Quagmire Ire[Job/Solo]

Job Name: The underground
Job Rank: C
Job Location: Reim
Job Rewards: 100 XP and 7,000 Huang |Knowledge of Remano's sewers|
Job Overview:
Having found nothing above ground with your searches, the underground is the next target. Perhaps the sewers are being used as a route for messengers and other dealings? Upon searching them, however, not much is found. There is but one old beggar who has made the place his home. He explains that a few months back there seemed to be more people down there, but it had slowed down in the past few weeks. He explains that he always kept his nose out of others business; it's the only way to survive, where he's at (if asked to keep an eye out, he will refuse regardless of bribes). Forgetting about the sewer monsters, he does tell you where to find one of the manholes that used to be used often. On your way there, you encounter several rats, each of which are .3 meters in size, and a rather larger rat which is .5 meters in size. Upon exiting the sewers, you find yourself in a middle-class residential area. Nothing seems out of the ordinary here...



Enemy Name: Overgrown Rats x2
Rank: D
Needed damage to take down: D
Abilities:
Overgrown Rats move at 10 m/s.
Overgrown Rats attack with their teeth, imparting D-Tier damage.


Enemy Name: Rat King
Rank: C
Needed damage to take down: B
Abilities:
Rat King moves at 15 m/s.
Rat King may attack with either claws or teeth, imparting C-Tier damage.
Overbite: The Rat King attempts to gnaw at a limb, dealing C-Tier damage to it at 15 m/s.
Pestilence Scratch: The Rat King scratches at its opponent, inflicting D-Tier damage and reducing ability speed by half and doubling reaction times.

After spending a week scouring the streets, Liber Aurelius' search for signs of the Kou network in Reim had come up short. The closest thing he found were imported silks being served on the black market. While it was good to take care of some muggers and thugs he encountered along the way, for the most part the fanalis young man's efforts had turned out to be fruitless. At the very least, Liber had managed to commit a great deal of the city streets and roads to memory. He wouldn't be getting lost in Remano any time soon and should he ever need to give chase to anyone, he knew many shortcuts and back roads he could take to cut off his quarry. Hopefully this would make any pursuits swift and painless for the assassin.

But with no signs of the Kou influence above ground, Liber decided that the only place left to check was below ground. Reim was fairly advanced and perhaps the most developed country in the world. No where reflected this claim greater than the capital city, Remano, and among one of it's less touted but still great, achievements was its sewer system. It was hard to call a series of tunnels designed for moving human waste "amazing" or "a work of art" but if any land could slap such a moniker on its sewers, it was probably Reim. That all being said, the sewers would likely make a great place to traverse the city unseen so perhaps Liber would find his prey lurking in the stinky depths below the streets.

Descending down into the dank, dark, sewers with torch in hand, Liber found his feel landing on solid concrete rather than a mucky sludge. A silent prayer of thanks escaped the Fanalis' lips, appreciative the Remano's designers and architects had the decency to include walk ways when creating the city underbelly. Using a bit of flint to spark a flame, Liber walked with his torch deep into the abyss of the sewers and began his search.

It was strange being in an underground tunnel. The foul stench was bad enough, but the air was still in most places and a near infinite darkness seemed to stretch out in places where there were no manholes or other access points to allow light in from the surface such as drains and direct latrine holes. It was a suffocating experience in more ways than one and each day Liber spent down there made the discomfort seem to increase. The cyptic passageways were confusing as well, no where near as organized as the streets above which had only take a short time for Liber to get the hang of. But even after five days of walking along side a stream of human filth, Liber still felt a bit lost even when going back over ground he'd already covered numerous times before.

A week in and Liber had already begun to give up hope on the idea he'd find anything down there. There were no signs of Kou movements in the dingy dark and he felt like every additional day spent out of the sunlight was starting to chip gradually away at his sanity. Liber decided that he would begin alternating days that he would spend in the sewers for the sake of keeping his own mind and body from losing themselves among the putrid smelling tunnels. This way he could also bathe and go a day without carrying said foul odor around like he was a walking latrine.

Two weeks in and Liber began feeling much more comfortable with his sense of direction underground. Now he was less doing this to search for Kou infiltrators and more interested in mastering his knowledge of Remano's sewer paths in the event that he would find need of them later one day. Another week and his search expanded far enough that Liber stumbled upon the shanty home of an old beggar man who looked like he'd been living there for quite some time.

~670/1000~

The old beggar was willing to talk after Liber gave him a few coins, but only so much. The sewer rat of a man told Liber of how he'd seen a number of people traversing these underground paths quite frequently in recent months. But as of late, he'd seen fewer and fewer people moving around until the past week or so when things simply went quiet all together. No matter how much Liber insisted, he couldn't get much more out of the beggar other than the location of a manhole which was most often used by these mysterious men who chose to move unseen through the plumbing of Reim rather than simply take more conventional routes. The assassin bid the man thanks for the directions and then moved on to follow the listed path. It was to an area of the sewers Liber had been intentionally trying to avoid because the side paths had been destroyed by some event or another and the only way to proceed was through the knee high flowing river of unspeakable pestilence.

Hoping deeply that the old man was not simply playing tricks on him, Liber held his breath and bit the bullet as he took his first step into the disgusting waters and began trudging through it. He could think of few equivalents to the sensation, but Liber guessed this must be what it felt like to walk through a swamp. Pushing thoughts of what he was doing to the side, Liber forced himself to think ahead to the goal. If the men running around down here were using this manhole often, then perhaps it was an exit rather close to their base of operations. If he emerged and found a high number of Kouen featured men frequenting a nearby building then it would be his first lead.

Whilst deep in these thoughts, Liber's pondering on the future made him absent minded of the present. A pair of disease ridden rodents found his trespassing into their waters to be a grave sin and lashed out at the Fanalis man from the dark depths without warning. Suddenly Liber found himself pounced upon and bitten in two places be a set of overgrown rats. Ones teeth sunk into his shoulder and hung on for dear life as the other gnawed at Liber's ankle. Grunting, the fanalis managed to get one of his needles out and used it to pierce the one at his shoulder in the eye lobotomizing its brain. The other rat down below received a quick fanalis kick that broke it's neck and sent it flying.

Sadly, Liber was not out of the woods...swamp, yet. An ever larger beast with beady red eyes emerged from the sewer wards and lunged for Liber. The Rat King's Overbite tore a gruesome bite into Liber's left arm. Better than his throat as it would have been had Liber not raised his limb to block the attack. He slammed the Rat King against the wall with his fanalis might and the punched its head crushing it into a vile splatter of grey matter against stone. With these monsters dealt with, Liber continued on wearily to the manhole and climbed out not even caring to begin his surveillance of nearby buildings just yet. First, Liber went to the nearest bath house he could find and cleansed his wounds and body so as not to let infection fester.

With some basic hygiene out of the way, Liber spent his off days of not searching the sewer looking around the manhole's street for lingering signs of Kou agents. After a month of sewer diving, Liber felt like he had sufficient knowledge of the tunnel ins and outs to get just about anywhere in the city via sewer paths. Alas, his kou investigation was no further along for it.

~1000/1000~