New Area
Neo Sion — humanity's last surviving city-state, raised by those who had lived through the end.
This planet had once possessed the technology to reach other stars. After the Gate Incident, it became a bleak dystopia where even surviving the monsters was struggle enough.
Neo Sion — which was also the name of this game — had packed every facility and every law with a single purpose: fighting the beasts. And that purpose sat far above the freedom of its citizens as the city's highest measure of judgment.
Every survivor inside the walls was assigned an identification code. Anyone without one was classified as a non-citizen. A child's birth had to be reported to the state at once; failure to do so within a month was a punishable offense. Any change of residence had to be reported as well, or one was deemed of "unknown residence" and cut off from every administrative, medical, and financial service in the city.
Every adolescent who turned fifteen underwent an ability aptitude test and registered the fingerprints of all ten fingers with the state. Citizens judged suitable were obligated to serve for a set term as public officers — hunters, Heroes, and the like. Under these and a host of other strict regulations, the city managed its people.
It reminded me of a certain country back in the real world, but here all that control existed for one reason only: to protect humanity from the monsters.
Human beings, though, will fight for freedom no matter the circumstances. When ability users who had gained power rose up demanding liberty, the city branded every rebel a villain and deployed its ability-wielding soldiers — the so-called Heroes — to crush them.
The Heroes of this city were nothing like the vigilantes and righteous champions of the superhero stories from my old world. Despite the name, they were police who kept ability-using citizens in line, and judges who held the power to pass sentence. Certain specialized Heroes who dealt with high-level criminal villains even had the authority to carry out summary executions without going through the courts.
In other words.
To survive, Shan and I would have to grow by taking Essence — all while never letting this city discover the parasite living inside my body.
A shop bell chimed. After finishing our meal, we stopped by a nearby artifact shop to sell the empty potion bottles.
"Welcome."
"Um... do you take these too?"
"Oh, empty potion bottles. Of course we do."
There was no need to haggle. The moment a slit-eyed beauty in a hunter's uniform, a gleaming hunter qualification badge pinned to her chest, looked at the merchant with a meaningful smile, the man put on an awkward grin, broke into a cold sweat, and abandoned any thought of lowballing us on the bottles. Thanks to that, we got almost the original cost back.
"Emily, here."
"Hmm? I gave those to you as a gift, so that money's yours too, little miss. Keep it."
When I tried to hand Emily the money from the bottles, she waved me off with a smile, as if she found me admirable. Well then — don't mind if I do. Before she could change her mind, I slipped the money straight into my wallet. That should cover food and drink for about two weeks.
"Coffee's on me, at least."
"Huh? Aren't you being way too shameless?"
There's nothing weird about showing off a little with money I earned thanks to Emily. Even when you do it this blatantly, people who already think well of you just add it to your score.
"Oh my, how sweet. Then I'll enjoy it, okay?"
See? Emily liked it too.
"Mmm... I thought I understood you, but I still don't..."
"You'll pick it up little by little."
We had plenty of time ahead of us.
We each ordered a cup at a cheap coffee stand and sat down. Relief settled in — and right behind it, a slow tide of anxiety about the future. We'd found a solution to Shan's problem. Now we just needed a safe place to molt.
It wasn't as if we had nowhere to lay our heads. There were abandoned buildings no one visited, safe houses the Secret Society had prepared for emergencies. I'd used plenty of those spots in the game, and I still remembered how to get to them. The problem wasn't the location. It was that human. No — that parasite.
I glanced at Emily. As if she'd been waiting for it, she leaned in and met my eyes.
"Got somewhere to go?"
"Of course I don't."
"Hmm. Fair enough."
Emily was asking things she already knew, just to enjoy my reaction. Those slit eyes you could never quite tell were open, that peculiar smile, that gentle voice tossing out questions as if they were nothing — it all kept feeling suspiciously like a shadowy mastermind from some story. She was clearly being kind to us, showing us genuine goodwill... so why? Was it those damn slit eyes?
"I am planning to leave this area, though."
The orphanage had vanished without a trace, and Chris had taken Siwoo and Sia into the Secret Society. I had no way to contact them right now, and Shan's follower-teachers weren't going to get in our way, so I figured I'd leave that side of things alone for a while. What worried me was what a little orphan with no proof of identity could actually do. There were several routes, technically. The problem was that most of what a non-citizen could do ran through the dark underbelly of the city.
"W-what about going to another orphanage? M-maybe we could live there the same way we did at ours..."
Shan had spent her whole life sleeping and growing in the paradise of that orphanage. Of course she'd think other orphanages would be the same.
"The others are hell. They're so awful you'd be better off becoming a villain."
"R-really? Th-that bad?"
It wasn't that the city offered no welfare for orphans and the poor. The problem was that this city's idea of welfare could give Industrial Revolution Britain a run for its money. The state-run facilities called Reformatories would, whenever the city ran short on labor, launch massive dawn raids, round up the poor, and force them inside.
"In the city-run facilities, they give you food and a place to sleep — and nothing else except the bare essentials you need to work."
"Th-that means... they don't even pay you?"
"Pay's the least of it. No snacks, nothing. If you need daily necessities, extra labor is the only way to get them."
"I-it shouldn't exist."
Shan muttered that a place like that had no right to exist in this world.
"Th-that's... that's just a p-prison, isn't it?"
"Yeah. There's not much difference between a Reformatory and a prison."
They were even more alike in that no one ever went in of their own free will. They worked captured non-citizens for years without pay, and those skilled laborers who survived until adulthood were granted the lowest class of citizenship — on the condition they keep doing the same work. And just like that, you had a fine labor force that even paid taxes.
Learned helplessness, plus the gaslighting that this was all they knew how to do — seven out of ten survivors accepted their lot. The other three exploded with the rage they'd been swallowing and became villains. That was the garbage system this city ran on.
"Shan, whatever your intentions were, the orphanage you ruled was one of the few paradises in this city. So I'd recommend you don't expect anywhere else to be the same."
"I-if I'd known that, I wouldn't have b-blown it up..."
I hadn't expected the explosion to be that powerful either. At the time, it had been the only way to survive.
"Even if we hadn't blown it up, we wouldn't have stayed there forever."
"Huh?"
"To achieve our goal, it couldn't be helped."
"Th-that goal... i-it's settling down somewhere nice and living happily... right? I-I misheard what you just said, didn't I? Right? That's it, right? Please tell me that's riiight~"
Shan seemed to think that now that everything was over, we could just keep living comfortably here.
"There's no way that's happening."
Sorry, but that was a dream we couldn't fulfill. Staying in a region where there'd been an explosion — and where it had come out that Abaddon had descendants — was the same as shouting please kill us from every rooftop. And if we stayed in one place, we couldn't grow strong enough to face the crises coming our way. In the end, we'd have no choice but to travel from region to region collecting Essence.
"Emily, go ahead and spit it out. Where are you trying to take us?"
I tossed the question at Emily, who'd been sitting quietly, savoring her coffee and our conversation as if it were classical music. Wiping my records from the orphanage had the advantage of putting us beyond the Management Bureau's tracking — but it also made surviving this city as a non-citizen far harder. Which meant, given how favorably Emily had been treating us, she'd taken that measure as part of a plan from the start.
"Sharp, aren't you. That's right. There is an option for a Tiss with nowhere to go."
Emily added that it was entirely my choice, then pointed a finger at herself.
"Want to come with me, maybe?"
"With you?"
I hadn't expected Emily to make that offer first.
"I'm a Wandering Hunter, see. The Management Bureau doesn't stick its nose in wherever I go or whatever I do. As long as I can prove my results."
She added that thanks to her major contribution in resolving the orphanage incident, she could afford to do nothing and loaf around for a while.
"If there's an Area Tiss wants to go to, let's go there. I'll lend you a safe house. How about it? Sound good?"
What we needed urgently was a place to molt, so I wasn't about to poke at her goodwill right now.
"Even if I ask why you're helping us, you won't tell me, will you?"
"Hehe. As long as it helps, that's enough. I won't do anything that would harm you, so you can trust me."
From Emily, I got a hint that she'd tell me when the time was right. For now, that was enough.
"Then how about you tell me? Where does the little miss want to go?"
I'd already decided on the destination. In this other world, humanity's territory was a single city — but it wasn't a small one. The administrative districts were arranged in a circle, numbered 1 through 6 clockwise around Area 0 at the center. The lower the number, the older the district and the more firmly it sat in the stable zone. The higher the number, the more recently humanity had reclaimed the territory.
For reference, we were in the outskirts of Area 4, a relatively safe zone — which was why hunters and heroes had been able to respond so quickly even after a hole had been punched in it.
"Area 7."
There were only six Areas, and I said I wanted to go to the seventh. I wasn't making it up.
"You know that's still a danger zone, not a complete Area yet, right?"
"I know. That's why I'm going."
Area 7 was the district humanity had most recently begun trying to expand into — a zone still being built. It was territory Abaddon had once occupied, and it was currently humanity's front line. Thanks to the death of Abaddon, the former master of that domain, there was no risk of running into a Calamity Class monster. So the place served as both the front line and a training ground where precious hunter apprentices and hero apprentices could gain real combat experience. There were also plenty of dungeons where they left the cores that anchored the Gates intact, using them as training grounds for candidates.
Areas 1, 2, and 3, inward of our Area 4, were packed with humanity's major facilities — places crawling with high-rank hunters and heroes, plus cutting-edge barriers that could even detect mimicry. We couldn't even get in because of those barriers, so they weren't an option. Areas 5 and 6 weren't bad, but the monsters there were monsters among monsters — so thoroughly hidden that even hunters and heroes couldn't catch them. We couldn't beat them as we were now, so those dropped in priority.
Which left Area 7 — a stage packed with major growth elements even in the game — as the most suitable of the remaining candidates.
The last problem was where to molt. I scooted over to Emily and whispered in her ear.
"Emily, can I molt safely in Area 7 too?"
"Of course. I'll stay by your side until it's over."
A faint flush colored Emily's cheeks as she promised I could leave it all to her. If Emily was going to watch over us, there was no need to molt in Area 5 or 6 and then move. I had no idea which of Shan's traits would appear on my body, so it made sense to do it in Area 7, where we planned to stay for a long time anyway.
"Ahh... my paradise... my nest..."
Shan couldn't seem to bring herself to leave — even though I was the one walking — and kept sighing inside me.
"Once we're there, I'll let you eat as much delicious new Essence as you want. So quit sighing."
Twitch. At the words delicious and Essence, Shan's drooping ears perked up.
"You mean it...? Hey, that's a promise? You have to keep it, okay? There's so much I want to eat and so much I want to do!"
"A-alright, alright. I promise."
Faced with Shan's star-bright eyes, I found myself promising before I knew it.
And so we headed for the terminal to catch the monorail to Area 7.