6. Fresh Meat

*Thump*

Thwain threw a squirming man to the ground in front of me and Pyro. The man, evidently the proud owner of a new gunshot wound to his leg, swore and writhed as his bleeding leg scraped the ground. He struggled against the rope tying his hands together.

“Gah! My leg!” He yelled for some reason.

“Pyro, get cloth,” Thwain said confidently.

“Oh, you assholes are in so much trouble when the boss hears about this,” he snarled as Pyro tied a piece of cloth to our prisoner’s mouth, gagging him.

“What makes you think anyone’s going to hear about anything?” Thwain asked, motioning to me, then to my slime. Our captive squirmed and tried shouting around his gag as he saw my summon approach.

I felt bad, I really did. Just imagining that line being the last words I ever heard sent chills down my spine. What a cheesy way to go. That didn’t stop me from doing it anyway. I wasn’t a complete monster, though. Just because we caught him spying on us didn’t mean that I had to make the poor man suffer. Still, I couldn’t let this opportunity go by. Blood for the Tower Gods and all that.

“Slimey… Attack. Make it quick, go for the face,” I said reluctantly. Pyro and Thwain turned around, not wanting to see what was going to happen. I forced myself to watch as my slime gleefully shot into the sky, landing on our prisoner’s face with a SLAM. Legs kicked wildly for a few moments before going still. It squirmed in perverse delight as its acid ate through skin, tissue and bone. My slime’s… Slime… Went from lime green to red, then back to green as it absorbed the blood of its victim. I wasn’t sure if its acid wasn’t very strong or if it was taking its time, but it sure took a while to dissolve the corpse. Like, war crime levels of taking its time.

After the body was nothing but a damp stretch of dirt, I unsummoned my slime. It just seemed too eager for more action. It had been following me around closely, its eyes alight with hunger. It creeped me out, to be honest, so I sent it away. When I opened my Bestiary to unsummon my slime, I checked its progress.

[https://i.imgur.com/qtfNhpE.png]

Bestiary entry: Green slime selected.

Soul strength: 131.8%. Collect more essence to increase soul strength.

It grossed me out a bit to see the slime’s soul strength increase, but progress was progress. For anything to change, blood would have to be spilled. We weren’t going to change the Slums by asking politely, that was for sure.

“Alright, we need to move now that that’s over. Someone might have heard the gunshot,” Thwain said.

We agreed. It wouldn’t do to be pinched between a large force of angry thugs if we could help it. We made our way back to the shack without much issue, navigating the woods as best we could without leaving too much of a trail. Pyro practiced his earth shaping skills by covering up deep footprints and firming up soft ground to prevent new ones.

Back at the shack, we talked it over. The Rising Tides were the first to extort us, which should give us a certain amount of leeway when it came to the other gangs. They had pissed on us first, making us part of their turf, but it wouldn’t make us invincible.

“So, who was the scout?” I asked, looking to Thwain.

He fished out an emblem from his jacket pocket and threw it on the table. Ok, emblem was way too fancy of a word for what it was. More of a pin, really. It was a small piece of metal stamped in the shape of a teardrop. Or was it blood?

“It’s the symbol of the Blood Oats,” Thwain said. “They’ve got some sketchy blood-collecting clinics around the Slums. Probably a front for some kind of drug business, like the other gangs.”

“They also control some of the farmlands to the south,” Pyro added.

“Blood collecting clinics?” I asked.

“Yep. They pay people for their blood. Not sure where it actually goes, but they claim to be giving it to healer’s huts and whatnot,” Thwain said.

“Demonic sacrifices,” Pyro stated matter-of-factly.

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“How could you possibly know that?."

“It’s demonic sacrifices,” Pyro repeated, not elaborating further.

“Can demons even survive on Floor 0 with the floor’s low mana density? I thought that was why powerful climbers didn’t stay down here. If demons could hang out…” I shuddered at the thought.

“Well, there wouldn’t be any point in a demonic sacrifice if it didn’t serve a purpose,” Pyro said, shaking his head like I had said the dumbest thing he’d ever heard. “That’s probably how they’re keeping it down here. Fresh blood from time to time.” I wasn’t sure where Pyro was getting his demonic lore, but I didn’t doubt him. He was brash, but he was also rarely wrong when he really put his foot down.

“Pyro, there aren’t any demons in the Slums,” Thwain chided. “If there were, we would have heard about them long ago.” His voice was steady, but there was something behind his stern gaze. Was it doubt? A shadow fell across his face, darkening it from his forehead down. There were many terms for such a looming shadow, but in the Slums, it was most commonly known as a foreshadow. It wasn’t a great sign, but we would just have to face what came and forge ahead.

“You think I’m one of them poet bards that goes around and makes up stories?” Pyro asked, shuffling his feet. “I know about it ‘cause I heard about it. Which means we have heard about them long ago. It just wasn’t important until now.” He crossed his arms defensively.

“Anything else that you’re hiding that you would like to share with the group?” Thwain asked, a bit of exasperation leaking out.

“As a matter of fact, I do,” Pyro said. “Fairies are real, dragons exist, my earth shaping sucks and we’re about to get our teeth kicked in by some two-bit gangsters.” He said it in such a matter-of-fact way that it took me and Thwain a moment to realize that Pyro was slowly squeezing his foot into the ground below the shack through a large crack in the old floorboards.

Thwain opened his mouth to reply when we all heard a loud crack of a branch outside. Pyro quickly shot two thin walls of earth up from the ground, ripping the shack’s floorboards to pieces. Then, he slapped his palm against the earth, creating a four-foot deep hole in the ground almost instantaneously. I cried out in surprise as we all tumbled in. My protests were cut off suddenly as gunfire erupted above us. Wood splintered, dirt flew and glass shattered as volley after volley of bullets flew above us, tearing the shack apart.

Pyro pressed his hands against the side of the tunnel and willed the earth to part. It separated like curtains as he led us down at an angle away from the shack. After a few dozen feet, he doubled back and created a small door-like indent to the right of our tunnel, then closed ours off, plunging us in total darkness. I gripped Thwain’s wrist tightly. How much air did we realistically have down here?

A soft purple light briefly illuminated the tunnel as Thwain conjured another pistol. Pyro stood next to us, breathing hard. I hadn’t ever seen him move so much dirt at once. It must have been quite draining. Still, we didn’t have many better options other than to push his mana to its limits. You could only dig so far with a slime and some pistols.

“Plan?” I whispered as softly as I dared.

“Shoot… Them…” Pyro said through heavy breaths. He placed his hand on the ceiling and slowly created a tunnel that sloped upwards. It wasn’t nearly as quick as the tunnel going down. He took a few breaks to regain his mana and his breath, but I was getting more and more nervous. Between his heavy breathing and our closed off tunnel, I was starting to feel light headed. It might just have been the nerves, though, like when you thought yourself into feeling slightly ill. Gunshots sporadically rang out. After a few more minutes of slowly ascending, Pyro sent one last push into the dirt above. A small shaft of light, no larger than a wrist, shot down from above. I grinned. At least now we had an air shaft.

Less panicked, we waited as Pyro sat back and ate ration after ration, devouring two days worth of food within minutes.

Not wanting to speak so close to the open surface, I dragged Thwain back down the tunnel a few feet before whispering to him.

“How many do you think there are up there?” I asked.

“Hard to tell,” he replied. “From the gunshots, at least a dozen if they’re each only firing one weapon and all of them are firing at once. Less than that if they’ve got more than one firearm on the go. Probably no more than that. Any gang that can spare to field more than a dozen people at once isn’t gonna be this sloppy,” he said confidently.

“Yeah, good thing they’re sloppy,” I replied sarcastically. “Blood Oats?” I asked.

“Almost certainly,” Thwain said. “They must have sent two scouts and I only caught one. Wouldn’t have been hard to find us if they had been watching us yesterday. We only really watched our tracks today. That was obviously a mistake,” he said bitterly.

“At least we don’t have any signs of demonic activity,” I half said, half asked.

“None,” Thwain agreed.

More and more noise was coming from up the tunnel in the direction of the shack. We could hear shouting, but couldn’t understand what was being said. It wasn’t hard to guess. The sound of breaking chairs and tables could clearly be made out, even through the wall. Then, a chair leg passed straight through the only barrier separating us and the gang, knocking dirt into the tunnel.

“Shit,” I hissed, “run!”

We scrambled back to Pyro, climbing the slope until we reached the air hole. Gunshots rang out again. This time, the impacts were only a few feet away from us. They were shooting into the tunnel through the dirt wall, hoping to hit us.

“How many more walls can you raise, Pyro?” I asked nervously.

I could barely make out the shake of his head in the dim light.

“I’m almost all out,” he said. “Best I can do is maybe a wall or two and then squeeze us out. Not much more than that.” He looked dejected, despite being the one that had saved our asses.

“How structurally sound is this tunnel?” Thwain asked.

“Why?” Pyro countered with his own question.

“I’m just saying, it’s almost always easier to collapse a tunnel than it is to keep one up,” Thwain said, a twinge of satisfaction and anticipation in his voice.

Both men shared an evil grin as the wall at the other end of the tunnel finally collapsed.