How to Get Girls, Get Rich, and Rule the World (Even If You're Ugly)-Chapter 56: How to Decode a Hoard of Forbidden Things (6)

I came back with the same caution. The hallway felt shorter now, like it wanted to spit me out.

I found Thalia again, pressed against the wall, her body slightly tilted like someone disguising interest with boredom. The woman was still staring at her, like she was passively waiting.

"Well?" Thalia whispered, without moving her lips.

"They’re not hiding a ritual. They’re hiding an entire operation."

"What?"

"Trafficking. Memories, relics, formulas, forged seals. And coordination. Everything runs like clockwork. And the worst part?"

"What?"

"She’s the dial."

Thalia turned pale.

And before we could say anything else...

The woman lifted her head.

Looked right at us.

Her shadow didn’t move. Her chest didn’t rise. But something in the air trembled.

And then—she lifted her head. Fast. Straight at me.

She didn’t blink. Didn’t hesitate. Just opened her mouth.

And screamed.

But it wasn’t a normal scream.

It was something deep, almost subterranean. Like the voice had come from the ground, from the sewers, from the roots of Antoril. Not a loud sound — a wide one. A call. An activation.

Thalia stepped back, eyes wide. I took a step too, but I already knew time had evaporated.

"Run," I whispered.

And we ran.

Not on impulse. On strategy. Because any second spent standing there would be seen as defiance. Or as guilt.

We turned the first corner, then another. We could hear voices. Rushed footsteps. Doors opening. But no one quite knew who or what to look for.

We ducked into a gap between two buildings, covered in damp stucco cloths and the stench of dead fish. Dark enough to swallow two bodies in silence.

There, with our hearts deafened by the pounding rhythm, we waited.

The night breathed differently after a scream like that. It was as if the air itself had thickened — too heavy, like it was waiting for something to collapse.

Thalia beside me was still panting, trying to turn panic into silence. I could feel her breath on my arm, too warm for that damp cold. But she held it in. She always held it in. Only now... I saw something in her eyes I hadn’t seen since we left Ashveil: doubt.

Not about me.

About the city.

About what this mission had become.

There, hidden among tarps and decaying scaffolding, we became part of the very architecture of the forgotten slums in the old city. That reeking corner of Antoril where no one looked for more than two seconds. Which made it perfect — for vanishing.

Footsteps.

Several.

They came fast. Irregular echoes. The kind of stride that doesn’t match formal shoes — reinforced boots, thick soles. People who run not out of fear, but on assignment.

Then came the voices.

Low. Cut short. Fragments tossed into the air like spears thrown blind.

"The sound came from here."

"Spread out. One group to the left, another around the back."

"If you see movement, signal. Don’t shout."

They were trained.

But they didn’t know who they were looking for.

Not yet.

I held Thalia’s wrist. Just to make sure she wouldn’t move on instinct. She understood. Didn’t flinch. Her eyes were fixed forward, but I knew inside, her mind was screaming. She wanted to run. Wanted to prove she hadn’t been wrong. That everything could still be fixed with logic, with words.

But there were no words here.

Only detection.

The footsteps came close to the alley. Four of them. One with a small torch. Two others with crossbows. The last with something like a ritual cane — dark wood, adorned with thin metal strips that vibrated in the wind.

They didn’t look into the gap where we hid.

But they didn’t seem ready to leave either.

I heard someone knock on the wall up ahead. A rhythmic pattern. Three short taps, a pause, two longer ones.

Recognition code.

A voice answered:

"Nothing here. But there’s been recent displacement."

I masked my breathing.

"Recent displacement."

They were tracking through the city like hunting for heat in a field. And if that was tracing magic... well, my tricks wouldn’t be enough.

Thalia’s hand tugged my sleeve.

Her silent signal for "Now what?"

My answer was simple: there was no answer.

Because there was no plan.

Only waiting.

The hunters passed. But slowly. As if they were testing every inch of the city. And what unsettled me the most... was that none of them looked alarmed.

They knew the alarm had already gone off.

Whoever had been there... had already been seen.

But, for some reason, not attacked.

I hated this kind of game.

The "let’s see how far they’ll go" game.

The kind of game only patient predators know how to play.

The nearest voice spoke again, now lower:

"If they vanished, they vanished wherever they wanted. But they’ll be back."

And then... silence.

Footsteps fading. Voices dissolving. No shout. No trace.

We just stayed there.

Dark. Still.

And when Thalia finally moved, it was only to whisper something that sounded like it belonged to another world:

"I don’t like this city anymore."

I smiled.

But without meaning it.

Because, immediately after that small noise of ours, they came.

The voices returned.

Lower now. Closer.

It wasn’t the first patrol anymore. These were different—more careful. People who knew how to search. Slow, measured steps, the kind that understand prey only runs when it hears. A distant crack, maybe the sound of a boot slipping in mud, made me squint and reevaluate our surroundings.

We had no way out.

Or rather... we had one.

To the left of the alley where we were pressed, beneath a poorly nailed board, was a vent from the city’s old drainage system — a vertical slit, just wide enough for a cat to slip through.

But what caught my eye was the moisture around it. It dripped not like rain, but like constant condensation. A sign of flow.

I crouched down. Carefully lifted the board. A putrid stench escaped—thick, oily, the kind born from decades of fermentation of things no one should’ve ever left behind.

But soon I saw: there was an opening below, no bigger than a badly built doorway. Enough space for two bodies, if they crawled.

And on the other side... a low, narrow, filthy tunnel. But dark. And out of sight.

Perfect.

I turned to Thalia.

"We have to go in here."

She looked. Then looked at me. Then looked again, as if I had said the only way out was to pretend to be a dead rat.

"This is a joke."

"It’s an exit."

"It’s a hole, Dante. A hole that smells like intestines."

"And that’s exactly why no one will look for us in it."

She hesitated. Her boots soaked in mud, her eyes fixed on the darkness below.

Another sound. This time metal against stone. A dry click. Too close.

"Got a better idea?" I murmured.

"We could try to throw them off. Take the rooftops. Or just wait a little longer."

"Wait? Here?" I pointed at the filthy rags. "With them getting closer every second? They’re going to sweep this alley. And when they do, they’ll find a journalist and a half-orc sweating fear in the corner of a wall."

She bit her lip.

"I won’t fit in there."

"Yes, you will. Just need to take a deep breath."

"I hate you."

"I’ve been told that. In much cleaner places than this."

Another sound. Steady footsteps, this time three alleys away. A muffled command.

"They’re dividing up the sectors," I said, almost to myself. "They’re gonna sweep in a ring. If we don’t leave now, they’ll sniff us out."

She hesitated a second longer. Then scoffed. Lowered herself, swallowed her disgust, and looked at me like I’d asked her for a personal, disgusting favor.

"If you tell anyone about this, I’ll kill you."

"You can try."

I placed my hands on the edge of the passage and went in first, letting my body slide slowly through the narrow opening. The stench hit me like a wall, but I stayed focused. Mud up to my shoulders, moisture on my skin, stifling heat.

Thalia followed. Crawling.

"This is the worst day of my life."

The tunnel stretched ahead like a damp scar on the city’s skin. We would move in silence, not knowing if the path led to freedom or a deeper trap.

But right then, anything was better than being caught.

And deep down, I knew:

The ones who survive in this world aren’t the cleanest.

They’re the ones most willing to get dirty—on purpose.