Alec opened his eyes and, out of reflex, immediately shot up and let out a terrible cough. The cough sounded like the cough of an old lady with pneumonia. The blood that he was coughing up was certainly helping that claim.

The coughing fit continued for a few more seconds, and after it stopped Alec’s body gave out again and he fell back down flat on his back.

He looked up at the dark sky and moons, realizing that it was nighttime. He wasn’t exactly sure how long it had been since he got the holy hell beaten out of him, but he figured that it must’ve been a few hours.

Though it was night, He could hear people breathing, snoring, and quietly walking. The moons lit the area just enough so Alec could see fairly well. Or at least, as well as his poor vision would allow him.

Alec felt the dry blood all over his face and head. He could feel that his body was in extreme pain, but he gave it no mind. His right eye was swollen shut and his cheeks were very puffy. There were a couple of large bumps on his head, and he could only imagine how purple and red his face was from bruises. Thankfully, and surprisingly, he hadn’t lost any teeth.

He reached down into his pockets, which shot a bolt of pain up his arm, suspecting that the dirty old man’s reason for jumping him was for his bread rolls. His arm reached his pocket, and his suspicion was confirmed.

Well, I guess I should be more careful from now on and be absolutely sure that no one is around me from now on whenever I’m about to pull out food.

At the thought of the word “food”, Alec’s stomach grumbled, as if responding to his thoughts. He was even more desperate than before for even the tiniest scraps. He figured that he should get up and search people’s garbage.

However, instead of getting up and heading toward the dumpsters, he simply continued to lie down in the middle of the street for a few more minutes. He knew that his body was really going to give him a hard time when he got up. Eventually, he did get up with great difficulty. It took several attempts to steady himself and prevent his legs from giving out, but he did manage to shakily get up. He began walking toward one of the city dumpsters that he remembered.

His gait was clumsy, and he was limping. The hardest part about walking was that his head was still in a daze. He was able to manage, though. He figured that he must have had a concussion.

As with much of the information about the world that Alec possessed, he didn’t know where he learned that. Sometimes he questioned whether this knowledge was really his own. However, he hadn’t questioned that in some time because of the dire situation he has been in lately. In any case, he was indifferent, so it didn’t matter anyway.

As he was heading toward one of the city dumpsters, he thought to himself that he should probably have some sort of weapon to defend himself. It didn’t have to be as sophisticated as a sword, just something to defend himself like the metal pole that the homeless man beat him with. There was no way he would win any sort of fist fight against anyone with him being so skinny, small, and weak. He needed something so that if he got jumped again, he could at least fend someone off. He also felt that he should probably not pull food out of his pocket in the middle of the streets of the slums. That was two lessons learned.

I just realized this, but it seems like my presence is being completely ignored here in the slums, unlike everywhere else.

In the shopping district of the town he was in, people still ignored him, but they still seemed to always, whether subconsciously or not, noticed his presence and purposely avoided him. However, in the slums everyone seemed utterly indifferent to him and didn’t care about him being there at all. Well, unless he had food in his hand, apparently. Alec was sure that if food, or something valuable, randomly appeared in his hands, people would immediately notice him and jump him.

He arrived at one of the dumpsters and found that, luckily, nobody was digging through it. Every dumpster that Alec had seen so far was on the border of the slums and the shopping district. Though, he hadn’t really explored through the slums, so he really wasn’t sure whether there were dumpsters here.

He hopped into the dumpster, which luckily had some torn furniture around it that acted as stairs for his bruised body and began looking for whatever scraps of food he could find. The dumpster was pretty large, as were all of them in this city, large enough where if it were empty, he wouldn’t have been able to see it. As for the smell, well, it wasn’t good.

Realizing how full the dumpster was, and of course concluding that the garbage hadn’t been taken anywhere else in a while, Alec wondered where the garbage was taken to and the process in which the garbage was taken out. In any case, Alec thought that this was useless information, and cast the thought out of his head and continued digging.

For about ten minutes, Alec found nothing but useless garbage like a bag of wood shavings and pieces of carpet. But then, he found a bag full of old, dirty, rotten orange peels that almost seemed intentionally hidden near the bottom of the dumpster. Alec immediately began scarfing down the peels with no concern for potential health risks.

There were over a dozen peels, but Alec scarfed them down in under a minute. Though he horsed the peels down, he was still able to taste them, and they tasted worse than anything he had ever tasted before. He didn’t really care, though.

After devouring the peels, Alec’s stomach growled as if saying that it wanted more. Alec then continued searching for more, but didn’t find anything. Alec was unsurprised by this. Rather, he was more surprised that there was anything in the first place.

Alec then left the dumpster with a stomach that was a little fuller and began heading toward another dumpster that was nearby.

Alec shivered as he walked through the dark quiet streets of this town. The climate in this nation-state was very warm year-round, but it was still chilly at night during the middle of winter. Alec figured that he should also add finding a relatively warm shelter for the night in his ever-growing list of things he needed to do if he didn’t want to die.

Alec arrived at the next dumpster and immediately moved on, as he could hear someone rummaging through it. He didn’t really think it’d be a good idea to get into another fight again, so he didn’t even try.

Alec continued to go from dumpster to dumpster searching for anything that might be edible, skipping the dumpsters that already had people searching through it. He ended up skipping most of the dumpsters because, even at night, many people were out and about scavenging for any scraps they could find.

Alec was also looking around for any sort of shelter for nights. He didn’t really know what he was searching for, but he didn’t find anything anyway.

His body was exhausted, so he decided to give his body a rest. Alec has figured out at this point that it’s best to rest when one’s body is on the verge of collapse. He knew that he’d still wake up exhausted, but at least his body would be in better shape. So with that, he took a street corner and went to sleep, still shivering.

…

Alec woke up and immediately vomited to his right. The orange peels he had eaten the previous night exited his stomach, and when they were all out, stomach acid came out.

He eventually stopped and laid back flat on the cobblestone. Contrary to his expectations, he felt even worse than the night before. He tried to get up, but as soon as he tried to sit up, he threw up again.

Alec realized that the rotten orange peels that he had eaten came back to bite him.

I must’ve gotten food poisoning.

Alec thought that his body might not be able to take it and that he might die. This caused a feeling to well up in Alec’s body that felt familiar, but he didn’t understand nor knew what it was. Even though he knew that he probably wouldn’t permanently die, he still really didn’t want to experience that feeling again, which he knew was the cause of the unfamiliar feeling in his body.

Alec laid there sweating and feeling like he might hurl again any second. Though Alec was a little out of it, lying on the cobblestone staring up at the supposedly purple sky did allow him to become aware of his surroundings. Per the usual, he could hear a scant number of people walking around and the quiet breaths of people. However, he also picked up on a voice, which wasn’t something you heard very often in the slums, or so it seemed.

Alec strained his ears so he could hear what the faint whisper was saying. He found that there were actually two voices, which wasn’t surprising because it’d be a bit concerning to hear someone have a serious conversation with themself.

“We should get a lot o’ stuff wearin’ these clo’se,” said a deep gruff voice; The voice definitely seemed to fit a slum bum.

“Wi’ll be eatin’ good domorrow,” said another voice. This voice was a bit lighter, but definitely still not feminine. The voice reflected excitement.

“Do’t be gettin’ your hopes too high yet. You…” The voice became unintelligible at that point.

Alec felt like he got the general gist of their conversation, though he wasn’t exactly sure why they stressed “tomorrow” so much. He was pretty sure that they hoped wearing nicer clothes would help them blend in with higher-class people, thus making it easier to get closer to people and steal from them.

I wonder if I could do the same thing. Though, I’m not sure where I’d find nice clothes. I guess I would have to steal them from a clothes shop, but I have a hard enough time already stealing at all.

Being the innovative smart guy he was, he was already trying to decipher how to use this sort of method himself to help him.

I still wonder what’s so special about tom–

Alec blacked out in the middle of his thought.

…

Alec regained consciousness with the sun shining above him. At first, he thought that he had only blacked out for a few minutes at most, since the sun was also high in the sky when he blacked out. However, he realized that the sun was slightly closer to the horizon to the East… which meant that he had slept for almost an entire day.

The next thing that Alec noticed was that he felt much better now with the rest, albeit still pretty bad and still pretty hungry. The third thing he noticed was that it was absolutely silent. Not even the wind blew. This was strange because usually, at any given time, Alec could hear the quiet breathing of other people and their quiet footsteps.

Alec closed his eyes and tried listening for any sounds. At first, he still heard nothing, but then he could hear what sounded like a crowd of people mingling and music. Alec realized that this must have something to do with what the slum-bums were saying just before he passed out.

There must be some sort of event today like the market in the town.

Alec tried to sit up, but didn’t even get halfway up before he fell back down. His body was still very weak and bruised.

Well, at least I didn’t throw up this time.

Alec tried again, and this time he was able to slowly but surely, shakingly sit up. It wasn’t pretty to say the least with him shaking the whole time

Now for the harder part.

Alec turned his body around so he would be on all fours, hoping that this would make standing up easier if he pressed his hands to the ground and pressed himself up.

This seemed to work, and he was able to shakily get to his feet. Now that he stood up, he felt like he could walk with only a little difficulty. His gait was still unsteady, but he had little problem.

Alec began limping his way toward the noise. He wondered if it was some sort of play or maybe it was similar to the market day in the town. As he walked the crowd noise became louder and louder, and he still heard nor saw anyone whilst walking down the streets.

Alec eventually found himself at the empty square that he walked through on his first day in the city; except it wasn’t so empty anymore. Alec’s second guess was correct: it was this city's market day. The only difference was that it was on a much greater scale. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people were walking around mingling, purchasing goods from the dozens of stalls, and standing in lines. The crowd wasn’t so big that people were shoulder to shoulder, but it was fairly close to that level.

Alec also caught some dirty looking people, people from the slums obviously, lurking around trying to be inconspicuous.

I see, so this is what those two people were talking about. This is definitely prime time to rob people, though I’m sure that stall owners are extra suspicious today… I bet the only slum-bums I can see are the ones that are at least fairly new to slums, since the people with a lot of experience would be blending in better.

Alec decided that this was also prime time for him to steal some food as well. But first, he was going to try to glean some new information about the world around him like he did in the town. However, this time he expected to be able to gather even more information; his guess was correct.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Alec didn’t have much experience at all with blending in, and he was especially bad at it considering that it seemed that something about him attracted attention, but with a crowd this big, people didn’t seem to notice him as much.

Alec listened in on the chatter of strangers and learned that this city was fairly new, and that’s why they only had one market square, and that it was rumored that the lord of this city’s next project was to build another market somewhere.

Alec also learned that if you kept going, the next district was called the entertainment district, which included the cathedral and the lord's manor–which was apparently quite strange–and other stuff like a bathhouse and the amphitheater. Apparently, it was controversial to have the church in the entertainment district, as, according to the men talking about it, the cathedral shouldn’t be considered entertainment and should have its own little area or district.

Both of the men suggested that perhaps the lord does follow the religion, which they didn’t name, and if that was the case then the lord should be overthrown.

People sure are religious in this city.

This wasn’t the first time he speculated this, but being here listening to people chattering, he realized that this was definitely the case. Even outside of these two men, many of the conversations, many of which were useless, mentioned God in some one way or another.

Alec continued to listen to conversation, and the only other piece of information that he found out was that there was this new invention called the printing press, which allowed pieces of writing to be mass produced. Along with the new plant that was discovered that essentially grew paper, literacy was beginning to go up among the lower classes.

How does that work? Even if paper and writing is beginning to become affordable and easier to get their hands on, someone still has to teach them how to write, so who?

The people conversing didn’t explain how, and the conversation moved on to a random, useless topic, so Alec moved on to eavesdropping on a different conversation still puzzled.

Unfortunately, no other conversation he listened to provided any useful information. Well, Alec knew that he could’ve probably gleaned some more information if he kept listening, but he then caught a scent of some really good food, so he went after it.

It turned out to be fresh meat. The woman at the stall was selling meat. She was cooking and keeping the cooked pieces of meat warm over a small fire she had going. Alec didn’t recognize the type of meat, but he didn’t care. All he knew was that his mouth was watering and that he wanted all of it.

He walked closer to the stall, making sure to blend in with the crowd as he did. Right before he reached the stall, he shrunk his body a little bit in order to make himself appear small.

Alec waited for the lady to be distracted by a customer before slipping behind the stall and starting grabbing pieces of meat off of the sticks that were leaning close to the fire. He didn’t even care if he was grabbing raw or cooked meat.

Alec had barely grabbed one piece before he heard a feminine voice snap “Hey!” behind him.

Alec immediately scurried out of the stall, scarcely avoiding the woman's hand from grabbing him.

Alec ate the piece of meat as he disappeared into the crowd. It wasn’t the victory he was looking for, as it had only been one piece, but he wasn’t complaining. The piece of meat was a little hot and burned his mouth a little bit, but was nonetheless delicious. It was definitely, and luckily, cooked.

I want more.

Alec devoured the piece of meat in an instant, but that small piece didn’t even come close to saturating his appetite. He began looking around for more food stalls.

For the most part, Alec was mostly unsuccessful in his attempts to steal food. The only reason he was able to have even the little success that he did was because of the crowd making it easier to blend in. Whenever he did successfully steal food, he always made sure to eat it immediately. After what happened only two days prior, he wasn’t going to take any chances; he wouldn’t put it past a slum-bum to cause a scene right then and there.

Evening came, and it seemed like the market day was coming to an end. Everyone who wasn’t sold out already began taking down their stalls. However, it didn’t seem like everyone was leaving. About half of them did, but many still remained in the square. They were all standing still looking toward the center of the square as if waiting for something.

Soon after Alec noticed that, someone who looked like a guard came walking to the center, dragging someone who had their hands tied behind their back with rope. The guard had a sword at his hip and a whip in the hand that was not dragging along the other person, who was clearly a prisoner from the slums.

I see what’s going on.

It was clear that the prisoner was about to be whipped for a crime that he committed. Alec assumed that the crime was probably theft.

Memories flooded into Alec’s mind of being in that exact same position. It wasn’t even 2 weeks ago that he was whipped, but it felt like much longer to Alec.

The guard tied the prisoner around the pole that was in the middle of the square and began whipping him.

“1!” The guard said. The prisoner let out a painful sound, but it was quickly drowned out by the subsequent cheering of the crowd.

“2!...3!...4!...”

With every strike, the people watching cheered like it was some entertaining event. Well, to them perhaps it was.

This is way different than in the town.

Alec recalled it not being nearly as rowdy when he was whipped. People watched, sure, but no one cheered. Here in the city, people seemed to treat it as if watching a fun event.

Alec began making his way out of the market square. There was no need for him to watch this. It wasn’t as if he felt disgusted at the people, or anything, he just simply saw it as a waste of time. Thus, he walked off.

Alec could hear the cheering and the guard’s counting fade into the distance as he made his way back toward the slums.

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I think this is a good place to interrupt. Sorry if you're disappointed, dear spectator.

Time passed.

Alec adapted to his new life in the slums. He continued to learn, observe, and think of new methods to make his life easier in the slums.

He spent a lot of time learning the layout of the slums district. It was massive, taking up over one third of the city, and it took even Alec, who had an exceptional memory, a little while to commit to memory all the little streets, alleys, hiding places, etc.

Alec didn’t want to spend time in the slums, as it was dangerous, but it was inevitable that all the time he spent not trying to steal was spent in the slums. He made sure to avoid as many people as possible at all times.

Alec never found any sort of honest job, nor did he try to. He felt that it was pointless to even attempt to find a job, as he figured no one would be willing to give a job to an orphan.

He found out that there was a part of the shopping district that he missed that was sort of the slums part of the district. The shops sold low quality goods and were very sketchy. However, they would actually sell things to orphans with no questions asked of where the money came from, so stealing actual coins was an option for Alec. And no, he didn’t try to find a job at any of these slum shops either.

Alec continued his lifestyle of stealing, and he continued to get better and better at it. He learned how to hide his presence better and how to be quieter and sneakier. His partial blindness still hindered him, but all things considered, he did a good job.

In the months that passed, Alec figured out that Marketday was held once a week, and that was always the day that prisoners were punished. They were all punished out once, unless of course there were no prisoners that week which Alec didn’t even see once. Most of the punishments were whippings, but some of them were things like having your bones broken, or even execution, which they used fire to cremate someone alive as their method.

Alec had been imprisoned only once in the months that followed. Luckily for him, it was only whippings.

Soon after the first Marketday that Alec witnessed, he found a weapon that he could use to defend himself, which he had to do several times, as he made a lot of enemies. The weapon he found, which he found buried in a ditch, was a large metal pole, not very different from the one he was beaten with by the old man. He was still often wounded, and he couldn’t really defend himself if the person he was fighting also had a weapon, since his eyesight was poor.

Alec never made any allies. He’d probably have a hard time even if he tried, but he made no attempt to. Having to rely on someone for anything, even something very miniscule, was the last thing he wanted to do. He felt like even in his past life that he never did such a thing. Alec knew that he could never truly rely on another.

It wasn’t until a full month after entering the city did he finally find a shelter that he could stay in at night and hide when he was being pursued by either a guard or some slum-bum that was after him.

The place was the basement of some sketchy people’s home. There was a small broken window at the base of the house that only someone very small like Alec could fit through. The entrance to this cellar from the main floor was blocked off, so there was no way to get in. The people were a group of criminals who made ransom off of kidnappings. Alec could often hear them speak about their shady business at night. There was nothing useful stored in the cellar, but Alec often took it upon himself to enter the house on the main floor and steal the kidnappers' food when they weren’t there.

Alec, of course, broke into many homes in the slums to try and steal food, but very few people had food and it was so inefficient that Alec eventually stopped doing it. Alec also tried to break into homes in the middle class and noble district, but there were too many guards walking around who kicked him out of the district on sight, so he couldn’t even get to the front doorstep of any of those homes.

The shelter that Alec found was also convenient for storing his things, as it was very spacious. However, Alec didn’t really have any belongings except his metal pole, which he rarely left in the shelter. He also never compiled enough food to store it in his new little home. His stomach was never not hungry at any point over the next three months.

Somewhere along the way he seemed to have completely forgotten about his main goal: to reconnect with Drei, live with him, improve his life, and not be in danger all of the time. The reason he forgot this was his constant state of hunger. This drove him to continue looking for food with little else on his mind; he was being driven by primal instinct to do nothing but find food and survive.

There are many stories to tell about Alec’s time in the slums of this city, which was called Vealzel. However, those stories are to perhaps be told another time, as the main story must continue, dear spectator. Now, let’s skip three months into the future when the people that Alec was living under discovered him, and were chasing him in hopes of either beating the hell out of him or killing him.

...End...

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Alec ran through the slums as he did many times before. However, all the other times, he had been chased by only one, maybe two men, and he had always been able to lose his pursuers in 5 minutes at most. This time, though, he and the men chasing him had been running through the city for over 15 minutes at this point.

They tried several times to cut him off, and almost did a couple times, but overall had no success in doing so.

The reason he was being pursued was because the people that he had been living under discovered him. They were a shady group of kidnappers and hitmen.

Unfortunately for Alec, he was discovered while he was sleeping, and Alec woke up to getting the absolute shit beaten out of him, before slipping out of his little hideout.

I left my pole in there, which is unfortunate.

It’s not like he really had any belongings before, but now he really did have nothing. It wasn’t like Alec was attached to the pole, but he had only seen one weapon like that for the last three months, so he knew that it’d be hard to come by another one.

Many of Alec’s old gruesome injuries had mostly healed, and he didn’t have any major new ones except for the beating he sustained just minutes earlier, so he could run much faster, albeit still not very fast.

He continued to run through the streets of the slums that he had long memorized at this point. Spring had come, so the weather was very warm. Couple that with the humidity from last night's rain, and the weather was a bit miserable. Alec’s breathing was shallow and sweat draped his skin like he had just exited a river.

Five more minutes passed, and he had still not lost them. He knew that he hadn’t lost them because they kept throwing knives at him and yelling; he could also see them if he turned his head. He continuously turned sharp street corners and ran down thin alleyways in hopes of losing them, but they always seemed a step behind.

An idea suddenly popped into Alec’s head. What if he ran into the shopping district. Surely, they would stop pursuing him in front of a huge crowd of non-slum-bums. Before he could test this out, though, one of their knives finally hit him. Well, more like grazed him, but it still was not good.

“Gottem!” The man throwing the knives was seemingly happy at his success.

Pain flared into Alec’s forearm where the knife grazed him and cut a sizable amount of flesh off. It wasn’t so much that it wouldn’t grow back, but it was sure to make a large scar, and he would need to stitch it up, which he didn’t know how to do.

Though extremely painful, Alec, as always, didn’t make any noise or movement that indicated that he was in pain. He simply kept running like nothing happened.

Blood dripped down Alec’s arm. It became stained red, and he was leaving a trail of blood on the ground as he ran. Now he knew he was not going to be able to lose them, as they could just follow the blood trail if they ever lost sight of him.

Alec started running toward the shopping district, which wasn’t too far away from where he was. It was only a couple minute run. However, Alec was losing blood fast, and after another minute he started to become dizzy, so he wasn’t sure how long he was going to be able to keep up his pace.

As for onlookers, well, there were several, but they just minded their own business. Others weren’t going to get involved in the business of two different groups. Alec had observed over the past three months that this seemed to be a sort of unspoken rule. It made logical sense for both oneself and the two parties. After all, why would someone put their safety at risk to try and mediate a situation that they didn’t know of or have anything to do with.

“Just get hit already!” Alec heard from behind him as another knife flew past.

The man was seemingly frustrated at this many failed attempts to hit Alec with his knives.

What’s this guy babbling about? The reason why he hasn’t hit me is because of his terrible aim.

Alec finally made it to the shopping district. By the time he got there, his head was very foggy, and his vision was even more obscured than usual. He practically stumbled into the district. He could feel himself ready to pass out.

Luckily for Alec, his theory seemed to be correct, as when he entered the shopping district, the men stopped following him. Alec was sure, though, that the men were waiting near the border for him to either re-enter the slums or for everyone to leave the street. The situation was probably going to turn out to be the former since this street was large and there was a lot of people here.

Alec put a little distance between himself and the border of the slums, crossing the street. He collapsed just before he could reach the other side. He crawled the rest of the way and leaned his body against some random building.

His head was throbbing and he knew that it was only a matter of time before he passed out. He knew that that’d be a bad idea, though, so he forced his consciousness to stay.

Five minutes later, Alec, still panting and on the brink of passing out, was approached by this elderly woman with a cane. Her appearance was a fragile one, and it was easy to tell that she probably had the wealth of a middle-class citizen, but the look she gave Alec indicated that she knew and had experienced the harsh realities of the real world.

She stared at him blankly for a minute, not saying a word; just staring into his eyes. Alec met her gaze and returned her stare. The lady gave an empathetic look.

“I’m going to take you in. Maybe I’ll be able to make–”

Alec’s body had finally reached its limit. He passed out before he could hear the rest of her sentence.