Chris imdiately frowned and stepped forward to block the doors.
"But Julien, are you sure?" Chris asked, holding up his perfectly healed hands to prove a point.
"I am completely fine now. I have full mobility, so I can co with you and watch your back."
Alice nodded quickly in total agreent.
She clearly hated the idea of sitting around in a safe room while her little brother was locked up in a military prison.
"No, you are staying here," Julien said, keeping his voice very firm.
"Think about it logically. No guard in their right mind would believe a simple travelling rchant wandering around with a heavy combat tank and a dark magic necromancer doesn’t have an ulterior motive. You two look exactly like an elite assassination squad. I need to look like a harmless, greedy guy selling water in a desert."
Alice bit her lip, knowing his logic was annoying but completely right.
"But what if you get mugged by the deserters on the outside?" Alice asked, her voice full of real worry.
"There are dangerous people who choose to live outside the safe zones. They just hide in the ruined buildings and steal from whoever they want."
Julien smiled a little bit.
He had already prepared for that exact problem.
"Oh, I am not going entirely alone," Julien said.
Right on cue, the heavy doors of the building pushed open.
Kyle walked into the lobby.
The massive guy looked even more intimidating than usual today.
He wore thick, battered armour and had a giant, brutal-looking weapon slung over his broad shoulder.
His girlfriend Mira walked in right behind him, casually carrying a glass bottle of so strange drink.
"I am hiring Kyle as my bodyguard for the trip," Julien explained, gesturing to the big guy.
"He definitely looks the exact part of a rcenary."
Kyle grinned widely, showing off his teeth.
He walked over and slapped a calloused hand on the side of Julien’s wooden cart.
"Are you ready, little rchant?" Kyle asked, his deep voice booming in the quiet lobby.
Julien looked past Kyle and stared out the glass doors.
The ruined, dusty streets of the city stretched out as far as he could see.
He had not actually left this imdiate district area since the apocalypse first started and the sky broke open.
It felt incredibly strange to finally leave his established safe zone.
But then he thought about Chris’s ruined hands and Alice’s missing brother trapped in a cell.
And he thought about the fake Gina plotting her next move in the background.
He had to do this.
’Ti to go to work,’ Julien thought to himself, feeling a sudden wave of determination.
He grabbed the rough wooden handles of the cart and took a deep breath.
"Yeah," Julien said, looking straight ahead at the open road.
"Let’s go."
Chris and Alice stood right by the doors of the association lobby, raising their hands in a slow, reluctant wave.
Chris still looked incredibly nervous about the whole solo plan, shifting his weight from side to side, but he knew better than to argue anymore.
Mira, completely ignoring the tension hanging in the room, pulled a cracked smartphone out of her pocket.
"Hold on, smile for the cara," Mira grinned, holding the phone up.
The screen flashed brightly in the dim lighting of the lobby.
"Got to docunt the grand departure. Bring my big guy back in one piece, alright?"
Julien just nodded, offering a small wave back to his friends.
Before Julien could even grab the rough wooden handles of the supply cart, Kyle stepped right past him.
The rcenary just chuckled, effortlessly grabbing the thick wood and pulling the heavy load as if it weighed absolutely nothing.
His giant, brutal-looking sword rested securely in a leather harness strapped across his broad back.
They stepped out through the doors and into the quiet dust of the outside world.
Both of them walked in near-total silence for the first hour.
The loud crunch of gravel under their heavy boots and the annoying squeak of the cart’s wooden wheels were the only sounds filling the empty air.
Julien looked over his shoulder after a while.
The walls of District Two were already fading into a grey silhouette in the distance.
It honestly looked like a mirage now, just a blurry dream of safety that was getting harder and harder to see through the hazy air.
When he turned back around, the reality of the outside world hit him right in the face.
Before the apocalypse started, this area was probably a bustling financial centre or a busy, crowded neighbourhood.
Now, it was just a massive graveyard of broken buildings.
Giant skeletons of skyscrapers pointed up at the cloudy sky, completely hollowed out and covered in creeping vines.
Rusted fras of old cars clogged the cracked streets, left behind by people trying to escape whatever ca out of the first gates.
’It is crazy how fast everything just fell apart,’ Julien thought, pulling his jacket a little tighter against the wind.
’A few years ago, people were probably buying coffee right here. Now it is just a dead zone.’
Nobody really knew what the Earth actually looked like anymore.
The giant sky broadcast had changed the entire landscape and geography of the planet in a single day.
Did the continents rge? Did the planet actually get bigger to fit all these new dinsional gates? It was all just total guesswork now.
As far as anyone inside the District knew, there were only three major sanctuaries left in this specific part of the world.
But looking out at the endless stretch of concrete ruins, Julien figured there had to be more.
There was a very high probability that other small pockets of humanity were hiding out there in the rubble, just trying to survive the daily monster waves.
And then there were the deserters.
Not everyone wanted to live under the strict, paranoid rules of the Hunter Association or the isolated military camps.
So people chose the ruins instead.
They survived by scavenging old grocery stores, hiding from the boss monsters, and stealing from anyone foolish enough to walk through their claid territory.
’For all I know, there could be so crazy SSS-rank hermit living in that collapsed bank over there,’ Julien mused, eyeing a particularly shady-looking pile of rubble on the corner.
’I really hope Kyle is exactly as tough as he looks.’
Kyle shifted his grip on the cart, seemingly completely unfazed by the creepy atmosphere of the dead city.
He cleared his throat, finally breaking the long stretch of silence between them.
"So, rchant," Kyle started, glancing back over his massive shoulder.
"I have been wondering sothing for a while. That giant black sword your friend used to cut down the boss monster back at the gate... how exactly does it have a power of its own?"
Julien blinked, a little surprised by the sudden question.
He thought about the item description he read in the system back when he first bought it.
The Ruined Knight’s sword.
He definitely did not want to expose his system to a hired bodyguard, so he went with a half-truth that sounded like a very solid theory.
"I think my weapons co from another era," Julien explained slowly, watching his steps over the broken roads.
"Or maybe a totally different tiline, or another world where people had already lived through this exact kind of ss. The items I sell... they are not freshly made in so local forge."
Kyle raised a thick eyebrow, clearly interested in the lore.
"aning?"
"aning soone already used it," Julien continued, keeping his voice steady.
"The sword Chris wielded belonged to a warrior who tried to defend his small village against an entire invading army. He fought until his body completely gave out, and all his anger and desperation basically cursed the blade."
’At least, I guess that is what happened based on the short lore text in the shop nu,’ Julien thought to himself.
"He might have had his own tragic story, a whole life and family, which we will never actually know," Julien added, feeling a weird sense of respect for the digital inventory sitting in his head.
"Every high-tier item probably has a history like that. We are just picking up their leftover tools and trying to survive with them."
Kyle nodded, digesting the heavy information.
He reached back with his free hand and patted the worn hilt of his own massive weapon.
"Makes you wonder who died holding this thing, then," Kyle muttered, a rare look of solemn respect crossing his scarred face.
"I picked this up inside a dungeon. I guess we are all just carrying ghosts."
They kept moving deeper into the concrete canyon.
The ruined buildings grew taller and tighter together, blocking out most of the sun.
Shadows stretched long and dark across the destroyed street, creating perfect hiding spots in every alleyway.
Julien was too busy looking at his Streetwise map to notice the subtle movent happening above them.
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