5 Discovery

Michael ran as fast as possible. He needed to get far, very far away. The people that rescued him were planning to sell him, make him a slave.

The blood pumping from his heart had never been so fast before. Used to living immobile on a hospital bed, never able to feel the wind on his face, this first experience would have been exhilarating for Michael, were it not for the fact that his freedom depended on it.

Or his life if it came down to it.

Michael used his little exposed feet to run across the smooth surface of the D-layer. Thank god the ground of this layer had been worked upon as Michael would have never been able to successfully run on the upper floors of the island, as they were uneven, had exposed shards of metal and vile liquid running. He would have probably pierced his feet on spikes and got caught very quickly.

Michael's breath was becoming very rough. His frail as a thin branch body couldn't keep up with the oxygen need. He wasn't used to having to run. He wondered in his escape how he even knew how to run in the first place, as he had never done it before, but that question quickly disappeared from his mind as he heard the horrible voice of Mitch as the duo gave him chase.

"Come back here brat-" Michael heard the sound of Mitch falling on the floor. However, he didn't have the time to rejoice as he started to hear the very heavy footsteps of the giant that was Mack coming closer and closer.

Michael pushed his hearing to its full potential. He needed to know where his pursuers were without having to turn around. He spat out the excess of saliva that pooled in his mouth and kept putting one leg ahead of the other, even if it started to hurt him.

But the sound of Mitch and Mack giving chase were not the only things he tried to keep his awareness on. As he was running around the city, through the narrow streets of the D-layer, he had to know if he wasn't going to run into a dead-end.

'Only God knows how I know all of this' thought Michael as he took a sharp turn to the right.

He didn't believe in god, but Michael thought that if there was an opportunity for god to make a new believer, it was now.

He gasped, having difficulty breathing due to his frantic pace, but the fear of being captured kept him going on through the streets of the D-layer.

Another thing Michael was aware of during the chase, was the eyes that were on him from the various windows on the dome-like houses all around him. He was in a residential area, and people were hidden, looking through their windows.

Some were amused, some were cautious, but the majority were waiting for an opportunity.

Was it not for his hearing, Michael would not have been able to recognize the fact that danger didn't only come from behind him. He was surrounded by tigers waiting to pounce on him. He was able to hear the smallest of noises inside the various houses around him, and after he looked up to where the noise was coming from, he saw the various hungry looks every inhabitant was giving him.

Very few were empathetic to his cause, but none took any action. That was the first encounter with the true face of this city that Michael had.

'All these people… all of them are bad people!' Michael cried out in his head and decided to never trust anyone around these parts.

The metal city, with the tubes filled with the purple liquid, was becoming frightening to Michael. everything was nearly identical, so he had a hard time orienting himself in the narrow passages.

The heavy sound coming from Mack's metal boots impacting the steely ground were becoming dangerously close.

Michael knew he had to take advantage of his small size to escape his stalkers. Instead of continuing straight as the street, he went on for a while, he decided to go right to blend in the small crowd that was apparently on something resembling a market.

While the boisterous sound of merchants talking to potential customers and the general hubbub of the multitude made it harder for Michael to localize Mack and Mitch, he knew that he had a chance of escaping them among the masses.

He realized long ago that he wasn't as fast as both of them, and the only reason why he was able to make ground between them was that he frequently sneaked into small holes between the houses or very narrow alleys.

He wheezed, his hands on his knees as a faucet ran down his face. His heart was beating loudly in his thoracic cage. Loud enough that with his sickly thin body he could hear it easily even without using his supernatural hearing.

He navigated a bit through the numerous people being here, using his small size to wiggle his way around. Suddenly, his shoulder was grabbed and his heart dropped.

He abruptly turned around with eyes filled with fear, only to see that it was a sickly and old lady that took him by the shoulder. She smiled revealing her broken and filthy teeth. Her greasy smile scared Michael off and before she could say anything, he shrugged off her hand and ran away.

" Gods… I swear kids these days… I just wanted to know if he was lost." she murmured as she pouted.

Michael, without ever turning his back, ran into a busy alleyway. It was filled with drying laundry. The housewives here were all unnaturally thin, wore clothes that had luminescent sickly green stains, and had varying degrees of grey hair, even the ones that were young.

Some had mechanical arms replacing their fleshy ones. Multiple cogs are attached in the shape of an arm, with tubes of purple liquid powering them. The sight that Michael thought was cool earlier now seemed dystopic. He realized that a great number of people here were missing limbs.

If it wasn't a limb it was a finger, an eye, an ear, and so on… The young man concluded that these kinds of fantasy environments were better kept in stories, as he couldn't imagine what kind of life one must endure here to have so many people missing parts of their body.

As he passed through the drying laundry, to the sound of the giggling housewives and ladies, he heard afar the sound of Mack screaming, "Stop hiding slave!"

Being happy with the fact that he successfully sowed his pursuer, he allowed himself to relax for a second before running in the opposite direction that he heard Mack being. As he took a corner, he was grabbed by two housewives. They brought his little body in front of their faces.

"Let me go!" screamed Michael as he tried to escape their clutches. The two women laughed evilly. "That slave Mack is searching… That's you right?" asked the one that wore a bonnet with a vile smirk.

'Shit! They know each other!' thought Michael as he widened his eyes in realization. With both of his shoulders under their control, he couldn't move around to escape the ladies that grabbed him.

The two continued to laugh, "I wonder how much I can squeeze out of you, boy!" Michael didn't know if they were talking about money, but he wasn't planning on finding out. As the two women went to pin him to the ground, the moment one of them let go of his shoulder, he used his free hand to pick up one of the metal sticks on which the laundry was drying.

He tossed the wet clothing on the face of the woman that released momentarily his shoulder, blinding her, "Ack! Don't let him escape!" She screamed as she tried to remove the sticking pile of clothing off of her.

Meanwhile, Michael bit the hand that was still pinning him to the ground. The second woman did not let go of him until he managed to draw blood. As her scream attracted the worry of the other women in the street, he proceeded to hit with all of his might the tibia of both women.

Satisfied with the sound of their bones breaking or at least fracturing. He threw as much laundry around as he could before escaping. Having the advantage of knowing exactly where thanks to his hearing, he managed to run away safely from the horde of women that gathered around his two victims.

Still breathing heavily from his first fight ever, Michael disappeared into the streets of the D-layer, as the sun was gradually going down.

#####

'I-It's s-so cold…' Michael couldn't bear the temperature when night came in the D-layer. Even if he was famished and sleeping on the metal ground didn't seem like a good idea, he thought he would manage if he found a place to hide into. The city was not well made and there was plenty of hiding spots and partially untreated areas. The ground was the only thing that was smooth everywhere on the D-layer.

When the sun disappeared and the temperature started to drop, Michael realized that he might not survive the night and that all of this chase to escape slavery might have not been worth it in the end. He seriously wondered if trying to find Mitch and Mack would be a good idea right now. At least in slavery, he would live.

He was stuck in a small hole he found on the silent street he was in. even if there wasn't much space, it didn't do enough to warm him up. The heat that his body gave off wasn't enough to warm up this small space against the cold of the night.

He shivered as a nasty gust of wind brushed against his skin. He felt his extremities freeze. Luckily for him, Mitch gave him something to cover his waist before bringing him to Sho, even if it was filthy and used. His muscles were contracted under the strain of the cold and he felt his vision darken little by little.

His back against the wall behind him, the glacial environment didn't let him realize how thin the wooden plank, that served as a platform for him to sit upon in the small hole he found, really was. Under diminished capacity, even the light creaking sound of the wood slowly breaking was lost on Michael.

He desperately tried to keep his eyes open. He could feel the frostnip effect of the cold slowly spreading from his knees. even if his fingers and toes were hidden from the cold, they still felt unresponsive. His ears were freezing. The air he released showed how frigid it was.

Frostbite started to rear its head as Michael stayed relatively immobile under the cold. Fortunately for him, the wooden plank he was on could not support his frail body any longer and broke under Michael.

The young boy let out a small noise of surprise as he suddenly fell. Before he could understand what was going on, a blue box appeared in front of him:

[You have discovered an entrance to Dungeon: Trash Valley]

[Teleporting now...]

Michael crumbled down on the hard ground. After his poor landing, he groaned in pain but managed to slowly stand up.

He was still extremely cold, but the warm atmosphere of the room he arrived into was in with his surface body temperature.

His body was quickly heating back up to a normal state. His fingers could be felt once more and he could stretch his toes without it hurting again. He stayed in a sitting position for a while, while the pain on his back, from landing on it, gradually lessened.

'What is that?' Michael nearly thought out loud when his eyes wandered around. He was in a ghostly version of the city of D-layer. A thick fog was sitting on the metal town, but it wasn't thick enough to completely block Michael's vision. He saw a ressemblance to where he was fleeing just hours before, but it was less… perfect.

The ground was not entirely smooth, and portions of it still resembled the dangerous ground of the higher floors of the island.

The domes were under construction and Michael could see how a multitude of tubes filled with purple liquid were placed into the walls of the dome structures. Purple liquid that looked... less alive than what Michael remembered.

The previous brilliance was lost and now the liquid looked inert, it was having a trouble moving up and down the vertical pipes, as if it had become a viscous liquid and could not run smoothly anymore.

Michael decided to ignore the scenery when yet another blue box appeared in front of him.

[Proceeding with class selection.]

[Analyzing current World...]

[Three basic classes available to Character:Gilgamesh]

[Marksman]

[Warrior]

[Engineer]

[Choose one.]

Michael decidedly was becoming crazy in this new world.