Chapter 105: Shadow City

There was no signature at the end of the text, and that was presumably because the sender didn't dare to enclose their name with the message.

However, the only ones who would dare to send him a message at a time like this had to be either the pawn shop or the northern congress.

Thus, Adam immediately packed up his belongings and left without any hesitation.

Initially, he didn't dare to take any modes of public or private transport, but he then came to the realization that it was impossible to completely avoid the surveillance of Mechguard's cameras.

After arriving at that realization, Adam cast aside his inhibitions and took the void rail directly to the edge of the city. The closer he drew to the edge of the city, the sparser the surrounding buildings became. By the time he reached the terminal station, there was nothing but barren wilderness around him.

Adam slowly made his way through the wilderness according to the address in the text message, and he found it rather strange that the number of pedestrians and cars around him was slowly decreasing.

Aren't the areas on the outskirts of Sandrise City supposed to be mostly filled with factories and waste treatment plants? If we go even further out than that, then it's all farmland and small villages and towns like Ash, so why is there such a massive barren area here? Is it because the soil here is infertile?

Adam crouched down and laid a hand onto the sandy soil beneath his feet.

Right as Adam was pondering these questions, the rumbling of a car engine rang out in the distance.

The sound drew closer and closer, and a dune buggy with massive wheels quickly came into sight before stopping in front of Adam.

"You're Adam, right?"

There were two people on the dune buggy, and both of their faces were covered in tattoos and piercings. They were also equipped with all types of prosthetic limbs, most of which had been illegally retrofitted, and they were holding a strange assembled electronic device, which seemed to be what they had used to track down Adam.

"That's me," Adam replied with a nod.

"What a boring ass name! Get in the car, we were told to pick you up."

𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂

Adam didn't ask any questions as he jumped onto the dune buggy.

"Toss away your communicator and remove all of your chipped prosthetic limbs." One of the men took Adam's communicator as he spoke before tossing it onto the ground beside the dune buggy. A flamethrower then extended out of his back, blasting out a plume of fire to incinerate the communicator.

While this was happening, the other man pulled out a probe and scanned it over Adam's entire body from head to toe before giving a quick nod. "He's clean."

"Let's go!"

The man who had just destroyed Adam's communicator jumped back into the driver's seat, then slammed the pedal down as far as it would go, accelerating from 0 to 100 in five seconds. The enormous g-force from the drastic acceleration almost threw Adam out of the buggy, and it was clear that the vehicle had also been modified.

Looking at the flames blasting out of the buggy's rear end, Adam was struck by the feeling that he seemed to have booked himself a one-way ticket out of the civilized world.

"Who asked you to pick me up?" Adam asked.

Up to this point, he still didn't know who these two men had been sent by. However, given his current situation, he had no choice but to go along with everything despite knowing nothing.

"I don't know. We're getting paid to do this."

The reply from the two men yielded no useful information, but it actually made Adam feel a bit more at ease.

Shortly thereafter, he asked a second question: "Where are we going?"

"Shadow City?"

"What kind of place is that?"

"It's a place that's above the law, the 101st Area of Sandrise City! Yahoooo!"

The man sucked some type of liquid up his nose as he spoke, and he immediately entered a frenzied state.

The dune buggy sped through the desert for close to two hours before finally arriving at what appeared to be an abandoned city. The landscape here was riddled with ruins, wild grass, and animals, and there weren't any signs of human activity. It was like a post-apocalyptic city.

After arriving at the city, the two men drove the buggy to a sealed-off subway station, then turned to face the surveillance camera for identity verification, and a gate was quickly opened to reveal a passageway that led downward.

The passageway was extremely deep and was lined with cold and oppressive lights, much like the Moscow subway station from 100 years ago.

"Let's go!"

The two men wasted no time as they casually parked the buggy on the side of the road, then began to make their way down the passageway on foot.

Adam kept a count as he descended the staircase, and only after scaling down over 500 steps and in excess of 100 meters did they finally reach the end of the passageway, where they arrived at a subway station.

There were Mechguard officers in the subway station, and Adam's immediate instinctive reaction upon seeing this was to run away, but after taking a closer look, he discovered that these Mechguard officers were retrofitted units rather than official officers.

They were assembled from scrap Mechguard parts that had been sourced from god-knows-where, and most of them were missing components like limbs, making for a stark contrast when compared with legitimate Mechguard officers.

However, if one were to take these automatons lightly due to their seedy appearance, then they would be making a grave error.

Even though these automatons look to be in terrible condition and were even missing limbs, they had all been retrofitted to enhance their firepower output. For example, the closest automaton to Adam was missing an army, but it had been replaced with a piece of heavy artillery, and the one next to it was missing both legs, but it had been retrofitted with tank treads.

These modifications appeared to be quite out of place, but in a battle, these automatons weren't inferior to official Mechguard units.

This was not just a case of small-scale illegal modification. Instead, what was being presented to Adam was a true army of automatons. It was astonishing to think that there was such an army lurking on the outskirts of Sandrise City, and it was no wonder that this place was considered to be above the law.

While Adam was staring absentmindedly at the army of scrap automatons before him, a metal bell suddenly rang above his head, following which a "train" began to make its way toward them.

While the vehicle was traveling on the railway tracks, it was more like a minecart as it was completely open-top, and there were already some passengers from various places riding on it. Some of the passengers had faces riddled with tattoos, and it was quite clear that they were locals, while others were more normal in appearances, except their eyes were rather vacant, and one could presume that they were criminals on the run from the law.

"Get in!"

The two men who had brought Adam here jumped onto the minecart, and Adam also followed suit without any hesitation.

The minecart rumbled along in a bumpy manner. These subway railway tracks clearly hadn't been maintained for a very long time, and there were some stretches of the journey that were so rough and bumpy that one could be sent flying out of the cart if they weren't careful.

Adam was grabbing tightly onto the metal railing in the minecart, patiently waiting to arrive at their destination.

After traversing through the cavernous underground tunnel for an indeterminate period of time, Adam suddenly heard a commotion in the distance, and the cart gradually accelerated before drawing to a halt in front of a plaza.

It was a very jarring transition to emerge from a silent tunnel into a lively plaza, and Adam felt as if he were in a dream.

"Welcome to Shadow City!"

Adam jumped down from the minecart amid the sound of the loud greeting being transmitted over loudspeakers, then cast his gaze toward the underground city before him.

There were people everywhere, and they were all behaving quite strangely. Some were using psychological drugs and were laying on the ground like piles of sludge, some were strutting along the streets with the illicitly retrofitted heavy weaponry on their bodies on full display, some were engaged in a heated argument, but the verbal altercation didn't last long before it came to a conclusion with someone having their head blown off.

Intracranial fluids were sent flying everywhere, splattering onto the shoes of nearby bystanders, but it seemed that everyone was already accustomed to this.

1. 100kmph is roughly 60mph.