Slumrat Rising

Vol. 3 Chapter 32: Catching Breath

To get cleanly out of Gwaju, a small city of no particular importance at the southern tip of the Jeon peninsula, one had to cross the highway that ringed the outer edge of the city. More like a three-quarters circle on account of the ocean being in the way, but that was the basic idea. You could be in your fine carriage, coming in from one of the “attractive” and “enviable” suburbs around the city, and simply zoom to your high-paying job in the city. The space and privacy of the countryside, with the convenience and industry of the city. The best of both worlds.

Truth admired the parking lot in front of him. Traffic was at a full stop as far as he could see in both directions. This was not, he was surprised to learn, because of the lockdown. It was because it was the evening rush hour. “Evening Rush Hour” was defined as the period of some four hours, covering the late afternoon and early evening. The police checkpoints weren’t exactly speeding things up, but the extra traffic control more or less balanced the delay caused by the inspection. Truth didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He could cause more damage to the city by knocking over a couple of wagons here than by firebombing a police station.

Not that either activity was called for at the moment. No, the challenge was how to get across this massive stream of vehicles without hundreds or thousands of bored eyeballs staring at him and wondering what a person was doing crossing the highway. There were spell birds patrolling up and down the highway, too- the draw on Incisive and the Blessing of the Silent Forest would be immense, multiplying the drain of total unnoticibility.

He wanted to go back to when he could just swan around, effortlessly ignored by dozens of Level Ones or an unlimited quantity of Level Zeros. The last twenty-four hours or so had sucked, and he really, really just wanted to find a place to rest.

He looked up the road, seeing the swarming police presence, knowing that rest was still a long way off. He sighed deeply. The overpass he was on led down a ramp onto the highway proper. The highway itself was separated from the suburban houses next to it by a tall bank of dirt with a very tall cement wall on top of that. It wasn’t intended to be pedestrian accessible. That was kind of the point.

Truth gamed out a couple of ideas, decided none were particularly practical, and went for the most time-consuming and safest. He strolled to the edge of the exit ramp, crouched down, and ran along the wall. He was briefly visible to the cars stacked up on the ramp, but only briefly, and only to a few people at a time. The drain on his energy was negligible and easily covered by its normal regeneration.

From the ramp to the road was slightly trickier, but only slightly. He dove into the drainage ditch that ran alongside the highway and used it to line up his route. It took ages crawling around, but it did have the advantage of, again, minimizing exposure and, again, reducing energy usage to almost nothing. Then, when he found a reasonably good crossing point, he crouched low and ran.

This time, he was using the almost stationary carriages as his cover, hiding behind bodywork or hoods, moving from cheap carriages to late model beaters, to utility wagons, and so on. Avoiding anything that even vaguely suggested the owner might be over Level 2. There was a steady drain on his energy at this point, but nothing too dreadful. More eyes on him, after all. He made it across the road and flopped down in the ditch.

After gathering his breath a moment, Truth rolled onto his back and looked up. From the bottom of the ditch to the top of the wall was almost twenty meters. Optimism be damned; he was sure he didn’t have a twenty-meter vertical jump. What he did have was absolutely brutal, literally superhuman, speed. Once he was sure his cosmic energy was as full as it was reasonably going to get without cultivating, he got his feet under him, almost curled into a ball in the ditch. He leaned over and put his hands on the embankment. Braced himself. Then jumped!

His first bound easily took him halfway up the embankment. He just wanted to have enough speed so that his next three steps would carry him to the wall with ease. Then Abner’s Amble! He cast the spell as soon as he hit the top of the embankment. Put his toes on the wall and launched UP! The drain on his cosmic energy was as explosive as his launch, as shot up to the top of the wall. It took all his lightning reflexes to catch the edge of the wall as he went past and changed his vector from “up” to “over.”

He landed in an impeccably fertilized and mowed yard, which he proceeded to cross at speed. He didn’t stop running flat out until he was ten kilometers from the highway and safely hidden in the guest bedroom of a suburban family home. He collapsed on the soft mattress, dirty shoes on the clean bedspread. It wasn’t nice of him, but he was too tired to care.

The family was having dinner downstairs. Sounded tense, but the parents were doing their best to hold it together for the kids. Truth was intensely uncomfortable, but he was also completely shattered at this point. It wasn’t the physical stress. It was being hunted. Of judging every tiny move. Not feeling safe for a single second. It took a toll. The family would go to bed soon. It would be enough.

He tried to consciously relax his muscles. He knew how to do this. They talked about it in therapy. Heck, they talked about it in a romance novel. You focus on your breathing, and when you have it deep, slow, and steady, you pay attention to the top of your head. And you let it relax. You give it permission to just let go. To relax. Then you work your way down, muscle by muscle, to the tips of your fingers and the soles of your feet. Take as long as you like. Just breathe, direct your attention, and let it relax.

It always made him sleepy. Even the noise of the evening routine didn’t stop him from drifting away.

He snapped straight back to alertness when the wife walked into the room. She looked tired. Drained. Carrying a book and a glass of water. She closed the door behind her, switched on the light next to the bed, and pulled back the cover. Truth scootched over to the side. She slid into bed next to him, reading. Trying to relax. He could see it. She was trying to calm her breath. Ten minutes later, it still wasn’t working for her. Truth would have told her to cultivate, but a bare Level One, trying to cultivate as the magic thinned? It would have been better than nothing, but not a lot better.

Fifteen minutes in, and she gave a resigned little sigh. She opened the bedside table and pulled out a little blue vial. A few drops went into her water, turning the whole thing a faint turquoise. She drank it sip by sip, visibly relaxing. Truth just watched. What could he tell her? To be strong? That things would work out? Her kids needed her? Her husband needed her? She needed herself? They didn’t even qualify as comforting lies anymore. It was pure insult. For her, despair was completely rational. She lacked the mental training to rebel. To find meaning in this desperate, futile world.

He had no hope to offer. Not even faith. All he could think of was what got him through his childhood. What was getting him through the present. With a tired effort, he cast Incisive.

“Sometimes, when everything is doomed, and you can’t see any hope, the only thing to do is act like what you are doing matters. Make yourself believe it. Believe it all the way to the end. Believe it as you are dying, if you have to. Because it hurts too much to think nothing you do matters. And who knows, maybe it will work after all. So you can sleep now. You can rest knowing you did your best. And tomorrow you will get up, hug your kids, kiss your husband, and fight like Hell.”

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Truth managed to sleep next to the wife, though not well. He realized, with a faint trace of self loathing, that she didn’t register as any sort of threat to him. He was quietly confident that, even if she pulled a needler from under her nightgown, she still couldn’t hurt him with it. She just was lesser. Not a being on the same level of existence. So he got a fitful night sleep in a comfortable bed.

He decided to make it a slow morning. Partially because he was still emotionally exhausted from his escape from Gwaju, and partially because he felt guilty about relegating the family to a lower tier of beings. Specifically, leaving his dirty footprints on the cover. He would beat the piss out of anyone who did that to one of his sheets. Enchanted cleaning tubs were standard in any suburban home, right? So it wasn’t a heavy lift.

>

Nice. Load it up.

>

Truth shrugged. Wasn’t like he was in an immediate rush. Despite the enrolment period coming closer with every passing second. Truth shook his head. Bad way of thinking. Time spent sharpening the axe wouldn’t slow cutting the tree and all that.

The spell felt… some kind of way. Prickly, maybe? Or irritable if a spell could have emotions. Like a man speaking very clearly, but people kept misunderstanding him. Frustrated. The System passed on what it had learned studying the spell to Truth. Truth snagged the key points easily- indicate what needed fixing and let the spell rip.

The cover shouldn’t have mud on it. Easy peasy. Cup and Knife didn’t quite go off. Truth tried it a few times, and eventually, there was a desolate little spark of energy. The duvet was now quite clean. He got in close and took a good look. He couldn’t see anything inherently different. The fibers weren’t damaged or anything. Just… poof. Dirt gone, at a very low energy cost.

>

Truth had no answer to that. He shrugged, grabbed a very thorough shower, and had a nice sit-down breakfast from the junk food in his duffel. He put on the scry for a minute but couldn’t find the news. Oh well. He knew where the dead drop was and how to get there. A complete pain in the ass going cross-country, but he was still too close to Gwaju to want to risk running down the highway. His shoulders slumped as he looked over his map. Another tiring day. Well. Nothing for it but to get started. He oriented himself on the map and started his great cross-suburbia adventure.