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.

filtration systems, food distribution infrastructure and other means of keeping the population alive. It was surrounded

much about how the barriers worked, but they were sufficiently effective in keeping the city in a bubble of breathable air. Of course, each district also possessed its own additional means of

a result, the city grew, too. It stretched further and further, both into the sky and underground. Of course,

Hence, the outskirts appeared.

required vast amounts of funding, human resources, and even more time. The colossal, skeletal frames of unfinished barriers had loomed above the outskirts for as long as Sunny could remember, unfinished. With what he knew now, he doubted that they would ever be

generations of people like him had already lived and died outside their protection. The 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

It reeked.

the familiar stench, Sunny struggled not to follow Neph's example and grimace. He had been accustomed to the smell for most of his life and never paid it much attention, but just a few years of sweet life in the Dream Realm and in

big deal… it's not that bad in winter,

for human life, as well. The buildings were straining to keep themselves together, clean water was scarce, most food came in the form of synthpaste rations provided by the government. Everything was dirty, worn out, and on the verge of collapse.

a working transportation system with connections to the rest of the city, but in practice, it broke down and malfunctioned so often that getting anywhere with its help was hard. That was

They were all frail, thin, and with unhealthy skin. The most striking difference

they all looked similar to how Sunny

three years and a few months ago, he had left this place, thinking that he would never return. But Sunny was already a very different

'This is so strange…'

of himself as someone from the outskirts, but now, after traveling through several regions of the Dream Realm and building a life for himself in the city, Sunny suddenly understood

ever known and explored a small part of them. The only world

considered such things, but after his last conversation with Master Jet, he realized the true scope of it all. From what she 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