The information on Elinaris’ criminal underworld was generally focused on the relations and strengths of the major organisations that dwelled in it. Some of the smaller ones that were more noteworthy were also included, but the one thing that made Gaius’ eyes shine was that none of them had a Knight-level individual, which was reassuring to a point.

After all, there were enough Squires in Heritage Basestation that started to make Gaius feel like Squire-level individuals were as common as cabbages in a vegetable market. He’d walked out of Heritage thinking that Knights were just slightly rarer, but now that Gaius had seen otherwise, it felt like a load had been lifted off his shoulders.

The boy yawned, and then took a left turn, turning into a nameless street that was distinctly more rundown. The people walking around here wore clothes that had shown signs of age and damage, unlike the ones who were at the tavern. Most of them had a sullen look in their eyes, a combination of both bitterness and resignation. These people were those that doled out a meagre existence, ruled by their de facto owners in the day and by criminal gangs in the night.

Decay permeated the air. The rank stench came from abandoned corpses that were largely unattended, except by wild animals, desperate humans who were starving and patrols who dropped by the place once in the wild…probably.

“What a sad sight,” said Gaius. “Were they abandoned by their family? Or were they the last of their line?”

“You might want to get used to it,” said Nexus. “It’s a common sight for the slum areas. After all, would you want to use whatever little oil and kindling you have to cremate a body, or to make sure that you stay warm and have a means of cooking that suspicious morsel of meat? It’s a no brainer.”

“Life above all, eh?” Gaius said quietly, as he continued to walk down the rundown street. Hundreds of eyes fixated on the newcomer, whose attire was in better straits than all of them, but none of these stares unnerved Gaius. The boy was well aware that none of them even cultivated — they were all normal humans who struggled to eke out a living.

No, he was baiting the fishermen of this region.

Gaius walked towards a corpse. As he closed in, it was painfully evident that even the belongings of the dead had not been left behind. The body was entirely naked, save for a small bit of cloth that hid the crotch area. Flies were buzzing around it, especially at the blackened areas.

Footsteps — many footsteps — came from behind him as Gaius drew the ignition symbol with his left hand. It winked out in the next moment, and a blaze consumed the corpse as the boy turned to face the newcomers. His little silhouette cast a stark shadow over the men jogging towards him, and their steps began to falter as the boy walked towards them.

Unlike the gangsters who were rushing towards Gaius, his steps were slow and measured. Gaius smiled lightly — his confident gait was unnerving the whole lot of them, and coupled with the small funeral pyre that had sprang out from behind him mysteriously, the boy could almost hear some of them beginning to regret their life choices.

He looked at the small group as they stopped five metres away from his small frame. “Who’s the leader here?”

The small squad turned to look at someone in the leader, who responded a moment later. “O-our leader?”

“Did you not hear me the first time?”

“H-he’s in our base, waiting for us to bring y-you back.” The apparent leader of the small group replied nervously. “Are — I mean, could we trouble you to follow us to meet our boss?”

“Hmm. How polite,” said Gaius. “And what if I said no?”

The man looked at the others, who were trembling imperceptibly. Gaius was half a mind to ask about their nervousness, but before he could act on this thought, the man at the front had opened his mouth to speak.

“Our boss wants to…meet you.”

Gaius rolled his eyes. Meet me? To rob me, or maybe to hold me hostage, probably. His goons seem to be far more perceptive, however.

The boy smiled gently. “Lead the way, then. I too, am interested in meeting this boss of yours, but perhaps for entirely different reasons. You lot too…are rather interesting.”

An audible gulp went around the small group, and the man was visibly trembling when he turned his back onto Gaius and walked down a side road, as though as he was scared that the boy might take the opportunity to shank him a couple of times.

The curious presences faded even further as Gaius followed the small group at arm’s length. It was considerably cleaner, the road that Gaius and company were treading on currently, but it was still a place as dismal as the street he had been on before.

Unable to bear the burgeoning silence, the man began to introduce the street that Gaius was walking on, his hands flailing somewhat. “This is lower Elinaris. There are three types of people that have a stake of in this place: the owners of slum residences, the crime lords and the slumdwellers themselves.”

His words were somewhat stilted, as though as he wasn’t used to speaking in such a manner for a prolonged period of time.

“Which one do you fall in, then?”

“Me and my budd— colleagues fall in the second category,” replied the man, his walk somewhat jerky as Gaius spoke. “We’re underlings of the Shadowed Claw.”

Taking a right turn, the small group stopped at a small warehouse of sorts. “I-it’s here.”

He pushed open the door to reveal a dull room lit by orange light, and the others filed inside obediently. Gaius looked at the frightened lot, and then stepped across the doorframe. The warehouse, thankfully, was stench-free, but instead of looking like a place where a business would choose to store their goods in, it was more of a training facility instead.

Men were sparring with each other. Others, who were wearing a hooded cloak, were gathered around a large table and talking. The boy wanted to question the fashion sense of this group, but as he continued to follow the small group up, Gaius began to feel that this place wasn’t any ordinary criminal group.

Not with the slogans hanging off the ceiling. And definitely not with a man standing on an elevated platform giving an impassioned speech.

Gaius licked his lips. There was more to Elinaris than he’d thought.