~ First Person POV ~

“Shit, shit, shit… FUCKING HELL!!!!”

My scream reverberated along the alleyway. I punched the wall next to me with all of my strength, but the wall didn’t budge a bit. My hand bled because of my skin getting cut by the rough body of the wall.

“FUCK!!! FUCK!!! FUCKK!!!!!”

My fury didn’t stop there. I continued pounding the wall with no regards to my hands getting wounded.

“Those fucking bastards!!! I’ll murder every one of them!!!”

Earlier morning, after the shift of Mari’s night duty, she came to our hideout, weeping. When I asked what was wrong with her, she just kept silent and cried while closing her palms with strength. The life in her eyes was dimming greater than before.

Then it hit me. Whatever those sick fucks did last night, it was enough to completely damage Mari’s emotional and mental state. Hell, even her physical state was no less better than mine when Gren died.

For now, seeing that she had cried herself to sleep, I laid her down on a makeshift bed to let her be even just a little more comfortable. The dungeon can wait after I finish cleaning up the mess inside, as well as the dead body of Drake that was sitting lifeless on the floor in the living room. Hell, even his head was still on the floor wearing a shocked expression on his face.

It sent a shiver down my spine knowing that I had once been him. Seeing your own dead body really wasn’t a pleasant sight.

After I laid her down, I went out the door and looked back at the abandoned, sorry excuse of a shack.

“Mari, I will let you taste happiness, I promise…”

Which then led to the present situation, with me pounding the solid wall with my skinny as fuck frail hands. Just remembering the sight of her trembling in depression made my head boil over.

“I will fucking kill you all…!”

********

After settling my angry fit, I went back to business, finding their stash of supplies. Who cares for the other slum dwellers, my only goal is Mari’s happiness and safety. Fuck them, if they don’t have the will to resist or the wits to supply themselves, then suck my ass and kiss my booty goodbye, you won’t be seeing your food situation get any better.

And for those who are at the top of the gang, syndicate or whatnot, I’ll fuckin’ destroy every one of their outposts, but the problem was how to do that. I can’t use monsters. I can’t risk getting my dungeon discovered by the guards unless I want one of their strongest hot on my tail.

“Whatever, I’ll get there when I get there.”

I stowed away that thought in my head for the future and continued finding one of their stashes. After about an hour search, I found two stashes, one with food and the other with gold. Their gold stash is more heavily guarded than the other stash obviously. Thanks to Gren’s memory, it didn’t take that long.

According to his memory, the most amount of gold stashed would be in their HQ, but since all of it won’t fit since most of the items in their HQ were materials and items for trading, they had to find another place to stash their gold. Same goes for their food.

Since it was morning, perhaps shouting in that alleyway wasn’t a good idea. As lo and behold, one of my kin (slum dweller) has been apprehended and has been put to the sword by a patrolling guard. There was about three of them that were wearing partial armor that covered their chest, back, arms and legs. I was about to go back to our hideout only to find this scene in my eyes. The person that died was a boy in his mid teens looking skinny as hell. He wore rags and his ribs could be seen under his skin. But right now, all I could see was his head rolling down on the ground with an anguished expression.

My bad dude, but tough luck, such is the life of a slum dweller.

‘Note to self, never yell inside the slum.’

I made a mental note as I saw them head back towards their duty while spitting on the corpse of the boy, damned sick bastards.

After seeing them off, I quickly head towards the hideout hidden between two buildings. Inside was Mari still sleeping like a log with her face sometimes scrunching up. This is a clear case of having nightmares. I approached her and carried her in my arms. She was light, very light, so light that even Gren’s body had no problem lifting her.

Carrying her in my arms probably calmed her down as her previously scrunching face has disappeared into something more normal. I float a smile up on my face as I created a [Dungeon Portal] next to me and head inside with Mari in toe. Probably recognizing Mari as a friendly, the dungeon sent me and her directly to the partially destroyed modern house.

I had a change in heart because of what I observed during the past hour. During my scouting, I noticed that unrest had been spreading around the slums. Apparently, the guards have been sighted more and more moving around the slums in the past month, and the local gang didn’t like this.

There has been an influx of recruits (against their will) of slum dwellers joining the gang for military strength. It seems that the gang plans to revolt against the current head of Garjo. But actually, the revolt is meaningless against the town guards who are physically fit against the slum dwellers who were not. Just even the concept of it was plain ridiculous. So their goal lay elsewhere.

Thinking for a bit while walking towards the bedroom made me realize that the revolt was a diversion. There is no way for them to win so why bother, unless the higher ups planned to escape from the beginning by using the revolt as a distraction for the town guards to move. And during that, since the town gates would have been left undermanned, they could probably break through and escape the town and live the lives of bandits.

Not that good of an idea, but nonetheless, something a gang lord would actually think about seeing that his head was probably on the bounty list. After coming up with a possible theory, I arrived at the bedroom and laid Mari down on the soft bed. Seeing her dirty the clean bed with her dirty body made me stifle a chuckle.

‘Looks like I’ll have to clean this bed sheet after she wakes up.’

I head back downstairs in order to complete one of my other objectives, cleaning the damned house. Well, with the help of DP as well as the dungeon, it wasn’t that hard, except I left my body, Drake’s body to be precise right as it was. I wasn’t going to confide my own body into oblivion, that’s just plain wrong, but I couldn’t just leave it here, so I decided to bury it under the backyard. Oh right, the house had a front lawn and backyard if I ever didn’t bring it up.

It took me about two hours to complete the funeral. The sword Drake used still by my side as it was still useful.

“Don’t worry Drake, you are still alive…”

I muttered unconsciously as I prayed for my plan to work once night falls.