The freezing rain felt like cold needles hitting their faces. Sirens blared endlessly from the upper district, echoing wildly across the dark sky of Marrath. The sound was deafening, like a massive beast screaming in anger because its prey had just slipped through its teeth.
Kanos ran through the muddy alleyway without looking back. His lungs burned. Every breath he took felt like inhaling hot sand. His head still throbbed violently from the extreme mental strain of manipulating the shadow threads earlier. But his legs kept moving, matching the quick and silent pace of Papuyu running right beside him.
Behind them, Sili was panting uncontrollably. The skinny information broker looked completely miserable. He clutched his heavy leather bag full of stolen books tight to his chest, trying his absolute best not to trip over the slippery cobblestones. Belida covered the rear. The giant knight ran with heavy, thudding steps, his black greatsword still drawn and ready to swing at anything that dared to follow them from the shadows.
"Here," Sili pointed at a dead end alley filled with overflowing trash cans. "The grating is right under those wooden crates. Move them!"
Belida did not waste a single second. The knight kicked the heavy wooden crates aside effortlessly, completely ignoring the disgusting smell of rotting garbage. Beneath the trash lay a massive, rusted iron grate covering a dark circular hole. It was a heavy duty drainage cover, sealed tight with thick iron chains and a rusted padlock.
"It is locked," Belida grunted. He raised his heavy sword, preparing to smash the lock to pieces.
"Do not smash it," Papuyu intercepted quickly. "The sound will echo for miles in this empty alley. Let me."
The female hitman slid smoothly to the ground. She pulled a very thin metal wire from her belt. Her bleeding shoulder clearly caused her immense pain, but her hands remained incredibly steady. She jammed the wire into the rusted keyhole, twisted it sharply twice, and a soft click was heard. The heavy padlock popped open.
Belida immediately grabbed the iron chains, pulling the heavy grate open with a loud groan of metal. A horrific stench instantly rushed out from the dark hole, slapping them right in the face. It was not just the smell of human waste or dirty water. It was a sharp, chemical rotting smell that made Kanos’s eyes sting and water immediately.
"Get in," Kanos ordered without hesitation.
Sili jumped in first, followed by Papuyu. Kanos climbed down the rusted iron ladder attached to the wet stone wall. Belida entered last, pulling the heavy iron grate shut right above his head and dragging the trash crates back over the hole using his sword tip. The world instantly went pitch black. The loud sirens of the city above became completely muffled, replaced by the echoing sound of dripping water and their own ragged breathing.
Kanos activated his Structural Analysis skill. The dark tunnel immediately lit up in neon blue grid lines in his vision. The tunnel was massive, built like an underground subway passage. The water flowing around their ankles was moving fast.
"Keep walking," Sili’s voice trembled slightly in the dark. The broker pulled a small glass crystal from his pocket and shook it hard. The crystal began to glow with a very dim, sickly green light, just enough to see the path in front of them. "Do not touch the water on the walls. Do not drink anything down here. And for the love of the gods, do not light a torch."
Kanos wiped his wet face. "Why?"
"Because the air down here is ninety percent methane and unstable alchemical gas," Sili explained quickly, walking carefully through the knee deep muck. "This is the lowest drainage system of Marrath. The upper city dumps all their failed magic potions, toxic forge runoff, and dead experiments into this exact tunnel. If you light a fire, we will all turn into instant barbecue."
Belida scoffed softly from the back. "A perfect hiding spot. Even the Sensor Bureau’s tracking dogs will fry their own noses if they try to sniff our trail down here."
"Exactly," Sili nodded, clearly proud of his survival knowledge. "The magical radiation down here is completely chaotic. It acts like a massive jammer. Any tracking spell cast by the Executioners up there will just bounce around and give them fake coordinates. We are officially off the grid, boss."
They walked in silence for another thirty minutes. The deeper they went, the worse the environment became. The water around their boots changed color. It was no longer murky brown, but a highly unnatural, glowing fluorescent green. The walls of the tunnel were covered in weirdly shaped fungi that pulsed like living tumors. Kanos could literally feel the soles of his cheap boots slowly dissolving from the acidic water.
Kanos glanced at the system panel hovering in the corner of his eye.
[ WARNING: EXTREME TOXIC ENVIRONMENT ]
[ CONTINUOUS EXPOSURE WILL CAUSE PERMANENT HP DRAIN ]
Kanos swiped the warning away. His HP was still full, but Papuyu and Belida were a different story. They were both bleeding and battered. If they stayed in this toxic sewer too long, their open wounds would definitely get infected by whatever mutant virus was swimming in this glowing green water. They needed a dry place to rest.
"Sili," Kanos called out, his voice echoing flatly. "Where does this tunnel actually lead?"
"To the forgotten sector," Sili answered without looking back. "The city builders abandoned this specific area fifty years ago when the acid ate through the main support pillars. Nobody comes here. Not even the giant mutant sewer rats. It is a total dead zone."
The narrow tunnel finally opened up into a massive underground cavern.
Kanos stopped walking. Belida immediately stepped up beside him, his grip tightening on his greatsword. Papuyu completely stopped breathing, instantly melting into the shadows of the cave wall.
The cavern was insanely huge. A massive river of glowing green toxic waste raged violently through the center, cutting the stone floor in half. The chemical fumes were incredibly thick, forming a hazy green fog near the ceiling.
But that was not what made them freeze.
Right at the edge of the stone cliff, just inches away from the raging toxic river, a man was sitting casually on a rusted iron pipe.
He looked like an ordinary old man. He wore a wide straw hat that hid the top half of his face, and a tattered brown cloak that looked like it had not been washed in a decade. The old man held a long wooden fishing rod in his hands. The fishing line dropped straight down into the boiling, glowing green acid below.
"Is he crazy?" Sili whispered in pure horror. The broker hid behind Belida’s massive back. "Who the hell fishes in a river of pure poison?"
Kanos narrowed his glowing blue eyes. He pushed his Structural Analysis skill to the absolute limit, aiming directly at the old man sitting on the pipe. He wanted to see the man’s level. He wanted to see his hidden weapons. He wanted to see his bone structure.
The blue grid flew forward and hit the old man’s body.
A loud, screeching static noise suddenly exploded inside Kanos’s brain. Kanos winced hard, grabbing his own head. The blue grid completely shattered the moment it touched the old man. There was no level floating above his head. There was no name. There was no HP bar. The system simply displayed a chaotic mess of red error codes, exactly like a broken computer screen.
To the world system of Yomalvara, the old man sitting in front of them literally did not exist.
"The fish will not bite if you stomp around like that," the old man spoke.
His voice was incredibly calm. It was slow, warm, and completely devoid of any hostility. It sounded so relaxed it felt entirely out of place in this deadly environment.
The old man slowly turned his head. Underneath the straw hat, Kanos saw a pair of cloudy gray eyes that looked like they had seen the birth and death of stars. The old man offered a very gentle, knowing smile.
"You are making too much noise for someone who just killed a Number Caste, Kanos," the old man said simply.
Belida instantly raised his heavy sword, aiming the black tip directly at the man’s neck. "How do you know his name?" the giant knight growled aggressively. "Speak, old man. Or I will throw you into that acid river myself."
The old man did not look at Belida. He did not look at the giant sword pointed at him. He simply smiled at Kanos. He slowly pulled his wooden fishing rod up from the toxic river.
Sili gasped loudly. There was absolutely nothing at the end of the fishing line. No hook. No bait. It was just a plain, burned string.
"You cannot catch things that do not exist using normal bait," the old man said casually, resting the wooden rod on his shoulder. He tilted his straw hat up slightly. "My name is Chitala. I have been waiting for you, Illustrator. You have a lot of drawing to do, and very little time to do it."