Root routes were exactly what they sounded like, routes that followed on top of or under the roots of the Asrin Tree that would connect the districts to one another. Now they weren’t everywhere, but they did tie all the major districts and dungeons together, and District 87 was one of those major districts.

It had a total of thirty-three root routes connected to it, three of them leading directly to up-side and one leading to the biggest troll district in deep-side. But even on top of that, District 87]] served as the connection of goods and supplies to all things deep-side, which included ores and rare earth metals, and even golem cores from the Golem Dungeon that were exclusive to deep-side adventurers.

All in all, District 87 was a blossoming trading spot for adventurers, biomancers, and craftsmen. It wasn’t as big as District 10. That district was the trading hub of the city and had giant open arches that led directly into the branchways of Yggdrasil, the metaphysical giant tree that held and connected all the realms. I’d never been through the branchways. I was too weak, but merchants and adventurers with enough strength would venture through them, traversing to other worlds.

But this also made tickets on the root trains extremely expensive. The Asrin Tree’s roots had their own magical defenses that kept them safe from most threats, so they were often used as safe paths throughout the city.

The naturally high mana levels here meant higher chances of monster spawning and of regular animals gaining magical attributes and turning into monsters themselves. And while the Adventurer’s Guild’s rangers did a fairly good job at keeping the monster population down, it was still fairly dangerouse to walk around in unpopulated areas.

So the trains were a compromise, a method to get from one place to another in bulk, and served as the main form of transportation for merchants and companies everywhere.

And that made the transport cost of a twenty-minute train ride from here to the Graveyard Dungeon a disgustingly expensive procedure.

I sighed. I could afford it, but boy was it a dent in my wallet.

“Two hundred and fifty-seven dollars,” the guy in the ticket booth repeated.

I yanked out my wallet and grabbed a quarter of the money I had left.

I don’t miss money. I don’t miss money one bit.

I had spent a lot of cash prepping myself for the dungeon. I made the longbread myself, but the potions and equipment had been costly. I needed new clothes, a couple of knives, a sword, some leather armor, spices, some rope, and a bunch of other stuff.

I had some of those things, sure, but it had been nearly ten years since I’d gotten anything new. Even if my knives were sharp, they were scrapes I’d come across in the Woven Frest and they were old and chipped. My clothes were good, but extremely thin, and a sword was a must when dealing with monsters.

Only powerful mages or idiots relied on spellwork alone, and I was neither.

And now with the amount of money I had left, I could only stay at an inn for a couple of weeks at best. But I was heading to an adventuring district. They would have business from travelers, merchants, adventurers, and scholars, meaning inns would double that if not triple the prices here.

Or maybe they wouldn’t, District 87 was a busy place after all, and it did get a lot of visitors. Maybe inn prices here were comparable to inn prices in District 109.

“Goddammit.”

I’d have to go into the dungeon today. I couldn’t afford to loiter around the place.

The ticket was small and enchanted, almost everything was nowadays. Money, jewelry, tickets, they all had some form of verification enchantment.

I wondered if I could get hired to do that instead. How much did they pay per ticket? Or maybe they paid per hour?

No. They probably had a spirit doing that stuff by now. These enchantments were too perfect, too similar. There was no way they were human-made.

I sighed again.

It wasn’t the adventuring that got to me. It was job insecurity.

I could always go back to a cave within deep-side, but I wanted to avoid that if possible. I would rather risk dying for a living than go back down there and rot.

Besides, I was good at this. Running, hiding, killing, I’d been doing this for decades.

I’d be alright.

I nodded and headed to the train station. The Asrin’s Tree roots were large, but the main roots were the size of a district or a small city in any other realm. This root was not one of those. But it was as big as the Adventurer’s Guild, bigger in fact.

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And it was not straight. The root twisted and turned and their bumps along the woods. Foundation and enchantments had been added to stabilize the tracks and keep the train moving in a relatively straight line, but even then.

This thing was huge and populated. There were people everywhere, people of all races and sizes, even more than the inside of the district. But this was a transport station I guess. There were a lot of people here who didn’t even want to enter the district, they were merely hoping off one train to get on another.

And the species varied so, so much.

I saw goliaths and beastmen, even gnolls and what I think might have been a demon-kin. I saw a mudman slide across the ground, his muddy form dripping onto the floor but always crawling back into his body. He didn’t leave a single drop behind as he walked.

Then there were the dryads and elves. They were rare down here, and it was clear that they didn’t want to be here from their stiff posture. There were also nymphs and-

A glare, a burning horrible glare landed upon me.

I turned and looked for the feeling, scanning the area to see where it had come from and I saw him.

A man with wings looked down at me from the staircase up ahead. The staircase leads up the root and into the entrance of the train routes. But the man stood there, blocking a bit of the path with his wings held wide open.

A half angel.

“Demon, I can sense your blood here. Reveal yourself and despair.”

Fucking angels.

You know they can retreat their wings and walk around in any other clothes aside from white. Yeah, they can do that. Do you know why they don’t? Because they were dramatic.

“I’m allowed to be here,” I replied as eyes suddenly started to focus on him, and then by association, onto me.

“Nonsense! Demon-kin are allowed within the city but demons themselves cannot intrude outside of-”

“I’m not a demon.”

“What?”

“I’m not a demon. Now please curl up your appendages or fly away. You’re blocking my path.”

The angel frowned and leapt, his wings letting him glide down to my level.

“I can smell your-”

“POLICE!! POLICE!! HE’S ATTACKING ME!! GUARDS!! GUARDS!! HELP!! SOMEONE!! I” M BEING ASSULTED!!”

“What are you-”

“I’M AN INNOCENT MAN WALKING THROUGH THE STREETS AND AM CURRENTLY BEING ACCOSTED BY AN UNKNOWN INDIVIDUAL!!”

“I’m not attacking you-”

“You were about to,” I cut in.

He was just about to deny it, but he stopped. Ah, angels. What truthful little guys.

“If I find your reason to trespass here unacceptable-”

“Do you work for the city or its officials?”

“What?”

“Do you work for the city or any of its officials?”

“No. I am a member of-”

“POLICE!! POLICE!! I’M BEING ASSULTED!! POLICE!!”

I’ve learned a few things in my few decades of existence. One was that there was no such thing as fair. Fairness was a perception, an image. It was an idea and a thought, but never a reality.

And two was that the perception of fairness still mattered. People liked the idea of order, not necessarily equality but order. Things had a place, people had a place, and there was reason for that. Disrupt that order, that illusion of fairness, and people will turn against you.

Now that had been useless in the Woven Forest. We only had dark elves and archane there and they were barely empathetic to their own kin, much less a half-demon.

But here, in the lowest district of down-side, where forbidden magic ran the economy and people committed the taboo of not only interspecies marriage but interspecies breeding as well. Here where the undead walked the streets uncaring of judgement.

Well, for once in my life, I might be better off calling for the police.

Well, I was half right. A troll guardsmen had gotten there and instead of helping me get past my soon-to-be attacker, by his admission. We were both held up for an hour answering questions to the guy.

The angel, the cretin incapable of falsehood, got off with a warning and a reminder that he was in no place to question people’s rights to exist. And the troll gave me a glare that somehow managed to convey sheer distrust with only stone-like facial features.

What the hell, even trolls huh? One of the dark races, the old vanguard of the Dark Lord’s raiding party, and even they didn’t trust me?

I guess it made sense. The trolls of deep-side had been weird, but they at least treated me like an equal. All the species deep-side had faced some kind of discrimination by the churches, as all of their ancestors had sided with the Dark Lord during the war.

But being a native down-side gave you a different perspective on things. I guess that troll grew up here where discrimination was less of a problem. This amalgamation of creatures was normal for him. I was the strange one.

I couldn’t really blame him for it though.

There was evil in me after all. It was in my blood.

I could accept suspicion. I could accept distrust and I could even accept hatred. That was fine by me.

It made sense to be afraid of someone with evil inherent to their nature.

But I did not accept judgment on the possible actions I might take.

That was something I hated. I hated being questioned or held against my will and I certainly hated the way people seemed to think they could tell me what to do just because of my bloodline.

I was still a person. That wasn’t something anyone could take away from me.

I walked away to catch my train. I could feel the angry self-righteous pigeon staring at my back, but this time, I didn’t care.

I got on the train and took a seat.

Calling for the police had been a risk, but it was the most nonviolent option available at the time. Half-angels were annoying in more ways than one. Aside from being the complete opposite of me by nature, half-angels were also pursuing their bloodline.

Every half-angel dreamed of one day waking as a full celestial and walking through the branchways to the Gold and Silver Realms above. Every one of them pursued this and dreamed of waking up a celestial.

Half-demons had nightmares about it.

I had never met a half-demon before, but I knew a great deal about them. We fight our nature. We try our best to silence the voice in our minds and to not fall into the pit.

Some because they fear what they would do, others because they fear the abyss.

Either way, most half-demons don’t turn willingly. But half-angels couldn’t fathom that, they couldn’t fathom someone who rebelled against their nature instead of accepting it.

They saw us as they saw themselves, but evil. And that was the reason I hated them.

And unlike half-demons, who mostly get killed right after birth, half-angels were praised and desired by everyone. And they were much more common than I’d like them to be.

I hated those blessed bastards.