Naph's penchant for stupidity was third on his list of vicious traits he exhibited.
Second went to his sense of humour.
But the first, he feared the first most.
For others, his first would also be first in others most shown traits. Albeit, in a different list, not in a vicious trait one. They would put it in the traits they wish to accommodate into themselves.
It was his desire to retaliate honorably. Not through savagery, not cunningness. But pure skill based.
He took on caestres. Not for fun, but to have a target he could vent his utmost vicious trait.
A cunning he hadn't inherited, but learned—sharpened by necessity and his dark humor. His externally developed cunningness stemmed itself in his sense of humour. A wicked one at that.
Naph's compass for retaliation had begun spinning within him. Wanting to have him reverse the situation, make the brawns who were hunting him and Don Extea pay.
Pay very dearly.
'They should pay.' An inner thought reverberated across his entire body. He ran zigzagging through main streets and alleyways.
Forging paths where there were people. He was glad for the sudden increase of the proclamation and propaganda in the city. A lot of people had to come out.
"Extea must also be using that. Maybe I should let the city know a bit more formally why such an action is so good for a city." He muttered between ragged breaths.
His legs never stopping.
He jumped over a crate, then pushed off a man startled from his jump. The man hadn't even had time to react, and Anaphol needed him to hate him. So Naph landed a perfect footprint on the man's coat.
Another added to the stampede. The stampede behind Naph had started shouting to stop the boy.
"Get that rascal, he's a thief! A thief!"
"He should be hanged! Hanged and fed to the caestres!"
Several more pleasantries came his way. The stampede grew wilder. Naph running and trying to survive the stampede he started, but he just couldn't lose them. Not now for they were needed.
'I need them around me, just barely. Let them trample the muscles that want to kill me over the bounty of Bulwark.' He thought to himself.
Another alley turn, he went in. "Crap!"
A dead end, born from the stampede. Anaphol had circled himself into the middle of the stampede.
He looked back, the front of the stampede had different people than the original.
"Some must have died. But where to now!" Naph panicked. Looking all over the walls.
'Can I climb these?' He grabbed onto a pipe from the back of a building pulling himself up.
His own creation of death had closed his escape through the roads.
'What if the ones who climb after me are the actual ones who want to kill me over her?' He had a spare thought as he progressed upwards.
No other path. And the angered ones had volunteers coming forward to climb up after Naph.
Naph kicked into the wall to his left a few times. Algae that had stuck to it fell down on his pursuers.
"How do you like that?!"
Further up he went, Naph dislocated more of the algae growing along the wall.
Sometimes with his left foot, other times with knees and elbows. His climb to the five storey building's roof was of high voltage chase but not fast. He needed to know who was coming and who were the ones behind the plan of murdering him over Bulwark's hunt.
The roof was a bended slope. A slow rise. Cleaner than usual roofs he had seen in Sevenren.
"Come on. What now? Going to let me slide away with the money losers!" Naph shouted down at the crowd in the alleyway. People surged forward, shoving one another in.
There was already blood in the alleyway from all the rush. How many dead Anaphol didn't know, but he expected a few of his to-be heaven sent messengers to also be part of the red.
He glanced in the direction of the dark clouds of smoke. "That's south-east. Not good for escape. Uhhhh, which direction then?"
Naph turned around and around as he let his few pursuers try to get to the top. None as nimble as Naph.
And many of them had a deep distaste of the algae.
"City folk and their cleanliness bug. Eh!" He lolled his tongue at the crowd.
Below, the crowd still howled, unaware they were trampling mercenaries sent to silence him.
A stone or two flew to him, he just backed away.
"Thanks for sending in the inventory! I needed it so much!" Naph retorted to the stone pelters.
Picking a few stones, and avoiding several others. He took a handkerchief out of the inner pocket of his and scrapped the stones clean.
"Time for more mayhem." Naph tossed a few stones back by kicking them down the slope.
He jumped onto the next roof attached. Safer, but not for long. The first pursuer had just climbed up the roof.
The pursuer screamed back down to the crowd, whether an original one whom Naph stole or hurt, or he was part of the people after him for his bounty hunting Bulwark. The scream was clear, "The boy is moving to the next roof over. Cut him across at the main street!"
"Clever one aren't you?" Naph quipped back. And he got the exact response he needed to know who the pursuer was.
There was no response from the pursuer. Meaning only one thing by Naph, the pursuer was from the group of people who wanted him dead.
"Too bad for you. You'll die today." Naph announced it to the world. The pursuer hadn't paid attention to Anaphol's approach as he was still looking down into the street. Naph didn't just bash his skull in with the stone.
Naph proceeded to bash his lungs in as well.
"Here's another trophy!" Naph pushed the body down onto the collected crowd as the body rammed itself onto the climbing pursuers.
None were now climbing up the pipes of the five storey building. But Naph did hear the lock to the roof opening.
"See you guys after the caestres eat you!" Naph called out.
It was time for his plan to begin taking on a bit more surreal, tangible, and physical shape. He sprinted across the roof of the five storey building, back to the one he'd just come from—to kill.
A reversal in position had begun. The crowd hadn't thinned but became explosive. They were barreling in up the path of the five-storey building against the well wishes of it's owners probably.
Naph needed the crowd. He didn't want to face someone like Bulwark with weird effects.
She was still on his mind.
Even through all that has happened one word Bulwark kept repeating through their confrontation never left his mind. Even when he was cornered over killing her.
One word: "Cata".
He just couldn't shake it off. And he had just heard a sentence beginning to be spoken by someone at the top of the sloped roof. That's why he needed the crowd. Naph wanted to avoid whatever the city had hid under its belly.
They can keep it under. While he runs amok.
The pursuers heard the crowds' rampaging footsteps through the stairs. One of the pursuers clicked their tongues, he screamed, "Boy! Don't think you have reversed this position! We will kill you. You knowing that word is enough, and for the proof that you did kill Bulwark. Boy, oh, boy."
The other pursuers around him were running back down trying to make it look like that Naph had escaped. But Naph expected that.
He shouted so loud his throat hurt, "Huh? I can't hear you! What did you say about Cata! What does Cata mean! Oh thanks for giving me a head start!"
He sang those replies running along the side of the roofs so that he was visible to the rattled crowd below. He needed their witness. To stop the city's true controllers to not hunt him.
His reversing of the situation was working. The population of guards among the crowd was less. Naph half-heartedly believed that was because of Don Extea.
Hoping against hope that he gets to meet him one last time. He crossed a dozen rooftops until a wide opening was approaching him fast.
Naph jumped not over an alleyway, but the main street. He sure was going to die.
The main streets of Sevenren weren't small in width, they were wide enough for eight of his metallic ride to run side by side and still have room for a single line of people to go on either end.
Except there was one hiccup in Sevenren's entire city plan. The city unknowingly had been made over the dead buried corpse of an ancient caestre. No one ever checked deep enough for no one in the original city's construction couldn't.
Now they did have people who they claimed had performed the related investigations. This was part of the everyday proclamations. One of them in particular had made itself well known on the main street Naph was barreling towards.
A glassy long pole had unearthed itself, standing two storey tall for now. But one thing about this was revealed that "whomsoever rammed into such a pole at anything faster than a brisk walk will get randomly teleported from one of such pole to the next closest one."
And Naph's reversal of all his pursuers plans relied on this one thing. Sevenren's very own teleportation pole.
Anaphol's anaclastic plan rendered his collected pursuers useless.