Crownless: The Fallen World - Chapter 32

“Of course, I’m always in. But I don’t really want to enter that tunnel while unprotected,” Hale thought back anything he knew and had in his possession for lessening the odor, but he remembered that Aires had all of their groceries. The only thing he had was the food in the fridge, besides his daily essentials.

The child suddenly goes off to the forest, leaving the confused Hale behind. The older shrugged and browsed the virtual shop for a smell canceling gadget or whatever, and there he saw it. It costs for 50,450 Klines and he only had a petty 20,000 Klines he borrowed from Aires, “I should’ve asked for 100 Grand…”

He contemplated whether to just ‘screw it’ and enter the hell hole and go back with his broken sense of smell. Minutes later, the child came back with a lot of bundled leaves, “Here, these were genetically mutated dracaena I found inside the abandoned botanical house. Will this help?”

Hale’s eyes twinkled as he touched the dark green leaves of the dracaena with a shade of indigo. He nodded with a huge smile on his face, “Of course! Help me crush these then we’ll put it in these sealable bags and we’ll wrap them around our body. I hope it will work…” he mumbled the last part.

In a good 30 minutes of work, the two were now wrapped with those little sealable bags and there was one hanging on their nose, if that was possible.

Hale looked at the storm brewing inside the opaque wall and it shrunk again with little icicles raining down, but the tornado was still the same. Though there was now heavy snow coming out of the cloud, blanketing the city in white and distinguished the fire on the houses. Dead or alive, he still had to see Aires with his own eyes.

“These dracaenas… what the heck is this?” Hale was astonished by the result since most of the bad odor was absorbed by the bags and it produced a more sweet smell like perfume.

“I don’t really know. I just heard someone from the trading field that some of the hired scientists were developing a lot of dracaenas for purposes. Though they told them to keep it a secret or they will be killed. I didn’t know that this plant was enough to eliminate the odor,” the child started to climb down the bar ladder, then Hale followed after he finished setting the patch in place to hide the huge hole.

Hale was blindly climbing down, feeling each step and holds since the instant he closed the patch, it was pitch black. He stopped descending then laughed at his stupidity. He willed his Holowrist to open the torch function and it lit their way down.

“That was one heck of a gadget. What is that?” The child praised as he jumped down when he saw that the floor was not that far from where he was. There was a squish sound when he landed and Hale went blank. He checked his shoes and it was not waterproof; horror stroked his face.

“What’s the matter, mister? Why did you stop?” The child didn’t care whatever he stomped on as he saw Hale wrapped his other arm onto the bar handle to frantically retrieve something from his Holowrist. Knee-high boots materialized in Hale’s hands and he quickly wore it whilst his arm ached from his hold on the bar.

The older goes down and leveled his legs to the child, and shamelessly asked, “Can you roll up my pants and tack in my coat?”

“You know that this is not the time for that, mister.” The child raised a brow but he still did as he was told. When he was done, his small hand patted Hale’s calf, “Done and no more whining.”

Hale tried to slowly step on the murky floor and he shivered, “Can you, at least, hold my sleeve?” 

The child pulled him by his arm and led him towards the path as the older lit the way. There were several pairs of red eyes looking at them and their wet steps on the floor were the only thing that was heard inside the tunnel. Hale felt that the ground was beginning to descent and he caught sight of greenish, murky water.

He stopped in his tracks that made the child stop too, looking around for possible ramp to walk over but there was none, “We’re not stepping in that, right?” He gulped.

“No, silly! That was deeper than you can imagine, there is a way here,” -the child pointed at one large pipe – “there, you see that? We’ll climb into that and crawl our way into another tunnel.”

I thought you still haven’t tried to cross the border of the city…

However, he remembered that he had to fcking crawl to get into another tunnel. There was, fortunately, a glove in his Holowrist which he stole from his father before they left. It was leather on the outside and cloth in the inside which had these light blue patterns of a palm. He also retrieved a knee pad that had the same structure.

The child went first as Hale pushed him up, the little one offered his hand but the older laughed it off as just a weak child helping up a grown man. He activated the gloves and knee pads by pressing the light green button on their side as he began to climb the wall.

“… what are you? A human spider?” The child shook his head and left the older to enjoy climbing the wall. When Hale grabbed the upper part of the pipe, he began to crawl there, inverted. The child stopped crawling to look at Hale as if he was a child and not him.