Young Master's PoV: Woke Up As A Villain In A Game One Day

Chapter 428: I’m Friends With Sewer Rats [II]

The walk back home was tiresome.Michael unleashed a barrage of questions, reacting with a mix of stiff nods and stumped frowns at my responses.

He asked me my plans for stopping the royal assassination, expressed doubts on why we shouldn’t inform proper authorities in time, and queried a few more things about the future that I had supposedly seen in my ’revelations.’

If he doubted anything I was feeding him, he did not let it show on his face.

Actually, he did not let much show on his face at all.

Which was, in a way, understandable.

He hadn’t come face-to-face with any Syndicate member yet, nor had he suffered the consequences of their schemes directly.

He may know about their unseen hands twisting the lives of countless ignorant citizens, but to him, they were still just an abstract concept that I painted out.

A bogeyman from a dark story rather than a blade currently pressed against his throat.

So he was struggling to grasp the sheer weight of what I was telling him.

It didn’t bother me, though. He was bound to understand the gravity of the situation eventually, preferably when I would put him in my plans.

For now, I could let him brood.

•••

Downtown, we were walking through the Iscon Plaza — a massive oval-shaped public square where more than a hundred eateries were starting to bustle with life.

Vendors were setting up their pushcarts and kiosks, and shutters of storefronts were rattling open.

The delicious aromas of toasted bread and baked cookies, sizzling sausages and roasted venison, sweet pastries and tangy fruit chaat and freshly brewed morning tea were starting to fill the air.

This area of Academy City was famous for both its fine dining establishments and cheap street food, where all kinds of cuisines from around the world were served.

It also held lively markets and open-air bazaars that, by mid-morning, would be absolutely teeming with Cadets, nobles and commoners alike, all looking for a quick bite or a heimish ingredient.

Right now, though, it was mostly just the early-bird workers and the two of us, cutting across the stone pavilion while the sun finally began to clear the horizon.

The golden morning light stretched across the cobblestones, catching the dew that had settled overnight. My stomach gave a slight rumble as the scent of some salivating meat pies wafted our way.

Before I could stop and suggest a hearty breakfast, however, we heard a sharp cry from somewhere behind us.

"Thieves! Thieves!"

A second later, a frantic clatter of bootheels resounded against the stone pavilion.

I spun around just in time to see a blur of movement darting out from a narrow alleyway.

Two people, from what I could tell. Both dressed in oversized threadbare, hoodied rags. Clutched tightly to one of their chests was a canvas sack that was packed to the brim with loaves.

Behind them, a portly baker with a flour-dusted apron and a rolling pin raised like a club came wheezing out of the shop. His face was burning with anger.

"Stop them! Someone trip those little rats!" the baker roared, his chest heaving as he realized he didn’t have the lungs to match the kids’ desperate sprint.

I went stiff for a second, confused as to why anyone in the Academy would be stealing loaves of bread?

Even the poorest of poor Cadets could get a meal from the campus dining halls for pennies.

It seemed Michael was on the same thought-train.

But neither of us got much time to ponder it. Because the two figures were on a collision course with us.

And before I could even think about doing something, before Michael was even finished instinctively shifting his weight, the kids dove into a chaotic scramble.

The smaller of the two kicked off the sturdy wooden wheel of a nearby vendor’s cart, launching themselves into a gravity-defying leap.

The larger one, on the other hand, used the momentum of their sprint to dive low, aiming right for the gap between Michael and me.

"Whoa—!" Michael grunted, a second too late to intercept them cleanly. He twisted his torso, trying to grab a handful of the larger kid’s threadbare rags, but his fingers only caught empty air.

Meanwhile, the airborne thief came down hard, crashing into me. A tattered boot clipped my shoulder, sending a jarring jolt through my collarbone and knocking me off balance.

I stumbled backward onto the dew-slicked cobblestones, my hands scraping against the cold rock as I barely managed to keep myself from taking a full-blown spill.

"Watch it, you fuck–!" I hissed, though the breath was half-knocked out of me.

Instead of profusely apologizing to my noble self as they should have, the thieves hit the ground rolling, scrambled back to their feet, and sprinted toward the labyrinthine alleys on the opposite side of Iscon Plaza.

The canvas sack remained clamped tightly in the taller one’s arms, the stolen loaves safe.

Michael wasted no time in summoning a Card called Shadow Blitz. It allowed him to teleport short distances, jumping from one shadow to another.

With a pop of displaced air, he vanished from my side.

I got up and tried calling upon my arsenal as well, only to remember I had no Cards on me.

Fuck my life, I thought and started after the thieves the old-fashioned way — willing Essence into my legs to boost my speed.

•••

Goodness, the thieves were fast.

Clearly, they were in possession of some good Cards too.

And judging by their speed, they were also around B-rank.

Without much effort, they left both Michael and me in the dust.

Again, I couldn’t understand why someone as capable as they would resort to some petty bread theft. There were plenty of missions to go around to make money, were there not?

The labyrinth of alleyways beyond Iscon Plaza swallowed the morning light, plunging us into a maze of damp stone and narrow shadows. The thieves had slipped out of our sight, disappearing somewhere into the web of interconnected backstreets.

We separated to cover more ground. I veered left, tracking the barely audible scuff of footsteps echoing off the high brick walls.

I kept at it for a while but my search yielded no results.

Eventually, I must’ve circled the area. And Michael must’ve done the same as well, because we bumped into one another, nearly cracking heads before skidding to a stop.

"Lost them?" I asked, leaning my hands on my knees to catch my breath, cursing the lack of an agility-boosting Card in my nonexistent Deck.

I shouldn’t have gotten tired so easily under normal circumstances.

But I hadn’t fed blood to my right arm in days, which, in turn, had caused a bone-drying chill to originate from its core and settle deep within my marrow. So every breath I took as of late felt like inhaling shards of glass.

In short, it was slightly uncomfortable to do intense cardio in my current state.

I should buy a shitton of blood bags soon.

Michael nodded. "Assholes were doing parkour! I thought about using—"

"Shhh!" Frowning, I shushed him off by clamping a hand around his mouth. He seemed startled but I placed a finger on my lips, signalling to him to listen quietly.

"Huihuihuihui!"

Someone was... laughing?

"Kewkewkewkew!"

Two people, actually.

The creepy, high-pitched goblin snickering was coming from somewhere above. My gaze zeroed in on a small crook between two rooftops, a little over fifteen feet in the air.

Coming right under it, I deployed my Origin Card and lifted a stone column under our feet to elevate us to the source of the sound.

The entrance to the crack was barricaded by a stack of half-rotted wooden crates, some cardboard, and sheets of styrofoam.

From behind it, the muffled voices that I was beginning to realize sounded far too familiar continued.

"Aren’t we eating well today?" said a girl in giddy excitement. "Bread, some tuna I scavenged yesterday, and salt water soup."

"Indeed, indeed!" replied a boy, matching the girl’s energy. "This is practically a feast!"

Michael and I exchanged a brief, telling glance. Then I pushed aside the withering plywood panel to reveal a narrow crawl space where the two kids were holed up.

They froze seeing us.

And we froze too.

Their hoods were pulled back, revealing faces that were entirely wrong for the scene.

My mind disconnected for a second before I raised an accusing finger at the girl. Her hair, which must have been the orange of tangerines once, was now dark under all that grime and dirt, the strands scruffy and bedraggled from neglect.

"Alexia?!" I exclaimed.

The ginger confusedly blinked her dark gray eyes — twin pools of silver reflecting my own face back at me like a mirror even though she was actually looking over my shoulder. "...Sam?!"

Beside me, Michael pointed at the boy. And though I always remembered him looking feral, seeing him huddled in rags on a bed of flattened cardboard boxes was an entirely different story. His usually wolfish demeanor was completely buried under layers of soot and filth, as though he had spent the last few days foraging through the city’s worst gutters.

That boy was obviously—

"Kang?!" Michael blurted out.

Yeah. Our two dear friends were apparently living like sewer rats.