Chapter 270 - Junky

"Are you coming?" The Escort asked with a deep, loud groan, and Eiro slowly turned toward him, "Yes?" 

"I asked if you were coming. We don't have that much time. And it feels weird to be down here..." The middle-aged, messily-groomed man said.

Eiro really hadn't paid attention to this kind of stuff before. Sure, he took it into account, but he didn't really think about it since it didn't matter all that much, but this man seemed to have a quite leisure lifestyle. At least, he didn't pay attention to his appearance all that much and seemed to be quite keen on alcohol and cigars.

There was nothing wrong with that, it made him stick out from the crowd a bit better actually, but it simply overlapped with his apparent personality pretty well. He was walking around with a rather tired, lazy demeanor, as if he wanted to get everything done as quickly as possible so that he could get back to whatever he was doing beforehand.

It actually reminded Eiro a little bit of an older version of Leo-

"Stop it." The Demon muttered to himself to interrupt his thoughts as quickly as possible, and the escort looked at him with a slight frown, "I didn't even do anything, you asked me to come here with you!" he exclaimed, and Eiro turned toward him with his head slightly tilted toward him, "I didn't speak to you though?"

"Huh?" Visibly confused, the escort was trying to figure out what exactly was going on, but in the end, just gave up and turned back around as he kept walking down the narrow staircase that led to the literal 'criminal underground' of this capital city.

The entrance to this place was hidden pretty well within the slums, pretty close to the place where the Organization had been hidden, although it was still a separate entity. Either way, now that they were on their way down here, Eiro was trying not to get lost in all of these 'new' sensations. Mostly, it was the smell that was making Eiro curious right now, since there were a lot of scents mixed in that he had never smelled before, although that was something that Eiro didn't really expect to be probable anytime soon, and not in this amount for sure.

Sure, Eiro might have just forgotten about a lot of things, but the point still stood. It was all very new to him, so it was exciting in the Demon's mind. Hence, he was quickly and easily distracted.

The Demon looked at the figure in front of him and continued walking down these steps, before Eiro could see and hear someone walking up this narrow, dirty staircase from the bottom. They were huddled over, and their whole body was completely shaken. Even in this weather, they were wearing nothing but a sleeveless shirt and simple, thin cloth pants.

There was a lot of scar-tissue gathered on the inside of their elbows, their teeth were completely rotten, their skin was in a horrible state, and if this person ever submerged their head in some water, they would probably lose the little bit of hair they had left. Right now, it was only kept on their scalp through dried-up dirt.

It was an honestly rather disgusting and overstimulating sight, but it was the perfect person to ask in this situation. And so, while the escort pushed themselves onto the wall while making sure they kept their hands pressed onto their wallet and any valuable belongings, Eiro just stood in the middle of the staircase, waiting for the man to get there.

The man had been looking down at the steps and seemed to be kind of out of it, so he quickly ran right into Eiro. Of course, the Demon didn't budge while the man nearly fell down the steps again, if it weren't for Eiro's quick reaction-speed as he grabbed the man's arm.

"Oops, sorry about that. Did I hurt you? Is there any way I can make up for it? Literally anything, I'm even quite wealthy, so if you want some mo-" Eiro started, obviously just trying to trick this man. He was completely empty-handed and had an expression of anger on his face that looked as if he was about to kill someone, so it was clear what had just happened down there.

The escort was just looking at Eiro with a confused expression, while the junky stared up at the Demon, "Money! G-Give me money! As much as you can!" He screamed out, grabbing onto Eiro's cloak, and the Demon just smiled underneath his mask as he pushed his hand into the pouch connected to his belt before pulling out a bundle of small gold coins.

"Is this enough for the trouble?" He inquired insincerely, and the junky took it onto himself before just turning around and sprinting down the staircase again, bumping into Eiro's escort on the way. And the man in question just stared at him annoyedly, "What was that for, now? Do you know how much money that is? Did you even forget that?"

"Of course not. Well, not yet, at least. But that's not the point, because surely, that's enough to give that man a pretty good night. Due to a new ability of mine, I can't make proper use of my perceptive abilities in a space like we'll most likely find down there yet. It's going to be far, far too overwhelming, I assume..." Eiro started as he wrote down all of this in the notebook he was carrying, and the escort looked at him strangely, "So?"

"Well, of course we're going to follow him so that we don't have to search for the right place ourselves. He experienced the same side-effects as the other junkies here in the slums."

"...Really? You could see that here in the dark?" The escort asked, and Eiro nodded his head, "Of course. Darkness is like daylight to me if I concentrate hard enough. But nevermind that, let's continue, erm..."

"Clark." 

"Right, let's continue, Clark. He's pretty speedy, but not too speedy for the two of us, right?" The Demon asked, as he just leaned forward and had himself basically fall down the stairs before kicking off the step to practically jump down the stairs. He used air magic to balance his upper body as he continued kicking off the steps to reach the bottom of the staircase at an extreme speed.

Meanwhile, the escort, Clark, was just following behind Eiro annoyedly. Soon enough, Eiro reached the bottom of the staircase and found himself inside of a small room. He just saw a glance of the junky as the door on the other side of the room was closing, so he should not waste too much time here and hurry through.

But as he tried to walk through the room, a rather big guy stopped him. He was rather large in height and width at the same, and was even holding some animal's roasted leg in his hand, just ripping off of it with his teeth.

"What is your purpose here?" He asked as he blocked the way to the door. But Eiro didn't really listen to him all that much. Rather, his mind, as influenced by his recently acquired Knight of Pentacles, was focused on the physical aspects of this man's body.

A heavily protruding forehead, unhealthily pale skin with an uncommon tint to it... A quite large overbite with prominent canines as well as slight tusk-like growths coming out of the lower jaw. Combined with the incredible height and obvious appetite, Eiro came to a quick conclusion as his natural curiosity shone through. Somehow, after all the stages he had gone through within this whole fiasco, his curiosity that had given him the 'Scholar Imp' and subsequently probably also 'Collector Imp' subraces was growing rather strong again after subsiding a bit over the past few years. It was as if he was some kid right now, learning about new, exciting things over and over again.

And so, combined with the curiosity... Eiro's manners took a bit of a beating to them.

"Oh, you're a half-orc, aren't you? What's that like?" The Demon inquired. It was supposed to be a genuine question born out of curiosity, but somehow, it simply came out... rather offensive.

"Pretty shit when there's cunts like you runnin' around." The half-orc pointed out with a growling undertone, and Eiro looked up at him with a smile under his mask, "Hey, would you-"

"Stop running the f.u.c.k ahead you dumbass!" Clark yelled out from the stairs, breathing heavily as he made his way down there into the room as well, seeing the large half-orc towering over Eiro, "Urgh... What did you do this time?"

"...Good question, I think I forgot to write it down." 

"You're so anno-" The escort said, although he managed to quickly shut himself up as he looked at the half-orc, "Sorry about this, he's a bit messed up in the head. I'll make sure he doesn't mess around anymore. We're here for business, and we have a lot of money to spend." Clark explained, and the half-orc slowly nodded his head.

"Not that I care." He grumbled and took a step to the side, before Clark proceeded to pull Eiro out of the door, "Now, look for that junky and let's go."

Immediately, Eiro did as told, and soon managed to spot the man in question again. And so, Eiro quickly ran toward there so that he would be able to catch up, and Clark followed as quickly as he could as well.

And while that was happening, Eiro managed to get a good look on the area around him. It was basically like a huge market stuffed into a single huge underground cave. Some rooms were carved into the walls and had wooden platforms leading up to them, while others were just set up in the middle of the room like food-stalls. But some of them, instead of selling snacks, sold illegal weapons, foods, or even people.

There were a few little things that Eiro was interested in scattered amongst them, but overall, they weren't anything that Eiro was incapable of getting himself.

Although... his eyes did end up getting stuck on a stall that had a bunch of books on it. He was a bit curious about what they were about, but at that point, Clark already pushed him forward to make him keep the search up. Either way, Eiro wrote down a note about the stall and then soon looked forward, staring at the back of the junky from before.

And he was standing there, in front of a rather large shop that seemed to be the main-supplier of this special drug that everyone in the slums had been taking for a while now.