The first day was the hardest. They oh so often are. My wounds were brutal, far more brutal than I realized. I was lucky to be alive. The rat I’d eaten didn’t sit right, not at all, but I didn’t lack for a toilet. The river was right there, though concerns about falling over were definitely had. As was making too much noise.

  I collected and drank as much water as I could. I also finally stripped out of my Gi and underwear. Being nude in a sewer was immediately a horrible idea and feeling but the grime was so much that I had honestly started to feel weighed down. That split moment of slowness could actually kill me, so, the clothes had to go.

  I tossed them, carefully, down the tunnel the toad had come from. Walking towards it, I noticed a wide branching turn, making the room lead down into a much more expanded area. It looked like someone had seen the rest of the sewer and decided “Why not bigger?” A whole massive floor all covered with a thin thing of water, with varying amounts of water flowing from holes on the side. It boggled my mind continuously but I wasn’t about to learn anything by staring.

  Hopefully though, nothing would come through there. Hopefully, the toad would see my clothes and make a sound that alerted me, allowing me to run. Hopefully, I wouldn’t die of parasites, infection, or disease. Lots of different hopes there.

  The water didn’t get me clean, not nearly. It did get me mildly less awful and that already felt like a god send from heaven. Cleaning my wounds was a bit too little too late but I’d take it. Carefully looking over my body, the worst by far was actually my stomach. It had nasty puncture wounds from the giant rat’s teeth and a massive black bruise that hurt unlike anything I’d ever experienced.

  Everything hurt, all the time, constantly. A lot.

  I was not happy when I learned that pissing blood was my new regular.

  That was only the beginning of the many, many problems I had.

  But! I could remember my family happily now and that was honestly, probably, well worth the trade. I’d have done anything before to have the kind of lightness I felt now. Becoming this broken was honestly pushing it but well, it would all be worth it in the end.

  My head felt woozy, my body felt sick and cold and hot, parts of me were broken and I’d only barely missed having any significant broken bones by some sort of miracle. The toad had only, probably, left me alone because it thought it had killed me with those two moves. My front teeth were ruined, my lip torn, my hair a grimy mess, and the only parts of me miraculously mostly undamaged were my legs and back.

  In other words, I was good to go.

  Collecting and drinking water was easy now. I just had to be absolutely certain there wasn’t a toad and then leave as soon as I had my fill, while keeping my ears active and listening. The slightest twitch of anything unusual would have me moving. I could theoretically throw a big rat into the water or get lucky with a horde via alligator but another toad would kill me.

  When I wasn’t getting water, I was getting rats. This was both easy and hard. Rats traveled in packs or hordes. The sewer was also filled with them and they weren’t shy about trying to kill you. I avoided multiple big ones, by the grace of finding out they had terrible eyesight. The path between my hole in the wall and the water was becoming scarily dark from all the bulbs I was breaking but it had to be done.

  The rats didn’t like the dark but they’d go in it. I’d seen another horde while silently traveling around the tunnels. I had to. I needed to map out the area, figure out the prey and the predators, and make do. I hadn’t been chased but I was quickly hating the dark. It felt dangerous. It was dangerous. But necessary.

  Actually getting single rats to eat sucked. It sucked a lot. But they truly were everywhere. Just not near the alligator river. I failed more times than I succeeded, before I finally figured out that playing dead was a very viable strategy.

  Eating them was worse. It was raw meat, probably riddled with parasites. I choked and threw up more than a few times. I had no way of making a fire and no idea how to. I was really praying for the best but on the lookout for anything that could make heat.

  There was nothing, of course.

  The tunnel probably led somewhere useful, but toads were that way. At least one and that was one too many. The turn in the big room probably also went somewhere but the idea of running into anything I didn’t already know about was horrifying.

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  I needed to be better healed and stronger before that.

  And speaking of… I had something I’d almost forgotten about till I had started removing clothes.

  My Vambrace. The one Master had gifted me. A look at it proved shocking.

  [4.12]

  I had grown stronger. By a lot. That was from one fight, one run, and one ass beating. And yet it was over a fifteen percent increase. My growth had been higher past [2] but that was ridiculous. I made it a point right then and there not to look too much at that feature of my Vambrace. It would corrupt me. I needed strength and power but I could already imagine myself having [5] and thinking that was enough to fight a toad.

  It wasn’t.

  Best to continue assuming I’m weak and desperately try to gain power then think I’m strong enough or let my mind get clouded by pride.

  That wasn’t the only useful feature the Vambrace had however. I was in a life or death situation and any tool was going to be used right now. I’d have even taken a gun, despite the extreme stigma people had about them. The tool of cowards and oppressors, useless past a certain power level. But still, I’d have taken it immediately.

  I shook my head. My thoughts were still blown to pieces at the best of times.

  The Vambrace had video calling, which I’d immediately tried only to get no signal. Which wasn’t really surprising. It also had access to the internet, but also again, no signal. I was probably pretty deep underground then. The power level reader was ignored, though it was amusing that it, of course, went both ways. I could read others, not that I needed to. My eyes had been cursed since that fateful day to always see power levels.

  The vambrace also came with music, ignored. It could take photos and videos, which was useless to me. And it could store information, which was finally the first useful aspect it had. Notes alone would’ve been good enough but a drawing app on it let me actually make a real map. That was invaluable.

  The second best thing, was the flashlight.

  It turned out that rats had terrible eyesight and didn’t do well against a suddenly bright light.

  And so the days continued on and on.

  *****

  A week later, the first real problem started rearing its ugly head. I was sick. Really sick. Deathly sick. But there was no medicine down here, no healing, only me.

  I did as best I could, stayed quiet as best I could, but my body still shook like a leaf and I fell in and out of consciousness with a high fever more than a few times.

  My confidence waned, hard, in my continued survival. I even thought about trying the toad path or the right path to find some way out but I knew that was hopeless. I just had to tough it out. Sickness didn’t last forever. My body would adapt, adjust, break the fever, and then I’d feel like shit but I’d manage.

  Or I’d die because it killed me.

  The infection didn’t help. Having a bunch of open wounds in a sewer was bad for health. I was pockmarked and parts of me had strangely gone green. That was probably bad. The abscess and pus were pretty awful though. The high fever that felt like my brain was burning and melting helped take my mind off it though.

  Catching rats became strangely easier. They took one look at me and thought I was practically already dead.

  While fair, that seemed pretty rude.

  The sickness only got worse and worse and by the end of it, delirium started slamming into me. I lost track of time completely. Seconds felt like hours, hours like days, and days… I don’t know.

  It was all a horrible blur. There was fighting. Eating. Running. I ate a dog sized rat. Puking. I fell into the water with alligators once I think somehow. All bad.

  Finally, after who knows how long, I realized I was sitting down.

  The pain had also receded by a massive margin. My mind was coming back. The clarity of it at least. It took a few more days before my mind truly cleared up at all, but when it did, I nearly burst out laughing. It was only the hard fought desire to stay alive that stopped me.

  I was alive.

  I wasn’t well, not at all.

  But I was still alive.

  My wounds had healed up enough. However long it had been in that horrific state of delirium, I’d made it. Somehow. I could’ve sworn I’d spent a week unable to move at one point there but time was practically an illusion without having a sun or a moon. It could have been only an hour or it could have been a month. There was just no way of knowing.

  The important thing was I was alive and well enough. My body felt… awful, terrible, and still broken. But I could at least throw a fist again. I’d put it at even odds I could beat that giant rat again.

  I smiled a broken smile.

  I wasn’t going to get out of here without growing stronger and those big rats? Well, those were just punching bags in disguise.

  It was time to get stronger again.

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