Chapter 8:

Jonathan couldn’t care less about trait; all he could think about was the old man lying dead in front of him. His heart beat so fast and so loud that he was sure that any one after him could hear him.

“Ohmygodohmygodohmygod.”

He had killed someone. He had killed an old defenceless man, an old man gaunt from starvation. Dirty and scarred from ill-treatment. An old man whose face was twisted in terror at his moment of death. He tried to calm down, surely he wasn’t dead right? This was all some misunderstanding right? He couldn’t possibly kill somebody. He tried to shake the old man awake, he tried to slap him awake, he tried anything he could think of to wake the old man up.

None of it worked.

He tried to rationalize his actions.

“He was gonna call the guards, he was gonna get me killed. I had to kill him.”

He looked around the cell desperately trying to find any bit of evidence, anything to prove that he did the right thing.

He found nothing besides him and the man he killed.

“Itsnotmyfaultitsnotmyfaultitsnotmyfault. Ididtherightthing. Ihavetolive. Ihavetogethome. Itsnotmyfaultitsnotmyfaultitsnotmyfault.”

As he babbled on, a notification appeared in in his field of view.

[Congratulations! You have learnt the skill: [Mantra of Madness]]

“What the hell-“

[You have reached an abnormally erratic emotional state.]

[Your emotions corrode your mental well-being.]

[Your mind is being corroded.]

[Skill: [Mantra of Madness] has delayed your mental erosion.]

[Skill: [Calm Mind] and skill: [Mantra of Madness] has lessened your emotional state.]

He calmed down before immediately felt a wave of guilt wash over him. The old man was still in front of him, lying dead. He tried to distract himself from his guilt by looking at the skill he gained.

[Mantra of Madness]

True madness is forsaking permanent truths for temporary lies. You are able to lessen the mental impact of your actions by invoking this skill. In return, your mind will be gradually and permanently corroded.

“This is an awful skill.”

He paid no attention to the skill. No one in their right mind would use it. He had better things to worry about. He was bleeding from the bite he got from the old man. The wound glared at him, it was between his index finger and his thumb on his left hand. He hadn’t lost too much blood but he had to close it up before the blood loss slowed him down-or killed him. He took his dagger and cut of a strip of cloth from his shirt and tied a knot over the wound using his good hand and his teeth. He didn’t have stitches to close it up and he didn’t know if he had the guts to stitch it up himself.

It was still bleeding. The cloth was only a dam against a stream of crimson that would soon become a sea. He needed stitches or something like that. He grabbed his short sword. He glanced at the old mans’ corpse again. A wave of nausea caught him. He needed to leave. He needed to leave now.

Jonathan opened the door, the wave of dizziness starting to dissipate. He listened out for slavers’ footsteps in the stone floor. He heard nothing but a constant but faint sound on his left, down the corridor, like someone was being quieted.

Shhhhhhhh-!

He realized it was the sound of water gushing in the walls. He walked closer, paying attention to any sounds he was making. He continued to walk down the corridor until the continuous gushing sound was replaced by the occasional grunt followed by a splash. Jonathan felt the cold sweat on his brow. The grunt meant that people were around. It made sense, if this place was some sort of sewage system, there would be people working to treat the sewage. He thought about his chances of escape if he was seen by the workers. No matter how he looked at it, his chances looked slim. He was weak, and it was unlikely that there was only one worker. Even if he could beat one, there was no guarantee that he could beat anyone else.

“Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

He had to take the chance. He followed the sounds down the corridor until he ran across stairs the led downwards. The grunts were getting louder and more irregular. Now he could tell that there was more than one person, there were two people at least. He grabbed his dagger tightly and tiptoed down the stairs. The corridor that they led to was lit up by multiple torches on each side and had only one open room on the right side. It was surrounded by about 10 dead bodies. Mostly female, all of them having in common the fact that they could be called beautiful in life. All of their faces were twisted in horror and and most of them had no clothes although those that did had the same clothes he was wearing. A grey-white shirt covered in blood and bile.

Jonathan could barely keep himself from vomiting. He reminded himself of his need to get out of there before inspecting the rooms’ entrance.

The rooms entrance was large and had symbols inscribed over it. Jonathan realised that it was probably Octavian standard. Augus said he could speak and understand it, he never said Jonathan would be able to read it.

Another setback. Jonathan thought. He didn’t know if his inability to read would affect his chances of escape, but from his experiences so far, he had a feeling that they would.

He peeked into the room. Luckily no one noticed him. In the room where two burly men who were standing next to a pile of bodies that they picked a person up from periodically by their limbs before throwing them into what Jonathan could only describe as a large groove in the floor where he could hear water flow. He realised that it was an opened pipe and the two men were disposing of the bodies.

Suppressing another wave of nausea, Jonathan entertained the thought of running past them and jumping in. He decided not to. He didn’t know how fast the two men were, but if they caught him, he would probably still make it to the pipe, just…less alive.

He looked over at the pile of bodies by the door. He had to get out of there, he just wished it didn’t have to be like this.

Felix and Marcus were not very smart; they knew it too. Their parents never encouraged them to go to school beyond the average required Imperial education. They were brutes, they did any physical job necessary and they enjoyed it. However today they were discontent.

Today they did not fight or enforce. Today they were glorified garbage disposers, disposing of the evidences of the excess that their higher ups regularly indulged in. However, they did not complain, they knew that any sign of insubordination would send Saxon warriors their way. The Saxon Michael was especially vicious. The Saxons were strange men from a strange place. The Princess had gone to their land to form diplomatic relations and had since come back with a small military force, allowing her to show superiority over her siblings.

So they did their jobs, robotically and in silence. They didn’t speak much unless it was necessary. They picked up another body, a man this time, young too. He had probably lived through only 20 winters. They did not comment on his youth or his looks, they were not in the habit of questioning their superiors habits and fetishes.

What they wanted to comment on was the aura surrounding the boy. It was an aura that Marcus last felt when he snuck out the city with Felix and they fought their first monster. The boy gave of the feeling of desperation and murderous intent. If he wasn’t bloodied they would have sworn that he would rise up and kill them. Marcus had half a mind to remove his head from his body, a notion Felix dissuaded him from. They were going to visit a brothel later and the price they had to pay would increase if their clothes were bloodied.

So they threw him into the water without much more thought.

The water took Jonathan before he could react, he couldn’t scream because the flow of the water blocked his mouth and nose. His breaths were half filled with water and half filled with pain.

The flow of the water led him down a path that had frequent turns at high speed causing him to get winded. He regretted hiding his dagger in his pants; it felt like he was constantly falling on his keys, if the keys were sharp.

He tried to stabilize himself but all the surfaces he clung to were too wet or slimy for him to get any traction. Eventually the chaotic flow of the water dumped him a few meters down onto a rocky shore which fed into a river that led into a forest. The impact of the fall onto a flat protruding him left him winded and with a pain which he was sure meant a broken rib. He couldn’t tell if his rib was broken though, he had never broken a bone in his life, so he couldn’t compare the pain.

He stood up gasping for air and realised that he was surrounded by the wet bodies of the people was thrown into the water with. He was assaulted by a smell he recognized would last with him for a long time. He looked around and saw some of the carcasses being scavenged by birds he would call crows, if crows were the size of a small ostrich and had eyes that glowed a crimson red.

The birds noticed his movement and one of the red eyed crows’ squawked at him. He figured that this meant it was calling for reinforcements because the other crows squawked in response and hopped on the rocks, getting closer to him, all the while flapping their wings in an intimidation display.

Just then a notification popped into his vision.

[Plaything of Fate] [Mandatory Quest][Update]

Fate is very amused. Your luck decreases. While you have escaped the Empire for now, you are still nothing. How will you respond to a world that is hostile to you? Will you give into suffering or will you rise to the challenge? The choice is yours.

Length of quest: Until you die.

Rewards: Your life.

Current chance of success: Varies from moment to moment. Currently 13%