Yes, you read right.
In this world, there were not many ways to survive. If you relied on your city's defenses alone, then you would put yourself in the hands of the rich. Unfortunately, throughout my playthrough, I saw dozens of cities rise and fall. Just because it was big never meant that it would survive against monsters, zombies or tribes or barbarians lurking in the wastelands.
Besides them, just the occasional gates of magical beasts could reduce a city into dust overnight. Of course, for it to happen, it needed to be some catastrophic S-tier gate with Lv 60+ monsters inside at least for the town army to be unable to stop them, but still.
That's why I needed to be strong.
In the game, there were not many ways around it. You could either train, like the natives. But this required talent, resources such as elixir regents to boost your growth rate, and mentorship, none of which I had access to as a teenager from the lower district, or a bronze rank citizenship.
Which is why...I turned to lawlessness. While morally questionning, I prioritized my survival far above the daily life of my neighbours or my moral compass.
[You have successfully killed [Valter]. You have earned 150 EXP]
[You have completed the chain of quests [Fall of Valter]. You have earned 350 Reputation, 1000 EXP, and 20000 Credits have been deposited on your account. Three new quests are available in your logs menu.]
[Your affiliated gang [Doomsmiths] have earned 800 influence points]
[Your affiliated gang [Doomsmiths] territory expands into the Red Avenue. Economy and influence will rise in the future as long as the territory is maintained under control]
I had not only joined the [Doomsmiths], a gang that was barely 50-members big at the time. I had joined the gang, got promoted to the title of [Officer], and even got to select an elite team of hunting dogs. I was in charge of clearing the occasional E-rank gates spawning in the territory, a fruitful business that got me plenty of credits to support my training, and plenty of EXP in the meantime.
As for Valter, he just happened to be the C-rank guild leader of an official local guild called [Dawn]. After fighting many times over low-rank gates, the interests of the Dawn and the Doomsmiths were always in conflict. Both organizations wanted the rewards of clearing gates, namely monster cores that could be turned into batteries in an age where energy was used to power everything yet with such limited supply.
Eventually, I received a chain quest to increase the influence of doomsmiths while undermining Dawn. After one full year of hard work, I had finally killed the corporate bastard. It had taken a full month to prepare for the ambush, but just as the lower districts were left unprotected by the army, it allowed lawless gangs like the Doomsmiths full margin of action.
[You have levelled up]
[You have earned 1 point of attribute]
[Your agility has increased by 1 point]
[Name - Greem Southport | Age - 15 Years | Class: Lv. 28 Warrior [D-rank]
Attributes:
Strength - 30 (+3) [C] | Agility - 21 [D] | Vitality - 26 [D] | Mana - 32 (+3) [C]
Talent: Martial Cybernetic Skeleton [B], Swordsmanship Affinity [C]
Passive Skills: Etherum Military Swordsmanship [D], Killing Intent [E]
Active Skills: Focus [E], Stealth [E]
Items: Cybernetic Enhanced Bones [C] (+2 Mana), Cybernetic Flesh [C] (+3 Strength)]
The system was pretty simple. It allowed me to see people through their levels, whereas the natives, or NPCs, would only evaluate their strength through 'ranks'. In a way, this meant that my system allowed me to have a much more precise status window about myself, and those I interacted with, though this level of detail was unique to my own character.
Most likely, the labs of those rich scions could produce something very similar, but I had not played the game enough to know about those. Plus, when I played the game, it was not year 2310 but year 2077, so it said a lot about me being lost in this whole lot of technology.
It was not the only thing that changed. While the game I used to play used to be a post-apocalyptic setting, you never began in a city like that. I could be considered lucky, but after some investigation, it turns out that the humans living in the wastelands were not even considered 'humans', but subhumans that had somehow grown accustomed to the radiations and lost all trace of civilization, living like real 'barbarians'. They evolved, making themselves more resistant to radiations, just like warriors who cultivated. However, all evolution did not mean better odds of survival, for they lost all form of knowledge and regressed to primitive societies.
There was a general sense of superiority coming from a city like Etherum, but at the same time, the technology seemed both more advanced than the one displayed in the game, with runic arrays and magical devices that protected and hid the city from wastelands magical beasts, yet very much inferior, without access to basic energy, making the households of lower districts very vulnerable to ailments such as cold in the winter and heat in the summer.
There used to be an abundance of electricity, yet all that disappeared, the only reliable source of energy being monster cores. While it was quite lucrative for guilds and gangs farming the gates spawning in the city, it also told a lot about the dangerous state in which the inhabitants lived. If a gate that was too strong to be handled spawned in the lower districts, then there would be a massacre with tens of thousands of dead people, until the army was deployed.