Chapter 185: The Road to Bloth

Chapter 185: The Road to Bloth

Most sentient creatures curse the route to the City of Blothbezmadan. They joke that trying to get back out was the only thing harder than getting there. It wasn't much of a joke. Each of the routes to the city was worse than the next. Sheer drops that required poorly built winches to lower wagons one by one, caverns filled with hungry beasts, and packs of bandits of any race. If there was a difficulty that a merchant could encounter anywhere in the Under Realms, you could experience it going to Bloth.

Not many laughed at the joke, at best a few wry grimaces, at worse, a few things thrown your way. Probably because not many of the city people (And we use that term loosely) had a sense of humor. They may have started with one, but Bloth ground humor, hope, and kindness into the stinking mud of its streets. Still, there was money to be made there, and with the lure of money came the hope of a better life for some people and overwhelming greed in all the rest. 'If you can make it big in Bloth, you can make it big anywhere.' was another non-joke. It was said a lot, but it was the truth. If someone could grind, trade, and stab their way to prosperity in Blothbezmadan, doing business in any other city would be easy by comparison. But very few could rise to the top of Bloth, and if you didn't have the hard coin, you weren't getting back out. Those few that to the top didn't leave either. Most had done things that would get them quickly hung in most of the Under Realms.

If the people who flocked to Bloth like wounded moths to a putrid flame could have made it to somewhere better, they would have gnawed off limbs to get there.N0v3lRealm was the platform where this chapter was initially revealed on N0v3l.B1n.

The Hollows, The Legion of Zilvren, and The Myconian Collective were all better places to live. Even the Slaver City of the Black Dwarves, Dinz-jot, had a better reputation than Bloth. Bloth was where you went when no one else would take you, and you needed a place to hide where even assassins didn't feel safe.

When he found that both were still technically alive, he was thrilled. This trip would yield something new after all. He called for chains and a large jar and collected his latest captives. He had no worries that they would both recover. The first was a smallish cheese fiend that had broken every bone in its body. The remarkable thing about it was that it was still conscious and could form words. Truly a genius of their kind. A stout cage and enchanted manacles ensured its captivity. Cazact had his guards waste no time restraining the beast as he knew only too well how fast they could recover. The stream of curses coming from its mouth was genuinely inventive, and Cazact learned two phrases he had never heard before.

The second creature was so curious that he almost paused the caravan for a day to observe it. Its liquid body had splashed over a wide area after the fall but had started immediately reforming. The guards found all its pieces and put them in the large jar he used to transport acidic slugs to Zilvren. The potency of the creature's excretions showed in how fast it could dissolve shovels and fingers. Most curious was how it reformed into a miniature humanoid. The pale little ratkin was amusing as it paced back and forth in the jar and ranted at him in a high, squeaky voice.

The two creatures hated each other and argued continuously during the journey if placed adjacent. A circular argument went on and on as the cheese fiend accused the blob of trying to steal its bones, and the blob shook its fist in anger and accused the fiend of ruining their friendship by rejecting it. But the most fantastic thing Cazact overheard from his captives was when they ranted about their true enemy. The fiend blamed someone named Tallsqueak for ruining its life. The Blob hated an Engineer named Milo for betraying it. Slowly Cazact realized they hated the same creature.

He couldn't wait to get them to his small laboratory in Bloth and begin experimentation to see what new things he could learn. Together they might help him stave off insanity for a decade or even longer.