After more walking, she finally reaches bandit town again. She shows the scroll to get inside, then makes her way to the doctor.

The doctor here hides his face behind a plague mask, it's a small man, only a head taller than Misa.

I broke my foot, can you help me with it?

Oh dear, this isn't looking too good, we'll have to cut it off, he says.

No I don't want to lose my foot Misa says, can't you heal it?

No this is quite bad, it's probably infected, in fact I'll probably have to remove your leg to be safe. He pulls a saw out of his drawer, covered in rust and dried blood. He quickly places it on Misa's thigh.

Stop! I just want it to be healed, please!

The plague doctor starts laughing. Hahaha, I'm only joking, sure I can help you.

But first, you have to drink this. The doctor shows her a vial with a brownish liquid and a floating eyeball in it. Come on then, drink it, it'll speed up your recovery.

A-are you sure about this? Misa removes the cork and places the vial on her lips. It smells absolutely disgusting, like rotten eggs and flesh.

The doctor starts laughing again, hahaha, it's just a joke, I can't believe you would actually drink that.

JUST HEAL MY FOOT ALREADY Misa yells angrily.

Okay okay, temper little lady. Laughing is good for your health, having a sense of humor wouldn't kill you.

Patricia! he yells. Bring me the bandages and salve!

Okay!

Not long after a girl in shabby clothing arrives. She smells bad, even from across the room that is obvious. She has rat ears and a rat tail attached to her. Her hair is dark brown and very messy, there's clearly some garbage stuck in her long hair.

The doctor binds Misa's foot and applies the salve, which speeds up the healing process.

Now be careful Misa, and if you change your mind, I'm always ready, he says, pointing to his saw.

Misa doesn't laugh. She leaves the doctor's house and goes to the jewellery stand on the market, where she sells some of the valuables she collected. She has a decent amount of money now. Those miners gave her all sorts of expensive gems.

Then she makes her way to a food stand. As she is deciding on what bread to buy, she smells an awful smell.

She looks over. It's the ratgirl again. Please! Can you buy me some cheese! I saw that you have lots of money!

Why are you stalking me?! Misa says, annoyed by the rat, and her stench. I thought you'd be rich, so I was hoping you'd buy me some cheese. Please, I don't have any money, and the doctor barely gives me any food.

Fine, will you go away from me if I do that?

Misa buys some cheese and gives it to the ratgirl. Thank you thank you thank you! Ratgirl is so happy she jumps forward and embraces Misa.

Let go of me! Misa tries to push her off, but she is larger. Her horrible stench overwhelming Misa. And she's pretty sure some fleas jumped off her.

Come on, leave me alone, I don't like hugging, I hate physical contact and warmth, it's not a personal thing, just let go of me! But Patricia just embraces her tighter. Those who dislike hugs often need them the most.

HELP MEEEE Misa screams. One of the market guards approaches them, come on now, get away from here. I thought we banned you from the market for stealing Patricia, you know the rules.

She walks away, enjoying her cheese. Misa is disgusted. She lost her appetite.

Misa rents a room for the night at the inn and washes herself. She makes sure to thoroughly scrub herself. But no matter how much she scrubs, she can't feel clean anymore after that encounter.

Then she goes to bed. The next day Misa opens her door and to her shock the ratgirl is waiting for her in the hallway.

Hello friend! Can we have breakfast together! Please share some of your food! Cheese especially I would love!

How did you get in here? Why are you stalking me?! I want to be alone.

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I'll leave if you give me food. Misa sighs and gives her one of the loaves of bread she brought the previous day. And the ratgirl thanks her again, jumping forward, but Misa closes the door before she can embrace her.

Then she climbs out the window and leaves. She has to go anyway. It's time to visit Lycerta.

She makes another stop at the market and buys some extra potions, they too have Sanguine delight, the same potion the witch sold. She also buys a set of twin daggers that look to be far stronger than her current one.

A merchant happens to be going in the same direction as her and for a small fee she gets to ride along on his cart. She makes sure to sit on the back near the exit, so that the moment something goes wrong she can run away. She doesn't trust anyone, especially not a shady merchant from bandit town.

The man notices her fear and tries to strike up a conversation but Misa just gives short answers and stays silent the entire way.

All goes well, for once, and she jumps off not too far from Lycerta's home.

She passes the old death altar, still intact, but a little dusty and unkempt.

Then she heads to the largest building, where Lycerta lives. She knocks on the door. No response.

She yells his name. Lycerta! Lycerta are you there?!

Weird, he must've been gone.

She opens the door. It's not even locked. It smells horrible inside the house. It isn't long before she finds out why. In the living room lies a mostly dissolved corpse. It's Lycerta, she recognises the unique robes he wore. His body is swarmed with flies, and several worms are crawling through it.

Nooo not Lycerta, what happened?! Misa falls on her knees and starts to cry. Lycerta was the first person who was kind to her. Without him she would've starved in the woods. She'd be nowhere. She had been looking forward to telling him how she managed to make it back through all her struggles, and she had hoped he would've been proud of her.

Why was he killed? How was anyone even able to? He was an extremely powerful wizard. It doesn't matter now. Even the good people get slaughtered in the Arcana kingdom, there is no mercy, everyone suffers.

Misa decides to give him a proper burial, it's the least she could do. The traditional way of honouring the god of death involves cremating one's body and then burying the bones.

She barely has the strength to carry his decomposing body to the funeral pyre outside, but eventually manages to do so. Then she buries the ashes in front of his house.

She recites some prayers to the god of death and then decides to look around the homestead.

Perhaps there's something laying around that could be of use to her. She doesn't mean any disrespect, if she doesn't take these things, the next person will.

She looks around the pantry, all the breads have gone moldy. The dried meat and fruits still seem good however. She eats some of them, it's still delicious.

There's a trapdoor too. She opens it. A horrible stench washes over her. Even worse than the smell of ratgirl, which up until now was easily the worst smell she had ever experienced.

She lights a piece of wood and climbs down the stairs.

There's another door. It opens to reveal a horrible sight.

Bodies, many of them, at least 30, of various sizes lay confined in small cages. There's also drying racks with dried and salted cuts of meat hanging from them.

Suddenly she realises what that meat she ate was, those weren't pigs, it was human meat. It tastes good though, but the thought of it makes her uncomfortable. She starts to throw up, the thought of eating people is simply too disgusting. Then she dumps the rest of the meat on the floor. During her time as a slave they had to remove the flesh from the corpses which was then collected in huge barrels by slave masters. Rumor was that they sold that meat to other people. She's pretty sure they even fed it to slaves on meat-night.

There is a table at the entrance too, that contains the chopped and mostly decayed body of a small child. She is horrified. Lycerta even killed children. He captured and trapped these people then fed on them. It's weird, he had been friendly to her, but secretly he was a crazy murderer.

These people must've been horrified. Living in small cages in darkness, seeing their friends get cut up and prepared as food one by one. It must've been complete torture. And when Lycerta died they all starved to death.

Misa decides to go back up stairs. She closes the trapdoor.

Its getting late. She goes to one of the smaller huts and decides to sleep there. She lights a lantern in one of the other huts. Tomorrow she will have to figure out what to do next.

The sun is just about to rise when Misa awakens to whispering in the distance. Rather than becoming scared, she is mostly just angry at this point. She's been ambushed in her sleep so many times in these past few weeks. This time it's different though. She's prepared.

Her diversion brought her some extra time. She takes one of the Sanguine potions and drinks it down. Her heart beat increases rapidly. Her vision becomes better, and colours seem more bright. She feels totally energised. Time seems to move slower.

She grabs her new twin daggers and sneaks outside. It's just 2 men. They seem to be relatively young, and they sit around a lantern. Through the veil of darkness she slowly sneaks up on them.

When she is within 5 meters she runs and starts to scream. Die you stupid bastards! She rapidly stabs one of the men in his back several times, and before the second one has time to figure out what is going on he receives a blade to the side of his skull, piercing his brain, killing him instantly.

The first guy starts to beg for his life, please don't kill me! I'll do anything, I'll tell you everything. Misa starts to listen, why are you ambushing me?

We needed the money! A rat-girl gave us a tip in exchange for cheese. So we asked the guards where you went... and then we eventually came across this place. We were hoping to catch you in your sleep, but we thought you already left so we decided to camp.

Misa stabs the man in his heart to end his suffering. He was going to die soon anyway. She feels no remorse for them, if she didn't kill them, they would've killed her.

I can't believe the rat-girl would betray me like that though, I fed her. I guess I should take more precaution to hide how much money I have next time. I hope she dies, ungrateful pest that she is.

She considers her options and decides to go back to Satharak to find the freedom fighters, as much as she hates the idea of returning to the city. Or the idea of depending on other people.