Chapter 99

From the Dregs (I)

“So...” Emma mumbled, looking around. “This is a shithole.”

“I think you’re overestimating this place a bit,” Jamal added. “I think I just saw a cockroach the size of a basketball.”

“It smells like a rotten-egg-fish combo in here,” Senna said, sweeping cobwebs from the windowpane, shuddering at their strange elasticity. “If you make a joke about that, I will stab you.” she immediately turned toward Cain and added, causing the latter to look at her strangely.

“Even I’m not that crude.”

“Yes, yes you are.”

“Oh, wow, a combo,” Cain chuckled at the instant response by Senna, Jamal, and Emma. “You guys are hitting those harmony notes. You could start a band.”

“But seriously, C’,” Emma said, sighing. “Do we... do we really need to live here?”

“No,” Cain shook his head. “We can go to the one where they store fresh corpses before burning them.”

“Ugh... didn’t you say you were friends with that Shopkeeper guy?” Senna grumbled. “Couldn’t you, I don’t know, suck up to him a bit to get us a better place?”

“... this is a better place,” Cain said. “It’s unoccupied, it has no corpses, human or otherwise, and it actually has windows so we can filter out some air. You do realize that this place is genuinely prime real estate for the Initiate Strata of the City? Just wait until others start joining us. They’ll be begging to stay here.”

“We were living like royalty until just recently,” Daniel said. “This... this will bring us back down to the ground. Everything is inconsequential. We’ll all leave this world the same. It’s important to remember our insignificance. I like it.”

"... alright," a moment after everyone looked at the young man strangely, Cain clapped and drew attention back onto himself. "You guys will split into teams of three -- Lukas, Jamal, and Diya; Emma, Daniel, and Senna the other. I've already shown you that central pillar -- there will be large boards there with currently available tasks. The more of them you clear, the quicker we'll leave this shithole. Few warnings -- uh, that... that I picked up from the quest notes I got--" though everyone looked at him even more strangely than they had at Daniel, he just sped past it. "If anyone or anything tries to sell you stuff -- say no. If they persist, punch them in the face. If anyone or anything -- no matter how cute and adorable -- begs you for stuff... don't give in. But, you all will so you can dip into the 'donations pile' if you can't endure it. If someone tries to rob you -- beat them up. If someone threatens to call some 'authorities on you', beat them up. If anyone--essentially, if it's cute, ignore it. If it's not, beat it up."

“What about... you?” Diya asked.

“I’d just hold you guys back,”

“Aha, aha.”

“So, y’know, I’m just... uh... I’m just gonna lounge around here. Drink a few beers, tidy the place up, all that good stuff.”

“Aha, aha.”

“I’m sensing some distrust in the group.”

“... just don’t do anything dangerous,” Emma said, sighing as she put her hand on his shoulder. “And if you do, be careful.”

“When did I become the guy who looks for dangerous stuff?” Cain genuinely asked.

“Since you started soloing bosses that would kill the rest of us in one attack,” Emma and Jamal said, rolling their eyes as the group headed toward the exit -- a doorless frame. “Seriously, be careful. How long do you think we’ll be hung up?”

“I dunno,” Cain shrugged. “If you’re lucky, a few days. If not, see you at Christmas.”

“... you’re joking... right? Please, tell me you’re joking.” Senna groaned.

"I dunno," Cain smiled mysteriously. "Go ahead and find out. Bye-bye! Have fun, everyone!"

Everyone looked at him for a moment and sighed before departing under his waving hands. The latter breathed in deeply as the room emptied, looking around with a bitter smile. Even if, in his previous life, he didn’t have access to truly prime real estate of the City, his place could have still been called a villa compared to this. Nonetheless, there was no hurry -- at least on his part.

Ways in which people are able to enter the city were quite limited at first. They could either be summoned up by someone who is already inside the City -- though quite some ways richer and in better standing than Cain and others -- or they could complete one of the many the requisite quests. In fairness, the quests were fairly easy and shouldn't take longer than a few days even to the most average parties.

Cain had also planned on first accepting and finishing a quest, but the surprising appearance of the Shopkeeper sped those plans quite a bit ahead. Though the man didn’t offer any trades, he’d provided the group with probably the best ‘house’ in the Initiate Strata -- the lowest part of the City. In addition, he’d also given Cain a quest meant only for him -- with a reward that left him feeling somewhat bitter.

//The Awoken

Difficulty: SS-

Requirements: Titular, Affinity with ???

Description: Discover the identity of ‘Siphoning Ghost’, the enigmatic phantom of Ka-hhe’el.

Hints: Zero.

Rewards: Infernal Key(SSS-)

Time limit: None.//

He continued staring intently at the screen, especially the rewards section -- Infernal Key. When he first got it, the rank of the item was indiscernible, a mere ‘?’ -- yet, it turned out... he’d really given up something. The biggest catch with ‘SSS-’ and above ranked items was that there were very few of them in the framework of individual levels. They weren’t so rare that getting one would change someone’s destiny, but they were rare enough where finding them had the potential to do so.

I got that key practically for nothing, Cain mused. Why the hell is it so stacked? Sighing, he then looked at the quest’s description and blanked. No matter how deep into his memories -- or at least what’s left of them -- he went... he couldn’t recall anyone or anything named ‘Siphoning Ghost’. He couldn’t even recall a reference to a figure.

However, he wasn't surprised; though he knew quite a lot about the first floor as he followed most of the news about it closely, his knowledge of floors two through four was... quite subpar, largely because he never truly spent much time in them. When it came to the second floor, he mostly did quests others did before him to get a decent house, and he completely skipped the third floor, just doing some grinding on the fourth as a preparation for the First Awakening questline on the fifth.

Furthermore, it wasn’t a surprise that he didn’t know who ‘Siphoning Ghost’ was; the Shopkeeper was well aware that this was Cain’s second go-around, so it was unlikely he would have given him a quest he could complete just off of his memories.

There were extra few crutches when it came to the quest -- namely that the task was simply to uncover the figure’s identity. It was a huge rarity that non-combat quests offered remotely good awards, let alone SSS- ranked item, even if it was ‘just’ a key. No, that’s not it, he shook his head. There will likely be a fuckton of fighting involved, maybe similar to the Haunted Harrowing questline that nearly wiped Arch’s group.

What he had to remember was that the quest wasn’t system-given -- or whatever controlled the notifications in the Towers -- but, rather, a person-given. In the case of the former, he could completely trust everything he read, but in the case of the latter... he’d have to read it with a healthy dose of skepticism.

In addition, there was the discrepancy of ‘Hints’ and ‘Time limit’ sections -- with the former having ‘Zero’ and the latter having ‘None’. So... Zero is likely an actual hint, then. Zero... what? From what I recall, the only place with ‘Zero’ in its name here is the ‘Zero Chamber’, but it would take me years of grinding out quests to gain access to it. Haah...

He charged Earth into his feet and erected a makeshift chair he washed with some Water, sitting down after drying it up with Wind. He suspected that he wasn't meant to complete this quest right away and that he should treat it as more of the background rather than it being something he ought to completely focus on. And even though there was no time limit, a feeling in his gut told him that the Infernal Key's value will start dropping with the passage of time and that its 'SSS-' rank really is just temporary, relative to the current state of the climb in general.

Haah, I should probably first visit Mercy, he mused, stroking his chin. And shave and augment some of the elements... I have a decent number of items to trade, but most are low in value. So, I’ll likely have to resort to challenging her in the end. Haah... that woman is a true pain in the ass...

Sighing again, he stood up and stretched, yawning lazily as he exited the house and entered the heavily-ruined set of narrow alleyways. Despite the fact that there were no ‘doors’ to the house, nobody except the seven of them could actually enter it no matter what they tried since the house was protected by the city’s formation. As such, the passersby could merely just take a peek inside, but since there was nothing there... it was irrelevant.

Whatever, he shrugged, taking toward left, away from the city’s center where the other six went. Let’s first check out if there’s anything fun going on in the Den, and I’ll take it from there...