Nick exhaled a deep breath and finally left the school grounds. By now, not only his face, but his whole body, was drenched in sweat due to the sheer stress. This was not enough to slow him down though, and he only sped up his movement, mixing in with the crowd as fast as he could.
While maintaining his brisk pace, Nick stopped a young passer-by. From the look of the young man, he was an ordinary human, who clearly feared the ‘present’ Nick.
Nick’s attire and the ring on his finger indicated he was a mage of the Blue Tear Magic School. Considering that almost all mage students had slaves, and that these slaves were ordinary people, the young man in question was worried whether Nick harbored any ill-intentions towards him.
Nick, though, just wanted to ask a single question.
“Where is the exit of the city?”
The young man did not expect this sort of a question, or even this kind of behavior. Nonetheless, he answered truthfully.
Nick nodded at the answer and began walking even faster towards the exit. Courtesy of his past life’s street experience, he can understand to some degree whether someone is lying to him. The streets are filled with people who lied for food or for almost anything they could get.
Nick knew that the young man had not lied to him. Added to Nick’s own perception of gauging people, the young man was after all an ordinary human, who was so scared of mages that he would not have the guts to lie to him.
Nick did all that he could to keep walking faster, without attracting much attention. Even so, he did not forget to look at the city, and the other people around.
Had he not been a slave that had just staged a legendary escape, he would have liked to explore the city that was filled with things new to him.
There were many people walking in the streets of Blue Tear City. Many shops and vendors lined up the street, constantly trying to sell something to people.
There were kids playing, full of smiles, blissfully unaware of the cruel realities of the world. Most of these kids were the same age as the slaves in the Blue Tear Magic School. Maybe their fate was blessed, and they were not born as slaves or eventually become slaves for mage students.
Nick did not pause to admire the scenery and continued his exit journey. A thought did flash in his mind at the moment –
“Wherever the human race and people’s society existed, there would always be problems of inequality; life was unlikely to ever be fair.”
As Nick kept walking, he whispered to himself.
“It is in the basic nature of human beings to kill and destroy each other.”
An hour later, Nick finally managed to leave the city. He came across many things as he walked, including several guards. But nobody paid any attention to him after seeing that he wore a mage ring, which was the storage ring that he stole from Elena’s corpse.
Some of the guards did look at him as he was leaving. Nick stayed calm, and just showed the ring, which sufficed for the guards to let him out.
Nick finally bid adieu to Blue Tear City without any problems. He still did not stop. Instead, he began running towards the forest that he could see in the distance. When he was walking in the forest, he steadily checked the map and planned in his mind.
This plan was in fact in its genesis even earlier. When Nick was first plotting his escape, he knew he would need a map of the continent where they lived. As he was neared the city’s exit, he managed to look at the map and created a basic escape plan.
The first thing that he noticed was that Blue Tear City was near the border of Anderium Forest West Entrance. After inspecting the map, he managed to create a basic outline of where he would be going.
“I killed a mage student, and the name of the student is Elena. It is most likely that she has some kind of mage family, and this mage family will ask for an explanation from Blue Tear City and Blue Tear City Mage School. It is highly possible that they will try to seek me out.”
“If I want to escape from them completely, I need to go to a different empire. There is only one big empire that could hide me from the noses of the Blue Tear Empire — the Deep Fire Empire. They do not like each other, and the lands of the Deep Fire are almost as big as the Blue Tear Empire.”
“I will enter Anderium Forest after I leave the city and move towards the Mosbour Desert. After passing the desert, I will sneak into the Neget Forest, which is controlled by the Deep Fire Empire.”
This was the broad contour of Nick’s plan.
Nick started running towards the Anderium Forest and managed to enter the manmade road of the Forest. He first kept running on the road, and then slowly entered a path covered with bushes and other plants. He cannot keep walking on the common road; that would be the first place they would look for him.
“I need to keep moving for a day without stopping. Passing the Anderium Forest will last longer than 10 days. If I stop right now, it will be easier for them to catch me this close to the city.”
Nick did not know whether Elena’s corpse was discovered by the mage guards or not. But he did not have any choice except to keep moving. He was lucky Elena’s ring had some food and water. At least this way, he did not need to stop to hunt or look for water sources. But in the end, he was still a low-level mage who needed some rest after the intense physical activity.
After walking for five hours, he found a small place for himself. The night was already here, and two moons brightened the Anderium Forest. He put his head on the tree and took his first downtime in what appeared to be an awfully long time for him.
Even four to five hours of sleep were enough to rejuvenate his strength to completely execute his escape plan.
“I need to keep moving!”
This was his last thought, before he entered into deep sleep.
