The sky was heavy and gray, and the air burned his lungs.
Lohan pulled his mask down completely and adjusted his glasses, feeling the filter vibrate with each breath.
It wasn’t comfortable, but it was better than suffocating to death like those who wore cheaper models.
During the half-hour walk, the backpack felt lighter than he remembered.
"This is punishment from the Gods for our sins, repent and secure a place in heaven!" A man shouted, raising a book and looking around.
But no one bothered to look at him, they just kept walking with their heads down and their minds elsewhere.
At the bus stop, the heat and the smell of rust from the asphalt made him sweat under his clothes.
The crowd pushed slowly, everyone with their eyes down and wearing identical masks. He slipped in among them more easily than he had imagined, his body moving at the right pace.
Taking a bus for the first time, and relying only on his memories of this world as a basis, he thought this "battle" would be fiercer than it actually was.
But he managed to get on the first bus. He held onto the iron bar. The vehicle pulled away, and he held on tight, as if he had been doing this his whole life.
Two seconds later, he noticed the smile on his face.
It wasn’t excitement, it was... simply the normality of something he had never had.
Even though instead of the bus going straight as he had imagined in the other world, this bus was flying above the dark clouds that clouded the Lower Zone, the feeling was still very good.
The higher the bus flew, the less stench he smelled through his mask, and the less irritated his skin became.
After two hours, the bus stopped in front of the campus.
Lohan got off with a slight smile. The place looked like another world... a clean bubble surrounded by smoke.
The main building stood like a stadium, covered by an acrylic globe that kept the dirty air out. The air inside was almost as clear as it should be, but still worse than in Elysium.
Unfortunately, even though the air up here was cleaner, it was still not suitable for direct human contact.
Entering the campus, he took off his mask and hung it on his backpack, taking the opportunity to breathe the luxurious air here.
Other students did the same, some discreetly, others shyly. The masks hanging on the side of their backpacks swayed like reminders of those who came from the lower zones and needed to breathe the air outside.
Meanwhile, the rich arrived by car, straight to the covered parking lot, none of them needing to taste the metallic flavor of the air outside.
This reality was a source of hatred for the old Lohan, who saw the injustices that were the difference between his life and those people’s and wondered what he had done wrong to deserve it.
But for Lohan coming from another world, the negative side of others having more than him did not overshadow the positive side of him having a functional body.
But his positivity did not last long.
Beep, beep...
Looking at Lohan suspiciously, the university security guard saw the mask hanging on the side of his backpack and asked with disdain.
"Slow down, kid, why are you walking so fast?"
Lohan was confused. "I was just walking normally, sir."
The man didn’t seem to hear his answer, staring at his backpack for a few seconds until he saw the mask hanging on the other side.
"Downtown?"
Lohan nodded.
"You know the standard procedure, hurry up." The man said, rolling his eyes and pointing to a conveyor belt next to him.
Lohan placed his backpack on the conveyor belt while the man activated an X-ray scanner, looking for anything dangerous.
As Lohan waited there, across the hall, the garage elevator opened, with five well-dressed students chatting and laughing as they walked straight into the college.
Looking back at his backpack, Lohan saw the security guard checking it a second time before handing it back to him.
"Next time, put your backpack on the scanner directly and don’t waste our time."
The man grumbled at Lohan as he shifted his gaze to the student behind him. "Go on, kid, put your backpack on the conveyor belt quickly."
Picking up his backpack again, Lohan started walking toward the classroom when a refreshing sensation ran through his body, giving him goosebumps and an even greater sense of strange satisfaction.
Confused, he looked around and realized he was standing under the main air filter outlet, responsible for cleaning the air for students coming from the Lower Zone and making the air inside the college cleaner.
As the university’s main filter, the purest and most nutritious air was released there.
The air coming from there was almost sweet. He closed his eyes for a second and just enjoyed the sensation, before hearing some laughter around him and walking again like everyone else.
It was normal for students from the Lower Zone to be surprised by that air the first time they came to college, but Lohan should already be used to it.
Not even the first time he felt it did he feel anything as satisfying as he did now.
But shaking his head and ignoring it, in a few minutes he arrived at the classroom.
When he opened the door, some students from the Upper Zone looked at him curiously, before looking away in disappointment, returning to ignoring his existence.
Accustomed to this, Lohan sat in his usual seat and waited for class to begin.
But the strange feeling he had felt had not disappeared.
’Am I sick?’
But that didn’t make sense, he had been feeling fine until he arrived at college.
Analyzing his own body, the feeling he was experiencing was as if his body was struggling to digest heavy food, as if he were in a food coma.
’I only ate that small portion of dehydrated food, shouldn’t I be hungry by now? What’s going on?’
At that moment, a conversation caught his attention.
At the back of the classroom, a boy commented proudly.
"I became a Paladin! As an apprentice Paladin, I managed to earn 50 Credits last night doing exorcism work on lost demons in the city!"
"A Paladin?! Really? Could I change my class from apprentice squire to paladin?
The only thing I could do yesterday in Elysium was carry equipment back and forth and help a noble NPC put on and take off his armor... who wants to stare at a man in his underwear with hair sticking out of his butt and going up his back?!" Another boy said in frustration.
Hearing what he said, the group of seven people started laughing nonstop.
"You’re very unlucky, Kenny, but even though I didn’t get a powerful class, at least I’m an Adventurer Warrior, free to accept missions and earn money as I please." Another boy laughed.
It wasn’t hard to understand what that group was talking about.
Everyone there was an Elysium player, just like Lohan, but unlike him, who had become the weakest monster in the game, they were humans and had already unlocked the ability to earn money from the beginning.
That Paladin’s income was already a dream for Lohan... with 50 Credits per day, he would receive $1,500 per month, managing to pay the $1,000 installment on the loan for the helmet, and still have $500 left over for him to improve his quality of life!
Too bad he wasn’t that lucky.
Not only was he still among the weakest monsters in the world, but he had no idea how he could get coins in the game to convert into real money.
He was about to stop paying when a name in the middle of the conversation caught his attention again.
"Do you think you’re lucky?" a girl asked scornfully, with a disdainful smile on her face. "Do any of you know what happened to Isabella?"
Hearing that name, not only did the students in the group become curious, but even the other students around them fell silent to listen.