Chapter 52: Underground Sewers

Lancaster City was originally one of the four most well-developed cities in Tierra, and was the only city under Tierra’s rule that didn’t fall after Tierra did, managing to continue thriving purely on commerce and trade.

Thanks to the vast variety of trade markets and commodities, Lancaster had the most well developed and large underground sewage system in the Valla Empire.

Along with the large scale migration of merchants and citizens into the city, the lord of the city also received great profits from commercial tax, allowing five expansions to be done on the city in its 200-year history, along with its sewage system.

The earliest copies of the sewage blueprints were long gone, and along with the five expansions, the entire underground sewage system of Lancaster became a sprawling maze spanning the entire city.

And so, the underground sewers became the shelter of some creatures that couldn’t see the light of day.

In the pitch-black underground sewer, a pale blue oval-shaped screen of light suddenly appeared, lighting up the darkness and scaring away the Hogwash Rats and the Rotten Cockroaches.

“So this is the event location… This mysterious and eerie atmosphere is great!”

“This looks like the underground cities mentioned in knight novels! I’m pumped up!”

“Is something smelly or is it just me? There seems to be a sour smell…”

“That’s because the person next to you threw up from dizziness…”

“Whatcha looking at? Never seen a mage’s Acid Arrow?! Blergh—!”

“…”

Seeing the noisy players gather up around her, Leah who had been confident about this quest started feeling like reclaiming the lost hideout from the Rotten Bones Church wasn’t such an easy task.

The reason was simple: The players hadn’t even realized that this was only an underground sewer.

“Everyone, I’m sure you have understood the details of this quest…” Leah cleared her throat and cut the conversation between the players short, wanting to continue on to fill them in on some more things.

The players only quieted down for a moment before starting to become noisy again.

“F*ck, I never read the flavor text when I do quests!”

“It’s alright let me fill you in, basically you just have to find enemies and bash their brains out…”

“Understood, easy peasy!”

“Blergh—!”

“You’re not done puking yet?!”

Feeling a headache coming on, Leah immediately opened her event skill page and activated a skill called Speaking Egg to trigger story mode and restrict the players from moving and speaking.

“These are the underground sewers of Lancaster, and our goal is to siege the Rotten Bones Church hidden in the depths of this sewer. Please find their hideout and destroy them without leaving the sewer!”

Even though the place that the Rotten Bones Church took over was Leah’s original hideout, but since the old and new sewers crossed together if a person were to enter from an entrance from they were not familiar with they would quickly get lost in the sewers, losing their sense of direction. This was why the lord of Lancaster did not do anything despite knowing that there were terrible creatures hiding in the sewers.

After all, including the abandoned parts from almost a hundred years ago, the underground sewers were even wider spread farther than the buildings from above. No matter which church decided to go in there, there would always be large amounts of casualties, so after some time no church wanted to let their believers go in.

After all, if they died because they were defeating evil cultists, they could still have died in honor, and perhaps even enter their god’s Divine Kingdom after they died. But if they died from a random reason like miasma or poisonous gas before even getting involved in combat, what would they have died for? For cleaning the sewers? Their god would probably be the first to come and smack them for being an embarrassment…

As for the lord of the city that conserved his forces so that he would not be overwhelmed by any of the large churches, he would definitely not do something that was synonymous with cutting off his own arms.

And so, this strange underground sewage system was preserved until now, becoming a thorn in the side of Lancaster’s recovery.

“At the beginning of your exploration, you may receive a Blank Map that will automatically record the places you have walked through, and upload it to the records kept by the God of Games, earning you AP. You can also use AP to buy the newest map from me.”

Leah shared the crude map system that Xi Wei rushed to make to the players, then switched off story mode. “You may start your exploration now!”

And so the players who had already become impatient cheered, most of them immediately grouping into parties and leaving to explore the underground sewers.

Only a small amount of players stayed by to ask Leah about the buff skills they could activate here.

Seeing almost 60% of the players start right away, Leah sighed in relief.

She hadn’t had any contact with any of the players before this, so they could only be counted as strangers with the players. They might nod at each other in greeting purely out of the merit that they believed in the same god, but that was about it.

In comparison, she would rather give her trust in the hands of the people she knew and trusted.

“Even though a lot of the players look like they can’t be counted on, but at least Mr. Marni is here…”

Marni’s competence while they were at Wickidor in successfully bringing back a hundred refugees to the unnamed town gave her confidence in this shabby-looking man.

If it were him, maybe he could be the first to discover the Rotten Bones Church hideout!

[Marni Wilf died while swimming in the cesspool. Revival in one minute.] 1

Princess Leah: “…”

“Wow, Marni died again!”

“How inhumane!”

“Is no one roasting his death method?”

“Why roast him? It’s a creative way to die!”

The players left behind all laughed and joked around.

Immediately, the temporary warp point was filled with a cheery atmosphere.

Even though the number of players that died in strange and funny ways wasn’t low, a lot of players were still exploring the sewer carefully. After all, 2% of EXP was still EXP, and if they were disqualified from the quest by dropping to Level 4 they would probably cry…

And so, the mysterious underground sewers of Lancaster slowly showed its true form under the map made by Xi Wei.

Ch 52 Footnote 1

Hahaha he keeps dying