Chapter 58: Caught

Kael didn’t have it in him to stay there, not after watching the minimap light up like a funeral pyre. The whole damn map was turning up in flames from the outside, a ring of towering markers that looked almost decorative from here, almost.

Though it didn’t look like it was approaching and simply remained far away, the kind of far away that still made your skin crawl because it wasn’t distance, it was inevitability.

That, however, will change the following day, and the day after that. Kael didn’t need the Tower to spell it out any clearer than it already had. He’d triggered a countdown and a closing net, and now the floor itself was going to start squeezing.

“I have no time to waste,” Kael realized the impending doom, and that realization had teeth. It wasn’t the abstract fear of dying “sometime.” It was the cold, arithmetic panic of a shrinking calendar.

He needed to secure his ticket out, fifty cores. He barely has a few right now. The thought of that number made his stomach twist. Fifty sounded so small until you pictured it as fifty throats, fifty kills, fifty chances to get stabbed in the back or ambushed in an alley. And that was just to get out; he needed more to pay his debt.

So he needs to go and kill as many goblins and enemies as possible as soon as possible. That was the brutal truth: he couldn’t afford caution anymore, not now that the Tower had just stolen eighteen days from everyone and blamed him for it with a global announcement.

He hurried out, walking through the crumbled buildings and away from eyesight. He didn’t take the street; the open felt like a spotlight.

He moved through broken walls and collapsed rooms, stepping over old furniture and shattered glass, the soles of his shoes crunching softly through dust that had been there long enough to turn gray and thick.

His body was in great pain. The burns throbbed with every movement, and now that the [Presence] muffling was gone, every scrape of fabric against skin felt like sandpaper on raw meat.

And he couldn’t afford to be caught by any other climber with bad intentions, as he is as easy as prey can get right now. A man with scorched clothes and a limping pace didn’t look like a threat; he looked like loot.

“I need to heal up,” he thought, and the thought came with bitter urgency. Healing wasn’t comfort, it was survival logistics.

There was only one way to do so that he knew of. “I have to go meet Baltak again…” The name landed in his head like a reluctant prayer. The imp, the shop, the station, one of the only predictable things on this floor, and predictability was priceless.

The imp that owned the shop at the exit of the train station. He didn’t like relying on Baltak, since he was a part of the tower and someone who worked under that cursed rabbit. But he liked the idea of collapsing in an alley and becoming a meal even less.

Without wasting more time, Kael began his trek back, making sure to keep one eye on his map and the other on the road.

The minimap was his second heartbeat now, the thing he checked whenever fear tried to hijack his focus. He couldn’t afford getting caught, and with burn marks and injuries such as he got right now, it’s the easiest person to point out as the cause of this mess.

The global notification had painted a target on someone’s back. Even if they didn’t know his face yet, they would be looking for anyone who looked suspicious, and Kael right now was looking freshly cooked and mighty suspicious.

After what felt like hours of going through dilapidated buildings, avoiding both green and red dots in the map, he finally arrived to the territory of the Sun Clan.

The walk wasn’t clean. It was a stitched-together route of detours and pauses, of waiting behind broken walls while dots moved past, of ducking through doorless rooms where the air smelled like mold and old smoke.

Each time he had to climb over debris, his burned arm reminded him with a sharp spike of pain that he wasn’t made of steel. By the time the Sun Clan zone finally came into his range, his legs felt heavy, and his mouth tasted like ash.

He couldn’t go to their HQ, that’s asking for trouble, and he needed to just go beyond it to reach the shop.

The thought came fast and clear: base meant questions, base meant eyes, base meant the boss deciding to “help” in ways that cost you more than they gave. He didn’t want help. He wanted to pass through like a ghost and reach Baltak before night shut that door too.

However, he only had one way forward, and there were a bunch of green dots in the way. Humans, probably from the Sun Clan.

The dots clustered like a group patrol, shifting slowly, not scattered like loners. Kael slowed instinctively, pressing himself closer to a crumbled wall as he watched the cluster’s movement.

Even without seeing them yet, he could feel the tension crawling up his spine. Green meant alive; green didn’t mean friendly. They were a group, a mob, and mobs gathered with purpose.

To Kale going any other way would make it hard to get to the merchant, not to mention it was getting very dark, if he took a detour it’ll be night time, and the shop will be closed.

The sky had deepened, the red becoming darker and heavier, as if the Tower was dragging a curtain over the city. Shadows thickened under broken awnings and between leaning buildings.

Kael’s breathing tightened. He couldn’t afford the detour, but walking into a group was equally dangerous.

He couldn’t afford to waste more time. Even going at full sprint with his current body wouldn’t allow him to get there in time as there was just too many broken down buildings blocking the path.

The streets here weren’t streets anymore, more like channels through wreckage. The fastest path had to go past the grouped dots, which were currently moving toward him.

They weren’t stationary. They were coming. And he didn’t know if they were coming to help, to hunt, or just to control territory.

“Might have to spend another night outside…” The thought tasted like dirt. Another night meant goblins sharper in the dark, means hiding without sleep, means burns rubbing raw against fabric.

It meant gambling again, and Kael was getting tired of gambling.

Just as he was about to turn and change direction, “Yo Kael!” he heard.

His heart dropped to his knees.

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