Underground Level 19, inside Harun's stall.
"Harun."
"...."
"Hey, old man. Are you deaf?"
Kael, who had been fixing broken parts as usual, spoke to Harun, who was staring blankly into space.
"Huh...?"
"'Huh' my foot. Are you ready to leave?"
"Uh... Yeah. Ready..."
Seeing him acting so completely unlike his usual self, Kael clicked his tongue in disbelief.
"What's gotten into you? If you've grown that fond of this shithole, you don't really have to go, you know?"
"What? Do you think I've gone mad enough to get attached to this place?"
"Then why are you acting like that?"
"Hey, you crazy..."
Harun instinctively started to curse, but shut his mouth and let out a deep sigh.
"No, it's thanks to you, so I'll try my best to hold back from swearing, but..."
"Cuss if you want. I'm more used to that anyway."
"...You really have a knack for getting under people's skin."
Harun dragged a hand down his face.
"Do you really not grasp what happened that day?"
Kael scratched his head, thought for a moment, and spoke nonchalantly.
"Well... didn't it end well?"
"Ha."
Harun let out a laugh of utter disbelief.
"Don't you know who you ran your mouth at? The Representative of Seraph! The Representative! Someone even people on the Surface Level could hardly meet once in their entire lives."
"Yeah."
"'Yeah'?"
At his response, Harun's eyes twitched.
"Ha. You're definitely crazier than I ever imagined. Just what kind of nerve did you have to bring up a reward right there? Didn't you think you might be riddled with bullets in an instant?"
"Didn't seem like that kind of person to me."
"How could you possibly know that?"
Kael said as he tightened a screw on a broken circuit board.
"I don't usually brag, but I'm confident in my eye for people."
Harun stared at him blankly.
A few seconds later, he shut his mouth as if at a loss for words, then quickly composed his expression.
"By the way..."
"What."
"Did you... know how to use magic?"
Without even looking up, Kael answered casually.
"Yeah."
"And you didn't say a word about it for an entire year?"
"You never asked."
"Ha."
Harun chuckled, genuinely dumbfounded.
"Was I supposed to ask? Like, 'Do you happen to be a Magician?' Just like that?"
"If you were truly curious, wouldn't you have?"
"I really want to kill you."
"If you're done talking, why don't you get ready now?"
Kael placed the component he was repairing onto the workbench.
"Tomorrow is the promised day."
At his words, Harun merely looked around the shabby stall in silence for a long while.
"Yeah... I should get ready."
..
..
And then, the promised day arrived.
Underground Level 1.
Harun carried only a single worn bag over his shoulder.
Glancing at the bag, Kael spoke, sounding surprised.
"You're bringing less luggage than I thought?"
"Isn't that obvious?"
Harun answered gruffly.
"No matter how useful things seem down here, they're all just junk once you go up."
He took several metal credits, used as currency in the Underground Level, out of his pocket.
They were so scratched and worn down that the numbers were barely visible.
Harun jingled them in his palm, then tossed them onto the floor.
Clink.
The pieces of metal rolled across the filthy ground.
"These are no different."
"Wasn't that money?"
"Up there, everything is traded through data. They call it digital."
Harun snorted.
"If the people up there knew this analog method was still being used, they'd treat us like primitives."
"You know more about the Surface Level than I thought?"
He fell silent for a moment before answering reluctantly.
"Well... I have my reasons. But don't pry."
The two continued their conversation as usual.
As they walked along, they soon reached the end of the passage, stopping before a gate where the light from the Surface Level faintly filtered in.
Silver letters embedded above the massive metal door caught their eyes.
[0th Descent Gate]
Beneath it, the logo and motto of the managing corporation had been left to rust.
[GARDIN SECURITY CORPORATION]
[Order from Security, Security from Order]
Surveillance drones hovered above the gate, and automated turrets on both walls quietly tracked the movements of people passing by. Yellow guide lines were drawn on the floor, and in the queue, people looking to head underground stood with their heads bowed.
Yet the passage in the opposite direction, leading up, was completely empty.
Kael stopped abruptly in his tracks.
"...."
Because Harun's footsteps behind him had ceased.
Without looking back, Kael spoke.
"Not going?"
When no answer came, only then did Kael turn his head.
Harun stood frozen before the gate, his hands trembling.
"My feet... won't move."
He wore an expression he had never shown Kael before.
A frightened face.
No.
A face stripped of all confidence.
"Is it really alright for me to go through here?"
"...."
"It doesn't feel real."
He could barely speak through his trembling voice.
"Since no one could ever pass through here, everyone chose other paths expecting to die."
Had all their struggles to reach the Surface Level held any meaning at all?
"No one... could even dream of going up. Just mentioning going up was treated as a joke. If you said something like that, people would sneer, call you a swindler, or call you a lunatic."
That thought turned into anguish, binding him.
"And yet it happens this easily?"
A man who had lived his entire life in confinement.
This is what happens when such a person stands before the door.
Because Kael knew that feeling.
"Then."
Facing forward again, he began walking up alone.
"Stay here for the rest of your life."
"Hey."
Harun called out, but Kael did not look back.
"Kael."
Harun stared blankly at his retreating back.
Kael did not turn around because he understood that feeling all too well.
That wasn't something that could be resolved by someone taking his hand and pulling him forward.
He had to break free on his own.
He had to muster the courage to shatter what had confined him his entire life and step out.
He had to cross it on his own two feet.
A few seconds later.
The sound of worn shoes dragging against the floor reached his ears.
One step.
And another.
Confirming that Harun had begun to follow, the corner of Kael's mouth lifted ever so slightly.
"You're slow. At this rate, am I going to become an old man too?"
Harun's gruff voice echoed from behind.
"You don't even know how to match an old man's pace, you brat."
"You said you weren't coming."
"Who said I wasn't going?"
"You said your feet wouldn't move."
"They're moving now, you obnoxious punk."
Kael didn't answer and kept walking forward.
Before them, the light of the Surface Level was drawing closer, step by step.
***
At the same time.
Inside the Checkpoint, things were far more chaotic than usual.
Normally, the routine here was simple.
When those discarded from above arrived, they would inspect them, trample them, strip them of anything valuable, and toss them into the Underground Level like trash.
That was all there was to it.
Recently, however, the workload had exploded.
It was because word reached the higher-ups that the Representative of Seraph Industry had suddenly passed through this gate.
Adrian Arkwright.
Representative of Seraph Industry and current Patriarch of the Arkwright family.
That single name had turned the entire Checkpoint upside down, but the trouble didn't stop there.
Following that incident, Investigation Teams from other Megacorps began descending into the Underground Level in droves.
Vehicles belonging to corporations that anyone in the city's upper sectors would recognize pulled up before the gate, forcing the staff to bow and repeat verification procedures each time.
Ordinarily, this would be the hour to blow off steam by grabbing a convict or commoner heading underground and hurling a few curses at them.
Lately, though, they didn't even have the luxury for that.
"Fuck, another Investigation Team?"
A male employee muttered, looking down at his Terminal.
He was the very employee who had previously motioned for the window to be rolled down on Adrian's vehicle.
Ever since that day, he had been forced to submit report after report to the higher-ups.
A report spanning nearly fifty thousand characters on why he failed to immediately identify the vehicle of Seraph's Representative.
'Fuck.'
He swallowed a curse inwardly.
Under normal circumstances, this was the time he would have vented his frustration on some bastard heading down below.
Just then.
He spotted two people walking up from the ascending passage.
Those who climbed up from the Underground Level were usually fools oblivious to the reality of their downfall.
The employee's eyes narrowed.
Both were filthy.
One was a young man with black hair and dark eyes, wearing worn clothes stained with dust and grease.
The other was an old man wearing a magnifying lens over one eye.
They were definitely not people from the Surface Level.
Sensing that immediately, the corners of the employee's mouth slowly curled upward.
'Finally.'
Some bastards to vent his stress on had arrived.
The very idea of people trying to climb up from underground was laughable.
Ascent permit?
Upper sector residency?
Citizenship?
There was no way people looking like that possessed anything of the sort.
Most were fools tricked by swindlers or bastards holding fake permits picked up from somewhere.
Those kinds of guys quickly turned back with lifeless eyes once intimidated just a bit—after he thoroughly blew off all his stress on them, of course.
The employee deliberately stepped forward at a leisurely pace.
"Hey."
He blocked the two men's path.
"Where do you think you're crawling up from, you insect bastards?"
Neither of them answered, but the employee actually liked that reaction.
"The ascending passage isn't a place for things like you to go for a stroll. Are you blind? This path leads up."
Another employee standing nearby chuckled with a weary face.
"All sorts of crazies are coming up today."
"Tell me about it."
The male employee looked them up and down.
"Got ID? Travel permit? Upper sector residency?"
Without waiting for an answer, he scoffed.
"Of course you don't. If you did, would you be standing here looking like that?"
Yet the black-haired young man remained entirely composed.
That attitude rubbed the employee the wrong way.
"What's with this bastard?"
The employee took a step toward the youth.
"Can't you understand plain speech?"
He reached out with a finger to poke him in the chest.
"Turn back. Don't cause trouble. Or should I roll you back down myself?"
At that moment, the young man reached inside his clothes.
"Whoa, hey?"
The employee immediately reached for the holster at his hip.
"Take your hand out slowly. Don't try any funny business."
At that, the young man withdrew his hand very slowly, revealing a small seal.
A seal engraved with silver wings and a circuit emblem against a black background.
The employee frowned, having no idea what it was.
He couldn't tell whether it was some scrap metal ornament scavenged from somewhere or a pathetic counterfeit ID token.
To their eyes, the seal appeared to be nothing more than junk.
"What's this?"
The employee said in annoyance.
"You picked up a scrap piece of metal somewhere and think you can mess with me?"
Then the young man replied curtly.
"Check it."
"'Check it'?"
The employee let out a hollow laugh at his attitude.
"This bastard is giving orders now."
The employee beside him broke into giggles.
The male employee started to curse, then pulled out his Terminal with an irritated sigh.
"Fine. I'll check it. If this turns out to be nothing, you're not walking away today. I'll make sure you crawl back down."
When he brought the Terminal close to the seal.
Beep.
A short authentication chime sounded, and text flashed across the Terminal's screen.
[Authentication Confirmed]
[Seraph Industry Special Guarantee]
[Issuer: Adrian Arkwright]
"...?"
The employee's expression froze solid, and the sneer lingering on his lips slowly dissolved.
His eyes locked onto the words on the Terminal.
The instant he saw that name, cold sweat ran down his spine.
As memories of that past day rushed back, the employee unconsciously straightened his back.
The hand that had been about to shove the young man's chest hovered awkwardly in midair before dropping back down.
"...It has been... verified."
His tone completely changed.
"You are confirmed as subjects of Seraph Industry's Special Guarantee."
The other employee walked over and asked cluelessly.
"What is it? Why are you suddenly being so polite?"
At that, the male employee showed him the Terminal screen.
The other employee's face also froze instantly.
The young man asked nonchalantly.
"Can we pass?"
The male employee bowed almost reflexively.
"Yes, yes! Please proceed."
The old man merely stared intently at the scene.
The employee hurriedly radioed the gate control room.
"Open the ascent passage. Two subjects under Seraph's Special Guarantee."
A voice came through from the control room.
- Verification procedure?
Gritting his teeth, the employee answered in a low voice.
"Issuer Adrian Arkwright. I repeat. Issuer Adrian Arkwright."
Silence fell over the radio for a moment, followed immediately by an answer.
- Open immediately.
Moments later, a thunderous roar erupted from the long-shut ascent gate.
Rumbleeee.
The door leading to the Surface Level began to slowly open.