“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!” panicking, he began to claw at everything he could to anchor himself. However, his weight made grabbing onto the tiles of the room impossible as they would simply come off when he grabbed ahold of them. Displacing tiles as he felt, his panic only grew as he came closer and closer to the edge.

In a last-ditch effort, he managed to grab onto the metal gutter lined beneath the roof’s edge, bringing his momentum to a halt. He flung and rebounded into the wall, kicking up some dust.

His right arm, which he used to grab the gutter, felt like it was about to pop off. The edges of the gutter bent under his grip and weight.

“What? What? What?” Issac’s pupils contracted as he saw the edges being torn off from the nails that were used to stick them into the roof. After the place he grabbed fully came off, like a chain reaction, the other parts also separated and fell backward with Issac.

“Fu-” he fell on a hedge with the gutter on him. Groaning in pain, he slowly lifted the gutter over from him and moved out. Leaves stuck to his clothes, and splinters covered his skin. They dug into him like needles.

“Ouch, fuck….” Quietly muttering to himself, he went to pick out the splinters that caught his eyes, but a gruff shout off in the distance quickly reminded him of his situation.

Groaning again, he looked around. He was on the ground floor of the left side of the castle. He couldn’t go from the front yard and neither to the back. The only way was to climb the wall to the side. But even the walls had men on them.

Issac grabbed the grappling hook from his pouch and aimed it at the wall. It was either fewer men on the walls or the entire army in the front, and he chose the former. Just like the Owner instructed, he pressed the button on the handle, and the grapnel shot out. It made a whistling sound in the air and flew high into the air. The grapnel went over the wall.

“Over there!” a series of shouts came from both sides. Issac looked left and right to see a swarm of knights with their swords drawn aiming at him. Anxious and scared, he pressed the button again, and the rope began to tighten. The grapnel made a metallic sound as it hooked against the edges of the wall. The rope started to contract again, and pulled Issac up with it.

His right arm was suddenly pulled again, and the pain made him think that he could visualize every single one of his muscle fibers tearing. The knights just missed him as Issac zoomed toward the edge of the top of the wall and grabbed it with his left arm. Pulling himself up the wall, he panted on top of it. He was tired.

“Fireball!” a shout came from his left, as well as a sizzling sound that came closer and closer. Ducking at the last second, an object of immense heat flew over his neck. It exploded a bit to his right away, and a pained shriek came.

“Shit, sorry!” the mage that threw the fireball panicked. And Issac took the chance. He shot the grappling hook on the ground. It bounced on the ground without grappling anything. He took the grapnel, hooked it to the other side of the wall, and leaped off. He began to rappel downwards with the grappling hook rope, which seemed to roll from the inside of the machine like tissue paper.

However, his journey down wasn’t peaceful. The mages soon remembered what they were here to do. The fireball mage checked if his partner was okay and then looked around for Issac, only to find a shiny grappling hook stuck to the edge of the railing. He ran over and peered downwards. Issac was rappelling carefree down the wall.

“Bastard!” with a shout, the mage unhooked the grapple, and Issac, who had already rappelled 75% down the wall, fell twelve feet to the ground. The dust kicked up from underneath him. His back hurt like hell. The grapnel the mage unhooked fell to his side.

However, he couldn’t keep lying as the mage again cast another spell, “Fireball!” Issac hastily rolled to the side as the orange ball of fire collided with the ground and burnt it charcoal black.

“Fuck me,” retracting his grappling hook, he made his way down to the city, more specifically, the commoner’s area. He knew that if he wanted to escape, the slums were the only way he was getting out. He quickly ran into the commoner’s area with mages shooting spell after spell behind him. Bobbing and weaving, Issac, who now looked wretched with the dirt and left sticking to his clothes and the splinters on his skin, finally made it to the commoner’s area.

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But that didn’t end his problems. Knights began to pour in from almost every direction. He took out more mana bombs and threw them at their faces. The explosions made his ears ring. At this point, he only hoped they would stun the knights long enough.

Issac rummaged his pouch for more bombs, and his mood worsened, “Shit, only four more!”

Remembering June’s recount of the slums, he quickly ran to the market district. With knights chasing after him, he threw another mana bomb behind and detonated it. The bomb exploded into a cloud of fire, stopping anyone from coming in. Citizens were crying and running for their lives, but Issac couldn’t pay attention to them.

Suddenly, the hair on the back of his neck stood up, and he sidestepped immediately. A huge sword slashed down where he was, cracking the cobbled paths. Issac, who was already exhausted from all the running, began to sweat bullets.

“What the fuck happened to not killing me!?” without much thought, he fired his grappling hook onto a nearby rooftop and climbed up. The inclined roofs made it hard to run on, but he got used to it. Jumping from roof to roof, the knight with the huge sword jumped up into the air. Issac looked behind and saw that the knight was aiming to land on the roof behind him.

The knight landed on the roof with a force that cracked the tiles beneath his feet. But the frame underneath him gave away, and the roof collapsed with him on it. Issac turned around to see the knight screaming as he fell through the roof. Issac laughed and jumped to the next roof; the tiles shifted underneath his feet and made his footing unsteady. He quickly steadied himself and continued running.

The knights were following him closely behind on the streets. Issac’s eyes lit up because the slums and the setting sun behind them were in sight. But the knights were a problem.

“Fuck, I need to get their eyes off me! What can I use?” Issac’s mind worked in overdrive, trying to find a way out as he neared the slums. He could no longer run on the roofs inside the slums, or he’ll fall through the knight from before. “They’re not going to fall for the mana bombs, at least I think.” He remembered the Basic Illusion skill he had learned but quickly shook his head. Even if he had an inkling of how to use it, using it on such a big group of knights would be akin to suicide.

He took out another mana bomb and threw it at the guards. It detonated, halting the guards slightly, and using that delay, Issac leaped off the roof. He rolled to the ground and started running again. The view quickly shifted as he began running inside the slums. The streets were no longer clean, and the houses were no longer sturdy; even the sun looked bleak. The poor lay on the streets, starving and disease-stricken.

Issac ran through the slums with haste, but the slum-dwellers didn’t so much as spare him a glance. He made an abrupt right turn coming into the slums and hid in the shadows next to some slum dwellers.

The knights passed him by and stopped at a crossroads five meters in front of him. The leading knight took off his helmet, perhaps to help him see better, but even after looking around, he couldn’t find Issac. He turned around and ordered, “Rodri! Try to hear him! He must be hiding!”

“Roger, Captain!” Rodri took his helmet off and put his armored hands by his ears as if trying to hear him.

“This isn’t anything good!” Issac’s breathing tensed. He held his breath and stood still like a sculpture. His nerves were loosening. The darkness of the shadow felt inviting and comforting, providing him relief at a time when it felt like all the bones in his body were aching.

Rodri kept trying to hear, but after thirty or so seconds, he lowered his hands and shook his head. “I can’t hear ’im, Captain!” Issac exhaled and inhaled again.

“Then widen your search; he’s probably farther away!”

“Aye, Captain!” Rodri once again put his hands to his ears and listened. His brows furrowed as he focused. Issac, who was holding his breath again, decided he needed to do something.

“This can’t go on!” he raised his arm and focused on Rodri. A wisp of mana came out from his palm and went to Rodri. With all his imagination, he tried to imagine the sound of running footsteps in the opposite direction.

Tap tap tap tap

Rodri’s ears perked up, and his eyes shone as he reported, “Captain! I’ ear off-beat footsteps over there-” he pointed in the opposite direction to where Issac was, “-he must be injured!”

“Must be!” the Captain agreed with his statement. “The feats he pulled must have stretched his weak body to its limits. Get him!” The Captain and his men began charging away.

Issac heaved a sigh of relief and began running again as well. The towering city walls soon came into his view. He smiled and ran with renewed vigor.

“Hurrah!” with a roar, someone shoulder-bashed Issac. It lifted him off his feet, and he flew away from the force, crashing to the ground. He groaned and lifted his body and saw a bunch of thug-like men looking at him with menacing smiles on their faces.

The man who stood in front and middle seemed to be their leader. He was bear-like, two meters tall, with shoulder-length black hair and a dense beard. He wore clothes made of animal hide.

The bear-like man laughed in a deep and gruff voice, “We found ’im, boys! The Queen’s sure to be pleased!”

“Boss, she’ll reward us nicely this time, right?” a smaller man by his side asked. He was a skinhead, and a nasty scar ran along his scalp.

“She better!” the others began clamoring.

“Calm down!” the bear-like men barked out an order, and the others stopped speaking. He continued, “Tie him up first. Then we’ll talk about the reward.”

Issac slowly got up from the ground and glared at them. The thugs and their boss snickered in response.