Irwiz ran and ran along the stone walls illuminated by the lanterns.
He didn't look back, but he kept his senses sharp. He felt every vibration and sound he could, while trying his best to isolate his own from his senses.
It was hard, but Irwiz knew he had to be both sharp and precise.
He ran for a hundred meters in around 10 second, then turned left and ran again.
It was the same view, the plain old stone walls. After running for a while, he once again turned right.
Although it was still the stone walls, there seemed to be something different. This time, he saw something hung up on the side of the wall.
A symbol of a 5 pointed star turned upside down. In the inside of that star were a triangle formation formed by a bloodshot eyeball, an ear that was bleeding profusely, and a mouth that had mold growing on its tongue.
'How ominous' Irwiz quickly made a mental note of the image as he continued running.
Soon, he was able to see the end of the corridor.
Although what he saw was still a stone wall, there was a stream of water flowing underneath it, perpendicular to the corridor.
There weren't any lanterns to illuminate the area around there too. As the corridor gradually plunged to darkness, so did the smell started getting bad.
From Irwiz's guess, he was getting close to the sewer system.
'So the basement is located in the sewer system.' Irwiz thought as he looked at the flow of dirty water running underneath him.
It was disgusting.
However, after looking for a few seconds at the water, Irwiz immediately lied on the ground, and rolled over.
Soon, he was soaked from head to toe, while reeking of a nasty smell. Well, not that he had that great of a smell before.
But now, Irwiz was practically indistinguishable from the water in terms of smell now.
After doing this, he took one last look behind him towards the stone walls, before turning right, towards the source of the waste water.
Irwiz ran off once more.
...
The smell was very disgusting inside this unending series of tunnels. It truly reeked of rot and decay.
It was a place where human waste was secreted to after all.
Kss Kss
The sound reverberated across the tunnels as Irwiz was walking along the sewer system.
Unfortunately, it was also home to the cockroaches of the city, the vultures of waste - the rats. There lived a whole colony of rats here.
By now, Irwiz had slowed down his pace. At the start of the escape, he didn't really think much about anything, concentrating on running as fast as he could.
'Fortunately I was able to get out of there alive. I was even able to get 15 fate points from it' Irwiz thought as he spotted a half built sewer tunnel.
Right now, he was starving.
He had perhaps spent 2,3 days without food by now.
So much things had happened, and all of it just within 5 days of entering this world. So more than the food he wanted to eat, Irwiz most importantly needed to consolidate his gains and plan for the future.
Irwiz, reckoning he was far away from the cult now, thus sat down on the ground into the darkness.
He then thought about and listed all the things he had done by now.
First off, his transmigration. He still remembered it clearly.
That ugly grotesque monster that looked like an angel that fell from grace. And then its eyes filled with pity as it looked upon him, saying that he had been chosen.
Then, from there he jumped from the building thinking he had achieved immortality. Well, his original plan was still to off himself then and there anyways, whether that monster appeared or not.
And as he jumped and fell, he truly did feel freedom. That feeling of falling from the sky was truly brilliant. But just before he fell to the ground amidst the shock of pedestrians, he blacked out and then found himself in this world.
Thinking now, that immortality he thought of probably didn't exist. After all, the monster's words were - "Fate won't allow 'death' to happen to you no matter what you do right now."
That probably referred to that specific time and space.
After he came to this world, he had become incredibly malnourished, and also reverted to this body of a kid.
No one was there at the time he found consciousness. It was some desolate place where not even the homeless frequented.
After he wandered for some time, he found people finally. Somehow, he was able to understand their language, but not the writing system.
However, the people he found were all very sceptic and indifferent to him, not caring about him at all. He wasn't able to get even a single beneficial word out of them. He somehow found the market place, but those stall owners all shooed him away, probably aware of his intent to steal food.
In fact, he even got chased because he wanted to steal coarse bread from a passersby.
Thankfully that person didn't chase a lot. However, during the process of escaping, he found himself in an unknown alley.
There, he found a rabid dog and once again had to escape once again.
Once the night fell, it was cold. So cold but he had no shelter to go to and no place to sleep on too. All he had was the cold ground, which he forced himself to sleep - only to get woken up by the bastard rats trying to feed on him.
He still remembered his despair then. He had truly hit the bottom.
With sleep deprivation, the next day didn't entail anything either. It was the same old thing.
Except, the night on his second day, he got found by the boss and recruited to his shelter. It was really a fortunate thing.
Through the other kids in the shelter, he was finally able to get information. The city they were in was called Evelyn, and the kingdom Seraph. The kids didn't know much either, but there were seemingly three main gods' temples here, along with several cults.
This city was called the Iron Fortress and it was a border city between Seraph and Azmut, thus it was reinforced a lot. It supposedly was very developed in modern technology...
The next 2 days he spent the time hunting with the kids, but on the night of the second day at the shelter, he got his first mission. To kill the boss, his benefactor.
To be fair, he did feel ominous from the boss, thus he did it. Only for the system to make him return back to the shelter.
Thinking now, it probably was a good thing for him to return. He had finally reached the border level of mysticism after all.
Without that, who knows what hardships he needed to face to reach here.
Anyways, the next day, some robed man came, gassed and knocked all of them unconscious. After that, he found himself in a jail cell in the base of the Madness Cult, luckily with the key accessible to him. It had probably been because of the fate points he used.
Fate point might really be related to lucky occurrences after all. He could either use it for luck, or use it for crucial knowledge.
It was an incredibly useful thing. However, it did talk about the law of equivalent exchange, meaning the fate points had a definitive value that could be compared to others.
Then, he found Rera, and then found that hidden tunnel made by the village kid Olly, the previous owner of the Records of Mysticism and Journey Into The Abyss.
With the help of the book, he was able to advance into this Abyss Pathway, and even this spell inside his mind. That had been very crucial to his escape, just as much as Rera's sacrifice.
Irwiz materialised the runic drawing inside his mind.
Actually, when he escaped, this spell helped him the most.
The advancement into the Abyss pathway gave him one ability, while also strengthening his constitution - especially his sensitivity to vibrations.
Unfortunately, it had also deformed his body.
He now had some strange scales growing on his body along with blackish blue spots on his skin. He didn't know how to remove them...
Fortunately he reckoned he could just wear clothes to hide them since it no longer showed up on his face.
The ability he gained was the ability to emit these magical strings from his body. While it was invisible, it could bind movements of others. Along with that, he also gained the ability to subtly manipulate people.
As long as he looked into their eyes and established a connection of an invisible string between the person's eyes and his, he could give them orders.
However, there were limits to it. It didn't seem to be very strong at manipulation. This could be seen by the way Rera was actively resisting his manipulation.
And with the help of the spell, he realised that he could also use this ability to hide himself from others.
By covering himself and the surrounding with the string, he would be able to hide from the perception of normal people. Irwiz doubted its effectiveness on people same as himself, mystics, though.
Thinking now, that book really did save his life.
It was a shame to have let the mysterious book go, but Irwiz didn't feel much pity about it. He had felt a very ominous sense from that book after all.
There was also that line of disaster befalling on anyone unfit for the book, so he let it go.
Maybe he will come back to steal the book in the future.
'Ok time to go' after reorganising his thoughts, Irwiz stood up from the place. He couldn't become complacent.
He will only relax after getting out from this sewer.