The red door the two people had walked through was locked by a pretty complicated electronic device…for humans.

  “And… Hack!”

  I cracked it in seconds. Sloppy stuff as far as an Exceed like me was concerned. Video game anti-cheat measures were more sophisticated than this thing, and that was saying something.

  Indena and I ran into the sewers without thinking, finding ourselves assaulted by the most foul smell of our lives. This smell was the absolute epitome of crap. Why couldn’t it have been my nose that broke?

  “Yucky…” I waved my hand in the air, fruitlessly trying to filter the putrid stench of the sewers away.

  “Damn… That dude really brought a girl through here?”

  I wouldn’t be surprised if they had some way of dealing with it… Like maybe a mask or something. Even a few seconds here would be enough to make someone with a weak stomach throw up.

  I would be fine since I really didn’t need to breathe at all, but I was worried about Indena…

  “Heh, you think a little smell bothers me?” her flame aura burst to life, condensing down and tightly hugging her skin. “My flames can filter oxygen out of the air, so I don’t need to breathe either.”

  “Clever!” I pumped my fist up, happy for the ingenuity of elemental magic.

  Now that the incredible smell wasn’t an issue, we closed the red door behind us and walked on. A very subtle hint of musical beat passed through the thick stone walls between the sewers and the flood tunnels.

  It was a straight shot forward. Little ledges that ran parallel to the river of yucky let us get around quickly. A few doors started appearing to our left and right the further in we went.

  Based on my map, it looked like the two people I'd tagged stopped in a room up ahead. It was just them though, so Bowler Joe wasn’t there yet. We weren’t far away before we heard a commotion…

  *Fwiiish!*

  “Ahhh!” the guy screamed like a girl.

  *BONK!*

  A loud sound echoed down the sewer tunnel as if someone had just gotten a nasty bonking on the head. What on earth was going on in that room?

  We ran speedily to the door it came from, both sharing confused looks before Indena kicked it down.

  On the other side was the guy unconscious with swollen red eyes like he’d been crying really bad. Upon a closer look, he had a nasty big goose egg on his head too.

  “He’s not dead, is he?” I asked.

  “No,” Indena inspected him. “He just got pepper sprayed and knocked out for it.

  “I think the girl knocked him out then,” I concluded.

  As my old family saying goes; once you’ve eliminated all the possibilities, whatever remains, however unlikely, must be the case. And since they were the only two in here, who else could have sprayed him and conked him out?

  “Obviously,” Indena scoffed. “Not that I feel bad for him, but we could’a gotten some info if he were up.”

  That’s right. He was going to be our lead to Bowler Joe. He probably did something to freak the girl out and she knocked him out.

  We still could get some info though. If crime drama games have taught me anything, it’s that you needed to check the guys pockets for incriminating evidence.

  Indena took point in that regard and dug through his pockets like a professional thief. I held my tongue from openly making the comparison, lest I draw out that dragon flame from her again…

  Samael did a bit of searching as well. He pulled out a pair of keys and handed them to me.

  “Good find!” I congratulated my snake.

  “Found something else too.” She had a paper and pocket notebook in hand. “It’s a contract. Guess who he’s working for?”

  She showed me the page, revealing that the mafia hired him up. Inside the notebook he had a ton of details on teenage girls who all happened to have parents working in politics.

  His latest entry was of a girl named Elma Lockheart. She was odd, because her parent's names weren’t written down here, bar the fact that she had a dad. A note on the page mentioned that he needed to find out who her father was.

  “So why’s the mafia want this guy hunting girls whose parents work in politics?” Indena asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  It was very suspicious for sure. Indena tried searching the guy a little more while I kept skimming over the notebook, but we couldn’t find anything useful. He had a weird heart shaped pin in his pocket, but it seemed a little out of place for his theme. Our best guess was that they were doing some sort of ransom thing or something.

  “Where’s this Elma girl anyways?” Indena asked. “Where’d she go?”

  I was actually still tracking her on my map, but barely. She was currently going down the sewer. Somehow she’d slipped past us.

  “Alright, let’s follow her.” Indena rolled the guy onto his back and dragged him over to the wall. “This guy’s all washed up.”

  “Good idea,” I nodded.

  Standing to my feet, I digitized the notebook and the keys into my INVENTORY and raced to the door. Apparently I could do that with small items.

  ~☆☆☆~

  Elma was really booking it down the sewers. By the way her overworld sprite was moving on the map, she was frantic.

  Tracking her made it easier to maneuver down the pipes, but she was almost always on the edge of the fog of war. There were so many twists and turns, even dead ends, but she managed to find a path that kept going, almost like she had a destination in mind.

  “This girl must be really freaked out if she’s running this far into the sewers,” Indena said.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “I don’t think that’s what she’s doing.” I projected the map from my heart. “The way she’s moving, I think she might know exactly where she’s going.”

  The same couldn’t be said about us, unfortunately. This was territory I wasn't really too excited to get familiar with.

  Suddenly, she stopped moving. Her sprite looked like it was about to turn around, but then started backing up. Then she just stood there. She wasn’t far away, so I thought maybe we’d catch up.”

  *BANG!*

  A gunshot rang down the pipes. It was really loud.

  *BANG!*

  More gunshots! I think that Elma was shooting something.

  We ran as fast as we could to catch up with her, but then a big green blob dropped down from the ceiling above us.

  *PLOP!*

  A bunch of other little blobs followed it, then rolled to block our path. A few more came up from behind.

  They bounced a little bit until their little rabbit ear like antennas were facing upwards. Then they just jiggled in place.

  -WARNING! Slimes Spotted! Tagged; Foe-

  Ahah! The classic sewer slime! I was wondering when these bouncy boys would show up. They're good for grinding.

  “We’ve got monsters!” Indena’s hands excitedly lit on fire. “Let’s do this!”

  The slimes bounced around, deflecting off walls and heading at us.

  The parts of them they intended to hit us with solidified like stone just before connecting. I raised up my forearms to guard against the attack, but it hurt pretty good!

  “Gah!” I flew backwards.

  “You good shrimp?” Indena said, kicking a slime out of the air.

  I didn’t take any damage, but that hurt for sure.

  “Spear of Destiny!” I announced, drawing forth my trusty stardust spear. “This is where rubber hits the road!”

  Another slime was flying at me, his skin turning hard as a rock. This guy was moving fast, but I had to react faster!

  -Combat Mode: Active!-

  I jabbed my spear forward, trying to hit the spinning slime at just the right time to strike soft flesh.

  I missed it!

  Evading the oncoming attack, my wings carried me right over to the other side of the tunnel. The retreat prompted another slime to bounce up and leap my way.

  *SWING!*

  This time I got the hit I wanted. But the gelatinous body of the slime merely flexed around the piercing weapon and prevented any significant damage.

  “Darn!” I shouted.

  “Shrimp! We’re gonna have to find their weakness to take them down!”

  Indena’s Fire wasn’t going to do anything to the moist bodies of the slimes, and physical damage was just as useless as blades were to something mostly liquid.

  Giving it some thought, the only thing that came to mind for battling these guys was to use some kind of cold attack, but what sort of cold magic did I have in my arsenal?

  -…-

  Nothing. I could throw up coolant at him, but that really wasn’t a good idea for obvious reasons…

  While Indena was battling a crowd of slime, she kicked one on the hard part of its skin and it was redirected toward the river of sewer water. Another slime bounced at its ally and hit him all the way across to my side, also using that hit to redirect itself back to Indena.

  From my perspective, it almost looked like he was helping his friend out by not letting him fall in the river.

  “Hey, that’s interesting…” Indena cupped her hand and put it down into the water. “Hey sticky! Why don’t I give you a bath?”

  She splashed up some water at an attacking slime. As it touched its skin, the water and slime skin started to mix up in an immiscible way, like oil and water.

  “Thought so!” Indena rolled up her fist in celebration. “Oi, Shrimp! They’re scared of water!”

  “I see that!” I nodded,

  They were really good at evading the river between the walkways, so it wouldn’t be easy to get them in there. But, I had an idea how we could get the water to them instead.

  There were big buckets sitting around. We both collected one each and scooped up some of the sewer water.

  We both splashed the buckets at the slimes, causing all of them to disperse into tiny little bubbles that washed into the river of sewage. The survivors went into a panic, trying to flee… But I flew down the tunnel and made sure to splash as many as I could!

  A few managed to squeeze past some grates in the wall, but we cleared quite a few of them away.

  With that, our battle was over. No level up though, since they were so weak.

  My combat systems cooled, but I didn’t shut them down. No doubt there would be more fights up ahead, so we scooped up more water and got ready to splash.

  “This crap water stinks. Literally,” Indena commented. "Can't believe I put my hand in it... Yuck..."

  Beams of light appeared around us, each displaying a slightly different shade of green or white.

  -Collect dropped items?-

  -(Yes)-

  -(No)-

  Ahah! I knew what these beams were.

  Whenever a monster dies, there’s a chance I can collect the items they drop. Nobody but me can see the little beams of light that indicate something was dropped.

  I selected ‘yes,’ receiving slime jelly and something else pretty interesting…

  -Gauntlets of Bluntness (Masterwork)-

  -Melee-

  -Poor quality-

  -Boulder Breaker Lv 1 : Increased melee damage + Crit rate up-

  “Gauntlets of Bluntness…” It had some interesting brown details that emanated a weak light across its metal and leather, clearly a sign of enchantment. And seeing as it was a green rarity, that meant it was a second tier item. Not great, but better then white rarity.

  Both the items I gathered had descriptions. The slime jelly’s said that “it goes well on toast”…yuck… And the Gauntlets of Bluntness said “Just hit a little harder.”

  Who wrote this stuff? These descriptions were just silly.

  Anyways, luckily the slime jelly stacked, so it wasn’t going to take up much space in my INVENTORY, but I spawned up the gauntlets and handed them to Indena.

  “What’s this?” she took them and gave them a look over. “Oh, this is enchanted, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” I nodded. “It’s enchanted with Boulder Breaker.”

  Indena put the gauntlets on. They fit her surprisingly perfectly. After throwing a few punches to get the swing of it, she threw me a thumbs up and smiled.

  “Good stuff!” she cheered. “I think I can hit a little harder now!”

  You’ve got to be kidding me…

  So anyways, a few other items had descriptions too, now that I was taking a look at them. My spear had a description, but it was weird…

  “Of blood and water it is christened.”

  I regretted reading that. Very eerie. How was I supposed to use this thing knowing it had a description like that?

  Next my instincts were telling me to check out the good-for-nothing Pier tokens…

  “Let’s crash the economy!”

  Good Lord… Who actually wrote these?

  “Oi, Shrimp, we good here?” Indena asked.

  I was a little sidetracked. I could check out more descriptions later. We needed to catch up to Elma, who looked like she was in trouble of her own on the map.

  “Yeah… All good here.”

  Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed, please support me, Taylor The Writer, here on Royal Road! :)