Chapter 4: Bullying
Athar took the bus again to return to the outskirts of the city, to the dilapidated building he had been staying in for the past four years.
He was culminating the last phase of his journey, the fifteen-minute walk from the bus stop to the building when suddenly he found his path blocked by three men.
The three men were in their late thirties with burly bodies; and were the local thugs and gangsters of the area.
A system of these thugs worked in these parts of the city. They were the ones who maintained 'order' in the area. And in return, they took up thirty percent of the income of powerless people like Athar and small businesses and roadside stalls.
They called it 'protection' money. And what and whom did they protect from?
They protected these powerless people from themselves. The city protection force hardly paid any attention to the outskirts of the city.
According to whatever rumours Athar had heard, this web of the thuggery was a well-organized way to earn, and some influential and powerful people were the ringleaders of the entire system.
Athar, for the past decade, had paid his thirty percent of income to these thugs. If not for this, he might have been able to buy himself an iron-grade egg. Not that he complained. He had now gotten a silver-grade beast from the egg.
For the past decade, Athar had remained docile in front of these people and had never caused any trouble.
The man in the middle, the leader of this area, Dervin, chuckled obnoxiously, "Athar! You got an admission into the academy."
"Never had I thought that you had so much money to buy an egg for you," he said with a sneer.