Making it to the front, I see a guard manning the carriage, trying to stop its movement, probably realizing by the yells of the crowd that something went wrong.
Whilst he is in the motion of pulling back the reins of the three horses pulling the carriage, I grab his sword and pull it out of his scabbard. As he turns his head and realizes my existence, I put the sword to his neck.
Alright, never mind the civilians; thay probable won't just let me mix in with them anyway. If I want to get away from the guards, I need to flee faster.
I hastily force the soldier to sit on one of the horses, and I sit right behind him. Personally, I don't know how to ride a horse because I wasn't a no-life that wanted to learn how to ride a dead form of transport, so I'm letting the guard have control of its reins. With heavy restrictions, of course, mostly in the form of a sword at his neck.
"Ride that way!" I shout, pointing in the general direction of the slums. Any other direction would have too many guards; I can even see some on patrol running towards me, though they are about thirty seconds away.
Unfortunately, in the meantime, the fellow on horseback comes into sight, with a newly bloodied blade, which is probably from average Joe. He will be missed.
The guard in front of me seems to go into deep contemplation, so I decide to give him a little motivation. "Go, you idiot!" I yell again and hit him over his helmet with my left hand, putting my sword closer to his neck.
This seems to snap him out of it, and he heeds my command, riding forward, which is unfortunately towards the other guard.
He rides towards me too, sword out, probably not caring about his coworker's life.
As we get closer, he moves his blade into the motion of a slash.
I pull my sword up a little, putting my left palm behind the edge of the blade, trying to use it to block the guard's slash, which causes a shallow cut into the neck of the idiot in front of me.
As we approach each other, the bastard stabs at my head.
Not expecting so, I move my sword up with my left hand as fast as I can, having to curl my fingers around the blade to move it faster.
As we ride by, the stab bounces off the edge of the sword, taking three of my fingers with it.
We ride past, and I scream out in pain; that hurts a fucking lot. The asswipe in front of me tries to take advantage, bending down to his left foot, but I force him back with my sword.
Checking what he was trying to do, I see he has a small concealed dagger hidden in his left boot. How quaint. I take it out with my double trouble of pointer and thumb fingers. Seeing as my prison-given outfit has no pockets or boots to put the knife in, I hold it with my mouth.
God, my hand hurts a lot. It's probably very much advisable to stop the bleeding. Unfortunately, I can't do shit now.
Looking behind, I see the bastard chasing me, and his horse, probably being bred for speed instead of endurance or something, is catching up.
Hmm, I can probably throw the dagger in my mouth at his horse, but I'll need my right hand.
I can't hold the sword with my left hand anymore, so I decide to show off the prowess of the magic circle to my horsemate.
"Let me show you something," I say, and move my left hand down to his thigh.
I hold it for about two seconds, enough for him to feel the pain. When I remove my hand, nice cuts can be seen on his thigh's surface.
I move my hand to his throat and tell him, "You better not move, or that will happen to your throat."
I place the sword back into his scabbard and turn around to throw the dagger. I aim for the horse's head and throw.
The knife misses the head but hits its throat, which seems to be good enough as the horse whinnies and slows down.
With that dealt with, I turn around and see the guard reaching for the sword.
I slap his hand away, take the sword out, and put it back to his throat. And as a lesson, I put my left hand back onto his thigh and hold for two more seconds. He lets out a lovely yell, and I think he learns his lesson, maybe.
Alright, I am safe. Now I need to find a place where I can take a breather, get myself back together, and plan.
Unfortunately, there is no such place anywhere. The slums are filled with desperate opportunistic idiots. No one will just let me sit peacefully for a day or two in one place. And besides, if I just sit still all day, the wizards of this stupid world will probably track me down using soul shenanigans. The only real thing I can do is get out of this damn city.
As we ride through the streets, it becomes painfully obvious that the horse has no saddle on its back, as my rear starts to feel like I've been sitting on a rock for a full day straight.
Though like the currently multiple things going wrong inside my body, the adrenaline lets me ignore it, and as we make it to the slums, I tell the idiot to pull into an alley.
He awkwardly begins to maneuver the horse into an alley. After he does so, I take the horse's lead from him and loop it around my left arm.
I tell him to get down off the horse, and I follow too, sword still to his neck.
I push him against one of the walls of the alley and start asking questions.
First, I ask questions I already know the answer to, like, "If I walk to the gates of the city, will they let me pass?" or "What are the patrols like in the slums?" The answers to most of these questions I already learned in the gang I was in.
I catch him lying a couple of times, so I use my left hand more. I convinced him that I could tell if he was lying or not, which I suppose would be easy to believe because I already showed that I can use magic, if he forgets he just has to look down to his poor thighs.
So when he finally stops being stupid, I ask the question that actually matters, "If you were leaving the city, what excuse would you use for them to let you pass?"
"I'd say that I would… be going out on a scouting mission to check if the requests of the nearby villages to take care of a goblin horde had any merits. But that would require a note of approval from my superior."
"Well if you need a permission letter, that's not much of an excuse then."
The guard looks at me, judging by his face probably a smidge bothered by the hole in his thigh, "Yes, but they're easy to forge, I know someone that makes them for a bit of money, though I never found myself needing their services."
I tell him to provide me with their location, and he apparently knows several, which at first I find odd, before I remember that the nobles here like pulling some silly shenanigans with the city guards, like that one time Keswick's brother paid off a whole block of the city enforcers to just ignore me, so they probably need people like these forgers.
"And what would you say the odds of the goblin argument working would be?"
I haven't heard much about the monsters of this world, mostly stuff about them sometimes hindering transport and shipments of goods throughout the empire.
"I'd say pretty high. We are often sent out on such missions, though the fact that I would be going alone would be a bit suspect."
"All right, good enough," I say to myself and stab the sword into his throat.
As he's bleeding out, I remove his clothes, chainmail, and light armor off him before it gets stained by his blood.
I remove my prison clothes and put on the significantly more comfortable clothes he had on.
I rip the prison outfit into bandages and wrap them around my left hand, making sure to avoid my palm.
I put on the rest of his outfit, the chainmail being unexpectedly heavy on my shoulders, mainly because I am currently a walking plague. The dopamine rampaging through my body, thanks to all the action and the fact that my fingers are cut off, letting me currently shove off the haze of all the diseases.
The guard also had quite a bit of money with him, six silvers or so.
So, with the money I set out to the nearest forger the guard told me of.
Which isn't very far thanks to the fact that such sketchy businesses mostly operate in the slums.
I ask the idiot in charge to make me a letter as fast as possible and the utter bastard charges me three silvers, actually initially he charged me four but I manage to bring him down to three.
I begrudgingly pay the man the three silvers and he takes about an hour to create it.
Walking out with a very expensive piece of paper, I also remember I need to buy a saddle for the horse, or the gate guards will suspect something. Thankfully, I remember the market here had some people selling those.
I walk through the slums holding a horse lead in one hand and gripping my sword hilt with the other, everyone seems to avoid me since I am wearing a guard uniform which feels just wonderful, I finally don't have to watch my pouch in the slums.
I go as fast as possible so no one has a chance to mess me over.
I buy a horse saddle, along with a backpack, some fruit and raw meat, also water and a flask to hold it, a fire starter, and a dagger. This all costs me two silvers because I didn't want to waste time haggling. Thankfully, everything fit within the budget AND I even have a spare silver lying around in my pouch.
I put the saddle onto my horse, put on my backpack, and ride towards the gates.
The gates to the city are guarded by plenty of men, some even being wizards. If one wishes to exit or enter the city, a reason must be given, or a fee must be paid.
The cost of leaving or entering is a ridiculous two gold, which is basically unaffordable to any commoner or slum dweller. People generally don't leave this city only because the middle class are the only ones that can afford to leave, and unless they are a merchant, there really isn't much reason to go anywhere, well if you are not from the slums anyway.
In my spatial ring, I do have around six gold lying around, but I can't access the damned thing, which is a great bummer.
I make it to the gates, on the way trying to understand how horses work. I looked at how the dead guy did it and understood the general basics, but it's harder than it looks. But finally, with much effort, I make it and stand in line in front of the many merchant carts waiting for their chance to depart.
Waiting in line and slowly burning time away feels like there is some murderer slowly stabbing his knife into my gut, which is not at all ironic. I don't know if a bastard in black robes will appear in front of me out of nowhere and turn me into dust, this time without a chat.
Thankfully, nothing happens, and I move to the front. The guard there gives me a once-over, but thankfully the helmet covers my face and there isn't much else that's suspicious about me. I give the spiel that the guard told me, injecting a bit less emotion into his words and give him the forged letter.
He looks through it for a couple of seconds and then looks back up at me.
The guard seems to care a bit more about his job compared to the academy doorman and tells me to give him my backpack, which thankfully means he found nothing in the letter.
As nothing interesting shows itself in the backpack, he probably counts himself done with the bare minimum and waves me by.
And as I make it past this stupid city and see a slightly worn road going off into a forest, I sigh to myself and start on my way.
End of Vol 1