Cleanliness, Kazuki Tanaka was learning, was not just about hygiene.
It was about *power*.
Power over life and death. Over health and decay. Over who lived in filth and who sold the cure.
The deeper he spread his sanitation movement, the more resistance he faced—not just from the Church, but from nobles whose pockets were lined with the profits of pestilence. None more so than **Duke Morbath of Gristmere**.
The name reached Kazuki through hushed whispers in taverns and from grateful peasants clutching their first clean water. Morbath's face appeared on posters around plague-ridden cities, smiling above slogans like:
> *"Suffering is a coin, and healing is our gift."*
> *"Blessed tonics, only five silver! Guaranteed relief or a more honorable death!"*
But the tonics were fake. Sugar-water with a dash of feverroot. Sometimes laced with tranquilizers. Sometimes with *nothing at all.*
Morbath didn't sell healing.
He sold *hope to the desperate*.
---
Kazuki's first encounter with the rot-empire came in the outer slums of **Thornwell**, a city where the stench hung in the air like a physical weight. Families huddled near overflowing cesspits. Children played near rivers that bubbled with slime. And on every corner, a merchant hawked Morbath's "miracle tonics."
Kazuki picked up a bottle, inspected the golden seal, and grimaced.
"Ingredients: Holy Spring Water, Trust, Extract of Light? This is 70% boiled gutter water."
The merchant scowled. "Blasphemy. You want healing, you buy from the Duke's line."
Kazuki smiled grimly, dropped the vial, and crushed it under his boot.
> **You have gained Local Infamy: Thornwell District — +3**
He raised both hands. \[Sanitize Aura] pulsed outward like a wave. Dust fled. Grime hissed. The nearest wall—previously coated in something that might once have been food—sparkled. A beggar's festering wounds closed slightly under the passive cleanse.
Gasps spread. A child ran to him crying, "Soap prophet! He's real!"
By the end of the day, Kazuki had **cleansed an entire block**.
He called it the **First Free District**.
---
Word spread to Morbath faster than germs in a brothel.
The Duke was a former merchant turned noble, slick-haired and sunken-eyed, wearing robes lined with the fur of plague rats—a symbol of his control over disease and "cure." His estate was perched on the hill above Thornwell like a fungus-ridden palace, surrounded by guards and shrines to his so-called "Healing Doctrine."
When told that Kazuki had given away cleanliness *for free*, he nearly choked on his fermented wine.
"No one sanitizes without a tax," he growled. "Send in the Black Fumes."
---
That night, they came.
Hooded mercenaries with smoke canisters, dumping toxic fog into the clean streets. "Sanitation is treason!" they yelled. "Healing comes from coin!"
But Kazuki was ready.
He had been experimenting.
He tossed a **Disinfectant Bomb** into the smoke. It hissed, burst, and released a wave of purifying mist that counteracted the toxins instantly. The crowd roared.
> **New Skill: \[Aura Amplify] – You can channel additional magic into an aura burst, expanding its range.**
He raised his broom like a war banner. "Let it be known," he called out, voice echoing through the streets, "that health is a right. Not a commodity!"
The people rallied. Brooms became weapons. Soap became symbols. Rats turned tail.
By morning, Kazuki had driven out the mercenaries—and renamed the slums **Sanctuary Ward One**.
---
Infuriated, Duke Morbath held an emergency summit with Church officials and bribed lords.
"His magic is destroying the economy of sickness," one whispered.
"He's cleansing what was never meant to be clean," said another.
"If this continues," Morbath growled, "peasants might start demanding *latrines*."
Varain, watching silently from the corner, merely muttered, "He dares to challenge divine rot."
They agreed on a simple truth: Kazuki was no longer a nuisance.
He was a *revolution*.
---
Meanwhile, in the shadows of Thornwell, Kazuki began forming a secret network—healers, midwives, even former Church clerics disillusioned by dogma. He called it:
> **The Order of the Mop**
Their mission: cleanse every disease-ridden alley, expose every false cure, and drag the rot of corruption into the light—one enchanted broom at a time.
As Kazuki looked out over the flickering torchlight of the newly purified districts, he felt it deep in his bones.
This wasn't just about cleaning anymore.
It was a war.
And soap was his sword.