CHAPTER 303: CHAPTER 303 CITY TUNNELS

Kailen activated his vine affinity.

Maybe it was the moment of crisis he had found himself in that stimulated the profound use of them. They lashed beneath his feet and attached themselves to it, their string-like constitution propelling him out of the spaceship with undeniable force.

Booom.

The sound of an explosion resounded. He could literally feel the heat of the explosion even after narrowly escaping death. He crashed into a building, propelled by the elastic vines.

"Shit."

He grimaced in pain, a migraine encumbering him. His heart thumping wildly, his vision almost fading, his wound searingly painful.

A fall.

Without wasting any time, he stood up, grimaced, and fled.

"I need to find a place and carefully analyze this map."

He searched the vicinity, scanning the abandoned, destroyed buildings. Managing to peer into one of them, he entered and sat down, quickly taking the map. He scanned through the map.

"Let’s see. The nearest teleportation gate that leads to the middle of the city is located in the city sewers. I just need to find a way into the sewers. Mmmmm. Let’s see. There’s a manhole a few walks from here, fortunately for me."

****

Kailen stood before the manhole that led to the sewer. It was just a few moments’ walk from where he had been hiding. Quickly he squatted and took off the lid of the manhole, then went straight inside before he repositioned the lid where it belonged again.

"Well, a map really makes things a little bit less difficult, err."

Kailen couldn’t help but muse to himself. He sat down in the darkness of the sewers, feeling more safe than he ever had since this harrowing journey begun.

"How paradoxical. I find solace in the sewers of a city, crawling with waste and a smell that would have made me want to throw up on any normal day."

He shook his head, his vision hazy. Kailen didn’t know when sleep took over. Maybe it was the mental strain that he had experienced over and over again ever since this Odysseus simulation begun, or the tired and fatigue from his germs-infested wounds and his exhaustion from exerting himself.

In the quiet night of the sewers, a stranger from the future trapped in the past slept away like a baby, not because he wanted to, but because his body had insisted he needed it.

Kailen suddenly drifted awake.

"I fell asleep? Time to move."

He stood up, strangely refreshed. Yet, the sharp pain that swung through his head from his right cheek reminded him of his predicament. He, although, had restored some reserves of his universe energy.

Thanks to being an awakener, seeing through the dark was not too much of an issue for Kailen. He moved through the tunnels without much of a problem, his feet sinking through the dirt of the tunnel. Kailen continued to move.

"Are those my footsteps? Hell no."

Kailen’s gaze darted through the tunnel of the sewers, their shadows clinging to damp stones.

He finally spotted a tunnel. Beneath the tunnel was a small pond of dirt, on top of which several waste floated. In his immediate vicinity, that was the only place he could hide.

"You gotta be kidding me. No, I’m not gonna do that. Well, I recently had a small vacation in a pool of dead bodies."

He sighed, then dove into the dirty pool. Bubbles of his breathing lingered on the surface for a while, but he couldn’t dive deeper because it was not very deep. He had no choice but to hold his breath till whoever was approaching managed to pass by.

"Did you hear? That pretty sergeant? Kraft?" one dwarf mentioned.

"What about her? Been hitting on her for a while now but she’s been ghosting me. Snobby little bitch!"

"Woah man, language, she’s dead."

"You serious?"

"Why would I lie about something as sad as that, bro? She was just a rank beginner stage Ascendant level lifeform, but she was the daughter of one of the captains of this perimeter. He has ordered a bounty on the head of the killer, a scar-faced little fellow with sickly appearance."

Kailen couldn’t help but feel a jolt of fear creep up his spine.

"That’s me. So I’m wanted now too, err. Great, just great! A captain’s daughter, huh. Looks like I have to be more careful about being discovered from now on. Someone like that will expand any resource to find the one who killed his daughter."

Quietly, looking beneath the surface of the muddy pool with held breath, he listened to the conversation of the two dwarves, who were probably part of the team guarding the teleportation gate in the sewers.

"Seriously, why are we even having this fucking war?!" one of the guys spat in annoyance.

"If the authorities hear this, you’ll be hanged," the other replied.

"Honestly, I don’t really see the sense in all this. Isn’t war just a couple of individuals with clashing egos sending some useless nobodies—who have nothing to do with the business of those they are fighting for—to their deaths?"

The duo kept conversing as their voices grew dimmer, their footsteps retreating into the distance.

Kailen dove out of the water the moment they were no longer around, then released his breath. A sigh of relief came out of his mouth. Ignoring the stench of filth that encumbered him, he sped out of the dirty pool.

"It’s a good thing that I at least have at least a great memory. Had it been for this bastard,with a shitty memory , I wouldn’t have managed to memorize the map. Else, with it being destroyed after I dove into this pool, I’d have been in serious trouble" he muttered, ignoring the searing pain that tore through his wounded cheek.

He moved with swift alertness, honed naturally from always being on the lookout for someone who would not hesitate to either end his life or capture him and send him to the commander whose daughter he had killed, to be given a fate probably worse than death.

He rounded dead bodies from time to time. After several veiled steps through the tunnels, he finally managed to arrive at the teleportation gates.