Chapter 47. The system is a lie
Shin said his goodbyes to Ayaka and stepped out of Yuki’s room, Lilian silently trailing behind him.
The moment he stepped outside, the scene before him hit him like a hammer to the gut. The once calm street of the safezone had transformed into a cage of violence and desperation. What was once a sanctuary now reeked of panic. Flickering gates lined the road—small glowing portals framed in gold, shimmering under the sunlight, with eerie purple sigils rotating lazily above them like cruel halos.
These must be the gates to the second-tier safezone, Shin muttered to himself. But he hadn’t expected them to be the trigger for this level of chaos.
Players swarmed the gates like desperate animals, but even those with enough coins to pass through couldn’t make it. The poor ones without enough coins clustered like vultures, waiting, watching, and ready to pounce at anyone who dared step forward. Screams echoed from every corner of the street.
Shin turned just in time to see a man dragged back from close to the small gate by three others. One gagged him with cloth, another forced his arms behind his back and bound them tight. He kicked, screamed into the fabric, eyes wide with terror. And no one intervened. They threw him over a shoulder and rushed off toward the main gate leading out of the zone, probably to kill him and strip him of his coins.
Shin shook his head, watching the scene unfold. Just the announcement that there wouldn’t be enough food... and people turned into this? Something ancient had awakened in them—something primal, and violent. Something that had always been there, buried beneath thin skin and smiles.
Then it hit him.
Hunger makes people fight... especially when there’s a shortcut to luxury through blood.
This wasn’t wickedness. It was instinct exposing the raw animal beneath us. Beneath the thin, brittle mask of civilization was a beast made to survive. When the hunger gets deep enough, when the thirst screams loud enough, the body stops asking what’s right. It just acts.
The healthy mind fights. It claws, steals, devours. It does whatever it must to live.
And now there was a path to safety... but it came wrapped in danger, soaked in blood.