I finally reached the end of the rope ladder and pulled myself into the lower level where the rope originated. The uneven cavern in front of me was practically dripping with foul substances.

Not a very good start to our ascension. We just got clean too. Oh well. Can’t win them all.

“Oh divine-beasts, the smell…” Celes gagged.

“A sewer line is probably running through here.” I shrugged.

I couldn’t smell much since a servitor hunter had nipped me in the head when I was seven. Nipped is a cute term for getting brain-fried and twitching on the ground for sixteen hours, unable to move.

I had almost died then, and since that day I’d sworn to myself to systemize my approach to stealing things.

The Pharmacist part of my brain approved of systemizing things. Yep, I named my distant-past self “The Pharmacist” since it was a fanciful word that nobody used anymore. Also, it was my past-self’s profession, I think.

Establishing a name for my other half made my walk through the sewers quite spry. Celes was the total opposite of my merry self, looking like an extra gloomy fox.

The sewer tunnel went rapidly up and then down again. The innards of the Gold City were quite uneven at times.

There was a labyrinth of passageways and hollows within the shell of Boundless Chorus, filled with all sorts of questionable things. Celes and I pushed Qi into our eyes to see in the dim twilight of the tunnels. The walls emitted a yellow-orange glow, but it was quite faint.

There were basic markings on the walls made with glowing blue paint wherever the tunnels split, labeling each passage as [I], [V], and [X], aka “safe,” “dangerous,” and “extremely dangerous.”

I tried to follow the “safe” route leading up. Tried to—because as it turned out, some of the tunnel’s inhabitants didn’t know the meaning of that word.

As evidence of this unfortunate fact, a person-sized sphere of black rats emerged, slushing and slurping, from the descending tunnel in front of us. The sphere of rats squealed at us with a thousand throats, their red, beady eyes glowing in the dark.

“Deathstorm! It’s the Efficacious Rat-King!” Celes gasped.

Nice to know that she had studied her bestiary, or whatever, because I had no idea what the thing was called. I would have personally called it “Scary-big-rat-ball.”

Now normally, I would simply run away very quickly from a sewer denizen as potent as this one, but alas, I had a tuckered geisha with me. It was time to test out my gun.

I had carefully disassembled and reassembled it several times while sitting on the rooftop earlier to make sure all of the parts were still in working order. It was a thousand years old after all, but Lord Boundless must have touched the safe at one point, suspending the decay in it.

On its own the gun would be completely useless against a massive spheroid of rats with no single organ to target, but I had a theoretical multi-step plan for defeating a potent denizen of the caverns beneath the Gold City.

With the strength of two, I grabbed one of the flour bags from the backpack and flung it in the downward direction of the Rat-King. The bag collided with a flop against the rat sphere.

I sent another bag in the direction of the abominable sphere and then another, until I was all out of flour.

A thousand rats angrily clawed at the bags, moving and wriggling, kicking up an enormous cloud of flour in the air.

“Cover your ears!” I yelled as I leveled the gun at the Rat-King. I weaved a spiral pattern of Qi around the bullet closest to the chamber, making sure that the spiral set into the outside part of the metal.

Seven years ago I’d been taught the ability to produce sparks with my Qi. It was a very handy street-know-how for starting fires—good for staying warm and alive in the winters.

“Wha—?” Celes started to ask. I didn’t wait for her to cover her ears. The dust cloud was moving in our direction.

I pulled the trigger, the muzzle flashed, and the deafening echo of gunfire bounced within the tunnel. A bullet, trailing a sparkling spiral, slammed into the horrid rat-sphere.

The thick cloud of flour in front of me ignited almost instantly, blossoming into a rapidly spreading explosion. I knew that flour clouds could explode, but I wasn’t entirely sure if this trick would work. It worked far better than anticipated…

Billowing waves of fire rolled out towards us.

I leapt to the side, bringing Celes down into the dirty water ditch. I spread my Qi in a brace-for-impact pattern across my body as I attempted to shield us from the brunt of the oncoming blast wave. The firestorm detonation rocked the tunnel as it slammed into us.

In moments I came to, coughing from the smoke-filled air. Celes looked up at me from the ground. She was quite thoroughly soaked, looking like a wet puppy.

“H-how?” she asked. At least I think that this was her question. I couldn’t hear her words over the persistent, angry buzzing in my ears.

I pushed Qi into my ears in an attempt to clear up the irritating noise. The ringing partially subsided.

“Behold the power of science!” I announced. Celes rubbed her fox ears. She obviously hadn’t covered them up in time.

“I should rename myself from Sparks to Firestorm! Ha ha ha!” I laughed heartily, feeling like my heart was beating a million miles a minute.

The sphere of rats had dispersed. Numerous dead critters littered the ground in front of us, as hundreds more skittered away... while still on fire. It was a fantastic, surreal sight.

I cautiously crept down towards the remnants of the ex-rat-sphere. It was now a well-torched rat-pancake.

A glittering, glowing, small sphere sat in the center—the explosion had not even cracked it. I picked up my awesome new beast core and showed it to Celes.

“Oh yeah! Who’s the boss now?!” I grinned. “Uh, did I do it right? Is this a proper beast-subjugation process? Do I... uh... need to do some song and dance to make the core fall in love with me? Hello? Tea-drugging lady? Can you hear me?” I waved a hand at her.

Celes must have figured out the Qi into the ears trick because she actually responded. “I can hear you. Owchhhh,” she said, rubbing her new bruises. “I’m completely soaked... and I smell something awful! I just got cleaned too!”

She looked like she was about to have a nervous breakdown.

“Shhh. No crying! It’s okay. You can do the magic purity song again, right?” I walked back to her, offering her a hand.

“I can, later,” Celes replied, sighing deeply.

“Did you see me explode the King-ball? It was awesome, right? Wasn’t it awesome? One bit of praise, please. Look at my beast core; isn’t it awesome?” I wiggled my newest acquisition in front of her face.

Celes smiled ever so slightly, emerging from her catatonic state. “That was really impressive. Do you know why it’s called the Efficacious Rat-King?”

I shook my head.

“It’s a 150-year-old creature from the deeper levels. The rats combine their Qi into a pact-type hive-mind to unnaturally lengthen their life and multiply their strength. I honestly thought that we were done for.

“Han boasted about killing one once. It chewed right through six of his men before he was able to put it down... and only after the rats clawed out his eyes.”

“Eeeesh.” I blanched. “We got unlucky that such a monstrosity wandered out of the deep into our path… and we got very lucky that it was in such a tight tunnel way below us. The force of the explosion wouldn’t have torn it apart if it was out in the open.”

“I don’t even understand how you blew it up. That was nothing like the fist of fiery destruction technique I’ve seen cultivators use!” Celes noted.

“That, my lovely geisha, is but a small sample of the arcane wisdom of the Ancients now residing in my noggin.”

I tapped my forehead. “A dust explosion is the rapid combustion of fine particles suspended in the air within an enclosed location. Dust explosions can occur where any dispersed powdered combustible material is present in high enough concentrations in the air.”

“Dust can explode?” Celes gasped.

“Yeppers! We... Ancients had something that was called thermobaric weapons, which fully utilized this principle by rapidly saturating a confined area with an easily combustible material and then igniting it to produce explosive force.”

“Uhh... did the Ancients kill their enemies with mere flour?” Celes blinked.

“No. Our flour exploded, but it had no Qi, so the effect was rather weak. An explosion of Qi-less flour would only temporarily distract the Rat-King at best.”

“Our food is blessed by the radiance of Lord Boundless!” Celes nodded, understanding.

“Indeed. This flour, just like all of the food grown in Gold City, is jam-packed full of Qi!

“Qi, as far as I understand it, is... energy that can create fireballs or be used by cultivators to strengthen their bodies. The flour was made extra combustible by the Qi bits in every particle. This excess of stored energy is what made Gold City flour more akin to an arcane thermobaric weapon, which we manufactured entirely out of specific, highly explosive liquid.” I concluded my lecture with a flourish.

“To summon explosive fire of that magnitude without a specialized High-Cultivator wielding it is completely unheard of!” Celes shook her head.

“That’s right. The dust explosion, triggered by the spiral within the bullet I shot at the cloud, jump-started the conversion of stable Qi in the flour into release of energy. Boom.”

“Damn,” the geisha muttered.

“Be glad I’m on your side, partner!” I winked at her.