Chapter 103: Caracas – Slums – Stairway 2
“I… My child, my child couldn’t eat…”
“Please, please.”
“Buy some fruits… Ah, don’t steal it! Ah, nooo!”
“Hehehe, heh, haha, I’ll kill you.”
“Thief! Ugh!”
“Just a penny…”
Chaos.
No, I should call it hell on Earth.
Even Dusty and the other Hush Gang members didn’t seem to be in a good mood.
“Welcome to the Caracas Stairway. Luckily, the Aerial Biker Gangs seem to be on a break today.”
Caracas.
Dusty said this stairway was called Caracas.
【Caracas. The original meaning refers to a slum in another language.】
It gave off the feeling of an immigrant village.
“The Executors call this area the Sluice Gate Region, but those born here call it Caracas.”
“As you can see, it’s a zone steeped in poverty. Overseer, living above, I’m guessing this is your first time seeing something like this?”
Anis and Dusty shrugged as they spoke to me.
“No, it’s not my first time.”
“What? That’s surprising.”
In the past, I might have been unsure, but after absorbing Gaia and rapidly enhancing my vitality, vague memories from my days as the Demon King resurfaced for Alice.
It wasn’t the first time she had seen sights worthy of being described as hell on Earth.
“Still, this is pretty severe.”
The Kowloon Residential Zone was also overcrowded, but the population density of the lower layers of Caracas was truly hellish.
The upper layers, at least, were just crowded, with plenty of residential zones, bustling areas, and shops.
There was a peaceful and leisurely atmosphere on the streets above, but the lower layers were a savage sight that drained energy just by walking.
There wasn’t even room to step, forcing you to bump shoulders as you passed by.
Thankfully, most members of the Hush Gang looked like tough thugs, so the slum dwellers avoided provoking them and made way cautiously.
“Funny, isn’t it? Even among the poor, begging from each other is a daily occurrence.”
Anis said as she sidled up to Alice.
The begging voices around sounded like an untrained choir’s lamentations.
Even amidst the noisy crowd, Anis’s voice reached Alice distinctly.
“There’s no such thing as law enforcement to maintain order here like there is for the pigs above. Fail to earn money, and you pick up a blade to become a robber—that’s daily life. Food is so scarce that human flesh isn’t even a shocking alternative anymore.”
“Anis, that’s enough.”
“What? What did I say?”
“Anis.”
“Tch.”
At Dusty’s admonition, Anis furrowed her brows and backed off.
“If it offended you, I apologize. She’s lived her whole life here in the sluice region, watching wealthy tourists from above come for their slum tours.”
“Ah, I understand. If you’ve seen them directly, it’s hard to ignore. I heard there are a lot of Executors and rich tourists from the upper layers visiting the sluice region.”
Humans are creatures of comparison.
They often determine their happiness based on those who are better off and worse off than themselves.
For Anis and the children of the lower layers, the happiest people were the wealthy from the upper layers, while the most miserable were themselves.
When young Anis begged for food in hunger, did the rich from the upper layers hand her money or bread?
No, they likely laughed and drank champagne, reveling in the sight of poverty.
For reference, the sluice stairway where Alice had once been stationed had hotels guarded by Executors.
The dazzling lights of these hotels flickered in the distance every night.
While the rich enjoyed dinner buffets, what did children like Anis feel?
It’s natural that Anis and the gang members from here dislike the upper layers.
The environment leaves them no choice.
Deprived of everything, they had to join a gang just to survive.
Meanwhile, the wealthy from above occasionally visited, treating their poverty and misfortune as amusement.
The cruelest truth is that those times when the rich came for their tours were probably the best days for young Anis and the gang members.
That’s because the scraps of food discarded by the visitors were more abundant on those days.
If the upper layer residents didn’t come for a long time, Anis and the children often went hungry.
Hearing this, Alice understood.
At times like this, someone might say, “What does that have to do with me? How dare some lower-class scum confront an Overseer?”
But Alice wasn’t heartless enough to ignore the plight of those who grew up in such hardship.
After all, Alice became an Overseer by a twist of fate—meeting Oriana with this body and a series of lucky circumstances.
“Then, aren’t you the same?”
“What?”
“Like Anis, you don’t make it blatantly obvious that Overseers like me are disgusting. Honestly, I can tolerate it, you know?”
“…I’m not like that, you idiot. I used to be a Hunter from the mid-tier Riren Guild.”
“Huh? That’s unexpected. How did you end up here?”
“Well, I stabbed the guild leader for skimming off my repair and crafting fees. Oh, and I sold a few people too, so I fled here.”
“Uh, wow. Yeah, you definitely belong down here.”
“I know. Damn it…”
For a while, Alice’s group walked through the streets of Caracas.
Honestly, with Alice being so short, the dense crowds and the identical, closely-packed buildings made it hard to tell directions.
The Hush gang members escorted Alice, the doll, and Marlang through the streets, sparing them the inconvenience.
Without them, beggars would’ve swarmed, making it impossible to move forward.
It wasn’t like they could declare, “The Overseer is here!” in the middle of the lower levels.
‘Hiring a guide was the right choice.’
After walking through filthy streets crowded with the impoverished for an hour, they descended a staircase building for another 30 minutes.
Passing through a maze of intertwined buildings and stair roads, they descended yet another staircase.
At this point, anyone not born and raised here would be utterly lost.
Alice finally understood why Ark Central had essentially abandoned mapping the lower levels. It was hopeless.
The population density surpassed the upper levels, and every building was unregistered, filled with makeshift paths and roads between them.
The layers and stairs blended together into an indecipherable tangle, making maps meaningless.
According to Dusty, every section and building of the staircases was regularly modified or destroyed in gang disputes.
Without Dusty as a guide, Alice would’ve been lost in the middle of the lower levels.
“This is it.”
Dusty and the Hush gang members led Alice to a point where the road turned into black blocks.
Beyond the road, there were no proper lights, and all the buildings were dark.
‘No people.’
All the way here, the area had been crowded with people. Yet, from the black blocks onward, there was a stark absence of human presence.
“This is the Maggedon District of the Caracas Stairs.”
“What did it used to be?”
“A drug factory complex.”
A different gang member next to Dusty answered.
It was no surprise that the lower levels and drugs were deeply intertwined.
One of the few ways to earn money here was trading drugs, and the drugs produced in the lower levels often made their way to the upper levels and central areas.
There’s even a joke that the central region leaves the lower levels alone so the upper elites can enjoy their drugs.
“This area was originally set up as a heavy industrial complex for Ark Central. But after the sluice gate region fell into the lower levels, this area was taken over by gangs and turned into a drug manufacturing hub. I used to make a decent living here manufacturing a drug called Harpoon…”
“Confessing crimes to an Overseer, huh?”
“Ah.”
“I’m kidding. I’m not here to bust drug manufacturers.”
Anis, as usual, grumbled something about how even that was caused by the pigs in the upper levels.
Dusty awkwardly continued, stealing glances at her.
“So, a deserted industrial complex means equipment scattered everywhere.”
The scale of Ark’s industrial complexes was massive.
To put it in Korean terms, it would be like the entire city of Seoul filled with factories and facilities.
Even occupying a small building here could allow a gang to produce more than enough drugs.
With such a large area and abandoned facilities, this place had naturally become a magnet for crime syndicates.
Ordinary people and the poor instinctively avoided entering the industrial zones past the black blocks, knowing they were teeming with crime syndicates.
“Anyway, it used to be full of crime syndicates, but since there’s so much equipment, it wasn’t often a site of disputes.”
“Since you’re talking in the past tense, I guess something happened?”
“Hmm, I don’t know the details, but there’s talk about something being discovered inside the factory. Maybe it’s what you called the Blood Contamination Zone?”
“What was discovered?”
“That, I don’t know…”
As Dusty spoke, the dolls behind him reached for their skewers, ready to poke him for not answering properly. Marlang quickly pushed the skewers back into place with her bare hands.
“I really don’t know. I usually stick to the sluice gate area or the Caracas stairs. But judging by how the drugs are still being distributed just fine, the complex seems operational, even though no one’s been seen entering or leaving.”
Alice couldn’t shake the feeling that she and factories were somehow connected.
In her first life, it had been the exploitative black company factory. In this life, Gaia had brought her to the biological factory. Marlang and the Immortal Girls were born from the Undying Factory.
Now, in the lower levels, it was an industrial zone taken over by drug syndicates.
“Hm?”
Alice suddenly noticed something strange.
No one else seemed to sense it, but her aura perception detected something smaller than an insect.
Something wriggling among the black blocks filling the streets and buildings.
A worm?
No, it was shorter and a bit plumper than a worm.
“?”
It wasn’t surprising to see maggots in the lower levels.
But for maggots to fill entire buildings—or even the blocks themselves—was far from ordinary.