Chapter 114. The Sewers and What Dwells Within
The stench was worse than he could possibly have imagined. Even to someone who was used to trash, who spent all day scrambling over garbage pits, this was something else, another realm of disgusting olfactory experience entirely. He could feel it soaking into his pores and newly-forged robes, and immediately knew that he wouldn’t be free of the stink until he figured out how to fully absorb and process this reeking mess of filth. It was just that virulent, that unstoppable.
Mouse followed after him, carefully climbing down to the side of the sewers, then turning back to replace the cover on the manhole. She turned and gasped. “Rhys! Get out of the sewage! There’s things in there that’ll kill even mages!”
“What do you mean?” Rhys asked.
Mouse gaped, her jaw working, but no sound emerging. As she worked on that, Rhys turned to the trash. There was no time like the present.
Experimentally, he drew in, but to his surprise, aside from the sludge immediately around him, nothing moved. He frowned and tried again. Once more, the filth entered him, then stopped, but this time, he was watching, and noticed a tiny ring of fresh water appear around him, only to immediately dissolve back into the sewage. His eyes widened. Right! Sewage is washed away with clean water, and even disregarding that, sewage is inherently part clean water! When he drew in the trash, the part that had been thrown away entered him—the filth, the shit and everything else, but the whole mixture wasn’t trash. The pure water emerged, separate from the trash. Without something to keep it away from the filth, it immediately vanished back into the filth, but that wasn’t good enough for Rhys. It meant he had to pulse his garbage absorption rather than absorb it smoothly, and that didn’t sit right with him. It was highly inefficient, not only for absorbing trash, but also because of the pure water he generated getting wasted, one, and diluting his trash, two. He needed something to move the pure water away from him.
He could just use Trash Manipulation, he supposed, but something about that felt dirty. Plus, it took more energy. It didn’t feel right that he had to use two skills to absorb a fluid form of trash, that should, hypothetically, be easier to absorb.
“The diseases!” Mouse said at last.
“Aren’t we immune to them?” Rhys replied. Mages were also immune to shitting, eating, and pissing, so hypothetically, this was all mortal refuse.
She shook her head hard. “The Empire has a few dragons and several spirit beasts on their side—you know, large magic beasts capable of great feats?”
“Some can transform into humans?” Rhys guessed.
“Some can, but those who chose bodily power instead of human transformation become massively strong instead. And unlike the beasts who choose human transformation, or human mages, they never lose the need to eat and, um…”
“Shit,” Rhys finished for her.