Shadow Slave

On a cold winter morning, two people were making their way through the black slush that drowned a rundown street, piling high near the dirty walls of the cheap panel buildings that clung to each other, as if for warmth. The loud sound of their steps echoed in the dim twilight, making it seem as if a monster was chewing on rotten flesh.

Nephis glanced at the dirt covering her expensive boots, then smelled the air and grimaced. Adjusting the collar of her white coat, she then glanced at Sunny and asked:

"Why are we here, exactly?"

He shoved his hands into his pockets and shrugged.

"Weren't you told to submerge yourself into how mundane humans live? Well, here we are. This is life, too."

He gestured at the ugly landscape that surrounded them and sighed.

After several years... Sunny was back in the outskirts.

'Brings back memories…'

In the aftermath of the collapse of old humanity, ravages of war and natural cataclysms made most of the planet uninhabitable. To exist in relative safety, people had to congregate in large cities like the one he had grown up in… the Northern Quadrant Siege Capital. Everywhere else was either drowned underwater or looked like a desert.

Of course, life persisted. Some trees and plants were still clinging to life. Large mammals mostly went extinct, but a few species of animals and insects had managed to adapt. However, the damage to most ecosystems was too severe. The earth turned barren, the water turned poisonous, and even the air itself was not safe to breathe anymore.

food distribution infrastructure and other means of keeping the population alive. It was surrounded by tall barrier walls that prevented excessive microdust, various toxins, stray remnants of weaponized

keeping the city in a bubble of breathable air. Of course, each district also possessed its own additional means of

it was slowly growing. As a result, the city grew, too. It stretched further and further, both into the sky and underground. Of course, it also sprawled horizontally. Eventually, the city

Hence, the outskirts appeared.

frames of unfinished barriers had loomed above the outskirts for as long as

air in the outskirts might not have been as bad as in the desolate wilderness beyond, but it was far from safe. Those who breathed it every day did not tend to enjoy

It reeked.

paid it much attention,

deal… it's not that

clean water was

a working transportation system with connections to the rest of the city, but in practice, it broke down and malfunctioned so often that

people who lived in the outskirts. Just like the slums themselves, the inhabitants looked decrepit. They were all frail, thin, and with unhealthy skin. The most striking difference was their height. People who lived in the outskirts were much

looked similar to how Sunny had been before the

and a few months ago, he had left this place, thinking that he would

'This is so strange…'

after traveling through several regions of the Dream Realm and building a life for himself in

vast and encompassed numerous different areas. He had only ever known and explored a small part of them. The only world he had known for most of his life was even

had told him, there were somewhere between sixty and seventy million people living in the outskirts. Twenty percent of the total population of the city existed in these unpleasant conditions, barely surviving as