For the next couple of hours, school followed its usual routine. Once it had let out, though, Theodore found himself wandering the narrow streets. Usually, by this time, he would have made his way home, excitedly anticipating lunch. A nice plate of synthetic bread, butter, and a cool glass of barely filtered water.
'What a meal.'
What a meal indeed. In fact, for the people in the outskirts, eating that much was a feast in and of itself. Well, that was compared to those who had to scavenge for the scraps of even that just to survive.
Theo stopped in his tracks, staring at the littered, poorly maintained, and narrow street. For a while, he just stood there thinking. Eventually, he let out a long sigh, turned into a nearby alleyway, and drifted without direction.
The smell of damp metal and stale air stung his nostrils the deeper he went into the outskirts. On the horizon, the sun hung low, its light filtering weakly through the maze of crooked buildings.
A while later, he found himself sitting at the edge of a rooftop. Staring down at his rundown neighbourhood with a somber expression.
A corner along the outskirts of the city. This was his home. The place where he was born and grew up. It was the only place in this huge world where any trace of him could be found. Looking over the landscape of their near-completely dilapidated environment, and remembering the speech the officer had given them only a few hours prior. His brows twitched.
"What was her name again?" he muttered, squinting at the barren skyline. "Emma… something. Right. Emma."
He clicked his tongue.
"She was a rank two, right?" he sighed. A rank two Herald showing up here of all places… that's new."
People like her didn't belong in the Outskirts. Well, it wasn't necessarily that they didn't belong there; people like her usually spent their time guarding the inner city. Leading patrols outside the great walls, or going out on expeditions to subjugate truly horrifying monsters. Not trudging through cramped alleys to talk to kids no one cared about.
Only a handful of humanity had made it that far after all. Even fewer had made it to higher ranks.They were all undoubtedly strong. Almost untouchable.
'So why send someone like that here?'
Her apologetic bow replayed in his mind—a gesture so out of place it almost felt comical. Theo leaned back, palms pressing against the rough, sun-warmed concrete behind him.
"What a joke."
Wind skimmed across the rooftop, carrying with it the distant echoes of shouting vendors, clattering metal, and the occasional bellow of rusted machinery struggling to stay alive. It was the kind of chaos he had lived with every day.
Interrupting his thoughts were the sounds of people in the bustling street below.
"Damned normies."
On the single paved street below that cut through the center of the outskirts leading to the outer walls, there were people clad in leather and steel armour. Their hair, skin, and armour glistened with an unprecedented lustre in the light of the setting sun. These were the awakened heralds tasked with patrolling the outskirts.
Honestly, patrolling was a stretch. For these people, coming to the outskirts was basically no different from a day off. As nobody placed importance on the development of the outskirts, the level of security there was practically non-existent. Even with a number of heralds being present in the district.
"It makes that rank two's visit to my school even more comical," he muttered under his breath.
As if on cue, a sharp crack echoed across the district. The sound was a familiar one. It was the unmistakable sound of a plasma cannon discharging. Theo stiffened, then turned back.
The view behind him stretched out in uneven layers. And the cluttered rooftops closest to him dipped away into a sprawl of crooked tin sheets of crumbling buildings, stretching as far as the eye could see. At the edge of all of that was the outline of the outer wall. Its crest rose so high it seemed to scrape the last streaks of sunlight.
Lacing its edge at the top, sprawled out in regular intervals were massive chunks of metal alloy contrasted by the dimming sunlight. Every few seconds, each one trembled with great force, and with every rumble came a flash of light unlike anything else he had seen before.
Every flash carried a low, rolling thrum that vibrated through the land, reaching even him who was at the border of the outskirts. A second discharge followed, and the tremor that rolled through the land sent a ripple through the building he sat atop, shaking loose dust from its walls.
Theo narrowed his eyes.
"Again," Theo grumbled. "Don't those mindless monsters ever learn?"
After a while, he got bored of watching the canons atop the wall discharge round after round and snapped back to reality. He glanced at the device given by the school on his wrist.
[Ether core- Dormant]
[Core rank- None]
[Core Saturation- Error%]
'No changes, huh... and it's nearly midnight.'
Glancing back in the direction of the city, he sighed.
"That's enough sightseeing for today."
Dusting off his clothes, he started towards home with a longing and desire, but at the same time, a reluctance he couldn't explain. Walking off, he ignored those thoughts. He put on a pair of cheap earbuds he found in the trash, connected them to a decade-old device, and pressed play. The music he was listening to wasn't anything exciting, but for him, it was calming. And unbeknownst to him, something had changed.
The faint hum of static-filled music trickled into his ears, drowning out the distant thrum of plasma fire. He slipped down the rusted stairwell, into streets filled with vendors shouting, metal whining, engines coughing their last breaths.
All of it, though, faded into the background, leaving behind an almost peaceful scene.
Nothing looked different.
Nothing felt different.
Yet, something was. On his wrist, the device ran out, and its screen lit up; on it, a few lines of text suddenly appeared, and they read.
[Ether core- Dormant]
[Core rank- None]
[Core Saturation- 3%]