Chapter 18
Inside Harun's street stall on Underground Level 19.
“Harun.”
….
“Hey, old man. Deaf?”
Kael, repairing broken parts as usual, spoke to the vacant-looking Harun.
“Huh…?”
“What do you mean, ‘huh’? Are you ready to go?”
“Uh… yeah. Ready….”
Seeing him so clearly different from usual, Kael clicked his tongue as though dumbfounded.
“What’s with you? If you’ve grown that attached to this dump, you don’t have to go.”
“What? You think I’m acting like this because I’ve grown attached to it?”
“Then why are you sitting there like that?”
“You crazy—”
Harun reflexively began to curse, then shut his mouth and let out a deep sigh.
“No, since it’s thanks to you, I’ll try to hold back on the swearing.”
“If you’re going to swear, swear. I’m more used to that.”
“…You’ve really mastered pissing people off.”
Harun wiped a hand down his face.
“Do you have any idea what happened that day?”
Kael scratched his head, thought for a moment, then casually opened his mouth.
“Well… didn’t it end well?”
“Ha.”
Harun laughed as though utterly incredulous.
“Do you even know who you were mouthing off to? The head of Seraph, I mean! Even people from the upper levels might go their entire lives without meeting someone like that.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah?”
The corners of Harun’s eyes twitched at his reply.
“Hah. You’re definitely crazier than I ever imagined. What kind of nerve did you have to bring up a reward there? Didn’t you think you might get riddled with bullets in an instant?”
“He didn’t look like that kind of person.”
“How would you know?”
Kael tightened the screw on a broken circuit board as he spoke.
“I don’t usually brag, but I’m confident in my ability to read people.”
Harun stared blankly at him.
A few seconds later, he shut his mouth like a man who had lost the words to say, then quickly composed his expression.
“You know, though.”
“Why?”
“Did you… know how to use magic?”
Kael answered indifferently without even looking up.
“Yeah.”
“And you didn’t say a word for an entire year?”
“You never asked.”
“Huh.”
Harun laughed, genuinely dumbfounded.
“Was I supposed to ask? ‘Excuse me, are you a mage?’ Like that?”
“If you were genuinely curious, wouldn’t you have?”
“I really want to kill you.”
“If you’re done talking, why don’t you get ready?”
Kael placed the part he had been repairing on the workbench.
“Tomorrow is the day we agreed on.”
At his words, Harun silently looked around the old stall for a long while.
“Yeah… We’d better get ready.”
..
..
And on the very day they had agreed upon.
Underground Level 1.
Harun had only a single old bag slung over his shoulder.
Kael glanced at the bag, then spoke as though surprised.
“You’re not taking as much as I expected.”
“Isn’t that obvious?”
Harun answered gruffly.
“No matter how useful something looks down here, it’s all trash up there.”
He pulled several metal credits, the currency used in the underground levels, from his pocket.
They were so scratched and worn that the numbers were barely visible.
Harun let them jingle in his palm, then dropped them straight onto the floor.
Clink.
The pieces of metal rolled across the dirty floor.
“Same goes for these.”
“Wasn’t that money?”
“Up there, everything is traded as data. Digital, they call it.”
Harun snorted.
“If they found out analog methods like this were still being used, they’d treat us like primitive people.”
“You know more about the upper levels than I expected.”
He was silent for a moment before answering reluctantly.
“Well… I have my reasons. But don’t ask.”
The two continued their conversation as usual.
As they walked, they soon reached the end of the passage and arrived before a gateway where the light from the upper levels faintly spilled through.
Silver letters embedded in the enormous metal door caught their eyes.
[Descent Gate 0]
Below it, the managing corporation’s logo and slogan had been left to rust.
[GARDIN SECURITY CORPORATION]
[Order through security, security through order]
Surveillance drones hovered above the gate, while the automatic turrets along the walls quietly tracked the movements of passersby. Yellow guide lines had been painted on the floor, and people waiting in the access line to descend stood with their heads bowed.
But the passage in the opposite direction, the one leading upward, was empty.
Kael suddenly stopped walking.
….
Because Harun’s footsteps had stopped behind him.
Without turning around, Kael spoke.
“Aren’t you coming?”
When there was no answer, Kael finally turned his head.
Harun stood frozen before the gate, his hands trembling.
“My feet… won’t move.”
He wore an expression he had never shown Kael before.
A frightened expression.
No.
An expression devoid of confidence.
“Is it really okay for me to go through here?”
….
“It doesn’t feel real.”
He barely managed to speak in a trembling voice.
“We chose other paths, thinking that everyone who couldn’t pass through here would die.”
Had all the journeys he had made while struggling to reach the upper levels been meaningful?
“No one… even dreamed of going up. Saying you were going up was practically a joke. If you said something like that, people laughed at you, called you a scammer, or said you were crazy.”
That thought had become anguish, binding him in place.
“But it can happen this easily?”
A man who had spent his entire life in a place where he was trapped.
That was what happened when someone like that stood before a door.
Kael knew that feeling.
“Then.”
He faced forward again and began walking upward alone.
“Stay here for the rest of your life.”
“Hey.”
Harun called out, but Kael did not turn around.
“Kael.”
Harun stared blankly at his back.
Kael knew that feeling all too well, which was why he did not turn around.
You couldn’t overcome something like that just because someone took your hand and pulled you out.
You had to sever it yourself.
You needed the courage to smash apart what had imprisoned you for your entire life and leave it behind.
You had to cross over on your own two feet.
A few seconds later.
The sound of old shoes dragging across the floor could be heard.
One step.
Another step.
When Kael confirmed that Harun had begun following him, the corner of his mouth lifted ever so slightly.
“You’re slow. At this rate, I’ll be an old man too.”
Harun’s rough voice came from behind him.
“You don’t even know how to match your stride to an old man’s.”
“You said you weren’t coming.”
“Who said I wasn’t going?”
“You said your feet wouldn’t move.”
“They’re moving now, you miserable bastard.”
Kael walked forward without answering.
The light of the upper levels was gradually drawing closer before them.
***
At the same time.
The inside of the checkpoint was far more chaotic than usual.
Normally, the process here was simple.
When people discarded from above came down, they searched them, trampled them, took anything valuable, and dumped them in the underground levels like trash.
That was all.
But recently, the workload had begun to explode.
The reason was that word had reached the upper levels that the CEO of Seraph Industries had suddenly passed through this gate.
Adrian Arclight.
The CEO of Seraph Industries and current head of the Arclight family.
The entire checkpoint had been turned upside down because of that one name, but the trouble did not end there.
Following that, investigation teams from other megacorps had begun descending into the underground levels one after another.
Vehicles belonging to corporations known by everyone in the city’s upper levels stopped before the gate, and each time, the employees had to bow and repeat the authentication procedures.
Under normal circumstances, this would have been the time to grab prisoners or lower-level residents heading down and relieve their stress by hurling a few insults at them.
But lately, they did not even have time for that.
“Fuck, another investigation team?”
A male employee muttered while looking down at his terminal.
He was the employee who had gestured for Adrian’s vehicle to lower its window earlier.
Since that day, he had been forced to submit reports to the upper levels several times.
A report nearly fifty thousand characters long explaining why he had failed to identify the Seraph CEO’s vehicle immediately.
‘Fuck.’
He swallowed the curse inwardly.
Normally, this would have been the time for him to grab someone heading down there and take out his frustration on them.
Then.
He saw two people walking from the upbound passage.
Those who came up from the underground levels were usually idiots who had no idea what sort of situation they had fallen into.
The employee’s eyes narrowed.
Both of them were filthy.
One was a young man with black hair and black eyes, wearing old clothes stained with dust and grease.
The other was an old man with a magnifying lens over one eye.
They were definitely not people from the upper levels.
The employee’s mouth slowly curled upward at that realization.
‘Finally.’
Some people he could use to blow off steam had arrived.
The very idea that anyone from underground would try to come up was laughable.
Permission to ascend?
Upper-level residency?
Citizenship?
There was no way people in that condition possessed any of those things.
Most had been tricked by scammers or showed up carrying fake permits they had found somewhere.
A little intimidation was enough to make such people turn back with their eyes dead. Of course, only after he had vented his stress as much as possible.
The employee deliberately stepped forward at a leisurely pace, then—
“Hey.”
He blocked the two men’s path.
“Where do you think you’re crawling up from, you bug-like bastards?”
Neither of them could answer, but the employee actually liked that reaction.
“The upbound passage isn’t somewhere vermin like you come for a stroll. Can’t you read? This is the way up.”
Another employee beside him laughed with a tired expression.
“All kinds of weirdos are coming up today.”
“Tell me about it.”
The male employee looked them up and down.
“Do you have IDs? Transit permits? Upper-level residency?”
He did not even wait for an answer before snickering.
“Didn’t think so. If you had them, would you be standing here looking like that?”
But the black-haired young man remained calm.
That attitude grated on the employee’s nerves.
“What’s with this bastard?”
The employee took a step toward the young man.
“Can’t you understand what I’m saying?”
He tried to press a finger against the young man’s chest.
“Go back. Don’t cause trouble for no reason. Or should I roll you back down myself?”
At that moment, the young man reached inside his coat.
“Whoa?”
The employee immediately moved his hand toward the holster at his waist.
“Take your hand out slowly. What kind of bullshit are you trying to pull?”
The young man really did slowly withdraw his hand and showed them a small seal.
A seal engraved with silver wings and circuit patterns on a black background.
The employee frowned, not knowing what it was.
He could not tell whether it was a metal ornament picked up somewhere or a shoddy fake identification badge.
To them, the seal looked like nothing more than that.
“What is this?”
The employee spoke irritably.
“You bring some scrap metal you found somewhere and try to pull this crap?”
The young man spoke briefly.
“Check it.”
“Check it?”
The employee let out a hollow laugh at his attitude.
“This bastard’s giving me orders.”
The employee beside him burst into giggles.
The male employee was about to curse, but pulled out his terminal as though annoyed.
“Fine. I’ll check. If this turns out to be nothing, you aren’t getting back down easily today. I’ll make you crawl down.”
When he brought the terminal to the seal—
Beep.
A short authentication tone sounded, and words appeared on the terminal screen.
[Authentication Confirmed]
[Seraph Industries Special Guarantee]
[Issuer: Adrian Arclight]
“…?”
The employee’s expression froze completely, and the sneer lingering around his mouth slowly disappeared.
His eyes stopped on the words displayed on the terminal.
The moment he saw that name, cold sweat ran down his back.
As memories of the past resurfaced, the employee unconsciously straightened his back.
The hand that had just been trying to push the young man’s chest awkwardly flailed through the air before dropping.
“…Confirmed… it’s been verified.”
His voice had changed.
“Confirmed as a special guarantee holder of Seraph Industries.”
The other employee approached and asked an utterly clueless question.
“What? Why are you suddenly speaking formally?”
The male employee showed him the terminal screen.
The other employee’s face froze as well.
The young man asked indifferently.
“Can we go through?”
The male employee almost reflexively bowed his head.
“Yes, yes! You may pass.”
The old man merely stared at him.
The employee hurriedly radioed the gate control room.
“Open the upbound passage. Two Seraph special-guarantee holders.”
A voice came from the control room.
-What is the verification procedure?
The employee clenched his teeth and answered quietly.
“Issuer: Adrian Arclight. I repeat, issuer: Adrian Arclight.”
The other end of the radio fell silent for a moment, then a reply immediately came back.
-Open immediately.
A short while later, a tremendous roar came from the upbound gate that had remained closed for a long time.
Rumble.
The door leading to the upper levels began to open slowly.