CHAPTER 46: CAN THEY SURVIVE THE CITY OF BABEL?

Leaves spun on the ground as feet trod forward, moving in groups and joining the already-formed queue stretched toward the entrance of Bion City. Children yawned as they tightened the grip on their mothers’ hands and stepped forward whenever their mothers moved.

One after another, the guards searched the people, and when they found nothing suspicious, they allowed them to see the bright side of the city, escorting them until they reached the road crowded with people.

Women carrying baskets filled with fresh fruits as they walked by the roadside called on the new people joining the queue, letting them pick the type of fruits they cherished, and if theirs weren’t part, directed them to the girls carrying the same baskets on their heads as they walked by advertising the fruits, singing.

At the walls of the barracks where the cross-sword symbol was, a ball painted in black and white flew in the air, landing on the right foot of the boys laughing, then began passing the ball and surged into running when the men dressed in military uniforms stepped out of the large door fixed in the wall and stretched their arms.

"What at all can make these kids stop playing football here?!" he said, chasing after the last boy, who stopped, turned, and showed his tongue, teasing him. But as the military man reached the green closed trash bin, he stopped, stared at it before turning back toward the wall again, kicking stones that lay on the road of the alley, and letting them crash with the walls of the building closing the alley in.

Inside the large building where the training courts were, rays of the sun shone bright through the glass windows and onto the shaking ropes lined in a square line around the boxing ring. The platform of the boxing ring trembled as two men, with sweat dripping from their broad shoulders, threw their fists on each other’s faces, slamming themselves on the ground.

Cheers echoed around the ring as groups of young men and women shouted and stretched their fists in the air, appraising the men fighting in the ring. All sorts of bets, from money, weapons, body, and other sexual bets, echoed as they all signed on a blackboard separated with two names, Oin and Max.

While the soldiers shouted in joy praising the men in the ring, two others stood at a far distance, halfway staring at the rings and staring at themselves with wild eyes.

"Do you think they can survive the cause arising at the city of Babel?" Gray said, throwing his right arm at his face and brushing his hair backward, then gasping heavily.

"Hm... I’ve been having the same question ever since they left the city two weeks ago," Wang said, leaning on the opposite side to where Gray was, folding his hands on his chest as he remained intertwined with tilting his eyes from the ring to Gray.

"The leaders can sometimes make some rushed decisions. All those sent there are E-ranked soldiers. Why send them to a land occupied with whatever-grade monsters? Based on the information received a week before they went out of this city, the creatures recorded were E-ranked monsters but had higher skills than every E creature I’ve fought with or seen," Gray said, tilting his head toward the ring and back to Wang.

"Let’s just hope they come back alive, else we’ll have to go there ourselves and bring them back," Wang said, closing his eyes and leaning fully on the wall.

"Hah... hah... hah... seems we have the same minds, that’s exactly what I was thinking of," Gray said, laughing. He raised his arm, stared at his fingers, and then back at Wang.

After a minute of silence as one of the men in the ring stopped moving, the soldiers standing and cheering stopped, placed a hand on their mouths, and widened their eyes. And when the man coughed and stood up sharply, the cheers rose again, followed by insults and shouts that gingered him into taking two steps forward.

...

Debris of the collapsing building dripped, falling from the top of the building and landing on the ground with a crashing sound, erupting dust in the air. Just after the dust faded, Denis walked by a group of four soldiers kneeling and coughing blood through their mouths.

"Where are the other members among you?" he said, slamming the large sword in his hands on Mike’s face and causing bubbles of blood to seep out of his mouth and nose. And as the other soldiers moved, trying to hold him, Denis kicked them with his metallic boots, crushing their chests and pushing them back.

"Hold them," he said, pointing at two of the men standing straight and holding sharp swords.

When the men held the soldiers, Denis walked, raised his leg, and crashed it on Mike’s kneebow, crunching it.

Hot pain surged in Mike, causing him to scream loud, yet Denis didn’t stop, he simply moved his leg and spat on Mike’s face, then moved forward to the three soldiers being held at the back.

"I remember you somewhere?" Denis said, moving toward the only female soldier among the three soldiers, brushed his fingers across her cheeks, tilted it to her chest, and dove it toward her left breast, squeezing it hard.

’Will he let her go if I tell him where that brat is? I’m sure he’s the reason they’re here, torturing us,’ Mike thought, forcefully raising himself from his own pool of blood and staring at the direction of Jinx, who was screaming loudly under Denis’s grip.

When he tried raising his hand toward Denis, one of the men standing beside Denis grabbed it, swung it sideways, and pushed him crashing hard on the ground.

"I know where they are!" Jinx said, her eyes wailing and causing her screams to break, and when she tilted her head toward Mike, who was seriously struggling for his life in the blood-pooled ground, she pushed the man back and leaned beside Mike, looking eye to eye with him.

"GRAB HER!" Denis said, sighing and gesturing to the two men standing still and letting them hold Jinx’s arms and pull her back, then walked toward Mike, struck his stomach with his boots, and raised the sword and dropped it at his head, chopping it off.

"NO...!" All the other two soldiers, including Jinx, shouted and trembled hard in the grips of Denis’s men but weren’t able to cut themselves loose from them.

...

At the window of the tall building standing still, Kai gritted his teeth and closed his eyes, yet the view of a head falling from a body didn’t leave his vision. Though he wasn’t there, yet he felt it so hard, harder than that of those standing there.

After a while, he cracked his eyes open, walked Jane to the room Kinji was in, used the sharp edges of the daggers to cut the hard cloth, tied it at the hooks at the handle of the daggers, wrapped it around his arms and held on tightly. Then, after looking at Kinji and Jane for a while, he walked to the slightly cracked window, tore the parts of his hair that were covering his face, and tied them with the cloth wrapped around his fists.

He walked out of the room, locked the door, and placed a heavy chair at the back, then inhaled deeply before running out of the window he stood beside, rolled in the air before grabbing the hinges of the wall of the other building opposite to the one he jumped from.