Chapter 125: Red Streets
Silas stared at the glass raining down from the ceiling and started shaking his head in panic.
"We cannot stay down here for another minute because a broken church window is basically a giant dinner bell for the entire local garrison," Silas whispered frantically, picking up his rusted iron pipe and pointing it at the stone stairs.
"The aristocrats are probably dispatching a whole army of armoured knights right now to investigate the noise, so we need to leave this building before they surround the entire block and trap us like rats in a cage."
Kyle grunted in agreement and picked up his new steel sword from the dusty floor, looking right at Julien and his terrifying new pet.
"The local guy is right about our terrible odds, so we need to move right now," Kyle said quietly, gesturing toward the giant bat-hound that was happily chewing on a piece of broken stone.
"Since you just spent a ridiculous amount of money to bribe that ugly tracking dog, I am guessing you have a brilliant plan to get us out of this creepy gothic town without getting sliced to pieces by the local patrols."
"So here is the plan," Julien replied confidently, giving the giant bat-hound another gentle pat on its leathery head to keep it happy and loyal.
"We are going to let my new asset walk right in front of us, because its overpowering monster scent will completely mask our human smell from any other patrols wandering around the dark streets."
A glowing blue system notification popped up right in front of Julien’s face, chiming quietly to warn him about the rising hostility levels in the area.
[Area Alert: Local garrison mobilised.]
[Elevated hostile presence detected in Sector 4.]
Julien casually swiped the warning screen away before Maya or Aiden could ask him why he was staring at the empty air, keeping his highly advanced system knowledge a complete secret so they would not panic any more than they already were.
"Just follow the dog and keep your mouths totally shut," Julien ordered softly, walking up the stone stairs and stepping carefully over the broken wooden door while the giant bat-hound happily trotted right beside him.
They sneaked out of the ruined church and stepped back into the eerie red twilight of the gothic city, sticking close to the dark shadows of the towering black buildings to avoid being seen by anyone looking out of the windows.
The streets were not just empty and quiet like a normal ruined city, because they were actually functioning as a very cruel and highly efficient economy that made Julien feel completely sick to his stomach.
They peeked around the corner of a narrow alleyway and saw a sprawling public square that was brightly lit by hanging iron lanterns.
Vampire aristocrats wearing incredibly fancy clothes were standing around in small groups, openly trading terrified human survivors right in the middle of the cobblestone street like they were just exchanging literal currency for everyday goods.
"Are they actually using those poor people to pay for their goods?" Maya whispered in pure horror, her hands gripping her daggers so tightly that her knuckles were turning completely white.
"This entire place is just a giant factory designed to farm people for blood, and they do not even care that we are watching them do it right out in the open."
Aiden leaned against the brick wall and looked at the towering Gothic structures surrounding the public market, shaking his head in total disgust.
"Silas was not joking when he said the system dropped pre-built mega-structures during the apocalypse," Aiden muttered quietly, pointing at a giant stone building that looked exactly like a modern processing plant but was covered in creepy gargoyles.
"They literally twisted the system’s integration architecture into highly efficient blood-harvesting factories, and they are probably running those assembly lines all night long just to feed their ridiculous aristocratic lifestyle."
’I thought the corrupt politicians back home were bad, but these bloodsuckers take terrible business management to a completely different level,’ Julien thought to himself, watching a pale aristocrat hand over three human captives just to buy a fancy carriage.
’You cannot just farm your entire consumer base until they go extinct, because that is a guaranteed way to completely crash your local economy and ruin your long-term profit margins forever.’
"We cannot save them right now without getting ourselves killed," Kyle whispered harshly, stepping in front of Maya to block her view so she would not do something incredibly brave and completely stupid. "We need to reach the glitching edge of the city and find a way out of here before Commander Lena figures out how to open that portal and brings her entire army down on our heads."
Julien agreed with the mercenary, so he gently tugged on the bat-hound’s leathery ear and guided the rescue group away from the terrible market square.
They spent the next hour navigating through the dark, winding streets, relying entirely on the giant monster to hide their scent from the heavily armoured knights patrolling the main intersections.
They finally reached the very edge of the gothic town, and the environment suddenly changed from perfectly smooth cobblestones to a completely chaotic mess of fractured reality.
The creepy red sky above them was literally glitching like a broken television screen, flashing with weird static and revealing a swirling, unstable dimensional wall that looked like it could collapse at any second.
"This must be the unstable boundary Silas was talking about," Julien whispered, pointing at the strange digital tears floating right above the street.
"If we can just figure out how to slip through these glitches, we might actually escape this nightmare vacation and get back to our own commercial sector."
But the giant bat-hound suddenly stopped walking and completely ignored Julien’s gentle commands, dropping its ugly head low to the ground and letting out a very deep, threatening growl.
The monster stared directly at the fractured dimensional boundary, its glowing red eyes locked onto a dark shadow that was perfectly hidden right near the glitching barrier.
"Why is your pet suddenly acting like it wants to bite someone?" Aiden asked nervously, raising his stolen military rifle and aiming it directly at the dark alleyway near the barrier.
Julien opened his system interface to check his taming skill and figure out what was wrong, but before he could even read the blue text, the dark shadow slowly detached itself from the glitching wall and stepped right into the eerie red light, leaving the entire group frozen in confusion.