Chapter 404 (1/2)

It was raining when he arrived in East End. Of the companions for the Raid Dungeon, only Ptolemy and Rose had taken Randidly up on his offer to accompany him to East End. Thea had wandered off to spend time with Simon, while Alana and Annie had dragged Lucifer off somewhere to spar.

Ace had disappeared, much to Randidly’s chagrin, almost immediately after they arrived in town, and Clarissa was much more interested in talking with mages in Star Crossing, to see what sort of spells they had developed, whether there were any unusual Classes. Randidly thought this was a mission given to her by Mrs. Hamilton, but Clarissa seemed to enjoy it well enough, so Randidly said nothing.

So, there they stood at the gates of East End, a steady drizzle turning the world around them grey, Randidly’s hair plastered to his skull. Ptolemy had a cloak, and Rose had an umbrella. Briefly, Randidly considered pulling up the hood of his bone cloak, but…

Not only were the bones rather poor at keeping water out, but also pulling up the hood would activate the twilight effect, and hide his face and figure from view. There was no point in spooking out the people of East End more than he had to.

Randidly had also considered breaking into East End, just making his way through the town and tracking down Sydney, but… that felt wrong. There was a strange nervousness in Randidly’s chest when he thought about meeting Sydney, one that he had never felt in the past. This meeting was… different somehow. Perhaps… because they had both assumed that this would be their final, permanent, separation. Or at least, Randidly had. He had thought she was dead for so long…

Ace was his best friend, but Sydney…. Sydney had been a part of his life for far, far longer. So long that even now, after the period of time stretched by the System, she still felt like a permanent fixture in his memories.

“You’ll be wanting let in, I expect,” An old man said, looking down from the roof of the building in front of them. His eyes were narrowed and suspicious. Randidly blinked. He had no idea how long he had been standing here. Both Rose and Ptolemy had stayed silent the entire time they had remained here, content to wait his mood out. Which was perhaps a mistake, but luckily this man had brought his attention back to himself.

“...Yes.” Randidly managed. He wasn’t nervous, he was just... This was a person that he had thought long dead. That he had mourned. That he had ignored knowledge of, to solve other problems. There was a complicated system of pulleys and ropes that almost bound him with guilt, rendering him unable to run away, but also unable to approach.

The old man hocked and spat, and thumped on the ground with a club. With a groaning noise, the wall of metal that blocked off the doors to the East End Mini Mall were drawn back, allowing passage.

“Welcome to East End,” the man whispered, turning away, walking back through the sheets of rain to wherever he had been watching Randidly from.

Turning a mall into a Village was a fascinating prospect. As long as the walls were sturdy, it provided a natural shape that would make defending the Village that much easier. There were also quite a variety of supplies contained in the mall, that would make living in the wake of the System that much easier. Donnyton was currently reaching a point where it could no longer feasibly import its paper products, including toilet paper, tampons, and writing paper, from Franksburg.

At this point, Franksburg itself was realizing the crisis that it was about to face as it ran into shortages of those items, and prices skyrocketed. So Donnyton could only helplessly watch and push some people into getting Classes related to paper production.

Meanwhile, at a location like this, there was a higher amount of pre-System resources to rely on, which would make the transition that much easier.

It also, Randidly mused, as they walked into the main part of the mall, made the fashion here a bit… strange.

The mall was a huge, sprawling, three-floor building, filled with shops and boutiques, catering mostly to the rich, but also containing a fair amount of grungy specialty shops designed to cater to the spoiled children of the rich, allowing them to act out just enough to catch daddy’s attention. So the people wore a mixture of strange, RPG-esque belts and suits, creating something a strangely steampunk semi-formal vibe.

It made Randidly shake his head in amusement. There was clearly some sort of weird fashion thing going on here, and he could feel Sydney’s hand in it. She always had the right amount of flair to turn the ordinary into a statement.

Randidly made no attempt to speak with the average person, but walked forward, heading through an area dominated by shoe stores turned into a strange mixture of textiles and armor production facilities. But then Rose tapped his shoulder.

“I know my way to my contacts from here.” She announced, giving him a slow look. Randidly said nothing, so Rose just shrugged and looked at Ptolemy. “I wouldn’t mind introducing you as well if you-”

“Please,” the man said nodding, and the two of them walked off, barely sparing Randidly a glance.