There were no more incidents, which frankly speaking was something that I was thankful for. I wasn't feeling hungry again which was a good thing, because every random bloke I passed on the street was pretty much looking like a snack. But what was worse is how disconnected I felt from everything.
I was looking at the entire world through a lens of apathy. I didn't really feel anything or gave a shit about anything. It worried me, it worried me a lot. Especially since I used to love this part of Mormon city. The Snakeman Commercial district was 4th largest commercial district in the city, it was the poor man's happy land.
It held our markets, our theaters, our supermarkets, our bars, the hotels, the red light districts, and it was the packaging area for most of the drug trade in the entirety of Down city. Or downtown, the areas relegated to the less privileged. Owning a business here was the dream of quite a lot of people, my grandmother's especially.
If our restaurant was here instead of back in the Dogman district, perhaps things would not have been so hard on us. It had four main streets, all but one of them was controlled by the Silver's. Apparently the fourth street that held most of the drug and convenience stores, belong to a powerful family from up town, which was saying something.
Skipping Mid-town to come all the way to down town to own a territory and take collections from the businesses there took a lot of balls. You would have to circumvent a lot of territory to do so, stepping on a lot of shoes in the process. But uptown was the cream of the crop, they had the most money and the most power….this was the world that Sophie now belonged to.
Never the less finding the docks wasn't too hard. That part of the city was seedier than most, in all hours of the day many people came here to find work due to the ships that regularly came in. Mormon was a port city, and the center of the drug trade in the Western edge of the continent.
Of course after the war with Palladia the city has been pretty much cut off from the rest of the world, as no merchant or businesses wanted to risk the ire of the Palladian Theocracy by doing business with what they had coined a 'Sinful and Cursed City'. I'd say they should go suck a bag of dick's, but not much that we can do about it.
But on the docks you were more likely to get a knife in your kidneys and all your shit robbed than getting a job. It would be smart to keep an open eye as even established gang members have been fucked by the vultures in this part of the city. Lucky for me, everyone kept a wide berth, must be the blood on my shirt.
I had tried to clean up as best as I could, but I still had a significant part of the blood of my enemies on me…..battle scars…. Or not. This much blood made me look like a lunatic, which was good. People only left beggars, lunatics, and the strong alone. I found my way to entrance of the secret testing sight and banged my hands on it.
"Who the fuck is that! Can't you use the fucking doorbell!"
My heart jumped into my throat at that, but just as quickly a cold feeling suffused me. My heart was not beating but I could still feel fear, but ultimately it was still not that much of a problem….the fear was only for a second. The doors swung open as over a dozen guns were pointed in my face…..I blinked once, then twice, then the third time, the. Shrugged before raising my hand.
This was all so bothersome, could they at least not be so high strung. What are they afraid of anyways, with this much guns nobody would fuck with them. I noticed that most of the guns pointed at me, at least 5 of them anyways were from other test participants. Looks like they got here ahead of me.
"I remember you, you're the twerp that jumped last….you look different kid, I take it you got a great card." A voice said as I looked past the guns to notice it was Mayuri, the guy who was supposed to administer the test but led almost two dozen people to their deaths.
"Yeah something like that. I've brought the card, but I'd like to talk to the boss." He scoffed at me, as he pushed past the guns pointed in my face and said to me with a grin.
"Down here I'm the boss! So cough up what you've got and we can get this over with." I raised an eyebrow at that, I sort of expected something like this to happen. He would definitely try to pass of my achievements as his own, as everyone wanted to rise up in ranks.
I shrugged and brought out one of the epic cards, one of two that I came along with. I smiled at him and made sure everyone, and I mean everyone, including the people hanging around outside the warehouse, some of which were definitely the opposition of the Silver's.
"This is just one of two epic cards I have, the other is hidden quite carefully. With just about half a dozen rare cards too. A haul I'm sure none of the fuckers behind you were able to get. You can't kill me, you do so, your bosses will fuck you up for a missed opportunity. You can't let me go either, I'd definitely go all the way to the Dodson's and you know what that means. So will you take me to your boss, or at the very least the person who's ass your kissing and we can call it day.
I risked my life for this damn thing (Heck I even Died you miserable piece of shit!) So there's no way in hell I'm going to let you screw me over like I know you want to do. I almost died! So fuck all your shit and just point me in the direction of a Block Head or the district head himself or I walk, and in case you're really going to kill me, just know I won't go easily." I said to him as I pulled out the handgun I had graciously relieved my meal of and pointed it straight at his head.
"I'm not fucking around Mayuri, I almost died for this damn thing, I'm getting my life's worth."
Was what I was doing wise? No it wasn't , would it get me killed, probably. But this is the only way I can avoid starting out as a fucking grunt, it would take too much time climbing the ranks. I had to buy my way to as high a position as I could, but I was playing with fire. The only problem was that there was not a lick of fear in me, in fact...I was fucking enjoying myself."