Chapter 122

Following the others through the door wasn’t exactly easy and Rain had to squeeze down to fit. Inside the hallway wasn’t much better and he filled it wall to wall, shoulders and head pressed up against the ceiling of the cramped space.

The hall lead deep into the building until it met the bottom of a stairway. Interestingly all the doors he passed by were broken down or left open, the rooms inside abandoned and barren.

Not knowing where else to go Rain made his way up, not easily, and also with alarm as the stair groaned beneath his pads. He made it up to the first floor without incident, only a few split planks, but then had more trouble going higher, putting his foot fully through the staircase and having to awkwardly step over the holes he left behind. Whoever used the stairs next would have more than a few obstacles to overcome.

He reached the top nearly on all fours and with genuine relief emerged onto the stone landing.

There he found Warwick with Pickle held in arm. Crushed in behind him was Lyra and Opal in the small space, which became even more cramped when Rain joined them.

“I would appreciate it-” muttered Warwick as he fiddled with a key in a lock, “If you kept that beast back, while I- Ah!”

The lock suddenly clicked and swung wide and Rain, interested, leaned forward to see a ... closet, complete with straw brooms and buckets.

“Uhm, no offence but I don’t think this is really going to work...” said Lyra

Warwick ignored that and pushed into the closet. After a moment of muttering and the sound of metal scratching against metal the back of the closet swung inward with a creak. Expecting to see something interesting they crowded forward and found a ... second closet.

“Is this a joke?” growled Rain.

“Yeah, you expect us to sleep in this thing?”

“Hardly. In my line of work the best defence is secrecy, and if that fails then your best bet is a fuck off big iron door.”

Rain blinked as he realised that the back wall of the second closet was in fact metal.

The heavy door opened slow as Warwick swung it wide and to their surprise daylight poured through. Opal and Lyra quickly followed Warwick leaving Rain to struggle with the first closet. Needless to say by the time he’d squeezed through every single broom had been snapped into kindling and every single bucket had been flattened.

He stumbled free at last and found himself standing on grass, vast galleon clouds drifting by far above. It was a courtyard, a courtyard that was surrounded by buildings, which, Rain realised, must have been built on top of the original structure.

The courtyard was overgrown with grass and even had a wizened apple tree in one corner. The grass at the centre of the courtyard had been stamped down in an oval and a long oaken table was set out with a few worn out chairs arranged around it.

More eye-catching than everything else were the cages, dozens of them stacked along one wall of the courtyard. Most were empty but a few contained large green furred rat monsters with three green eyes. Beside the cages were dozens of barrels, the barrels were labeled with things like ‘grass slime’ and ‘moss slime’.

“What is this?” gravelled Rain.

Warwick didn’t reply until Lyra repeated Rain’s words, “Why are you keeping monsters like this?”

“Why am I keeping a bunch of weak monsters taken up from the dungeon? For the children. I have them so that children can kill them.”

Lyra gave him a blank look causing him to snort.

“Please, you wealthy snobs have no idea, you think Florens’ dungeon is dangerous? When you can afford good escorts? Good armour and good weapons? Have decently leveled family to help? Try going down there as a family of low levelers, so poor the only sword you can afford is made of tin and worse taking your kids down there to level with you. I’ve lost count of how many families I’ve known to lose their children in that hell hole. Half the folk in these slums have given up on leveling it’s so bad down there. But the only way out of this kind of poverty is to level, so those who want better lives keep trying, they keep trying and they keep dying.”

“They- They gave up on leveling?” said Lyra, the words sounding alien in her mouth.

Warwick turned away from her and plucked a plate from Pickle’s hands placing it on the table as she ran back into one of the buildings for more.

“Yes. Hope is scarce to come by when you see so many of your peers killed or crippled. Is it really that surprising? Florens’ dungeon is a meat grinder.”

“So you help out by bringing the monsters out the dungeon ... But why are you hiding up here? These aren’t exactly the biggest of monsters, it’s not like you’d get in trouble...”

“Who said I didn’t used to bring ‘em big? ... Not that it matters. An easy to kill monster around here is like holding a prime cut of lamb while walking by a pack of starved dogs. Go figure. If I didn’t have this place I would be getting robbed left right and centre and I’d never get the monsters to the kids who need it, I know that for a fact.” He paused momentarily. “Hiding a big one like yours is just going back to my old ways. Fool me.”

“Is it you that’s causing no one to live or come around here then?”

“ ... Actually that would be Bean.”

“Really? That skinny little thing scares away all the other levelers?”

“He’s stronger than he looks and I’ve seen him use some concerning Skills, but it’s more than that.” Warwick’s expression became mixed, “People ... have tried to sleep around here ... they don’t last long. Waking up in the middle of the night with Bean breathing loudly while lying on top of you and trying to lick your eyeballs tends to scare people away ... and that’s not even mentioning his habit of syphoning people’s blood. The stories about him that have built up over the decades are, hrmm, disturbing. But in reality he’s not that bad, fine enough keeping folks away from me and mine.”

Lyra stared at him. “Licks your eyeballs? In the night? H-hold on this wasn’t part of the agreement??!”