“Shit… shit… fucking shit, don’t look down, don’t look down… don’t look…” I murmured loud enough for only myself to hear.

“You there! What the fuck are you doing!?” He turns his flashlight towards me from a few meters away.

But, I guess my bad habit of murmuring things under stressful situations is my undoing.

“Shit!” I cursed, as I climbed out of the filthy waters and ran away.

The ghastly odor can’t get to me anymore because I think my sense of smell wasn’t working that well since… I don’t know, for a long time now, I guess? And I was used to the filth in this place that I don’t mind getting drenched in it now. Unsanitary, full of microbes, and death? A hundred percent yes.

“Stupid fuck!” Surprise-surprise, they were also patrolling this place, too. Goddammit, my King does some stupid shit without a second thought.

“Over there!” He yelled to his other companions, and then a lot of loud footsteps came from everywhere around me.

“I just need to plant one more!” I made sure to plant the seven others inside some of the detachable bricks in the walls underneath the city hall that I used to store my valuables back then, so that even if they tried to find it, it would take the keen eye of someone paying attention to notice it. Perks of being a sewer rat, of course.

“Hah! You’re way too slow you damn shit!”

They were catching up to me even though some of them were wearing bulky heavy plated armors over their huge bodies. That meant they were rankers, too, and heavily spec'd on mobility and strength from what I’m seeing. Must be low-class Rooks that the council employed.

“Heh” The only possible way I could escape and plant the last remote explosive is to somehow lose them, and I just have the perfect place in mind for it.

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“Wait till we get our hands on you, little man!” He said. “You’d serve as a good plaything for the Holy Hole Hotel!”

“For the sick fucks, you mean”

“Obviously for those fuckers!” He yelled back. “Who else goes to that fucking pig-sty in the first place?”

I sneered at their talks even though I was their prey down here. They're forgetting one thing that’s quite important.

This is my home

Did you think someone like me could survive in this shit hole without anyway to escape my pursuers like these ones? Of course not. I had to learn how the system worked and what the people could do with it, so that I could eat once or twice a day and sleep soundly behind a garbage heap for fucks sake. The only reason I haven’t bumped into the council ever since I got here was because of their numbers.

…

And maybe because I was just too busy trying not to get killed, and meddling in on their business was a no-go if I wanted to live for a long and miserable time.

“Better make those feet move faster, little man! Else, your asshole’s going to get stretched like a latex glove!”

As if on cue with that man’s words, I made a sharp turn to the upcoming tunnel on my right. There, a ladder that was headed down towards a large chamber interconnected with more tunnels that lead to different parts of the city was. If I wanted to lose them, then now is the time.

“He went down here!” My pursuers shouted from above me.

But, losing them in the tunnels wasn’t my plan. No. My plan from the very beginning was to hide under a small hiding spot behind the ladder. There was a small enough gap for me to fit in-between a concrete slab that was used to block sewer debris and the wall.

“Where’d he go?” One of them asked, confused as to where I went. But, I’m only a few feet away from them. It's not as if they were going to find me.

…

Please don’t look here. Please don’t look here. Please don’t look…

“Shit, split up and go search a tunnel each”

Nice! A good thing I checked myself not to murmur this time around.

After some time has passed and making sure no one was there anymore, I climbed back up and continued what I was doing. But, when I reached in for the last remote explosive inside the small waterproof bag that I have with me, it wasn’t there. Instead of it, there was a red brick with a note attached to it that said:

Sorry, I forgot to mention that I didn’t have enough money to buy all of them. Here’s a brick that I found while looking around, though, so feel free to use this and fool them ^_^ Good luck!

…

My King is an idiot for sure.