Uhtred’s POV
Don’t think about it. Just keep moving, just keep moving!
Uhtred couldn’t even open his mouth to breathe properly, let alone speak. The noxious fumes rising from the thick, knee-deep sludge filling the underground sewer was so dense that opening his mouth meant inhaling pure, suffocating rot.
Even his eyes watered from the fumes alone. But Uhtred did not care about any of this. His focus was on the next step forward. He trudged through the knee-deep shit, clenching his jaw hard at the squelchy, sickening feeling of it.
Never in his life would he have thought he would resort to such a filthy attempt to escape from somewhere.
If there was any upside to the situation, it was his chat. The interface on the right side of his vision had turned into an absolute circus. Thousands of multiversal viewers were firing off messages at lightspeed, bantering, laughing, and roasting him mercilessly for his choice of escape.
> Serial_Troll_Nyx: Look at the ’Sovereign candidate’ wading through shit! Magnificent!!
> TheStarTravelingDaoist: This guy... I can’t believe he actually did it. He really escaped by jumping into the cesspit!
> Grandmaster_Haiiko: @Serial_Troll_Nyx Laugh all you want, but this kid’s decisiveness is not bad. He didn’t waste time planning at all. The moment he got his intel, he moved!
> SchemingDemon_696: Truly ruthless. To throw away all pride and dignity to grasp an opportunity... He understands survival!
...
None of them had realized when he had hatched the plan.
The previous night, while lying awake pretending to recover, Uhtred had stepped out under the guise of using the latrines.
He had been followed by the guards who stood outside his room, of course, but that toilet trip hadn’t been about relieving himself. He had simply wanted to inspect the inner sect layout, as Jor-than had never been allowed inside these grounds before.
When he entered the latrine cubicle, the idea had struck him.
First, the cubicles were tiny, private wooden stalls. There was no physical space for anyone else to stand inside with him. Whoever was watching him in secret had to wait outside the cubicle to maintain surveillance.
Second, while inside, Uhtred had heard the gross sounds of an adjacent user dropping waste down below. That meant the latrines weren’t isolated pits, they were connected to an underlying drainage system.
When he went to the library the next morning, he hadn’t just searched for maps. The book he read right in front of Nayu An — the manual on outer-sect warrior and worker duties — contained the schematics of the inner sect latrines. It detailed the sewer layouts and the maintenance schedules for the menial workers.
Uhtred had read all of this right in front of Nayu An without her knowledge. It was what enabled him to act so decisively after he read the maps he wanted.
Of course, he could still have waited and planned out something better. Perhaps he would have actually found an alternate solution. However, he felt that acting immediately was the only rational move.
Even if Nayu An suspected him, she would never expect him to launch an escape in broad daylight at noon. People expected escapes to happen under the cover of night. By moving when everyone assumed he was going to return to his room, he caught them completely off guard.
Still, his plan wasn’t foolproof. There were many risks.
When anticipating an enemy’s actions, Uhtred always put himself in their shoes, never underestimating them. He knew that if he were running the An clan, the very first thing he would do to a high-value asset like himself was plant a tracking device on them.
Before leaping into the pit, Uhtred had checked his body thoroughly, and at first he found nothing, until he checked again, then, behind his left ear, he noticed a small bump.
It was a very small device... something that looked less like a mechanical device and more like some sort of artifact. It released a faint numbing agent, mimicking a leech or a tick so the host wouldn’t feel its presence.
Removing it had been simple enough. Channeling a pinpoint burst of heat essence — his first use of magic in this world — he scorched the skin behind his ear to a blister, forcing the artifact to lose its grip and drop out.
From there, he didn’t waste any more time, he dropped softly into the waste channel and took off through the dark underground pipe.
He didn’t know whether the artifact could send back an alert to Nayu An and the clan Ancestor, so he made his move very quickly.
I should be near the exit now!
Uhtred waded forward, his ears strained for the slightest sound. He knew the clan would notice his absence soon, but he calculated that he would reach the septic outlet before any surface search party could intercept him.
His heart pounded against his ribs. So many variables could go wrong. What if they were already waiting at the end for him? He had essentially cut off all pretenses now, and they would know he knew something was wrong.
Maybe I should really have waited behind and thought of a different plan to escape?
Uhtred shook his head, cutting off the doubt instantly.
No. Nayu An was already on to me. The longer I stayed in that room, the harder it would have been to break free. Leaving now was the only choice!
Suddenly, the sloshing sound around his legs changed. The echoes widened, indicating the narrow pipe was opening into a larger chamber.
Uhtred moved in pitch-blackness, unwilling to use any lights at all.
He could have used fire magic or some sort of illumination spell, but the air here was thick with methane gas. One spark, and the entire sewer would detonate like a bomb.
Ahead, a faint crescent of sunlight cut through the darkness.
It was the stone outlet grate — the maintenance hatch where the waste workers funneled the filth out of the septic tank.
He reached the circular opening, peering through the small gaps. The outlet led out to a rocky hillside outside the inner sect. Through the narrow slits, he spotted the outlines of two guards standing right outside.
There was no time for stealth.
With a sudden boom, Uhtred crashed out of the sewers, shattering the stone grate outward. Huge chunks of rock exploded into the air, shrouding his figure as he burst into the sunlight.
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