I still feel that you seriously underestimate the sheer amount of labour needed to accomplish what you envision, Mara…

  Nara said something along those lines a total of seven times since I began digging the earth. She had said it twice by the time I was nearing the city wall, followed by telling me to be careful when I was getting close to breaking through the surface a few days later.

  I had no good idea of where I was going to end up. I tried to get a vague idea of the city’s layout by watching it from the cliff, but my ability to calculate distances I see from a vantage point, and an angle, does not allow me to know precisely where anything is when underground, but it was fine because I could use the city wall as a landmark.

  How they built that thing, I have no idea, but it is solid and unmoving. At one point, I dug an entire tunnel that wrapped around its entire length, and still, it showed no sign of becoming unstable due to this.

  It was much easier to have an idea of where I was going to emerge this way, and in the end, I popped through the back of some small house tucked in a corner of the city, where I emerged, which was what I presumed was a garden that had been left to its own devices…

  The only resident in the house this garden was attached to was a bumbling old man who couldn’t see further than a meter in front of him. I know because I originally wanted to kill him, but he genuinely couldn’t tell a thing about my appearance.

  Also, his first response to seeing what was probably a blurry dark shape looming over him was to ask me if I had seen his dog. When I found his dog, which is actually a grey-furred fox, he told me that I was a pretty and nice young woman. In the face of such a distinguished and truth-seeing gentleman, I decided to extend mercy and not disembowel him.

  Which was a good call in hindsight, having a kind old man inhabit the place where I was going to be imprisoning and torturing my victims would make for a magnificent cover in case someone went and stuck their nose where they shouldn’t.

  Now… The five other times Nara told me that I was underestimating the work needed to dig my tunnels came during the three months that followed, during which I was nearly constantly digging and displacing dirt or breaking stones. I probably could have finished earlier, but I was a perfectionist, and I wanted my tunnels to have some personality and for some places to be different from the rest.

  The few tunnel collapses that nearly buried me alive were a bit annoying, but I surmounted the challenges after much effort. My sweet underground of doom and gloom was ready. I just needed to find some unwilling participants to populate it, and then the fun would begin…

  It will be worth it, don’t you worry, Nara. And even if it doesn’t work, it would have been a whole lot of fun! I don’t know why, but I really love cramped spaces. I might be whatever the opposite of claustrophobic is, I feel at ease in tight tunnels.

  And so, here I was, prowling the streets in the dead of night.

  I think I prefer scouring the countryside. The landscape is prettier, and the people are tastier as well. Damned city dwellers are nearly all scrawny, and those who aren’t, well, then they tend to be full of fat. Developed muscles as simply better, and the farmers nearly always have those due to the hard labour they perform.

  But here? The average commoner is just four sticks stuck on a bigger stick. They lack the fitness required to properly run away in the tunnel. Guess I don’t have another choice, I’ll have to catch myself guards…

  Not that it is too complicated, this city is smaller, some patrols are made up of a single guard.

  I just need to play the sound of a child sobbing that I recorded and lure them to a quiet spot before knocking them out–It is important to note that I need to hold back a fair bit as I accidentally killed some and knocked some so hard that they were left paralysed.

  It’s not my fault that the supposed defenders of the city are so fragile, but due to this, I might have caused the disappearance of a few too many people in the same night. But it didn’t matter if they stirred up on the surface. I was going to be below for a little while.

  ___

  “Oooh… What the hell happened to me?”

  Arnauld reached for his face, finding dried blood all over his mouth. Quickly reminding him that, after going to check on what he had clearly sounded like a child crying, someone had smashed him in the face with what had felt like a mace, dropping him to the ground like a sack of bricks.

  Everything had happened so quickly… But it was rather clear that he had been ambushed. No need to think deeply to realise that.

  Looking around, he could only see darkness, an impenetrable mantle of dark. The ground felt like upturned dirt with some pebbles, and as he tried to stand, he nearly immediately hit the ceiling.

  He couldn’t stand at all. At most, he could only move around using his hands and knees. His first thought sent panic through his heart. Had he been buried alive? But quickly, he understood that this didn’t make sense, although the ceiling and ground were close, everything else felt much wider around him.

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  Who would dig such a big hole just to throw a random guard into it?

  He checked himself and his surroundings. The sword and shield he usually carried were nowhere to be found. In fact, his armour had been stripped off him, but thankfully, his lantern had been left nearby… With only a small amount of oil left in it, for some reason.

  The surroundings were illuminated, revealing several paths all around him, and confirming that he was indeed underground. Everything around was dirt, pebbles and protruding rocks.

  He couldn’t be too deep underground, as he was fairly certain that he would be surrounded by nothing but stone in that case.

  Arnauld might have been knocked unconscious and carried beneath the earth for unknown reasons, but if he looked at the bright side… Well, he wasn’t suffocating at least, meaning that this place had to be connected to the surface, although the air was rather thin…

  As his thoughts turned to that, he realised that if something collapsed and dust flooded in, he would probably just choke to death. His heart began beating faster, he extinguished the lantern for a few moments, wanting to conserve what little oil it had left, and also, seeking to use the darkness to calm his nerves.

  But that had the opposite effect, as in the distance, the instant the light disappeared, he saw two small purple dots staring him down from the end of the tunnel directly in front of him.

  The dots stared for a few seconds and disappeared without a sound.

  The guard barely even thought. He needed to get the hell out of here, and so, he felt his way to another tunnel and began crawling, but the ambient and absolute darkness made it more than just a little difficult to manoeuvre around.

  In his hurry, he kept on bumping against the walls and ceiling, fearing that using his lantern would alert whatever creature it was that he saw, but at some points, he had no choice but to use it as the tunnels weren’t always on the same elevation as him, some required him to climb, and some would take him deeper underground.

  Naturally, the latter was a less-than-ideal choice, but sometimes, the tunnels that were higher in elevation than he would be blocked off by heavy stones, and in the confines of the tunnels, there was no way for him to move them out of the way.

  Moving mindlessly through dark tunnels wasn’t exactly a walk in the park. However, it was tiring, and his body was aching all over due to the awkward position he had to be in to get anywhere, but he did eventually see something. It was not reassuring in the least.

  From a tunnel ahead of him, to the right, a purple light peered through, slowly becoming stronger as though it was getting closer.

  Arnauld wanted to curse, struggling to twist himself around in the narrow tunnel, desperately wanting to go back before the thing was going to poke its head out of the tunnel and see him, but just as he managed to turn around, the light disappeared.

  The guard stared into the darkness, listening for any sound, but he wasn’t hearing much at all, only the usual sounds he had been hearing since the beginning, things he couldn’t quite describe, that he couldn’t attribute to anything in particular… That is, until he heard the shifting of dirt directly in front of him.

  This sound, he was familiar with, and accompanied by the sensation of one of his hands going lower as the dirt he was taking hold of had to accommodate additional weight.

  He breathed sharply as he turned his head. He had been looking back, and when he looked forward, he only saw darkness.

  For a moment at least, until two purple dots revealed themselves mere centimeters away from his face.

  He was frozen in fear, his entire body unresponsive as he was unable to come up with any good response to his current situation. Arnauld could only remain still.

  “P- Please…”

  All he came up with was a choked plea.

  It had the opposite effect of what the guard would have hoped. The instant he tried to beg, the tunnel lit up as the dots flared up with a purple glow, revealing a monster for a split second, as an awful scream escaped its maw.

  Arnauld only felt pain for a moment.

  He would not be coming home.

  ___

  See? That was amazing! I told you that blocking some tunnels so that only I could use them was worth the time! I shone a light down the tunnel, keeping him in place as I actually swung around, took another tunnel and ended up directly in front of him! Did you feel that sheer terror he emitted? And that sorrow? That was some high-quality negative emotions right here.

  I’ll admit, it was far more effective than I expected, and it is certainly more entertaining to have a playground of your own making, which allows you to control the actions of the victims far more thoroughly

  Exactly.

  Since I know the tunnels like the back of my hand, I can find my way even in the dark if needed, coupled with the fact that I can track down my prisoners at will, thanks to the stream of negative emotions they constantly give out. I have full control down here and can force them into a situation that will lead to absolute despair.

  Despair is a negative emotion that I don’t get much of, and that rarity makes it attractive in my eyes. Unlike what I had originally imagined, most people retain hope even in the worst situations. Naturally, it is mostly delusion, as more often than not, when I get my hands on someone, they die within the next few moments.

  So to really squeeze some of that despair out, I need to force them into situations they know for certain they can’t get out of.

  The tunnels are helpful in that regard.

  Mmh… The rest of our guests must have heard my scream. They are more fearful than ever.

  By the way, what did you think of that one?

  It was good, but maybe a bit too high-pitched

  I’ll take note of that. I have a few more prepared anyway…