel jungle canopy, I couldn't even tell direction anymore—let alone find a way back.
Every wound on my body throbbed. My nape and back, especially where the flames had kissed me, burned with a raw heat. Every breath tugged pain through my nerves. My throat felt like I was coming down with a cold—dry, sore, and scratched raw. Hunger and exhaustion gnawed at my will like two venomous snakes.
…"Upper-city folk… even their shadows smell sweet…"
A dry, muffled voice came from the shadows beside me without warning.
Before I could even locate where it had come from, five figures sprang out from nowhere and surrounded me in the center of an alley.
My whole body went rigid. I didn't dare move—like a sheep encircled by wolves.
They weren't tall. None of them were even as tall as me. But the viciousness in them, the feral cruelty that seeped out of their bones, made my heart hammer.
I already had more injuries than I could count. Everything hurt. I had no desire to get beaten senseless over pointless resistance. If someone's hand slipped and a blade went into my kidney, there was only one outcome: I'd end up sleeping forever in this hot, stinking alley—like a shrimp stripped of its shell.
They… seemed to think I was some kind of "young master" from the upper districts, fallen into the lower depths by accident.
Fair enough. Even though my clothes were now filthy inside and out, the fabric and cut were clearly out of place compared to the rags and rough workwear around here.
The figure in front grabbed the small respirator hanging from my neck and yanked it off with brute force. The thin strap scraped across the burned skin at the back of my neck, slicing pain through me like a knife, and I couldn't help sucking in a sharp breath.
"Money. Hand it over." The voice was slightly youthful, but forced low, as if trying to sound intimidating.
"I… I really don't have any money." I raised both hands, almost pleading. It was the truth. If anyone wanted someone to blame, blame the Lady Inquisitor for never once considering pocket money.
They didn't believe me.
Two of them immediately stepped in and patted down my waist and pockets with rough hands, checking for hidden items. As they leaned close, their sour sweat stench and the fermented smell of cheap, rotten food shoved straight into my nose, making my stomach churn violently. I almost retreated on instinct.
Under the flicker of nearby sickly neon, I finally got a good look at my "robbers."
They were all kids.
The leader was a girl. A filthy brown scarf covered most of her face. Long red hair shook like a tangle of weeds. Judging by the size of her face and the brightness of her eyes even in shadow, she couldn't have been more than sixteen or seventeen.
She wore a work jacket that clearly belonged to an adult man, so oversized it hung like a cloth sack. The cuffs of her trousers were wrapped seven or eight times in insulation cloth stripped from steam pipes, just to keep them from dragging on the ground. On her chest, six patches of cloth in different colors formed a blurry, twisted smiley face.
As for the boys behind her—they looked like a cheap necklace strung together from scrap and garbage: tall, short, fat, thin, all mixed. Everyone had half their face covered with rags, leaving only eyes glinting in the dark.
The skinniest boy wore three shirts of different colors and sizes layered together. The outermost looked like a pink women's top with fraying sleeves. Another boy's jacket seemed to be cut from some thick industrial waterproof blanket, and half of a warning phrase—something like "DO NOT COVER"—still remained on the back.
One kid wore a barely-intact cheap patent-leather shoe on his left foot. His right foot was encased in a crude metal boot welded together from various bits of waste. On his exposed ankle were star-shaped scars—ugly, healed, and numerous—left by something I didn't want to imagine.
When they found nothing, they spat to the ground in frustration.
"Strip him!" the girl leader snarled, ordering me to take off everything I was wearing.
The outfit had been prepared by the Lady Inquisitor specifically for the meeting with the Archbishop. It was barely a formal set, but the quality was solid. Despite all the rolling, crawling, and smashing, it was mostly intact—just utterly filthy.
When the girl raised a rusty knife—a crude blade made from some kind of pipe—as a threat, I noticed her earrings.
Two screw nuts, made of different materials, hung from her earlobe as jewelry. The one on the left gleamed brightly, obviously polished often. The one on the right had grown a strange copper-green fungal bloom.
"And the boots!" a boy added. He seemed to be forcing his voice to sound rougher and more threatening, but the moment he spoke he was seized by a violent cough. "Cough—cough—cough… Even if they don't fit, a gent's boots can still be traded for at least three days of clean water!"
The cloth he used to cover his face rose and fell with the coughing. I saw that the inside of it was speckled with blood—some dark and dried, some bright and fresh.
I stayed silent.
I didn't resist.
I began taking off my clothes.
"At least… leave me a pair of socks?" When I squatted to remove my shoes, feeling the slick, filthy ground beneath me, I finally couldn't hold it in. I sighed, exhausted.
Maybe my tone wasn't humble enough. Or maybe someone interpreted that sigh as defiance, or contempt, or insult.
I suddenly felt a heavy, blunt blow crash into the back of my head.
Thud.
Along with a startled, sharp gasp from nearby, my vision flipped and sank uncontrollably—
The last image I remember was a foot, too long and too thin from malnutrition, the top of it laced with bulging blue veins like worms.
And another foot—between the big toe and the second toe—had a translucent web of skin, like a frog's.
All right. So maybe going barefoot down here really is doable…
(End of Chapter)
[Get +30 Extra Chapters On — P@tr3on "Zaelum"]
[Every 300 Power Stones = 1 Bonus Chapter Drop]
[Thanks for Reading!]