[Lisa: Do you want to move somewhere else?]
Isabella was initially surprised by the message, but when she thought about what the Lower Zone was like when she had visited it, remembering what that place was like, she realized it made sense.
In her view, if Halon wanted to move to the Upper Zone, with the money he was currently earning, he could rent a great, spacious apartment, or even a decent house in a decent neighborhood.
Although the people in the Upper Zone felt very superior, even in this privileged Zone, the social divide was very wide.
There were still small apartments, small houses, and places with limited infrastructure and entertainment, catering to the low-level employees of companies who already earned enough to leave the Lower Zone.
Obviously, even though they were small places, everything was very well maintained, clean, and extremely safe, so even if the places were small and lacked variety, this was still very attractive to people from the Lower Zone seeking social advancement.
[Hayes: Yeah... honestly, I don’t really care much about luxury or the extra space I’d have by renting a bigger place; even a small place would satisfy me just fine, as long as it was clean and the amenities met my needs.]
Lohan wasn’t picky either, considering he spent most of his time in Elysium, and with plans to drop out of college to focus exclusively on the game, he just wanted a minimally comfortable place where he wouldn’t have to worry about being broken into at any moment by a greedy thief or a drug-addled landlord.
As long as he could leave the house and buy something nice to eat, he was satisfied.
But for Lisa, this news sparked a different idea.
Isabella Vance let her body sink a little deeper into the silk sheets, ignoring for a moment the Vance Group’s financial reports flashing on a secondary screen she had to deal with every day before going to sleep.
Elysium took up a lot of her day, and despite the importance of the game, she couldn’t ignore it or give up the advantage the Vance Group held, so in addition to her daily work in the game, she still had to organize and manage the group in the real world every day.
Her golden eyes were fixed on Lohan’s message bubble.
Isabella’s mind, trained to analyze everything and anticipate risks, was already working on multiple levels.
Having Halon in the Upper Zone wasn’t just a matter of comfort for him, but it was also a safety measure for Astralis Requiem. If the world was truly beginning to "bleed power" and Elysium’s mana was rewriting the biology of Players in the real world, the physical proximity between the guild’s President and Vice President was vital.
But behind that cold logic lay a feeling that Isabella rarely allowed to surface.
’It would be... nice to have his company nearby...’ she thought, feeling a subtle warmth rise up her neck that had nothing to do with the room’s air conditioning.
She found herself smiling as she recalled their moments in Elysium. The laughter in the forest, the arguments about how he used her as a "Legendary Mount," and the way he treated her, not as the Vance Heiress, but simply as Lisa.
If they lived close to each other in the Upper Zone, she wouldn’t have to wait for Elysium’s servers to see him.
Even with so many eyes on her, she could still create opportunities for them to meet in person at a café and talk for the first time in this world. The idea of doing "fun" things in the real world with Lohan, rather than Halon, was something Isabella, the "Ice Queen," never imagined would sound so appealing.
While keeping the conversation going on Syn, she quietly opened a real estate app for this planet, filtering the results to match exactly what she was looking for.
’This can’t be anything too flashy... he’d turn it down on the spot if I suggested a penthouse with huge party halls...’ she thought, ruling out dozens of luxurious options. ’But it needs to be secure, at least with bio-energy sensors, Level 5 soundproofing, and, of course, staying discreet yet still close enough to my complex.’
She found an "executive studio" in the Lotus Building, just a few minutes’ flight away by flying car from her residence.
It was a space intended for high-level business consultants who came to stay for short periods of time, being compact, minimalist, yet equipped with the best in purification and security technology.
The $5,000 credit rent was high by Lower Zone standards, but with Astralis Requiem’s current earnings and the currency conversion she was pushing to help him, Lohan could afford it without even feeling the pinch.
Meanwhile, in Sector 4 of the Lower Zone, Lohan turned off his phone screen and sighed, feeling the oppressive silence of the apartment where he lived. The digital clock on the wall, flickering slightly due to the old wiring, read 2:14 AM.
Normally, after a full day of intense grinding and leveling up to Level 12, he should have been passed out from mental exhaustion. However, Lohan had never felt so alert.
His lungs, enhanced by the [Digestive Filter], extracted every bit of nutrient from the heavy air of the Lower Zone, converting chemical pollution into a constant energy that circulated through his veins.
The [Superior Magic Core] and the [Sacred Light Core] inside his human chest felt like two idling engines, keeping his metabolism in a state of perpetual readiness, so the fatigue he felt grew smaller and smaller with each new evolution, becoming increasingly difficult to reach, even as he increased his energy consumption.
He stretched, listening to the satisfying crack of his now perfectly aligned vertebrae. The feeling of no longer having the 30,000-credit debt hanging like a noose around his neck was almost as intoxicating as Mana itself, making this the first time since he came to this world that he felt his mind clear and light, without any pressing concerns.
’With no college classes tomorrow, I think I can use this free time to look for places to live...’ Lohan thought, walking over to the window and watching the distant, flickering lights of the sludge processing towers.
Contrary to what Isabella imagined, Lohan had no intention of leaving the Lower Zone.
The criteria for safety and stability he had in mind could be met in the Lower Zone, not only keeping him away from the insufferable people in the Upper Zone who thought themselves superior, but also allowing him more freedom and drawing less attention to him than being in the center of the powerful’s focus.
He was about to lie down to at least give his eyes a rest when his senses, sharpened by weeks of constant danger in Elysium, fired off a warning signal.
It wasn’t a scream, nor an explosion; he heard the almost imperceptible sound of a rhythmic, metallic scraping, an electronic lock pick or a pin decoder being inserted into the lock of his door.
Lohan froze in the center of the room for a moment.
In a fluid, instinctive movement, just as he would do in Elysium when faced with a dangerous situation, he activated [Instinctive Perception] and [Spatial Echo-Location], without needing to look at the door to "see" what was happening on the other side.
The vibrations from the floor and the metal of the building’s structure fed detailed data into his [Parallel Processing Core], which was working at full capacity.
There were five heat signatures on the other side of the door.
Through [Thermographic Perception], he was able to map the silhouettes of five burly men, whose heartbeats were racing from adrenaline, or perhaps from cheap chemical stimulants, common among local gangs.
’To be honest, five people to mug a student from the Lower Zone at two in the morning? That doesn’t seem like a common robbery to me...’ Lohan reasoned coldly, feeling mana coursing through his arms.
He noticed that one of the intruders was holding a device that emitted a specific radio frequency, like a signal jammer to prevent him from making any emergency calls to the Federation or Syn.
Glancing at his cell phone and realizing he really had no signal, no longer able to contact Lisa, Lohan felt a sinister smile, the same one he’d used to terrify Varkas in Petal Village, appear on his human face.
Considering the difference in structure between the human body and Slime’s body, that gigantic smile with sharp teeth in the dark, with his eyes glowing subtly and the blue Mana and Biomass flowing beneath his skin, turned Lohan’s beautiful and delicate face into something straight out of a horror movie!
[WARNING: Dont look if you are easily disturbed.
1
Visual Representation here and on Discord.gg/NunuXD]
His muscles tensed, and he felt the membrane of the [Obsidian Exoskeleton] harden just beneath his skin.
He remembered what he had said to Oscar, the drug-addicted landlord: "You know how easy it is for someone to ’disappear’ in the Lower Zone, don’t you?".
The intruders probably thought they’d find a defenseless "slum kid," but they had no idea they were about to step into the lair of an Elite Predator who had just leveled up to 12 and received the synchronization of that power from a Double Mythical Base.
Lohan didn’t move behind the bed or into the bathroom to hide.
He walked silently to the center of the entryway, standing directly in front of the door. His eyes glowed subtly with a red luminescence in the darkness, just as he had instinctively done in Elysium.
’Well, if they want to come in so badly, I’ll welcome them with all my hospitality.’ He thought, preparing the [Vacuum Detonation] in the palm of his right hand as he looked at the door expectantly.
The sound of metal in the lock gave the final click of confirmation, and then the doorknob began to turn slowly.