Chapter 245: Ruins of Civilization

By the time he reached the gates, Shiro was already there talking with the guards and showing them the permit.

Ishiki could see that they were not so nice to Shiro before, but as he approached their expressions became controlled and weary. Well, people do care a lot about these useless post stuff at the end of the day.

“Sir,” Shiro noticed him and turned around to greet him. The two guards and the people around them also greeted Ishiki on arrival.

The matter with the pass has been settled and an escort vehicle was being prepared for them to go out.

One could not venture outside the walls without a car and a person who frequents in going there. Most of the people who go out are trucks with government officials, they are tasked to bring the remains of the old city which had been devastated to help build the city behind the walls.

Soon, a mini truck was there to pick them up for their trip out. The driver was an fairly old man, probably in his late forties and another mysterious person in complete black attire.

’A secret government agent.’ Ishiki determined by his clothing. ’As I thought, they won’t just let us go out on our own, even though we are their trusted plyers. Such shits.’

The gate opened with the reluctance of something that knew it shouldn’t.

A slow, hydraulic groan, that was the sound of weight being moved and then the doors parted, and the world beyond them pressed in through the gap like cold breath from a room that had been sealed a long time.

The mini truck followed down a steep ramp slowly and then finally got onto a straight surface.

The ground changed texture under the tires in the way that mapped itself clearly to a man who paid attention to such things.

Ishiki looked outside and saw nothing but a barren land all around the wall, under whose shadow they stood right now. There was a paved road that went straight ahead through the barren land which had been cleared of everything to create a visible space around the wall.

The road stretched forward in a pale, almost surgical line, cutting through two kilometres of barren earth before it gave up on itself entirely.

And beyond that — the still ruins of the old world lay untouched.

The gate groaned shut behind them. The lock bolts engaged with a sound like a sentence being closed.

“Different when you’re on this side of it,” Shiro commented quietly.

He was looking back at the wall.

On the inside, the wall was a fixture — something you lived against, something that existed in the background of every ward the way weather existed, always present. Out here, it revealed its true scale. A sheer, colourless monolith that swallowed its own top in low cloud. Featureless. Impassive. It offered nothing to indicate that millions of people were living against its inner face.

But the world has always been like that, as far as Ishiki was concerned. Well, the old wall… the one built before he was born, to keep the water levels out.

Ishiki almost chuckled at the thought.

He had always been living behind walls. All his life. First the walls of the lower sectors, then to the irony of it… his Scenario forced him to go behind the walls for protection, and now. he lived inside the walls which were inside another pair of walls.

“It always looks taller from out here,” Ishiki replied.

The truck kept going, straight.

The barren land was its own kind of ruin.

Not the dramatic ruin of collapsed architecture. This was the quieter kind: the ruin of erasure.

The two kilometres between the wall and the city’s broken edge had been cleared, as a defensive buffer. Whatever had stood there — houses, small businesses, the accumulated texture of suburban life — had been taken apart stone by stone and levelled flat. What remained were low mounds and half-buried fragments, the occasional rusted skeleton of a vehicle half-swallowed by drifted earth, and above it all the silence of a place that had been emptied of purpose.

The wind moved across it in long, unobstructed sweeps. It smelled of metal and dry concrete and something older underneath.

The road was rather well maintained, as these were used more often then one thought.

There was actually another reason for why this place had turned into a barren land. The broken ruins that lay here were taken apart and then used once again as building materials inside the, new city.

And the area is just increasing as there is more and more need to build new wards and buildings…

After roughly, two and half kilometers mark, the paved road gave away.

“Hehe, this is as far as the mini truck can go.” The driver quoted. “beyond this, the roads are all broken and filled with debris not allowing anything but walking individuals.”

“its quite, I thought there would be people working here to extract useable items.” Shiro asked the driver curiously.

The driver laughed and replied in a rather disappointed tone. “Today is Sunday, of course everyone is home enjoying.”

Shiro had an urge to ask, why was he here then. But he didn’t and let it go as it was.

Ishiki, Shiro and the government agent stepped out of the mini truck and walked to the edge of the paced street.

It ended abruptly and beyond it, everything was in utter ruins. Nothing much had changed from three years ago when Ishiki was here. But still, now as he stands here again.

His heart is filled with kind of dread, longings and something that might be a regret. Well, this was his original hometown, so he couldn’t help but have those feelings.

Around him, there are several corpses of the buildings, but more than half of the debris are gone. They were taken away and used for helping humanity grow once more.

“Well… this place must be teeming with Xenons so, try to stay in the sun as much as you can.” Ishiki explained and then stepped into the ruins.

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