Truth awoke, cold and sticky.

“The Hell?” He pulled at his fragile pants and watched them come away in a gooey mess.

There was a metaphorically pregnant pause.

“No. No way!”

<>

I have never had a wet dream before! I have only ever had one dream. This is gross.

<>

Truth couldn’t be bothered to argue. He dashed off to the bathroom and spent some quality time scrubbing with a washcloth. The underwear and trousers were a complete loss. They were so fragile, even a hand wash had them disintegrating. He did have another pair in his backpack, but they were only marginally better. New clothes, and a new backpack, were now an urgent necessity.

He examined his shirt in the mirror. It had been rubbed almost transparent where he had slept on it the last two days. Delightful. His “Things They Don’t Tell You About International Terrorism” list now had two entries.

1. You will be doing a lot of cardio.

2. You will spend a lot of time finding clothes.

He didn’t want to imagine what the third entry would be. “Stock up on wet wipes and toilet paper,” probably.

He spent a little time cleaning up after himself, doing his best to erase all traces of his presence in the house. No chance of his scent being found, what with all the nicotine soaking into every surface. Cleaning the smell off him was a much bigger challenge. Still, the shower worked, and he was quick.

Scrubbed, dressed, and then to the street. Truth could feel the change before he could see it. There was a heaviness in the air. The Blessing of the Silent Forest was drawing noticeably more power. Still sustainable, but it was a definite increase. Eventually he got it.

People were openly staring at each other. Eyeing each other, trying to spot the saboteurs and terrorists. Recording talismans dotted intersections and were lodged under eaves, while rarer, more difficult to identify talismans sprouted from rooftops and lamp posts. The walls had new posters on them too. Coarse propaganda- Smiling Jeon men and women declaring that they were “Doing their part,” while frowning children crushed roaches with the word “Terrorist” on them.

It didn’t have to be subtle, or clever. There just had to be a lot of it. Truth frowned at the terrorist one. It seemed to lack punch. Surely a Siphios flag or something would make it more pointed? Or were they being deliberately vague, so they could fill in appropriate villains later?

No Hell Prince material. Disappointing.

He walked exactly ten steps further before crashing to a halt. No Hell Prince posters. There would be eventually- a most wanted version at least, somewhere. But so far, nothing. Well. That just wouldn’t do. But first, pants.

Truth made his way to a decently high end department store. Each brand had its own little section. Truth looked at it wonderingly. They are all owned by the same two conglomerates. Why separate them out? Annoyingly, they didn’t have what he was looking for in his size, so he had to settle on athletic gear. He looked like a prize fighter doing road work. Unfortunate, but he would lean into it. He loaded up another backpack, destroyed the anti-theft enchantments, and jogged out of the store.

He would have to try another store. Fifteen different brands, and none had anything decent in his size. Shameful. The district he was in was new to him. It was a bland sort of place. Nice-ish apartments and townhouses, next to ok-tier chain restaurants and stores. You could get a decent takeout meal, he would guess, but not a great one. There was a distinct lack of street food vendors too.

It lacked magic. He snorted at the realization, but it was true. There was a distinct lack of enchantments on display, as well as a complete absence of mystery or charm. It was a functional sort of place, a dormitory neighborhood where people slept, did the minimum necessary business, and then left for more colorful parts of the city. An idea worth imitating, Truth thought, and jogged to the subway. Off to a place he had never thought to visit, let alone come on business. But here he was.

Truth hopped off the subway one stop early. He needed to load up on wen while they were still useful for something, and over the coming month, they would be less and less valuable, until they became utterly worthless. He still had the bank transfer gem from MegaShroom, but he wasn’t going to test it until he absolutely needed to. No way to know if that connection had been cracked.

He chose a department store for his target, naturally. This was a Qeto, a slightly higher end store. He walked in, was confronted with a slightly different selection of brands owned by the same two conglomerates, continued to not find clothes in his size, and therefore felt particularly vindicated when he emptied the cash registers. He didn’t even have to break anything. He just waited until the cashier opened the drawer, then he pulled all the bigger bills out. Rinse and repeat until he had run through the line.

Level Zero clerks were never going to spot him. Despite that, he didn’t net much for his efforts. It seemed that the stores kept a low balance of cash in the registers. Any big purchase would almost certainly be with credits or by transfer, so no need for it.

Five thousand wen. Not much, but it would likely be enough. He navigated to that most strange and unusual place. That land where even his daydreams did not take him.

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Truth went to university.

The University of Jeon was a huge, sprawling thing. Truth had been through parts of it in the past, but hadn’t paid it much attention. It was really nothing to do with him. Now? The madness of the place came blasting out at him, swarming him and bewildering him.

Some loon, or more likely, some hundreds of loons, had built boxy beige buildings next to a floating horse skull the size of a city block, packed with what appeared to be classrooms and laboratories. Next to that was a cluster of serene trees, a modest twelve stories tall, with… offices? In and on them. And next to them was an enormous rectangular building purporting to be an athletic center. Though that did raise the question about what the other four buildings also claiming to be an athletic center were.

Every single building was sponsored. They either had a donor’s name on them, or a corporation. All of them. He spotted a bench that had been sponsored, next to a sign for that stretch of pavement’s sponsor, next to the individually sponsored trees in the larger sponsored stretch of garden.

Truth could easily imagine each student bearing a sponsorship tag too. Certainly the scholarship kids. Anyone with a student loan too.

Truth grabbed the first sufficiently exploded looking kid and asked- “Where can I find the artists?”

“Wha? Dunno. I’m a thaumaturgy major.”

“Who should I ask then?”

“Dunno. Student services?”

“Which is where?”

The student waved vaguely towards a building that looked like a temple. Truth went. It was, actually, a temple. It looked a lot like the Call To Glory Temple, actually. Now that he thought about it, he didn’t know a single thing about the religion there. At all. He had never cared enough to find out. He just knew that’s where everyone went to find out the results from their SAT.

He agonized about asking for a moment, but ultimately decided he was on a job. It took another forty minutes of bouncing around the campus, but he eventually made his way to a dorm generously stocked with art students. They looked about as exploded as the thaumaturgy major, but considerably more focused. He walked into the common room. A couple of dozen people were scattered around, some making out, some working, most eating and bullshitting with friends.

“Hey, I want to commision a piece. Two hundred wen job. Who’s up for it?” He said loudly. Every hand in the room got raised.

“It’s a propaganda poster.”

The hands went down.

“Satirical.”

Most of them went up again.

“For Hell Prince.”

A few went down. There were still about ten hands.

“Alright, show me your stuff.”

He eventually settled on a young lady who seemed equal parts cigarettes and spite. She got the gist of it very fast, and had some rough sketches done in a few minutes. Truth modeled a bit, then was told to “Fuck off for a couple of days.” He paid fifty wen in advance, which were practically ripped from his hands. Her nails were black, he noticed. They appeared to have been painted with actual paint.

Job done, it was off to the next task. Merkovah wanted a hit done on campus, and since he was here already, there was no reason not to. It took a mere forty minutes longer to find the right building, then another thirty to find the office, two hours of waiting around, then another fifty minutes to eventually track someone down who knew that the good Doctor was out of the office today, but had office hours from one to one fifteen tomorrow afternoon.

Truth was very proud of the fact the building was still standing when he left. Truth looked up. The days were starting to get longer. It was late afternoon, but the sun was still high in the sky. Was there something else he should do? Truth’s stomach reminded him that he hadn’t eaten in literally days. Time to remedy that fact.

The dining options were greasy, greasy and heavy, heavy, and lettuce. He was assured there were other things in and on the lettuce, but based on the plates he was seeing in the dining hall, he didn’t believe them. He opted for Greasy and Heavy, which in this case was a plate of noodles, heavily sauced, with stacks of boiled and fried vegetables in it. It was paired with a side of watery fish broth (no actual fish was put in the soup, naturally) and the soup was topped with a heavy dollop of fried chili flakes in oil.

It wasn’t quite up to the standards he had come to expect at the Sila. He wasn’t entirely sure it still qualified as food. He was about to bin it and search elsewhere when he saw how the students handled things. Two schools of thought were apparent. Hot sauce in tiny bottles, and heavy shakes of Adlom seasoning, from big plastic tubes labeled Adlom Seasoning™.

His eyes fixed on the tubes. He collected one, carried it to the table, and sprinkled it over the noodles. His hands still remembered how much he liked. That was the thing about Adlom- it didn’t taste good, and the food you put it on didn’t taste good, but somehow, when you combined the two, the end result was something that you could tolerate. It unquestionably made the slum food he grew up on taste better. Not good, but better.

Truth stuck in his fork and gave it a twist. The whole mess glooped together, sticking and dripping at the same time. He could see, with perfect clarity, the way the sauce would stain his shirt if his attention wandered. He carefully ate over his plate.

It was horrible. It was everything the visuals promised and so much more. The sauce was too salty, the noodles too bland, the boiled vegetables had been cooked until they were a textureless illusion, and the fried vegetables just tasted of rancid fry oil. Also, because they had been sitting on the noodles for so long, their crunch was long gone. It was just greasy, soggy sadness. Then the Adlom seasoning kicked in, and he was fifteen again. Heating up canned vegetables and old rice in the hot box, dumping the seasoning on and praying.

Hunger had been the best sauce, then. Now? He wasn’t that hungry. Even after two days without a real meal.

It was… something. Salty, and oniony, and garlicky, and some kind of acid, and something that tasted sort of like tomatoes but not. Mostly salt and that weird tomato-ish flavor. It tasted like the slums. It tasted like four wen for a big shaker just so your food would taste like something, so you could choke it down.

His plastic fork clattered on the table. Truth buried his face in his hands. He could smell the Red Bats, the cigarette stench ground into his skin. He could taste them. Could taste the spilled, stale splashes of schnapps in the air. He could smell the mold. Hear the screaming and fighting coming through the walls. He felt the rough concrete and the lightheadedness that came when the wind blew from the Alchemist Towers. It was the taste of the slums, and his childhood, and it took him right back.

He wasn’t quite right for the rest of the afternoon, and much of the evening. At some point, he had walked over to a park and just sat, staring at the past. It wasn’t until sunset that he managed to shake off most of his mood. He looked around the nearby buildings, trying to guess what was an apartment. It would be a busy day tomorrow. A murder to plan, at least one burglary to conduct, chaos to spread, and rebellion to forment. He needed his beauty sleep.