?Time continued to pass in Crimson City.
Months had passed since the Crimson Sea broke out.
During these months, the Outer City underwent drastic changes, while the Inner City barely felt any difference.
Sure, a couple of wares in the Inner City had hiked up in price, but everyone could still afford them without any issues.
Meanwhile, metal became extremely expensive in the Outer City, something that had never happened before.
Crimson City had always had a huge abundance of metal, and even if one found a pristine plate of metal on the sidewalk, one wouldn't even bother picking it up.
The only kinds of metal that were worth anything were steel and metal treated with Zephyx, but those were not materials that normal people came into contact with.
The rusty metal in the city always seemed to be everywhere, but now, things were different.
All the spare pieces of metal had been cleared off the streets.
In the past, if someone needed some metal to fix a hole in their house, they would just walk to the streets, grab a plate, and fix it to their house.
But now, they just couldn't find any loose metal anymore.
When the first shops selling normal metal popped up, the citizens became confused.
Selling metal?
Which insane person would buy metal?
And when these same citizens needed the metal, they became angry that they had to pay for it now.
Nevertheless, many of them paid the exorbitant prices.
The ones that refused to pay for the metal just waited.
At some point, metal would become free again.
Yet, just a couple of weeks later, things became even worse.
All the metal shops closed business.
Metal could now only be sold via the city.
Someone who had a lot of metal and wanted to sell it needed to contact the city to sell it, and somebody who needed metal also needed to contact the city.
The people who had too much metal could quickly sell it since the city was basically buying every single piece of metal on the market.
Sadly, the people who needed metal found it almost impossible to get it.
It was really, really hard to get the city to sell some metal to the people.
If one needed metal, one better had a good damn reason for it.
A hole in the ceiling was not a good reason.
So? That's just another light hole.
You're missing an entire wall? Just take half of another wall to close the hole.
The people felt like they were living in a different reality.
Something that had been abundant just months ago was now impossible to come across.
But then, something changed again.
A trend appeared.
Sleek one-strip houses.
Instead of having a house made of thick and cold metal with many holes in it, a company appeared that was offering a service to change the houses.
The company would take the old and rusty plates of metal and replace them with new, thinner, and cleaner plates.
Naturally, there were also no holes in these plates, and the entire house would even have a uniform style and look.
They also didn't even ask for any credits!
Just 20 liters of blood donated over an entire year would be enough!
Naturally, this company was owned by Kugelblitz.
Of course, not many people were fans of paying with their blood, but it was actually the best solution to their current problems.
But there was another problem.
Losing 20 liters of blood was a lot for one person.
It could even be life-threatening.
That was when the next change took place.
The price was per household.
Not per person.
While families didn't have issues with the cost, people living alone didn't have it as easy.
Even two people living in a house might not be completely fine with the price.
But they still needed usable houses.
So, these people looked to the streets.
At the displaced people from the Dregs.
Many people of the Outer City offered the people of the Dregs to live in their houses for one year in exchange for ten liters of their blood donated across the year.
The blood was basically seen as rent.
Even more, the actual owners of the homes would even pay the measly 100 or so credits of taxes for them so that they wouldn't die of blood loss.
In the end, the sudden rise in the metal prices resulted in the elimination of almost all homelessness.
Within months, most houses were replaced with newer and better-looking ones.
Naturally, the company offering the service got more metal than they were using, which they then sold to the city for a hefty profit.
In a way, one could say that the Outer City was skimmed off an entire layer of metal.
And what happened to all the metal that the city bought?
The first pieces of metal were turned into Crimson Shields, lovingly called Cockroaches.
The deaths on the city's underside had been brutal, but after the Cockroaches had been introduced, the deaths drastically reduced.
A Cockroach was a 2.2 by 1.2-meter bowl of metal with several straps attached.
Someone working on the underside of the city would strap that bowl on their back and grab the underside of the city.
The bowl would then encompass their entire body and only leave a small gap of about 10 centimeters through which the worker could see the outside world.
The small gap and the good distance it was away from the eyes assured that the person couldn't see the Crimson Sea, no matter how much they turned their heads.
Additionally, people could use the Cockroach as a big bucket in which they could store their tools.
The Cockroaches were a great invention, which reduced the deaths by a ridiculous amount.
Of course, the Cockroaches were named as such due to how they looked when someone wore them and worked on the city's underside.
A worker crawling along the city's underside looked like a metallic cockroach moving out from the city, leaving a trail of grips behind like footprints.
Working on the underside of the city was also called Roaching from then on.