“The city is about to be crushed!”

“D-dodge! Dodge the debris.”

“The troll is going toward the buildings!!!”

“Everyone, run away! Run for your lives!”

A bunch of people rushed past me as I walked through the streets in the night. All of them with looks of sheer horror on their faces.

They kept screaming about trolls and monsters and the city breaking apart.

But all I saw werre the same old buildings of the city, these people were never stopping.

“Hey, man! What are you doing! You’ll die—”

“That’s not a player, dumbass.”

One of them tried to talk to me, but the other stopped him right away.

And so, all of them ran again, screaming their hearts out.

A sigh left me. This was what happened to the people with the advent of the newest Mixed Reality game, Rise of Babel.

The streets lit up by the neon signboards and the cars speeding on the side continued on their own. Many of the drivers and shopkeepers were also likely to be wearing their own Zagros units and making their way through life while living the AR part of the game.

I shook my head and walked past the lines of people enjoying the presence of the monsters in the city. My eyes stopped on my reflection in a mirror. Long black hair came falling over my eyes while similarly black eyes stared back at me, almost lifeless.

Heh.

I guess my hair had grown too long.

I went back through the streets of the city and walked past the many neon lights, turning through through the boulevard and into the more deserted routes.

Behind me, the sound of the enourmous billboard emerged.

[Today, the Mixed Reality game Rise of Babel has hit a record base of 4 billion users! With me on the panel is James, what do you think of this?]

[Of course. The world is slowly facing a paradigm shift from the era of just VR Games. With the groundbreaking capabilities of the Zagros Lens and the ease and safety of the user, along with the sheer imagination of the Alternate Earth—]

The voice faded away behind me.

After the short walk under the flickering street lights, past the lines of trash and druggies, I was finally in the block where small, rotting, slum-like houses were lined up.

The coat that I had snagged god knows when hung lightly on my shoulder as I made my way past the piles of disposed trash and even worse shanties.

My small trip came to an end at the gates of a broken house where neither the streetlights nor the stars wanted to fall down.

I slowly tapped on the door.

…

No response.

A creak resounded as I forced the rusting metal door open with next to no effort. A howling dog ran away.

The staunch stench of old garbage and bottles of alcohol assaulted my nose at once. I slowly walked past the small walkway and entered the shanty with a broken wooden door. The floorboards creaked and the light overhead flickered.

“Hick… snifff…”

On the floor was a crying woman, sobbing her heart out.

“I am here… to collect the money.”

The woman sniffed at my words again. She was trembling from head to toe. It was then that I noticed her gaze slightly shifting the side.

I snapped around, hidden beside the door was a man with bottle of alcohol in his hands.

“YOU BASTARD!!” He screamed and swung the bottle at me.

With a nimble twist, I leaned back and evaded the strike. The man immediately switched gears and swung up front.

“Tsk.”

How foolish.

The man jabbed the bottle at me. With a sidestep, I avoided it again and moved closer. I grabbed his arm with one hand and palmed his jaw with the other.

“Ack!”

The man screamed as he tipped over and fell on his back.

“Honey!!” The wife crawled over to the man and grabbed him tight. “No!”

A sigh escaped me as I dusted my palms and looked at the woman.

“The money.”

“P-please… just this time… we’ll pay the next time—”

“Augh…”

The groaning man slowly tried to stand up again, so I kicked him in the face.

Screams rang out once again. If they didn’t have it on hand, then I would have to look. I ignored the two of them and started picking apart whatever little furniture.

“Stop! Stop! Why are you doing this.”

Nothing in the closets, nor drawers. I found a vase held together by some tape. I smashed it on the ground, and with it fell a roll of cash.

Without a word, I picked it up and started couting it.

“Leave us alone… please… aaah…” The woman started crying once more. “You’re just a kid… why are you doing this? Why…? We don’t have anything left…!”

It was the amount I needed. I placed the cash in an envelope I brought along and shoved it in my coat. Tightening my scarf, I started leaving the place.

The floorboard creaked.

The lights flickered.

My eyes fell on the bottles of alcohol piled up like trash outside.

“You should stop drinking,” I said as I left the place.

The metal doors screeched once more and the dogs started howling again.

The dark of the alleyways faded and the neon of the night city returned.

[And here we have the latest event going on Rise of Babel. With the full dive dungeons being set up, you can go to another country while sitting in the capsule!]

The world moved on its own.

And the world’s shadow on its own too. Though they both walked in the same direction, they couldn’t be any more different.

While people were busy playing the latest Mixed Reality fad and going to schools, I was here working for the worst mafia in the country, for as long as I could remember.

My steps carried me away from the lines of houses in the residential area and toward the harbor where our current base was set up. The place was dark as always with barely any sounds other the words of the few workers and the movings of the shipments.

After a short walk, I found myself in front of the largest shed. It seemed quite a few of them had gone away, we were to change bases tomorrow after all.

I pushed the door of the shed open and stepped inside.

A bright light flashed in my eyes.

“PUT YOUR HANDS UP! THIS IS THE POLICE!!”

Guns.

Dozens of guns pointed my way. Beyond the circlement of cops, I could see all my fellow gang members being cuffed and dragged away while more dead bodies littered the ground.

I slowly took a step back and put my hands up.

“No funny business or we’ll shoot you—”

“W-wait…”

One of the cops stopped the other, his eyes trembling.

“A-aren’t you… Oh my god…“

“C-chief! Your son! We found your son Arthur!!”

And that was how, my life as a member of the worst mafia in the country, along with the mafia itself, came to an end. From four to sixteen, a long career of twelve years.