I turn around from the estate and start heading to the hideout where the goons I hired are located.

After some time, I make it to the front of the hideout; it’s, of course, in the slums, and my great nose is once again cursed to smell the horrible mixture of stenches of the slums. Well, at least the mask I’m wearing is suppressing a little bit of the smells.

I knock on the door and after waiting a moment, I hear footsteps approach, and a raspy voice asks for a password. Of course, I provide them with the password since I am the one who originally instructed the idiots I hired to use one.

The door opens, and I see a dirty, unhygienic mess of a man in front of me, who could be considered an average slum dweller around these parts.

“Hello, boss!” he speaks with the same raspy voice, probably having one of the many diseases of the slums. They better not have gotten Ustos sick.

“Where are the captives?”

“Oh, in the back.”

“Take me there.”

The goon nods and starts leading me to the two captives. On the way, I meet the other three idiots I hired, along with the man leading me.

He finally makes it to a door and says, “They're kept here, the one with the stab wound is not well, though.”

I frown, “Open the door.” He says “OK,” with a worried voice.

He opens the door, and I see Ustos tied down onto a chair and looking alright, although looking to his left, I see Marfont on a bed, not even tied down.

“Yeah, that one got a little sick,” he says, pointing at Marfont.

I start approaching Marfont and immediately notice a putrid smell in the room. It’s so bad I can’t even discern the general horrid smells of the slums.

I hold my disgust in and approach Marfont; he’s flushed red and is breathing heavily. I remove the sweat-soaked blanket covering him and notice that he’s shivering. I tell him to flip over, but he doesn’t respond; he just sits there, probably on the edge of unconsciousness. I sigh and forcefully turn him around on the bed. I look down at the location where the minor stab wound, wrapped up nicely with pure bandages, was supposed to be, but instead, I find putrid, heavily stained yellow cloth barely reminiscent of any bandage, emitting one of the worst smells I have ever encountered in my life that yellow stain, it’s pus, a lot of disgusting, putrid pus.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

I take a deep breath to calm myself down, but I end up just breathing in more of the putrid smell. I turn around to the four people standing near the doorway, looking like nothing is wrong. This ends up being my last straw. “You incompetent idiots!”

The idiotic rat bastards flinch a little.

“You had one job! I told you to switch out the bandages; I even showed you how! How did you fail?!”

“It was–”

“Do not talk back to me, commoner! You had one goddamn task to do, and you failed it!”

“But we did! We switched it–” one of the absolute braindead idiots dares to interrupt me.

“Who the hell are you lying to?! Those are the same bandages I wrapped around him to show you how to treat his wounds!”

“You didn’t even try to do it once! You absolute morons!”

“Do you know how much damage this man's death would have caused?!”

One of the unspeakable simpletons approaches me and attempts to put his hand on my shoulder, “Hey buddy, calm down yo–”

I pull out my dagger from my spatial ring and stab it into the hand that’s approaching my shoulder.

“Do not touch me!”

The man starts screaming in pain and falls onto the floor; one of them yells, “What’s wrong with you?! Who–”

“Shut up! You’ve all failed me! You should be glad I don’t bring your asses to the gallows!”

I kick the idiot on the floor to let out a little anger and take a deep breath in.

I regain my calm and start talking again, “All right, you guys are going to help me out with something because you caused this mess.”

“A-Are we going to get paid?”

“Yes, but not a gold coin anymore.”

“How much?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

“What do you want us to do?”

“This man,” I look at Marfont, “is probably not going to be able to walk on his own. I need you idiots to bring him to a certain location.”

I instruct them on the location of the person who’s going to kill Marfont.

“And if you morons don’t screw this up, you’ll get paid.”

“Uhh, what about him?” one of the goons points at the man clutching his hand on the floor.

“He’s useless.” I state, and I bend down and slash his throat. He starts bleeding out on the wooden floor.

“You guys better get going,” I tell them.