"Vlad, huh... what are you doing here?" Ruri questioned without easing her stance. In her other arm, Mimi was asleep.
Sensing the coldness behind her words, Rudy fidgeted his fingers and mumbled in a confused voice, "I-I don't know..."
Seeing a man with a build as absurd as his acting like a shy boy, Erick scoffed, "Keh. Why is a beast like you acting all girly?"
Rudy looked at Erick and mumbled, "W-Well, it's not my actual body..."
Puzzled expressions appeared on both of their faces, and Ruri questioned after lowering her hand, "What do you mean?"
"I had entered the trial of life, and after I completed it, my body became like this..." Rudy explained with a lowered head.
"Oh..." Understanding dawned on both of them.
It wasn't too rare for the trialists of the trial of life to gain a change in their physical appearance, so even though Rudy's words sounded absurd, they made complete sense at least to both of them, because even the trial of life couldn't change one's appearance as much as the trial of blood had changed Rudy's.
They nodded within themselves, and Ruri repeated her question, "Why are you here?"
Even though he could just ask the same question to them, the person standing before him was a breaker and had the strength to kill him with a snap of her finger, so instead of antagonising her, Rudy responded while looking around,
"I don't know where this place is and why I am here..."
Erick frowned. "What do you mean?"
Rudy looked into Ruri's eyes and answered liefully, "This isn't the place where I was before entering the trial gate... I was at Sanctuary City 07-C."
Sanctuary cities/sanctuaries - safe zones within which the irregulars or regulars of the old world reside.
He tilted his head and asked, "Where are we right now?"
Hearing his words, Ruri and Erick blinked a few times and looked at each other with baffled expressions.
Rudy's expression turned puzzled, and he muttered, "What's wrong?"
Ruri regarded him with pity and mumbled in a low voice, "I don't know how to tell—"
"Fuck! You aren't even on the same continent!" Erick shouted while holding the back of his head with an utterly shocked expression.
"At least, not like that..." she murmured.
"W-What...?!" A grim expression appeared on Rudy's face, his hands trembled, and he asked in a shaky voice, "W-Where am I?"
Ruri looked in his eyes and announced, "You are no longer at S.C. 7-Caldora... at the moment, you are in the yellow zone near S.C. 12-Aurelia."
Rudy's eyes widened beyond belief, his body trembled uncontrollably, and his expression turned extremely grim.
"Oi, calm down," Erick said furiously.
Both — Rudy and Ruri — shifted their gazes at him.
Ruri gave him a displeased expression and her lips parted to speak, but before she could, Erick stated, "Panicking won't do shit, so instead of that, come with us... We can help you go back."
Ruri pressed her lips in a thin line, looked at Rudy, and mumbled, "Erick is right, Vlad. You should come with us."
Rudy stared at them with an uncertain expression and mumbled, "Why are you even helping me...?"
Hearing his question, Ruri smiled, Erick folded his arms across his chest with a smug expression on his face, and both of them muttered at the same time.
"That's what we irregulars do, no?"
His lips stretched into a beautiful smile, tears streamed down his face, and he answered, "Yes... That's what we do..."
Ruri and Erick turned around, and she said, stepping forward, "Follow us."
He nodded and followed behind them while looking at ruined buildings, metal waste, thick wild vines, and grass around them.
Ruri and Erick walked a few steps ahead of him, and Erick asked in a low voice, "Miss Ruri, do you also think that he is lying?"
She looked at Rudy from the corner of her eye and answered, "Yep. I don't know how much of his words are lies, but he didn't look confused when I saw his face for a blink."
Erick nodded. "Yeah... I couldn't see if he was scared or not, but he surely wasn't confused, otherwise he would have called out to us the moment he heard us."
"Mhm..." she nodded back, and after walking for a few minutes and reaching a wide crossroads, they stopped.
Seeing them stop at such a place, Rudy frowned. "Why did we stop?"
Ruri chuckled. White, serene sparks flickered on her left palm, and she muttered, "Did you think we would walk to the sanctuary?"
He tilted his head and mumbled, "How else?"
A thin grey card with two red arrow stripes appeared on Ruri's palm, and she muttered while lifting it to the back of her head, "Stealth mode off."
An electric hum filled the place, and the space behind Rury rippled as a black hover jet appeared out of nowhere.
The hover jet was as big as a one-story house, with sleek black plates of hypergraphene covering its beetle-like frame, and multiple energy thrusters hidden at its bottom and sides.
Rudy stared at it in a daze,
She tapped the card key on its door, and the next moment, the gate opened with a low hydraulic hiss, and a slight blue light flooded out of it.
"Don't just stand there," she muttered and stepped inside the hover jet.
Erick and Rudy followed beside her.
Just as Rudy stepped inside, his gaze fell on the red leather seats, the liquid LED light within the wall, and the holographic display at the center. To the left was a gate leading to the control room of the pilot, and to the right was a wide gate that could only be opened from the control room.
Ruri jumped into the squishy red leather seat and said while tossing the card key to Erick, "Be at home."
Rudy nodded, took the seat opposite her, and thought, 'They must be thinking that I am unaware of how suspicious I am and that's what I want...'
Erick swiped the card key at the box on the left, the door opened with a soft click, and he slipped into the control room.
The door closed, and a few moments later, the hover jet let out a soft hum and began to rise.
'Take me to the syndicate. Take me to the empire that will help me achieve my goals.'
He wobbled slightly as the jet flew at a speed unperceivable by the regular eyes.