novelraw Chapter 135: The Underworld
Chapter 135: The Underworld
In a room that was as small as my bathroom, I was eating a meal that was the equivalent of someone vomiting on your plate and serving it as food.
But beggars can't be choosers.
It has been a hundred days since I've been in the underworld.
Due to the time difference between the two, for Nara, it should be around ten days since I've been gone.
I hope that my family is doing well. I hope that they aren't crashing out. They're good people but I understood that they were all capable of doing bad things. I could only hope that they didn't do anything brash.
As I bit on a piece of grain that was harder than stone, I let a groan escape my mouth.
"Damn… I don't want to complain, but this tastes like dog shit. Scratch that. Dog shit probably tastes better than this. Not that… I would know what it tastes like."
There is no sun in the underworld. There is no concept of daytime or nighttime. It is simply one continuous day where you never have to worry about running out of light due to the comet-like fireballs that travel across the sky in mass every single second.
I was currently raiding the home of a lesser demon while they were out working.
What is a lesser demon? Well, they are the equivalent of a peasant back in medieval times. Yes, I am stealing from the working class, but can you blame me?
To explain how I got here, we have to go back to the day that I was brought into this world.
As I passed through the portal, I found myself falling into the mouth of a dragon the size of a mountain. And by that, I mean their head alone was the size of a mountain.
I immediately swallowed the purple fruit that was in my mouth. I don't know why Cyro had this on him, but I'm glad that he did because the instant it went down my throat, I was teleported into a random place that was within a thousand-mile radius from me.
As soon as I landed, the shackles on my wrists vanished, likely due to the connection between the caster being severed when my body was forcefully pulled through the fabric of space.
I found myself at the peak of a volcano and had to catch myself as I nearly stumbled into the lava when the ground underneath me shifted and crumbled.
Pulling my weapons out from between my legs, I turned the spear back into a ring. Instead of wrapping up Gon in the bandages, I kept it ready just in case the dragon was somehow able to follow my presence all the way here.
My chances against it were about as slim as an ant taking on a lion, but still…
"Are you watching me up there, shitty god?" I asked as I looked around my surroundings.
"...Yeah," he answered me in a voice that seemed confused.
Looking around the landscape, calling it a world almost felt generous, even though it technically was a world.
The sky wasn't a sky as much as it was just this vast emptiness that stretched on forever.
Rivers were meant to carry water, but the rivers here only carried molten lava, leaving streaks of fire on the shore as they traveled.
Water did exist, but it was scarce and the color of it suggested that it was dirtier than a pig that had rolled around in mud.
The ground below the volcano stretched outward in these jagged layers as if they had been stacked improperly. Plains of blackened stone gave way to these valleys that were filled with ash.
Far in the distance, I could see holes in the ground that opened up and spewed out bones. It was like the ground had literal mouths.
But it wasn't barren. Society did exist. Well, at least whatever version of society was in front of me.
Cities. Towns. Villages.
All of these places could be found and they were inhabited by the citizens of the underworld. It wasn't just demons that called this place home. The banished races, such as vampires, could also be found here.
From where I stood, I watched a group of lesser demons that trudged along this path while carrying tools. They looked like an army of ants marching to a piece of fruit dropped by a clumsy human.
If you ignored the fact that they looked hideous and terrifying, they almost seemed human the way that they were talking to each other, laughing, arguing, etc.
Occasionally, higher demons such as Selgaath would occasionally make an appearance and I had to be extra careful not to expose myself.
To say that I was putting in a hundred percent effort in suppressing my presence was an understatement. I was putting in two hundred percent. Maybe even a thousand.
Whenever the higher demons passed by, the lesser demons would lower their heads instinctively like prey that had learned not to be noticed.
Flying in the sky were "birds". That's if you consider the abominations up there to be birds.
They were hideous and looked like they hatched from eggs that had visible green stench lines.
"I didn't expect to be here this soon," I muttered. I shouldn't have set foot on this land for a couple more years at the very least.
But nope. With no choice but to toss my plans aside, I began thinking about what I needed to do to not only survive but make it back home.
'You know Master, it's been a long time since I've been here. I haven't seen this place since I fell in the fire and the next thing I knew, I woke up in your hands,' said Gon.
"That's right. You've been here before. Got any clues and tips on how to survive?" I asked it, not really expecting much. I was already formulating a plan to get out, albeit the plan was only about one percent of the way to being complete.
And I would also need to think of plan B. Then, plan C just in case.
'Avoid the nobles,' Gon responded.
"What a coincidence. I was thinking the same thing," I chuckled. I barely managed to kill a higher demon. Taking on a noble would be the death of me. And if it were a general, that would be even worse than death.
I began making my way down the volcano, being careful not to expose myself. I would hide behind boulders occasionally when I felt like I was going to be seen.
My outfit was completely soiled in this black dirt by the time I reached the bottom.
The description of the underworld wasn't very in-depth in the novel, so my knowledge of where I was was basically zero. What I did know was that the size of this world was almost as large as Nara.
However, because I had just seen the eyeball of the demon king a few moments ago, the chances of me being near the capital city were rather high.
I needed to get away from it. Fast.
.
.
.
It took putting my sword up to the neck of a lesser demon but I was able to discover that the capital city was to my East.
After slicing the neck of the demon, I began making my way West.
Ten days have passed since then, and I was quite a distance away.
Although I didn't get hungry often, I was still bound to feel it when I would use my mana to travel across empty plains as fast as I could. I would wear this stained brown cloak that I had stolen from someone's home to hide the fact that I was a human but if a demon got too close, the difference between my mana and a demon's energy was too easy to tell the difference.
How did I keep my stomach full?
That was by hunting the demonic beasts that I would come across.
Their meat wasn't edible for humans, but I had no choice. I would eat and begin to spoil like a fruit left out in the sun for too longbut would use my code to heal my body back to normal.
This method wasn't sustainable forever, so I also learned what fruits were edible by a kind demon, whom I most definitely did not hang by their leg while punching them repeatedly until they squealed.
Thankfully, the fruits weren't poisonous to me.
After a while, I noticed that I had developed some sort of immunity to the meat and was able to eat it without having to heal. It simply gave me a bad stomachache and at times, explosive you-know-what.
I finally settled in a city that was inhabited mainly by lesser demons.
Occasionally, I would catch a higher demon here and there but for the most part, this place seemed to be the home for lesser demons.
Setting up camp in the city, I had to be careful not to be caught, but I needed to move around and listen in on conversations. Although I didn't speak their language, thankfully, I had a translator with me.
Gon.
Although I didn't know this, Gon knew how to speak and understand the common demon tongue.
That's how I was able to communicate with those demons in the past when I kindly asked them questions before sending them to a "better place".
Most of the information I got was useless. Even after spending half a day just eavesdropping on conversations under the guise of my cloak, I was not one step closer to my goal.
That all changed when I discovered that the city had a facility that was directly outside of a cave. Every day, the slaves of the facility were sent into the cave to mine precious materials and if they refused, death.
These slaves weren't lesser demons. They were something even lower than them in the hierarchy. They were the designated slave race. Although technically demon blood ran in their veins, they weren't called demons.
They were called Mudwads.
The lives of these specific Mudwards were managed by the sound of a bell. Whenever the bell rang, that meant it was time to head into the caves. They weren't allowed to leave the cave until they reached their quota.
The bell rang multiple times a "day".
From a distance away, I watched as the dull sound rang and the slaves who had returned got up like zombies and began making their way back.
The Mudwads who didn't complete the quota for the previous bell were punished by receiving no meal when it was lunchtime.
If they failed the quota for two bells, they were whipped until they bled.
If they failed the quota for three, death was the only answer.
Due to the neck ring they all had on, none of them had any demonic energy or mana presence to them. That meant I was able to infiltrate their forces without being suspected despite my lack of energy presence.
I observed these people. I observed the way they looked at the lesser demon guards with disdain in their eyes.
That was when an idea came to mind. Taking inspiration from one of the greatest sci-fi novels back on Earth, I began to spread a rumor amongst the Mudwad that there was a prophecy about someone who would save them from their fates as slaves.
"Do not fear the one who comes to you, even if they don't share your blood. They are not your enemy. They are your salvation sent to you by the first. Their eye is black like the darkness above the world. Their hair is the opposite. Where they walk, lightning follows. They are the answer to your prayers. The chains that have shackled you for generations will be broken. Rise. Rise and fight! You will be free!"
It was a bunch of nonsense and it took a little bit of gaslighting, but I was able to make it seem like this prophecy has existed amongst their people for centuries when in reality, I came up with it while digging my nose.