The deep black night enveloped the rooftops gleaming in the moonlight. Down the dark streets of Orma, silence reigned. No merchant was swarming the ravines of the capital as during daylight. They were all dreaming gold.

As the clink of gold coins reverberated in their slumbers shattering the eerie silence, two figures swiftly jumped off a rooftop.

Fwooosh

The two black shadows maintained a steady speed. They didn’t stop nor stumble, as if they were diving on a sea of flat darkness. Black stormy clouds would veil the moon from time to time, making it impossible to make out the two figures.

***

Meanwhile, in the Royal Palace

“WHERE THE FUCK DID THE BRAT GO?! WE NEED TO RAISE OUR GLASSES TO THE DOMINATION OF THIS EMPEROR CAT OVER THE CAPITAL.”

While Snowflake alcohol-talked, lost in a daze, Lumia and Circe began to look about themselves. Which FINALLY made them stop bickering.

“Where’s my sweet brother whose only love is me?” Lumia childishly said, baffled.

“Where’s my sweet fiancé?” asked Circe, irritated by the arrogance of that mischievous little girl.

“WHERE IS MY PORK?” asked Snowflake, drunk and furious.

All the guests surveyed the room as well, curious. Apparently, Helial had disappeared. They couldn’t catch sight of him. On the high platform though, Caesar and the others didn’t seem upset. Helial had wisely thought it best to tell his Goblin master he would go out to attend to some business with Pseudonym.

Caesar didn’t mind at all. He and Aure had resolved for a laugh.

If the banquet had been celebrated in a human capital, Helial would have risked offending them instead. There, though, no one cared about what he did except for a couple Seniors who only saw arrogance in his every moves.

***

Down the streets of Orma

A moon ray suddenly pierced the clouds shrouding the Goblin capital. It shed its light upon the face of one of the two figures jumping at breakneck speed from one rooftop to another.

Helial.

Fwooosh

Beside him, Pseudonym suddenly shattered the silence: “Do you think they’ve noticed your absence by now?”

Helial didn’t answer immediately. It seemed to take some time for him to ponder. Circe and Lumia were likely to be already wondering where he might have been. After all, how could two people fighting over who owned his heart not notice that the focus of their discussions just disappeared into thin air?

“It doesn’t matter anyway. I’ve already told Caesar and the big shots, and they didn’t stick up the nose, so it’s alright,” Helial said. “Are we there yet?”

Pseudonym peered at the darkness as if his gaze could ripple through the horizon. “We are.”

Suburra, the Orman slum.

It was a god-forsaken place that only flashed through the people’s mind when the flames of its fires risked reaching the wealthiest houses of the town.

Suburra was one of the suburban areas of the capital. It was home to the poor, the thugs and other bunches of dangerous people. It also was the area with the highest density of Humans.

When you wallow in misery, a loaf of bread means so much more than race. Race is a concept only those who lived in the most luxurious wealth, like the Sect of the Worthy, could care about.

The weird coexistence of Humans and Goblins had plenty of episodes of violence and discrimination. It was nothing like the sophisticated concepts of racial supremacy of the Sect of the Worthy. However, the little gangs and the family units often had feuds.

In this scenery, the elderly, the kids and the sick were left at the mercy of fate. And fate could condemn them to death anytime.

Since the population grew at an exponential rate, most of the slaves in Orma came from Suburra. No one would claim their freedom down there. Often times, slave traders sent their men to snatch kids or youths from the streets. Then, they would be trained to fight as gladiators in the Colosseum, and their blood would shed for people’s enjoyment.

A mephitic smell of sweat and blood wormed its way into Helial’s nostrils. Ever since he acquired Body of the Qilin, his sense of smell was now extremely strong.

Passive Skill

Lv: 6

Body of the Qilin

The strength of your arms and legs increases by 6000 kg per limb.

Vitality Regeneration: 2300%

Health Regeneration: 2300%

Physical Resilience: 3600%

Resistance to Magic: 3600%

Your sense are heightened and get ever more similar to those of an Ancestral Creature.

Your body was bestowed with the body of a Qilin.

One of the supreme Skills of the forces of Life.

The Skill levels up as you temper your body. It is not possible to upgrade it in any other way.

Exp: 15.5%

Helial closed the window he had checked his Skill’s progress in.

Pseudonym didn’t spend any words on Suburra, but Helial already knew something about that place. After all, most of Helial’s stay in Orma was spent reading the charts and records of the past and present of the Goblin capital. Very little was written about Suburra, really, as if it were but an infection to be ignored. In the most recent documents though, he had found little information on the area.

Under the fullest moon, Helial and Pseudonym landed on a rooftop. Pseudonym didn’t go any farther and nodded that Helial followed him.

Helial looked about himself. All around them were only silence and desolation. The building they were standing on was covered in yellowish foul-smelling vines.

The houses were all made of wood, which kind of explained the incidence of fires in Suburra. The combo plenty of wood and criminal underworld could not but result in a deathly formula.

Helial gazed at the rotten building and the misery of the surroundings with a blunt expression on his face. He didn’t see Pseudonym’s point in taking him there. Did Pseudonym really think he had never seen misery before? That he didn’t know what “hunger” meant? That he could have forgotten all he had faced in the past?

Pseudonym reached for the edge of the rooftop and without further ado, he twisted a hand telling Helial to step closer.

Helial shrugged and took a couple steps towards the ledge overlooking a dimly lit space.

Down there was a bunch of little guys. They were covered in rags and held wooden staffs as improper weapons. Helial saw them neatly enough in spite of the darkness. He made out an unheard of fierceness in their tiny eyes. It was a feeling no kid of six or seven years of age should have experienced.

Still upset by the sight, Helial gazed down. There lay another kid, wheezing on the ground. His complexion was green and his ears were faintly pointed.

A Goblin?

It was only then that Helial realized the unusualness of the scenery.

All the kids holding staffs were Humans, while the one lying on the ground, covered in wounds, was a Goblin. One of his eyes was frighteningly swollen; he couldn’t see on that side anymore.

“There is no such thing as good and evil in Suburra. Here, misery leads the youngest kids to attack a peer. Why, you ask? Because something he did irritated them, perhaps. He might have stolen their food, or maybe just glanced at them for a second too long. When you’re in Suburra, it doesn’t matter what you’ve done. The only things that matters is to not let anybody tear your life away.”

These words died out in the silence as Helial gazed at the scene with eyebrows furrowed.