Chapter 86 Susie
Waking up rather early in the morning, Shiro looked around to see that everyone was still asleep.
'Seems like the kids don't mind the sleeping bags that much.' Shiro thought as she knew how picky some kids could be with a different sleeping environment.
Getting up quietly, Shiro looked at the time and saw that it was 6am.
'Around sunrise. This should be a decent time to scout out the slums.' Shiro thought. With the sunrise, there'll be more shadows for her to hide herself in.
Pulling up her mask and hood, Shiro stepped out of the tent without waking them up.
Looking around, she saw that she still had a few minutes until the sun started to become visible. She could already see slight hints of red in the distance.
'I should try to get this over and done quickly.'
Yin Style Phantom Arts: 1st Phantom + 2nd Phantom.
Her body flickered out of the campsite as she made sure to avoid the staff that were patrolling the area. She didn't want to expose herself snooping around the slums after all. Even her tent mates only knew that she was going to scout for information. Nothing more, nothing less.
Landing on the side of a building, Shiro started to parkour up to the roof with ease.
'The first task I should do is figure out the territory the slum lords' control. Once I do, I should be able to manipulate their conflict with each other to mask my movements. I also need to figure out how many slum lords there are. If there is only one, then things might get a little annoying.' Shiro thought, jumping over the gaps between the buildings.
Flipping her body over, she squeezed through the gaps of a few metal supports and didn't slow down. What she was doing right now was manually mapping out the slum area.
Even though the digital maps gave her quite a bit of detail, it was still good to make sure of everything yourself. Digital information could be tampered with after all. It was still best to do the work yourself to make sure that there were no errors.
After running around the slums area, she had a basic map of it in her mind. The slum wasn't too big but it wasn't small either.
'So far from what I've seen, the slums seem to be split amongst 3 slum lords. The subtle difference in how they lay out their parts of the slum and the abrupt change from one territory to another suggests that they're fighting one another for control.' Shiro thought with narrowed eyes. Currently, she was hiding in the shadow of one of the taller buildings in the slum area.
She knew that the slum lords must be high levelled to have this much control in a relatively high level city.
Plus, with the government not shutting down the slums either, it seems like they had a few complications.
'Wait… could it be that the reason the government located the refugees into the slums were to get the slums to act? If they did, they'll have a reason to act against the slums.' Shiro thought as it was strange for the government to place the refugees this close to the slums. If anything, outside of the city would also be fine and yet, they were in the slums.
'But aren't they able to act against the slums for black market, smuggling routes and the such?' Shiro thought with narrowed eyes.
There was something going on that wasn't right and being used as bait wasn't something Shiro liked a whole lot.
'So the potential key points are that the refugees MIGHT be used as bait to draw out the slum lords. The slums potentially have something that stops the government from making a move on them and need a more obvious reason to start attacking the slums. AND, for the slums to have this kind of power, they need to have high levelled leaders along with a decent backer.
'The backer must either be within the government or have enough 'presence' to push the government back. No reasonable city government would allow the slums of this kind of power to exist in their city.'
Naturally, she could think about this all she wanted but there was no need since she had no intention to remove the slums. Especially since she could also think of a few 'good' points to keep the slums.
'The slums can act as a fire behind the adventurers. They'll be pushed into the thought of wanting to be higher levelled. This, in turn, would boost the cities economy since with more high levelled adventurers, the more income they'll get from the dungeons and out at sea.'
There are points for both good and bad, as with all things, but Shiro wanted to know the entire situation if possible. With that information, she would be able to plan her next actions around it and avoid whatever was happening if need be.
!!!
Quickly suppressing her presence, Shiro made herself an earpiece to amplify the sounds when she saw a few individuals coming out of a building.
"What's the boss been doing lately? I've seen him wandering around quite often."
"Dunno. Something about a weapon to help us take down Ice fang and Jade Shark."
"You mean we can finally take care of those f.u.c.kers?"
"Yeah."
"So you got any ideas on what the new weapon is? We gotta need something big since their executives are all C class adventurers."
"Don't ask me. Do you think I got the answers? The best I can guess is something similar to R-pike."
"R-pike?"
"You're new so you probably don't know. R-pike is a drug boss's friend made. It's very addictive and caused an outbreak in the slums a few years back. The authorities almost came at us because of it."
"Wait, I thought drugs don't affect us as much?"
"But that shit is super concentrated. I'm guessing that if anyone lower than level 30 consumes it, they'll most likely die straight away."
"Oh my god. You serious?"
"Yeah. How else are you going to make level 50's addicted to this shit?"
"Damn."
"Don't think about it. What that shit does to people is f.u.c.k.i.n.g horrifying man. Everyone who took it eventually killed themselves because they couldn't get another fix."
Shiro frowned as she heard this. R-pike sounded like a drug she knew back in her old life.
That drug had always been known by a code name: S250. That was because it was estimated that only those higher than level 250 could survive a small dosage. That was how potent the drug was. A single drop could have reduced a lush mountain to a poison one.
Naturally, with such a potent drug, making it was just as hard. Just a small cup of the drug took over 20 years of constant efforts to make. Just a single thought of what the cup of the drug did made Shiro shiver slightly.
The rest of their conversation didn't contain anything important as Shiro left the premises to scout out the other slum lords.
. . .
After scouting out the entire area for almost half a day, Shiro had gained a rudimentary understanding of the slums. The three factions that are trying to take control of the entire slums are the Ice Fangs, Jade Sharks and the Ivory Cobra.
Ice Fangs have the best combat power, Jade Sharks have the most influence out of the three and Ivory Cobra is the most dangerous. With their arsenal of poisons and drugs that circulates the markets, Ivory Cobra was the gang that the government wanted to take care of the most.
However, even after all this scouting that she did, she still had no idea as to why the government didn't move.
"Seems like the government are using the refugees as a bait and a cover. Bait for the people in the slums to try attack and cover to trade with the slum lords." Shiro muttered whilst feeding Yin her lunch.
Eating a few mana stones herself, Shiro was going to scout out the only area she left out till now. The black market.
Flipping over several barriers, Shiro swung herself onto a ledge.
Right now, she was looking at the entrance of the black market.
With two level 55 guards at either side of the door, Shiro narrowed her eyes.
A person walked up to the guards and whispered something to them.
The guards then nodded and allowed the man to enter the building.
'I can't use the sonic mapping or else the C ranked members would definitely be able to track it back to me.' She thought as there wasn't any way for her to enter the black market. From what she could tell anyway.
She could risk it and sneak in the black market but it wasn't worth the trouble. Her main tasks were completed. Scout out the slum area and understand the hierarchy.
Once she was far enough, she revealed herself and walked towards the main city of Cairosa. She was going to first update her adventurer's ID then go to the lowest level dungeon they have and level Yin up a little.
Looking at the bustling streets of Cairosa, Shiro couldn't help but notice how busy it was compared to New York.
Not to mention the fact that there were a lot more demi-humans from what she could see in the streets. Especially the cat people.
'Probably due to fish?' Shiro thought to herself.
However, that was a misconception as fish didn't make up the cat's main diet. In fact, it was better to feed cats other meats rather than fish.
Arriving at the adventurer's guild, Shiro wasn't surprised to see the building being much bigger than the one she saw in New York.
There were a few unfriendly stares in the crowd since they guessed that she was a refugee. So an influx of unknown adventurer's from other cities, they weren't pleased about them taking their bounties.
Shaking her head slightly, Shiro walked into the guild and queued up at the reception.
"Umf!"
A woman rudely barged past her as there was clear intent to make things hard for Shiro.
Shiro only frowned since she shouldn't make a scene.
But it was also bad if she made it seem like she was a pushover. They'd get the idea that they could keep on pushing her aside.
'What to do… what to do…' Shiro thought with narrowed eyes.
Her 'opponent' was a level 50 knight. While she could kill her with ease, that wasn't a viable option. If she was to fight her 'fairly' there was still a chance that the woman's status will overwhelm her.
There was only one option for her.
Pure killing intent!
By directing pure killing intent towards the woman, she'll be able to single her out without offending the people around her.
Pulling up her mask a little, Shiro narrowed her eyes at the woman.
The temperature started to drop as her killing intent started to flow outwards, singling out the woman.
The woman was about to continue to taunt Shiro when she suddenly felt a hulking aura crash down onto her. She was about to scream when the aura intensified, rendering her speechless. Her muscles tensed up in fear as sweat poured out from her body.
Her mouth agape with paralysing fear.
Ice started to form around where she stood and Shiro knew she had to stop.
Retracting her killing intent, Shiro thawed the ice while the woman collapsed on the floor as she tried to shuffle her body away from Shiro as quickly as possible.
"Ah!! AHHH!! AHH!" She wasn't able to form words as her fear had taken over her instincts. Just looking at Shiro's cold merciless eyes made her shake with dread.
"AHH!!!!!" Scrambling on her feet, she ran away from Shiro with all of her might.
Scoffing slightly, Shiro redirected her focus back to waiting in the queue.
Naturally, most adventurers only found the situation odd while others didn't have a reason to act against Shiro since she didn't attack physically.
From an outsider's perspective, it looked like the woman had just lost her mind and went crazy.
The adventurers who were waiting for a good show was shocked seeing the grown woman run from the little girl like her life was in danger. The senior adventurers narrowed their eyes a little before ignoring it.
It wasn't something they could be bothered to deal with. At best, it was like children fighting in a park.
Once she was at the front of the desk, she was slightly surprised to see a cat woman as the receptionist.
"Welcome nya. Is this your first time in Cairosa nya?" She asked.
While she was a beast woman, there were more human parts to her than beast. The only animalistic parts were cat ears, a tail and two fangs. The rest of her was human.
'Seems like she is only 1/5th cat woman.' Shiro thought, looking at the receptionist in front of her.
Her hair was coloured a healthy red and reached her waist. The hair itself took a 'wilder' appearance instead of being smooth. Her irises were yellow and her overall physique leaned towards the small and nimble side.
Her clothes, on the other hand, was just a simple office woman suit.
'And yet she is still bigger than me.' Shiro thought whilst looking at the cat woman's b.r.e.a.s.t and height.
[Susie LVL 50 – Cat Girl]
However, her stare didn't last too long as she knew it was rude to stare.
[I wish to update my adventurer's ID card.] Shiro typed out.
"Alright nya. Just give me a second ok nya." Susie smiled and took Shiro's ID card.
'I don't remember cat girls needing to say nya at the end of their sentences though…' Shiro thought with confusion. Beast men had pretty much the same speech pattern as humans.
[Do you cat girls have to say nya at the end? Because I don't remember that being a race trait.] Shiro asked.
"We don't. I just like saying it." Susie smiled dropping the nya.
'Well... that was… interesting.' Shiro thought. During this, she happened to see an ad for the Cairosa auction that caught her interest.