“Good Morning, sewer rats, rise and shine and all that bullshit,” shouts Nars as he stomps through the door as loud as possible.

For a second when I wake up to all this noise I forget where I am and turn to shout at my Zero for waking me this way. When the pain in my back makes itself known again with the wounds reopening. This causes the memories of the past day rush back to the forefront of my mind, and a sob of pain, regret, and anger escapes before I can stop it. This causes Nars to look my way with a smile.

“Ah, I see the lesson I taught you yesterday still hurts. Unfortunately, I can’t have you getting sick from an infection, so I have to have you healed, Yars see to it,” says Nars with a look of regret on his face and he waves to the man standing behind him who must be Yars. With a wave of his hand and a softly spoken word, I feel a burning all across my back. Not a bad burning but one like a hot shower after a long day out in the cold. And the pain is gone, I sigh in relief and go to thank the man, but no words come out. That’s when I remember I can’t talk to any non-Zero without them talking to me first. So I just nod in thanks, but he just looks at me in disgust and turns away.

“Alright, now that is done let’s get down to business, you Zeros are to clean the NorthEastern side today top and bottom,” says Nars in a now bored tone. “Oh and um… you show the new Zero his duties,” pointing at the first Zero he sees. “Well, that’s it,” and with a wave, he and Yars leave.

The Zero Nars pointed at comes over raises his hand to shake mine and says, “Guess I’m showing you around my names Lan you?”

With slight hesitation, I’ve never touched a commoner barehanded before, I shake his hand and introduce myself, “I’m R… I’m Nox.” I don’t feel comfortable using my old name it reminds me of everything that I should have, and I want to say have again but… I don’t see how that can happen now.

“Well Nox let’s go eat, and I can explain a little about what we do here. Oh, don’t forget to give the first pick of your portion to Bur he’s not a man you want to get on the wrong side of,” Lan informs

“Yeah, I got that from when I met him last night, and I’ve been ordered not to eat today,” I say while my stomach grumbles. I have never missed a meal in my life so being hungry is a new kind of torture I’ve never been through before.

“That sucks, oh well follow me and I can at least show you where we get our food,” says Lan with a shrug.

So I follow him we leave the room and exit the sewer and just to the right of the entrance is a small stone building that we enter walking in silence the whole way. Once inside Lan gets in line and grabs a tray. I stand off to the side and out of the way once Lan receives his food we head back towards the sewers and the men’s kennel to eat. On the way, I take a look at the food and almost gag. The only thing that I can even say with some certainty is the bread, but it’s green. Then there’s a kind of fuzzy red thing and a brown thing that honestly looks like someone just shit on his plate.

“What the hell is that!” I ask before I can stop myself.

“Ha, that is a good question from what I’ve been able to put together green thing is bread, the red thing is maybe a fruit I’m not sure but it’s sweet, and the brown well they say it’s meat, but well look at it,” laughs Lan good-naturedly.

When we get there just inside the doorway is Bur. He looks over Lan’s food and takes only the bread and nods him off. But not before saying, “I’m taking the surface today. You and the newbie stay down below.” Lan just gives another nod and walks away.

I go to follow him, but Bur stops me with a hand on my shoulder, “Remember you will have to pay your portion for today and yesterday when you get your meals tomorrow.” I nod at him, and he releases my shoulder but not before giving it a bone-crushing squeeze first.

I sit on the floor across from Lan. “So, what does he do with the extra food?” I asked Lan with a nod towards Bur. “There’s from what I’ve seen about 20 Zeros here there is no way he can eat all that extra food.”

“Yeah he doesn’t eat it all himself he gives some to his lackey’s, and some goes to a female Zero that he’s sweet on from what I’ve seen,” Lan explains pointing at two other guys standing near Bur.

“I guess I can see that, but I thought we aren’t allowed to “mate” with the females here,” I said confused.

“That’s true we aren’t allowed to “mate” as you say, but there are other ways to seek pleasure if you know what I mean,” Lan says with a wink and a laugh.

I start blushing with the implications of the idea. My parents never let me go to the pleasure houses like some of the other Royal heirs. They always said it was unbecoming for someone of my rank to interact with anyone that far below me. So I’m wholly unfamiliar and embarrassed by these new thoughts. Of course, this causes Lan to laugh louder at my expense.

Once Lan gets a hold of himself he starts to eat again and says, “So, let’s get onto the topic of the job. I don’t know about you, but the itch is starting to creep up. Meaning we need to start working soon.”

“Yeah, I feel it, what’s with the itch anyway? Wouldn’t pain or something else be more effective in keeping us in check?” I ask.

“Well, this is just a guess, but I think it’s because pain can stop us from actually completing the job if it gets bad enough. Whereas itching just gets very annoying to the point where you’ll do anything to make it stop even when it reaches unimaginable levels you should still be able to move,” explains Lan while itching his neck.

“Makes sense I guess,” I say also starting to itch. “You done eating? This is starting to get bad.”

“Yeah, I’m done let's get to the supply room, and I’ll explain what we do while we walk to the north tunnels,” Lan says getting up.

Lan leads me over to the supply room next to the door there is a wheelbarrow with the empty food trays of the other Zero’s. Lan adds his to the pile and enters the supply room with me following behind. The room was rather dark only one Light globe, a magic light that can be set somewhere and stay on until dismissed, near the center of the room. As I imagined this room was filled with cleaning supplies like mops, buckets, brooms, and other such items. Lan grabs a cart and loads it with two push brooms, mops, cleaning liquid, and a collection of different size pipe brushes.

“These are the basics you’ll need for a sewer job. For a surface job you won’t need the pipe brushes,” says Lan. “But don’t expect to get to many surface jobs. Bur and his boys always take them. That is on the infrequent occasion that Bur’s girlfriend has to work down here than he’ll follow like a puppy.”

We leave the supply room and start pushing the cart down the large sewer tunnel and eventually stop where eight different tunnels are leading in different directions.

“Okay, it’s quite easy each tunnel leads into a different side the city, and it follows a compass, North, Northeast, East, and so on,” says Lan point and the North tunnel and then the ones to the right of it.

“I think I can remember that, but what do we do down here?” I ask.

“Mostly we just unclog the different pipes and clear any blocked passages. The abandoned slimes usually keep the rest clean,” explains Lan as we head down the North tunnel.

“Abandoned slimes? And what blocks up the pipes?” I ask confused. I have never heard of a slime type called abandoned.

“They are slimes that were once a tamer's but were abandoned when they grew in spirit level and could get a better monster, and what the hell do you think blocks the sewer pipes,” laughs Lan.

“I don’t know I never thought about what sewers are used for, and that makes sense about the slimes, but I thought there were places you can sell your monster too,” I ask. I also start to realize the smell of this place is starting to get worse. It smells like…”Wait, we have to clean up shit? That’s disgusting, and I shouldn’t have to touch any of that.”

Now Lan’s really starting to laugh at me, “We do, it is, and you will be covered in it before the day is done I guarantee it. As for the slimes, the Monster Farms never take any slimes unless it’s a Royal Slime, Queen Slime, or some other rare variant.”

Lan stops and points off down a side tunnel, and I see some weird colors that seem to be moving around. “That’s some of them now. They are a good way to tell if there is a blockage. They tend to congregate at them so while looking to clean look for them and you’ll find something,” says Lan walking off towards them. “And don’t worry they never attack anyone.”

There is not much talking to be done from then on. It was just walking and cleaning for the rest of the day. I threw up a few times, well at least I attempted too but with nothing in my stomach I just dry heaved and threw up the water I drank that day. I tried to refuse to clean a rather large blockage, but Lan was right the itchiness got so bad that I would have done anything to make it stop. Lan was also right about another thing I was covered in more… no, I don’t want to think about it. At the end of the shift, we head back to the supply room, put our stuff back, and head into the men’s kennel to shower and in Lan’s case eat. I decided just to go straight to sleep I’ve never walked or worked so hard in my life… or in the case of work, I never had to do that before. Just as I fall asleep, I get another swift kick to which I look up and see Bur’s back. I just shake my head and go to sleep.