1% Lifesteal

"Ugh, fuck man, my back is killing me," Freddy heard an older man complain.

"Yeah," another concurred. "My neck is so stiff I can barely turn my head."

"At least you two can walk," a woman added. "My knee is locking up."

Many had become acquainted during the week-long bus ride. As the ride finally ended and people got up to leave, they shared their woes. Indeed, sitting for almost an entire week was one hell of an exhausting experience.

They had occasionally stopped to let everyone stretch their legs, but that could only help so much.

Or so Freddy observed from the sidelines. But he was fine. Sequelae—the long-term health deterioration that others suffered from—had become a thing of the past for him.

Not only that, but he was damn strong, even if he was pretty skinny at that moment. Also, Adaptive Water Body assisted quite a bit, even if he felt it was probably unnecessary.

He waited for the others to leave and clear his path. There wasn\'t a need to wait long since he had no baggage, so he was free to leave as soon as he was out.

As he walked out into the streets of Nova York, he was greeted by a rather ordinary sight. They were quite far from the city center. In fact, they were on the outskirts. The buildings, most of which didn\'t go over five stories tall, were plain and relatively old. At a few blocks both north and south, there were many newer buildings, those made as the city expanded, but the part he found himself in had stood there for a long time.

The road was relatively narrow, but there was enough space for vehicles to pass each other.

He took a deep breath. It smelled bad—stale. Cities generally did. A lot of garbage was around, and the buildings limited air circulation. But he was surprised at the subtle difference he sensed. Something was missing, or at least lacking.

The previous city he had lived in had a particular issue that most urban areas did. As many used drakes for transport, there had to be designated areas for those animals to take a crap. Some respected this, others didn\'t. Either way, it made the streets smell like shit.

But that was absent here, surprisingly. Actually, he felt that there were too few drakes around. Too few? No, there were none at all. He was used to seeing many of them on the streets. In their stead, there were numerous self-propelled carriages. Maybe this was just a Nova York thing. He wouldn\'t complain either way.

Without any guide, he simply picked a random direction and started walking. It was still early morning, so he had the whole day to settle himself. Naturally, it wasn\'t going to be easy.

First, he was broke as all hell. The milky pink alia root in his storage ring could be sold for some pocket money, but he was slightly worried about the attention that would attract. It wasn\'t a big deal, nor a large sum, but it still made him feel uneasy. Everything in the storage ring on his finger was hot goods; if possible, he\'d prefer keeping all of it a secret.

Perhaps he was being a little paranoid, but he couldn\'t judge himself for thinking that way.

As it stood, he was down to 700 dollars, which was quite problematic. That wasn\'t even enough for a rent down payment for a shitty, downtrodden shack, given where he was at. And he still had to eat.

But there was one purchase he had to make before anything else. Walking into a nearby thrift shop, he bought some gloves. They were made of fake black leather and smelled weird, but they only cost him eighty cents, so he wouldn\'t complain. The two rings on his left hand weren\'t too unusual from a distance, but he wouldn\'t flaunt them to be extra safe.

Next, he needed a place to stay, at least for a few nights. A short walk around the streets and a brief interrogation of a couple of residents later, he was directed towards a crappy hotel.

It took him nearly half an hour to get there, and by the end, he walked into an even older and shittier part of town.

Once he found the hotel, every damn cell in his body screamed that he should turn around. There was a giant "HOTEL" sign right above the entrance. It was made of what had once been blue-painted plastic. Now, it was just plastic with most of the dye flaking off, and the E was a little damaged, making it almost look like "HOTFL" from a certain angle.

Sighing, he stepped inside. The lobby was… well, at least it was clean. Sort of. Once upon a time, the walls had been white, and ever since, they had aged into a soft beige where the paint hadn\'t fallen off. There was a closed wooden door to the right and a tight stairway leading upstairs to his left.

There, he was greeted by a surprisingly beautiful girl sitting at the reception desk, which looked like it could fall apart at any second. "Hey there! Welcome!" she greeted him in a somewhat deeper voice than he expected.

She had dark hair that reached her shoulders and wore a simple black T-shirt. Her irises were a mundane brown, but they were framed by some of the prettiest eyes he had ever seen.

After catching himself staring, he coughed and responded to her previous question. "Yeah, uh, hi." He paused as he fought to remember why he was here. "I was wondering if I could get a room."

"How long are you planning to stay?" she asked.

He pondered, then asked, "How much for a night?"

"Here you go," she said, handing him a price list. The prices ranged from forty dollars on the low to ninety dollars on the high end. "But!" she added with a raised finger. "You can get a twenty percent discount if you stay for a week or longer!"

That was pretty cheap. Exceptionally so. He had hoped to stay for no longer than three nights if possible. But if he went for the most affordable option and stayed for seven days… he would only pay 224 dollars—not an unacceptable price. If he couldn\'t find a better place to stay by the end, he could probably afford another week.

There was no food, but that wasn\'t a big issue for him. He had eaten literal slop before. And he knew his way around frugal cuisine. He\'d be fine.

He paid the woman upfront and was taken to his room. They walked up the tight stairs, almost bumping into a man who smelled of smoke, beer, and sweat.

The woman brought him to a door with the number "130" on it and opened it.

It was only then that he realized his mistake. He had failed to calculate it mentally. What kind of hotel could one stay at for less than 900 dollars a month?

The answer, even by the standards of someone who had lived in a literal cave, was… that it was terrible. Subhuman, even.

He had always compared the size of his old apartment to a closet. He had had no fucking idea what he had been talking about.

"Here you go…" the woman said, her words petering out as even she couldn\'t muster the energy to hype the room up. If it qualified to be called that.

A tight door opened into a, well, closet. There was a futon on the ground. That was all there was space for, yet that, too, barely fit.

There was no window. A single shelf above his head was the only place he could put his things. It also smelled vaguely unpleasant, with hints of piss. The walls had been scribbled on by the absolute shittiest graffiti he had ever seen. Penis on penis on boob stickman. On even more penis. Random proclamations that someone was gay was the most intelligent writing he could decipher.

But he had paid for it, and… it was better than the streets, at least. There were also numerous locks and chains that clattered as the doors were opened, whose purpose was to secure the door from the inside quite tightly. For some reason, that did not inspire a feeling of safety. At all.

With a sympathetic glance at the woman beside him, he asked, "You must go through some shit, huh?"

"Yup," she confirmed with a chuckle. "Sometimes literally."

He laughed at that in turn. The woman handed him a rather bulky set of keys and pointedly warned him to ensure he never left anything of value in there if he could help it. Although there was almost no space left, he could at least keep money in the storage ring, so he would be fine.

She also half-jokingly warned that someone might mistake his room for a toilet, so he should keep it locked at all costs. Brilliant. That explained the vague scent of urine, at least.

After thanking the girl and obeying her advice to lock the doors, he left the hotel and stepped outside.

"Well then," he muttered to himself. Never had he felt so motivated to find a goddamn job.

***

Among one-stars, many could still be considered relatively common folk. Whether it was those who had retired due to injury, those who were still new to the whole thing, or those who had wasted the opportunities being an arch had provided them with, it wasn\'t uncommon to see such a sight. There people were sometimes referred to as "Jupiters"—failed stars.

Among two-stars, however, very few could be said to be living everyday lives.

For the time being, Freddy needed an ordinary wage to get on his feet before he could prepare to start delving, which was why he found himself quite surprised to discover that finding a job was almost impossible.

There were two main problems. The first was the fact that he was a two-star arch.

Yes, really.

The reason why this was a problem was because nobody wanted to hire him for ordinary work. Most cited the fact that it was clear that he wouldn\'t stick around for long. And others claimed that they couldn\'t afford to pay him. And they were, unfortunately, correct.

There were mandated minimum wages for archhumans. He quite literally couldn\'t earn less than ten thousand dollars a month because nobody was allowed to pay him that little money.

This was where he encountered the second problem. Getting hired as a two-star arch was a pretty rigorous process. Any establishment employing two-stars required an in-depth evaluation of his knowledge, expertise, talent, affinities, and abilities. Fuck that, he thought, but it was a pointless endeavor anyway since such organizations were looking for non-combat talents.

So, he gave up on ordinary work and decided to try his hand at joining a mercenary group.

He eventually located a massive building that acted as a hub for independent mercenaries and gave it a shot. Everyone wanted to hire him there, no questions asked. This was to be expected. Unfortunately, they all demanded he sign for at least a year of work.

If he wanted to negotiate better terms, everyone wanted him to display his fighting skills against one of their members and give them a detailed description of his talent and abilities. But he didn\'t want to do that—too much risk of getting identified.

There was, of course, the more permanent choice of joining a large organization, but he shelved that option for the time being. Too restrictive, and with his talent, he had considerably less use for such organizations than others might.

Sighing deeply, he walked out, knowing he had only one real possibility left.

He would have to delve into a passage independently.

This was a huge problem.

The usual method for going independent as an arch was simple, if labor-intensive and challenging. Most got a rather ordinary part-time job or something their affinity made easier and did that while training and gathering knowledge during their free time.

There were numerous classes for those who could pay to take them, whether for martial arts, ability use, or any of the innumerable less exciting skills required to safely delve.

After all, if one was on their own, other than just combat, they had to handle resource management, scouting, tracking, first aid, equipment maintenance; they had to know both the area they were delving into and the monsters that populated it, the secondary dangers present, and much more.

Injury, loss of property, or, at worst, death was on the line. The more one knew and the better they were prepared, the lower the odds of making a critical mistake.

As absurd as that might have seemed, the fact that he was a two-star was bad for his circumstances. After all, nobody expected people to get to their second star without getting their shit together first.

Asking around, he discovered that, unfortunately, the closest passage open to independents was a three-hour walk away from where he was staying.

He had already spent the whole damn day running around like a dumbass, and the sun was already setting.

Sighing, he left the pursuit of work to tomorrow\'s Freddy while the Freddy of today went to get something to eat. Having waited in several lobbies today, he had pilfered numerous random shitty snacks and candies, but that could hardly be called proper sustenance.

Well, what he got wasn\'t much of an upgrade, either. He bought two massive loaves of bread and ate them as he went. Hey, a two-dollar meal was a two-dollar meal; besides, he had 1% Lifesteal, so he probably didn\'t need to care too much about his diet.

Wait, could his talent just… spawn the nutrients he was lacking? It could undoubtedly create tissue from nothing, as he\'d verified by regrowing an entire body from just a head. Huh. An interesting thought, he decided, as he took the final bite of his second loaf. Soon after, he made it to the hotel, and his mood instantly dropped as he remembered where he would be sleeping that night.

"Welcome to the piss-shack," he mused sarcastically as he stepped inside.

What greeted him was the sight of a very drunk man leaning over the reception desk and getting quite close to the receptionist. He eyed the situation with a raised eyebrow. She handled the man quite well, actually. An icy attitude, pointed threats, and some fascinating manipulation skills had the man walking away back to his room.

After the sleazy dude walked away, he gave the woman a short applause, which sounded rather damp due to the gloves on his hands, and shot her a cheeky smirk. "Well done, miss. I couldn\'t have handled him any better myself."

She squinted at him and crossed her arms. "Aren\'t you supposed to, like, help out in these situations? Hello!? Damsel in distress!?" she asked sarcastically.

Approaching confidently, he looked down at the small woman. She was pretty attractive. He liked her. He was far from the most charismatic dude in the world, but he approached anyway, determined to test his luck. What was the worst thing that could happen?

"Well," he said as he walked over and leaned against the counter. His mind rushed to think of anything charming to say. "I\'m afraid of karma, you see. Wouldn\'t want someone to interrupt my attempt, now, would I?"

She couldn\'t stop the small burst of laughter at that.

Was that a success? Probably. He mentally high-fived himself and straightened his posture a bit.

Shaking her head, she reached for some papers. "You know, I\'ve been wondering ever since you walked in here… Uh, why?" the receptionist asked with a frown.

"Oh?" he chirped inquisitively, raising an eyebrow. "Not sure what you mean."

The receptionist rolled her brown eyes at that. "Come on."

"What?" He shrugged defensively, trying and failing to catch on.

"You know, if anyone walks in here looking even vaguely normal, the illusion is usually dispelled as soon as they open their mouth," she informed him. "I just can\'t figure out what the hell is wrong with you."

He snorted. "Okay, wow. Uh… where do I begin?" he pondered. "How about that time I lived in the caves, surviving off nothing but mushrooms and grit?" he suggested jokingly.

She snorted at that. "Sure thing, pal. Start at the part where you discover fire while at it."

For some reason, he found himself swallowing rather heavily. "Well," he said leadingly, feeling a bit of trepidation in his chest. "If you\'re done with work soon, I could perhaps take you… out for drinks and share more." It wasn\'t the most intelligent way to use his money, but he wasn\'t that broke.

"Uhm… Let me think about it…" she said, tapping her temple with her finger as she pretended to be considering it. "How about… no?" She rejected the offer.

There, he found himself leaning against the counter, staring at a cute girl. A mere moment ago, while it had been waning slightly, he had felt pretty confident. Yet, all of a sudden…

"Ah," he thought out loud. "I guess you\'re, uh"—he scratched the back of his head—"not done with work any time soon?"

"No, that\'s not it," she said, putting the papers she had fetched into a different drawer.

"Then, uhm… what\'s the problem?"

"Sorry," she said, "but I\'m just not interested."

"Oh… All right. Well, sorry for bothering you," he apologized as he walked away, almost stumbling as he took the first step on the stairs.

What the hell was happening? Okay, well, he got rejected, but that wasn\'t that big of a deal. For Christ\'s sake, he\'d gone through half a year of torture! So why was this hitting him so hard?

There was a tightness deep in the back of his throat, and a faint pain pushed at the corners of his eyes. He felt a bit ill, and his heart rate was elevated.

Wow, that really sucks, he decided, unsure of what to make of what he was feeling.

As he finally approached his "room" and settled himself, discovering that he was too tall to lie down and stretch his legs out, he stared at the almost entirely dark ceiling. The door wasn\'t fully sealed, so light still trickled in from the hallway, blinking briefly as someone walked through the hallway. For half a moment, he appreciated the light source, thinking it would help him find the bugs faster when they crawled on his body. Then he remembered that he wasn\'t in the caverns anymore. Well, there might still be bugs here, but… He sighed.

"What\'s the worst thing that can happen, my ass," he self-ridiculed.

He felt rejected. It was such a normal thing to experience that it felt weird. After all that he\'d gone through, all the terror and fear and… The tightness in the back of his throat intensified, and he found breathing difficult.

Emotions became nothing but a blatant weakness for him. So he suppressed them. Shut them off in self-defense.

But he was trying to reintegrate back into society, wasn\'t he? Nobody was chasing him now. The threat of death and indefinite captivity no longer hung above his neck like the blade of a guillotine. Perhaps it was still there somewhere, but it was far removed from the problems he faced at that moment.

What hurt the most in that shitty little room wasn\'t the burning cut of blades shredding his skin or a hot rod pressing against his back. There was no severing of body parts, no patriarch standing above him like a devil, plans of how to make his agony worse playing behind his pale, ghoulish eyes.

No. What hurt the most at that moment, as he repeatedly failed to make himself comfortable, was that he tried hitting on a cute girl and she wasn\'t interested.

How pathetic. How ordinary.

How relieving.

Suddenly, two streaks of tears appeared, running down the sides of his head. The joy that he was okay, the relief that he was safe, flooded him, and he was powerless to stop it.

What had plagued him the most, without him even realizing it, was the never-ending sorrow of having been broken—shattered into miserable, unfeeling pieces, reduced to a base animal.

He thought of the people he had killed. He thought of the people he had injured. Every single thing he had done on his path to making it out of his predicament had felt justified to him. Too justified.

The image of the bald bodybuilder who assaulted him in the back alley interposed with the image of the drunk father who couldn\'t come to terms with his son\'s fate. On a surface level, in both cases, he had merely been protecting himself. But that wasn\'t really the case, was it?

The danger to his life had become an all-too-convenient excuse, and with it, darkness had snuck into his heart—the willingness to do the unforgivable. Anything to survive.

But now he could live.

And he was so frustrated and sad yet happy and excited to feel that, indeed…

It appeared that he was still capable of doing so.