The Abyss is an extremely dangerous place, with vultures and wild dogs hiding in shadowy corners, eyeing the passing fatties.
There are no laws here, following the natural law of the weak and the strong.
This is the impression of the Abyss from the original body's memory.
Charlotte stood in front of the clinic, still surrounded by a foggy, dim look at noon.
Looking upwards, a narrow band of white light could be seen through the misty gray fog that was the sky of the abyss.
The Abyss, true to its name, is a long, narrow city nestled in the Great Rift Valley just outside the city of Karwar.
Narrow at the top and wide at the bottom, the hundreds of meters of cliffs formed a natural barrier to the maddening magical beasts of the wasteland.
It was one of the few large cities on the continent of Aesop that was not protected by a magical barrier.
Chaos and disorder are the stereotypes of the Abyss from the outside world.
But under the control of several major gangster families, the real Abyss actually maintains a unique order.
As long as you pay enough protection money, then you can likewise do a little business in the Abyss, like open a clinic or something.
Baca Street, where Charlotte's clinic is located, belongs to the Harriman family and is generally quite harmonious compared to other streets controlled by gangster families ...
Not far away, two orcs beat each other in the street, white knives in, green knives out, the winning one stooped down to snatch the money bag, turned around and disappeared in the mist, the other orc died horizontally in the street unattended.
Never mind, he took back that previous sentence.
There would be no safe place in the abyss.
Poverty is the best passport to the abyss.
Unless you're overly good-looking, few people are generally interested in poor people.
Of course, you have to always be on your guard against poor poor people who are at the end of their rope and will do anything to stay alive.
Like all social structures, in the Abyss, people are similarly categorized into three, six, and nine classes.
Powerful forces and individuals with great strength, represented by the four gangster families, are the rulers of the Abyss, the proper upper class.
They kill and plunder the lower classes and exploit them wantonly.
Next is the middle class that carefully survives under the patronage of the gangster families by paying protection money, and the class of fresh leeks most favored by the upper class.
They are generally the owners of various personal stores in the Abyss, or criminals, mercenaries, and adventurers with some ability to defend themselves ...
Charlotte was such a fresh leek now, working hard to make money each month and then paying a handsome rent to her landlady with only a few copper coins jingling in her pocket.
Abyss to earn money abyss to spend, not a dime to bring home.
The bottom of the barrel remains poor.
Many of them were persecuted in other cities and entered the abyss, and without the ability to defend themselves or earn money, they had to die slowly in the dark corners.
And then there are the middle-class leeks who have been poisoned by the addictive magic pills distributed indiscriminately by the gangs, who have lost their homes and their bodies to bad health.
Of course, there are some salty fish who have lost their dreams mixed in, and such are among the more harmless poor.
Charlotte had the self-consciousness of being a competent leek, and worked hard to fatten herself up so that the landlady would be a little happier to cut.
The primary goal, then, is to get through each day safely.
Going out, it's a risk.
Charlotte has done the math and in the last three years he has made 204 trips out of the house and been in danger a total of 18 times.
Twelve of them were pure robberies, with a shroud left at the end to return to the clinic unharmed.
Twice, after being knocked out from behind, he was ransacked of all the possessions he had on him and not even a piece of cloth was left for him to cover himself with.
On two other occasions, there were violent robberies in the street, where the knife pierced the neck and chest cavity, only millimeters from the aorta and heart, and survived by luck and self-help.
The most outrageous ones are the two remaining ones.
Once he was looked at by a three hundred and sixty pound female orc, smashed unconscious and carried straight back home, and had he not escaped while she was out hunting, he would surely have been impure.
Another time, he was taken captive and sold into a clubhouse, endured three days of training, and because of his lack of endurance and excessive speed, he was judged unqualified and thrown right out.
Charlotte: ????
The incident hit Charlotte's self-esteem so hard that at one point she was so self-absorbed that she couldn't open her business properly.
Charlotte glanced at his skin, which was so pale that it was almost transparent because of the constant lack of sunlight, and it was a good thing that the club was only open to female guests or he would have been dirty.
Looking up at the light of day and determining the approximate time, Charlotte took her first step into the abyss.
Going out in the middle of the day has a higher safety rate.
This is the truth practiced by the predecessor.
There was a bakery right next to the clinic, and Charlotte paid four copper coins for two loaves of black bread, stood in front of the store and stuffed a few mouthfuls of it haphazardly, then took a big gulp of cool water and swallowed the dry, hard bread, which made her feel that her body belonged to her.
Stuffing the one remaining loaf of bread into her pocket, Charlotte glanced from side to side and stepped quickly along the edge of the street into the mist.
Charlotte needed to make a hemostatic potion and a cleansing potion, which were very important potions in his daily clinic, and he had found the method of making them in his journal to try and make them.
In addition to this he also planned to refine the hydrating serum, which was a high profit product that would bring him great rewards if the sales could be opened up.
The apothecary material store was located on Tucker Street, seven or eight streets away from Baca Street.
Charlotte followed the memorized route, avoided some dangerous locations, and arrived at the material store an hour later without any danger.
Harry, the owner of the material store, was an old gnome man with shrewd eyes hidden behind thick lenses of black metal framed glasses, seeing Charlotte enter the door, he smiled and stood up from the recliner, "Dr. Charlotte, you haven't been here for a long time, I thought that you've been sold off to one of the clubs again."
Charlotte's face darkened, this kind of black history was the last thing she wanted to be mentioned.
He wasn't angry though, Harry was one of the few beings the original could call a friend in the Abyss, and a steady supplier of herbs to him.
Although he loves to be cheap, the quality of the materials provided is not compromised.
"Don't mention it, it hasn't been going too well lately, here's a list of materials I need this time." Charlotte fished a list out of her arms and handed it over, talking the way the two had interacted in the past.
Harry took the list and the cloth pockets and weighed the materials as he said, "What all went wrong, tell me to amuse old brother."
"My landlady is in love with me." Charlotte made a casual remark.
"No way!" Harry shook his head decisively and looked back at Charlotte, "After all, you're the inferior male demon who was eliminated from the clubhouse."
Charlotte: ="= convex
Making small talk with Harry, Charlotte surveyed the material store from side to side.
Silver bats the size of palms were drying on long poles, a huge colored snakeskin encircled a post, dried green frogs were piled in a corner, and a putrid stench filled the air.
Harry's material store not only supplied magical potion materials, but also all kinds of magician supplies, two rows of exquisite magic wands stood on the cabinet behind the counter, a brilliantly colored magic stone was placed in a separate box, and two fist-sized purple magic cores came from the fifth level magic beast Berserk Lizard in the wasteland, which was the treasure of the store.
It is one of the most comprehensive magical materials stores in the Abyss, and one of the richest private stores.
Harry had vaguely mentioned that this material store had the background of the Cade family, one of the four major gangster families, so no one dared to hit him.
"Has Calva been up to anything interesting lately?" Charlotte asked casually.
Harry walked between the Abyss and Calva all year round, and it was rumored that he also had a much larger material store in Calva, and one of the main reasons Charlotte liked to talk to him was to get some information about the outside world from him.
"What can be new under the sun, those old men of the council have made Calva more and more boring, Calva wasn't like this a few hundred years ago." Harris sounded disgusted.
Charlotte was silent, hundreds of years ago when Calvar was first established, a hundred years ago, naturally, it was different from the present guard.
"There are no big things, but there is one funny thing, and, it has something to do with you." Harry pushed his glasses, which had fallen to the tip of his nose, and looked at Charlotte with a smirk.
"Something to do with me?" Charlotte frowned, was there still a legend of Brother circulating in Calva?
"That former fiancée of yours, the daughter of the Lord of Calva's, Elizabeth, it is said that the Lord of the city has recently rearranged a marriage for her, and the other party is the second son of the Duke of Cromwell, the Minister of State of the Reims Empire." Harry stared at Charlotte's face as if he wanted to see some interesting changes in expression.
Charlotte's expression didn't waver half as much as it should have, and she said calmly, "Sounds like a good homecoming."
For that childhood friend's ex-fiancée, the memory is not particularly strong emotional ties, at best a little bit of the humiliation of being withdrawn from the marriage after falling on hard times.
Charlotte began her surgical studies while attending Calvary Medical School and has been working on healthcare reform since graduation, with less contact with Elizabeth, who grew up dreaming of becoming a Dragon Rider.
The marriage contract was set by their elders when they were children, Charlotte's grandfather had been a councilor in the Calva Council, and her parents were also high-ranking wizards, but more than a decade ago his parents were accidentally killed during a defense operation of the Wraiths' onslaught on Calva, and he was left an orphan.
Seeing Charlotte's expressionless face, Harry couldn't help but feel a bit bored and skimmed his lips, "Sounds like a good homecoming, but that Duke Cromwell's second son is a notorious flirt, your ex-fiancée can't look at him, so she put out the word that if that second son can beat her, she'll marry him or the marriage won't be counted as a good one. "
"Then the marriage is not over?" Charlotte was a little amused by this.
In his memory, Elizabeth, who had half of the elf bloodline, was a fourth-ranked knight three years ago, and none of the knights of the younger generation of Calvary were her rivals, and she was still the leader of the younger generation when looking at the continent of Aesop.
"It's hard to say, Duke Cromwell's power is extremely great, and if the city lord wants to enter the council, he can't do without the support of the human councillors, that's why he facilitated the marriage." Harry laughed and shook his head, "Maybe in the future there will be a scene of a forced marriage of a daughter, this is nothing new."
Charlotte shrugged, it really wasn't anything new, but what did it have to do with him?
All he wants to do now is try to get money!
"All the materials are here, a total of fifteen silver coins, and I've wiped four copper coins off the top for you." Harry handed Charlotte the bulging cloth pocket.
"Thanks." Charlotte placed the fifteen silver coins on the counter and turned to leave, carrying the heavy cloth pocket.
"I hope to see you again next month." Harry's blessing came from behind him.
Charlotte tucked the remaining two copper coins into his shoe, and if all went well, he'd be back at the clinic in an hour.
It was the return trip that was the most dangerous, and although the bulging ragged parcel was filled with strange things like silver-winged bats, dried frogs, and green-eyed gull feces, it didn't detract from its attention.
And dozens of pounds on his back greatly limited his agility and speed for his small frame.
The return trip was relatively safe at this point in time, though; most of the abyssal creatures had just eaten lunch about half an hour ago and were at their most sleepy.
When stop-and-frisk becomes a profession, then there is bound to be a regular routine.
Charlotte picked up her pace, hoping to get home soon.
And then it hit a sword around the corner.