Chapter 1375 - Inner City

Diggy, diggy hole, diggy, diggy hole, Jake hummed to himself as he slowly burned his way forward, honestly making a tunnel more than a hole. In front of him, his Supreme Arcane Soulflame roared, destroying the otherwise incredibly dense and resilient stone with little effort, though it still took a bit of time to get through.

Seeing the Blademaven absolutely destroy several Administrators and given the rather precarious option of trying to enter the Inner City through the gate that said Blademaven had just walked through, Jake had instead decided to make his own entrance.

Usually, trying to get through a massive wall that Jake wasn’t even confident he could do much damage to using his most powerful Arcane Powershot would seem like a bad idea. However, through the power of alchemy, Jake could rely on the conceptual supremacy of his Arcane Soulflame, which specialized in breaking down matter. Fortunately, the wall had no active formations carved into it; it was just a massive wall of extremely dense, durable stone.

By now, Jake was about five hundred meters into the massive wall surrounding the Inner City, and it had only taken him about an hour to get there, which was honestly pretty damn good. He still had quite a bit to go, at least he believed he did. The issue was that he didn’t really know how much further he had to go.

This was the one major flaw in his plan: the spatial distortion made it impossible for him to tell how thick the wall was, or if he could even enter this way. His intuition told him it would work, though, which was why he’d continued to commit despite having had to dig for an hour already without becoming any the wiser whether he was making any meaningful progress.

He simply trusted his intuition and kept going while humming happily to himself. One fortunate thing was that at least he wasn’t bored, as he kept releasing Pulses of Perception and used his sphere for entertainment. The gate was within his range, as well as much of the wall, which had allowed him to spot many others who were trying to enter the Inner City.

On a side note, he had blocked off his own little tunnel at the entrance to avoid having anyone following him. While Jake was confident in fighting most everyone, he would prefer not to get ambushed while within a Jake-sized deep hole with borderline indestructible walls surrounding him. He was good at dodging attacks, but even Jake had his limits.

Anyhow, the other Administrators tried many things, and others tried to dig their way through the wall, though many gave up shortly after starting. Perhaps because they didn’t believe it would work, or because they realized it would take them days, if not weeks, depending on the thickness of the wall.

Others attempted to dig below the wall, but unfortunately for them, it extended downwards all the way to the edge of Jake’s Pulse range. In other words, it likely continued down forever, courtesy of simulation system-fuckery.

Others attempted to fly over the wall, but that plan also had some major issues. First of all, there was the suppression if one tried flying too high, and while the wall wasn’t that tall, one would have to deal with this suppression before reaching the top. Secondly, while digging into the wall near the ground and generally maneuvering beneath the oversized foliage was safe, the same couldn’t be said for flying in the sky.

Several more cyclopes had already arrived and continued their search for intruders, and it wasn’t that hard to spot someone flying for the top of the wall. Once spotted, the cyclopes would all start hunting after someone, throwing their spears and casting what looked like metal magic as they manipulated their weapons in the air to shoot down whoever was flying.

A few people died like this, with others learning their lesson and retreating back to the ground where they proceeded to hide themselves once more. This seemed like it should be difficult; however, the cyclopes were surprisingly lenient and didn’t pursue for long after losing the trail of someone. Some people did get caught, and minor chain reactions occurred as people got caught up in fights, but now that everyone had learned what would happen if one tried to start a big brawl, all the Administrators focused only on escaping, never allowing the situation to escalate too much.

Either way, so far, Jake hadn’t seen anyone successfully make their way either under, through, or over the wall. The only potential successes so far were those that had gone directly for the gate, but the issue there was that while quite a few had entered, not a single one had returned.

This could mean that all those who tried had been killed, but Jake believed it was more probable that the gate effectively served as a portal into the Inner City, making it difficult to return to the Outer Gardens. He also stood by his conclusion that wherever one ended up on the other side, it had to be dangerous. If the system event wanted to communicate a safe entrance, it certainly wouldn’t have done it with an army of kilometer-tall monsters walking out of it.

Time continued to pass as Jake slowly made his way forward, one step at a time. About half an hour later, when he reached roughly the eight-hundred-meter mark, there was suddenly a shift. Jake felt the world temporarily distort as he suddenly found himself standing in a very small tunnel rather than a long one. Looking back, he saw his small tunnel had only extended about five meters before stopping at a completely solid, untouched wall. It was entirely blank, as if he hadn’t even gone that way, and perhaps, he technically hadn’t.

Observing through his Pulse and Sphere, the Outer Gardens were gone, replaced by an endless wall of stone and spatial distortion. In its place, he could instead peer onwards as an absolutely massive city stretched as far as his senses could see.

As with the Outer Gardens, everything was utterly oversized, but besides that, it appeared mostly normal. The city looked a lot like a pre-industrial-age capital, with buildings standing up to seven or eight stories tall, many with different architectural designs, all of which seemed somewhat familiar yet also foreign.

Everything appeared to be mostly made of stone, though there was certainly also some wood used for construction, which did strike Jake as a little odd, seeing as he hadn’t seen a single oversized tree anywhere. Then again, he hadn’t seen a large enough supply of stone either to facilitate a city of this size, so he probably shouldn’t question things too much.

Throughout the city, Jake saw cyclopes walking about, wearing simple clothes and seemingly just going about their day. Some were shopping, some were watching street performers that seemed to be cyclopes capable of performing magic, and others were just hanging about, talking or eating at restaurants. Again, where did they even get the ingredients for such massive steaks? He genuinely wanted to know because they actually looked pretty damn tasty. With their size, perhaps they’d even be large enough to sate even Sandy!

Yeah, alright, one shouldn’t ask for the impossible.

Anyhow, Jake was relieved that tunneling through the wall was a valid method of entering the Inner City, especially when he located where it looked like all those using the gate would have to enter through.

Attached to the wall was what looked like a large fort or a garrison with a completely nonsensical interior. It was a maze of hallways and rooms, all cyclops-sized, making it an utter nightmare to navigate. It was also freaking huge; the massive structure was more than a thousand kilometers on each side.

These hallways and rooms were also all guarded, and some places even had traps. It really didn’t look like the kind of place that had any reason to exist, and likely only did so because it was a fake, simulated world created solely for a system event. Granted, this unrealistic structure, which Jake could only assume was repeated at every other gate around the circular wall, did contrast quite harshly with the very realistic Inner City.

Scouring the gate-entrance structure, it didn’t take long before Jake spotted Administrators trying to make their way through. Unfortunately for them, there was no foliage in the hallways to hide beneath, making it very easy for any patrolling cyclops to spot them. If they moved too fast, they also risked giving off too much energy, which also led to their detection.

Their only saving grace was small imperfections in the structure. Cracks in walls, small holes in the ceiling, missing or chipped floor tiles, and the occasional item littering the floors that could be used to hide beneath or behind. Observing them trying to navigate the maze while avoiding the patrolling cyclopes was like watching a stealth game. This analogy only got better when one remembered that this place was technically just one big game. A game with very tangible rewards, sure, but still just a game.

Watching his fellow Administrators and getting more familiar with the cyclopes city provided great entertainment during Jake’s remaining digging time, as he still had roughly a kilometer and a half to go before he’d fully reach the Inner City. Given his speed at digging and now knowing what one had to do when passing through the gate, Jake had to admit that it would have likely been the faster option given his ability to navigate mazes and stealth skills, but oh well, what’s dug was dug.

Jake continued his digging journey, counting a few dozen dead Administrators along the way after they failed to sneak through the garrison. A few were discovered and managed to get away, and there was even an instance of a group getting caught by a lone cyclops within a hallway, after which one of them appeared to seal off the area.

After a rather brief battle, the cyclops guard died, and a mage burned the entire body into nothingness before the barrier was dispelled, and they moved on, the other cyclopes none the wiser. Of course, they could have gotten unlucky if another patrol had come by, or if they had been spotted when more than one was too close, but their success at least showed that getting spotted wasn’t an automatic failure condition. Same as in any good stealth game, which should at least offer the opportunity to fight it out or attempt to re-hide should one get discovered.

He naturally still kept a lookout for anyone he recognized, but he still didn’t spot any that appeared familiar. He did recognize several factions he knew, but found no individuals noteworthy, and of the people he did see, none truly caught his attention.

It ended up taking Jake only about another hour to finally dig his way through the wall, in large part due to his speed increasing with every passing moment. He hadn’t really used his Supreme Arcane Soulflame much like this before, so it was good practice, and while the flame would consume the stone even without his help, he could certainly speed up the process with better control.

Jake didn’t dig his way all the way out quite yet, though, as while the walls certainly weren’t as bad as the massive garrisons, they weren’t entirely undefended. A handful of cyclopes were patrolling lazily back and forth, watching the walls, primarily looking up to see if anyone managed to fly over.

This was naturally fortunate for Jake. So was it that the area around these outer walls was, to put it nicely, not the nicest place to be. There was a lot of trash lining the walls here and there, and if Jake dug directly out from where he was, he would go straight through a discarded bottle the size of a large cruise ship.

Wanting to go out in a better place, Jake started digging slightly to the side, which would let him pop out beneath a stack of crumpled paper instead. He expected his appearance to be somewhat noticeable, as while his stealth skill was good, he wasn’t fully confident it would hide the Supreme Arcane Soulflame perfectly, especially not in combination with what felt like an alarm formation of sorts placed on the inner surface of the wall.

It wasn’t anything special, but he did believe any nearby guards would be notified the second he broke through, so Jake prepared for that. He watched the patrols carefully, and when no one was actively watching and all the guards were decently far away, Jake made his final push, at last fully breaking into the Inner City.

As expected, his breakthrough released a pulse of energy and lift that echoed across the wall’s surface, originating from the small hole he’d made. Instantly, two guards noticed something was up with the wall and turned to look at where the pulse had come from before rushing over.

When they got there, they found a small hole in the wall close to the ground, but there were no other signs that anything had happened. The two looked at each other before searching the area carefully, not finding anything immediately. After looking around for a few minutes, both of them looked at each other again, shook their heads, and returned to their usual patrol route.

Meanwhile, Jake had already rushed past them the moment he’d broken through the wall and made his way to the building closest to him. He let out a sigh of relief when the search stopped, happy to see that these two cyclopes were lazy as hell and didn’t look like they’d reported anything suspicious to their higher-ups. While Jake wasn’t afraid of a few level 400 guards and could rather easily dispose of them if need be, he definitely didn’t want to attract the attention of a Blademaven or a being comparable to one.

In fact, Jake had been pretty damn afraid that, given the number of cyclopes he saw wandering the city, it would be extremely dangerous being, well, anywhere. There were hundreds walking down the long streets, every house was filled, and it was overall a very busy place. He did find it odd how all the cyclops looked the same, though. They all appeared to be male and had the same size, meaning children apparently didn’t exist in this simulated reality. Also, surprisingly game-like and probably for the best. Nothing was worse than playing a stealth game with invincible children.

Anyhow, Jake, despite every cyclops being a fully grown adult and there being this many of them, felt significantly less worried now that he could get a better feel for what he was dealing with. He could detect the many auras emanating from the city, and after he made his way around a building and used Identify on a cyclops peering at a pair of shoes through a store window, he confirmed he really shouldn’t be that worried.

[Abundant Cyclops Civilian – lvl 299]

The difficulty of staying hidden within this Inner City was immediately reduced several times over. Rather than having to hide from B-grades, these civilians all appeared to be only C-grades, and after using Identify on several more, he confirmed there wasn’t a single B-grade among them.

This isn’t to say there weren’t any B-grades. Sitting in front of a restaurant, drinking from a giant mug, was a cyclops giving off a significantly more powerful aura than any of the others, and using Identify made it clear that one couldn’t be too careless when navigating the streets.

[Abundant Cyclops Officer – lvl 410]

Stronger than the guards by a fair deal, but still not a huge threat in Jake’s eyes. Again, the major threat was the sheer number of cyclops and the potential for powerful experts to appear should one cause a ruckus. As for why one would cause a ruckus in the first place?

Well, Jake quickly realized that, just as in the Outer Gardens, this place was filled with treasures. The major difference was that, rather than these treasures being found in nature, here, they were where one would expect them to be in a city:

Within retail establishments. Establishments that the Administrators were now apparently expected to rob.