Roth arrived in Hilsford's teleporting gate sweating and trembling. He took off running, not caring or knowing what direction he was taking. He had hoped they would leave him alone and that what they had done to him was punishment enough. But when his eyes met Gary's, he saw predation and violence. They were still looking for him and wanted to hurt him more.

After seeing him teleport, they now knew he had reached level 10 and had just traveled to one of the cities in Green Country. If Gary jumped into a teleporting gate and happened to choose Hilsford by chance, he was doomed. Even if he went somewhere else, he could at least rule out one of the cities and narrow his search area. He had to find somewhere safe to go. Where would he go? Where could he go? He didn’t want to feel all that pain again. Even if they couldn’t strip him of his stats because of his [Martyr] title, being hit and killed over and over would hurt very badly.

He looked at the [Ratan Form] skill and cursed at having an inventory full of items. If he activated it, he would lose strength and get a debuff. He had to run in human form. Roth took off.

As soon as he found a side road that took him out of a main street, he darted into it, and then, seeing an even smaller alley, he ran in. He heard someone coming around the corner. What if it was Gary? What if it was one of the others zoning in on him? He looked up. There were no footholds to climb. The crates wouldn't hide him, either. He then saw a sewer drain. Another noise, this one closer. There was no time to think.

Roth ran toward the drain and activated his epic skill.

Miniaturize!

His form shrunk until he was small enough to make it through the grids, and his tiny figure fell into the darkness.

The descent began in a flurry of chaos and disorientation. Arms flailed, their desperate attempts to grasp something, anything, met with nothing but damp air. The light of the street outside soon faded, and the world shrank into a narrow, claustrophobic tunnel. The stench of decay and sewage assaulted his senses as he plummeted further into darkness. The water around him was foul and slimy, and the feeling of vertigo and all the curves and sharp turns of the pipes just added to the sick feeling in his stomach.

As splashes of the water landed near his mouth and nose, he was glad the pipes were so dark that he couldn't see the color of the water. After several minutes of falling down the pipes, he finally heard the echoes of running water falling and entering a more expansive space ahead.

He saw a faint light at the end of the pipe and was soon sent flying toward the ever nearer ground. He fell with a splash and then hit solid ground. The water had softened the fall but as it wasn't deep, he had still felt the hard impact.

You have fallen.

-43

After a few seconds of disorientation, not knowing which way was up, Roth tried to push his legs against the ground and broke the water's surface. He gagged as he breathed, and his lungs were filled with the putrid stench of decay. He coughed and tried to make sense of where he was.

Unlike the blackness of the pipe he had fallen through, there was enough light here. He strained his eyes to discern the origin of it, discovering that it came from a small aperture, either a drain opening to a street above or a jagged, holed sewage lid revealing a sliver of the world above. Tunnels stretched out before him, a labyrinthine network of concrete and metal. Dripping pipes echoed softly in the distance.

He spotted a shore to swim to. The claustrophobic atmosphere and the overwhelming smell threatened to overpower him but he summoned the strength to swim. He hauled himself out of the water as his fingertips brushed against the solid ground. Drenched in filth and sick of the smell and vertigo, Roth wept.

All the pain he'd been through had just returned to haunt him as soon as his eyes glimpsed Gary. He had seen the shock in his eyes, but also that he'd been recognized. They were still running after him. They still wanted to cause him pain. Roth didn't want to go through any of that again.

Thinking of the torture he suffered made him think of his mom and his brothers. He wondered how they were doing. He hoped that Loki hadn't hurt them. It wasn't beyond the monster to do so.

For four years, he'd been powerless to stop any of the hurt Loki wanted to cause his family. It was just one more month of frustrating powerlessness. It was out of his hands…. All he could do was to try to get out. He had to escape.

Roth began taking some calm steadying breaths. It wasn't easy. All that entered his lungs was the stench of the sewers around him. He tried to find the pipe he had come through. No one had fallen after him down the sewers. He was safe for now.

The [Miniaturize] buff expired, and he was restored to his normal size. The sewers became smaller in scale and a little less daunting. He decided to start walking. He would have to find a way out eventually. Even though there was some light down here, it was dim and scarce. He was having trouble seeing anything.

He pulled a handful of [Glowshrooms] out of his inventory and held them up. They gave very little light, but it was better than nothing. On second thought, he went into his inventory again, pulled two more shrooms, and stuck them up his nose. Maybe it would help with the stench around him. After a few breaths, he took them out. It didn't help.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

He had to readjust his plans if his old squad knew where he was. But first, he had to better understand the city he was in. He had hoped he could peacefully ask around until he got his bearings, but he now had no choice but to do so from down here.

He revisited the forums looking for any reference to Hilsford. He had chosen this city because that's where the contact of Greenleaf Inc. was, but other than that, he didn't know anything about it. There wasn't much available in the forums for him to read. Since so many players were still based here, any information available was considered valuable.

He tried to look for a paid guide to the city. If he could pay in-game currency, he would fork out a few silvers or golds if that's what it took. He discovered a channel just for Hilsford-related news. A player had the idea of starting a regional newspaper in the forum. It was called 'The Hilsford Gazette.'

The monthly fee to access it was one silver. Roth did a few quick calculations in his head. A successful newspaper could earn a fortune if one multiplied that by several million players. One silver wasn't much since he had over 90 gold in his inventory. It wouldn't be much of a loss, even if he didn't find anything useful.

Are you sure you want to pay one silver to subscribe to 'The Hilsford Gazette'? [Y/N]

A series of windows opened up. A part of Roth had hoped that a seagull or a pigeon would have come flying into the sewers and dropped him an old-style newspaper, but that was wishful thinking. The Gazette was more like a well-organized series of posts with privileged information. He checked the categories:

News of the Week

Introductory Guide to Hilsford

Hotspots

Profession related quests

Class related quests

Guilds and Prominent Players

Adverts

He selected the introductory guide.

Welcome to Hilsford, one of the ten mid-grade cities in Green Country. This is where you will be playing from level 10 to at least level 30. Here you'll find a small introduction to the city's structure and some things to note if you're new to the game.

The town has a series of districts that are controlled by different factions. You have the slums south of the city, a paradise for rogues. Uptown, the garrison maintains law and order and is the go-to spot for warriors. Then you have the campus to the east, where medics and espers will spend much of their time. Finally, to the west, you have the commercial district. This is where players that want to perfect their professions can go.

The most important thing to remember when settling in one of these cities is the different factions that fight over control of the city. Different crime families are constantly disputing over turf in the slums and trying to expand their influence into the other districts, while the garrison is continuously promoting raids to the slums to eradicate crime.

Then, there are the esper politicians, the medic intellectuals, and the merchants and craftsmen that try to stretch out their influence. It's a very complex ecosystem that generates a lot of storylines. The key to thriving in the city is to carve your own turf. Try to cozy up to a faction and build a reputation with them. When you do so, not only will you have a place to call home, but you will also be able to find better and more unique quests.

The guide described where players could do their quests to change classes and suggested the most popular faction to befriend each of them. The only class that seemed interesting to Roth was Medics. However, if he went down that path, he would have to rely on other players and go out hunting. That didn't sound like the gameplay he'd enjoy right now.

Once upon a time, he would have gone to the Garrison without hesitation. He always chose berserker or damage-dealing warriors in every game he'd played before. He had loved being in the middle of all the action, but no more.

He hoped to find some hidden class that could give a bonus to his broker profession. He'd build on his foundation in the Green Woods. After all, if he hadn't befriended all those factions in the woods, he would have never unlocked his biggest treasure: the Zoomorph race!

According to the [First of a Kind] title he had received, he'd been the first player ever to unlock it! Thinking about the Green Woods, it hit him. He had to make one weekly trade run if he didn't want to lose trade exclusivity. He was on the clock here. He didn't know how long his gameplay style would remain a secret.

Everyone loved violence so much these days that they jumped at the opportunity of hitting whatever came across their path. But he couldn't be the only player who had befriended other races. His gut told him that he shouldn't lose the trade exclusivity. He opened the ledger and saw when he had last visited his suppliers. He then set a timer in his system clock. He had less than a week to sell all the goods he was carrying and return to the Green Woods.

He had gotten quite a scare after seeing Gary. Good thing he had been next to the teleportation gate when they saw each other. Even if Gary had jumped right into the teleportation gate and paid the exorbitant fee required to teleport, he only had a 1 in 10 chance of ending in Hilsford. Chances were slim that the other squad members were close to a teleportation gate.

Thankfully, these cities were also humongous, with millions of players each. There were several nooks and crannies where they would have to look before they could find him. He calmed down. There was still some time. Roth tried to write down his plan for the week of gaming. He pulled out the little app that players had to write in and made a to-do list.

- Find a way to hide from Loki;

- Sell all the goods I brought from Green Woods;

- Pay a visit to the contact Greenleaf Inc gave me.

He paused to see if he'd forgotten anything. He scratched his head and then wrote something at the very top.

- Find a way out of the sewers.

There. Here was his game plan. He looked inside the Gazette for any reference to the sewer system. There was only a reference to a rogue quest that required players to travel down to the sewers and hunt an alligator. It was a popular quest because it gave alligator leather armor with good stats. Nothing else.

He went to the rest of the forums and did a broader search for any reference to sewers in public posts. After all, how different could sewers be between towns? Someone must have posted more information about the sewers.

There was a lot of complaining about the smell. There were also some references to the different mobs that one could find. As he read the first name on the list, his eyes widened, and his heart raced. Of course! How did he not think of that earlier?

Roth took off running in the tunnels squeaking as loud as he could in Ratan:

"Hello! Is anybody there?"