Above us, the heavy iron manhole cover vibrated violently as the mindless thralls on the surface slammed their calcified fists against the iron.
BANG! BANG-BANG!
I paid them no mind whatsoever. Those brainless beasts couldn't figure out a simple latch mechanism if their lives depended on it. Down here, in the cool, damp subterranean air, we were temporarily safe from the blinding sun and the flying horrors.
"Great, from an alleyway full of monsters straight into a giant pipe full of shit. My life just keeps getting better and better." Keane muttered, wringing out the hem of his soaked tunic as he looked around at the dark, stinking stone arches.
"You're breathing, aren't you? I can always throw you back up through the grate if you prefer the daylight." I replied.
Keane flinched, pulling his head back into his shoulders.
"Right. Very funny. You... you actually know where we are, right? You said you knew the map."
"Certainly," I said coldly.
A year ago, before I ever stepped foot near the Dodorant Citadel using Keane's face, I had ambushed a senior municipal sewage engineer in his home, taking his detailed blueprint schematics. I memorized every junction, overflow pipe, and maintenance ladder in a single night, using those exact subterranean pathways to pull off my clean escape after breaking out of the prison.
Back then, the sewers were just a dark, smelly escape route. Now, the world had shattered. There was no law, no justice, no guards… only horror, flesh-eating abominations, and the suffocating stench of decay.
James leaned against the damp wall, resting his bad leg while keeping his Tommy gun raised.
"So, do we take the straight shot out of the city, Eirene?"
"Not yet, I doubt Patricia, Keith, Chris, and Aisha are sitting outside. If they dropped underground to avoid the horde at the gates, they're hiding somewhere in these pipes."
"Are you insane?! We finally made it underground! We should be running for the exit, not playing hide-and-seek in a labyrinth!"
I ignored his whining. From memory, the fastest way to the main river outlet at the edge of the city was a simple sequence: left, left, right, right, left, and then following the main drainage stream until the pipe opened into the outer ravine outside Lulu City.
It would be trivial to take that exit and save myself. But I had people down here.
"We don't leave anyone behind, we search the side junctions first."
We moved further away from the manhole, and the faint traces of daylight vanished entirely, plunging the narrow drainage corridor into pitch-black shadow.
As a half-vampire, I could easily trace the glowing, thermal heat signatures of small sewer rats scurrying along the ledges, but thermal vision doesn't grant clarity in pitch darkness… it just turns everything into an amorphous blur of thermal shapes. Without a direct light source, the high chance of taking a wrong turn in this labyrinth was far too risky.
"It's pitch black ahead," I called back softly over my shoulder.
"Great, so we're blind in a monster-infested tunnel. Perfect." Keane muttered, nervously tapping his hands against his legs.
"I can take the front step if you need, Eirene," James offered, his voice steady despite his bad leg.
"No need," I said.
I raised my right arm, bared my fangs, and bit down hard into the stump of my missing right hand. The flesh tore easily under my sharp teeth, leaking a stream of dark, crimson blood. Manipulating the fluid with blood magic, I hardened the stream into a thick, fibrous crimson rope. I tossed the end back to them.
"Hold onto this, and don't let go, no matter what."
"Gross, but... got it," Keane whimpered, gripping the cold, hardened blood-rope tightly.
I stepped forward into the total darkness, using my left hand to grope along the slick, slime-covered brick walls. The further down the main drainage conduit we went, the deeper the stagnant water rose, sloshing past my knees. My boots were completely drenched in foul, mushy sewage, but I ignored the filth.
Ahead, thermal heat signatures danced along the stone pipes… dozens of bloated sewer rats.
Reaching into the gloom, my hand snapped forward, catching one of the squirming rodents by its neck. I brought it to my mouth, sank my fangs into its throat, and drained it dry. It was barely a mouthful… maybe 26 milliliters of blood at most.
My vampiric life-steal worked in two distinct ways: causing physical harm to enemies granted me physical regeneration, but directly consuming fresh blood granted both swift regeneration and restored my mana reserves.
With my passive blood-to-mana conversion, drinking these sewer rats was the only way to generate enough magical energy to fuel the enchanted incendiary rounds in my Death Chant shotgun.
I snatched a second rat from the wall, then a third, draining their blood one after another.
"Eirene...? What in the gods' names are you chewing on back there?!" Keane's horrified voice echoed from behind me in the dark.
"Recharging, keep moving."
I continued draining the filthy, sewage-covered rats until my mana pool vibrated with fresh energy. Just as I wiped a smear of rat blood from my lips, a miracle appeared around the curved bend of the dark corridor.
A faint, warm amber glow flickered against the damp brick walls further down the hallway. It wasn't the harsh sunlight of the surface… it was the soft, dancing light of a fire magic torch or a lantern, held by someone walking toward us.
I raised my left hand, signaling James and Keane to halt behind me as I tightened my grip on the Death Chant shotgun.
"Hold your fire, the light isn't moving like a monster."
As we rounded the curved stone arch, the soft amber glow intensified, revealing a group of soaked, bloodied figures wading through the knee-deep sewage water.
At the front of their group was Aisha, her small hand holding a hovering orb of bright fire magic. Her face was streaked with dirt and fresh tears, her eyes red and swollen. Behind her stood Chris, hauling his crystallized daughter Lukreia over his shoulder, alongside Keith, who was limping heavily from a fresh bullet wound in his leg. Carrying a weakened, barely conscious Catherine was Patricia in her heavy plate armor, her sword drawn and ready.
Aisha's floating fire orb illuminated my pale face, James's military uniform, and Keane trailing behind us on the blood-rope.
"Eirene?! James?! You're alive!"
"We made it, we thought you guys were swallowed by the horde near the main gates." James breathed out, letting out a heavy sigh of relief as he leaned against the curved tunnel wall.
"We almost were, we had to weld ourselves into this pipeline to escape." Chris said grimly, adjusting Lukreia's weight on his shoulder.
Patricia stepped forward, her sharp blue eyes narrowing as she looked at me, then at the blood-rope in my hand, and finally at Keane, who was cowering slightly in the shadows behind me.
"Eirene, I didn't expect to find you down in this filth." Patricia said, her voice filled with a mixture of disbelief and stoic relief.
"I mapped these sewers a year ago, I came back down here to find my team. I don't leave people behind." I replied flatly, letting the hardened blood-rope dissolve back into liquid and splash into the murky water.
Keith winced, clutching his bandaged, burned calf.
"Well, you picked a fine time to show up. We've been wandering in circles for hours."
I glanced at Aisha, noticing her bloodshot eyes and the deep, suffocating grief hanging over her shoulders. She looked utterly broken, clutching the enchanted firearm I had given her as if it were her only lifeline left in the world.
"What happened to you?" I asked softly, stepping closer to Aisha.
"My... my mom… She was turned... Keith killed her..." Aisha choked out, fresh tears welling up in her eyes as she looked down at the foul sewage water.
"She was going to bite us, Eirene, I had no choice!" Keith defended himself hoarsely.
I looked at the weeping academy student, then back at the dark, winding tunnels ahead. Down here, grief was a luxury none of us could afford for long, but I knew the pain of losing family all too well.
"We move forward, the main exit is straight through the primary arterial line: left, left, right, right, left. It leads directly to the river outlet outside the city walls. Stay close, keep your weapons ready; and let's get out of this hellhole."