The men pulled ash forward, forcing him to keep walking. everything grew silent, the air got colder the deeper they went, a slight fog settled around everything, this place felt like a prison more than a city, the walls were huge, the ground was echoing with every step he took.
They went to a massive bleak building, behind it was a huge white line stretching horizontally across the facility. Armed guards stood guarding the entrance with no expression on their faces, tattoos running on their necks. When the doors opened, Ash was shoved inside.
The interior looked different from everything outside, It was a quiet, empty room except for one thing placed at the center of the room.
It was a gem.
An emerald one, on a stone pedestal with a slight green aura around it.
One of the men looked at Ash with an unreadable expression.
"Go hold that gem."
Ash looked at the man with confusion.
"So you brought me all the way here just for a crystal of some sort? You know I can't afford stuff like this, right?"
"Hold the gem." the man who brought him here has said, his voice tired and flat, like this was a routine.
Ash swallowed and stepped closer. His hands were shaking.
'Here goes nothing.'
As he held it a huge ethereal glow shone and filled the whole chamber, coloring everything around it in a green light. The guards who were always calm stared with wide eyes. Even the man that escorted Ash here didn't blink once, watching him very intensely.
Ash felt something rush within him, like his body was being analyzed, judged, and even measured.
The man who brought him here looked at the emerald in disbelief and mumbled
"What a high number.."
A sound was heard from somewhere inside the chamber. It was loud, mechanical, and impossible to find.
"Seventy seven thousand units."
Everyone froze in their place
The guards stared at Ash in disbelief, like he did something impossible. The two suited men looked completely shocked. One of the men grabbed Ash by the arm pulling him away from the pedestal
"That's a huge sum of units." he said while making him walk further from the emerald. "You need to be careful. Some people around here are willing to do many things to gather more units."
Ash swallowed. "What do you mean by a huge sum? What exactly are units? What are people willing to do?"
The man didn't answer.
Ash didn't understand what was going on, but he did know a thing about units. Units were connected to inhuman powers, anyone who had them would gain un-ordinary powers, they could fight monsters, survive in places humans can't, and rise to the highest of ranks, and he knew that he had a bunch of units.
They kept walking until they reached another room. The man stopped and faced Ash
"Where would you like to have your Unit tattoo? it will display the number of units you have on your body"
Ash finally knew what those tattoos meant, It was the number of units everyone had
Ash thought about the man's warning. He was an officer in this place, and yet he told him to be careful. That alone proved how menacing the number of units he had truly was.
Ash looked at him with a confident expression
"On my forearm," he said. "Somewhere I can cover up the tattoo with my sleeves."
His shirt was oversized, it used to belong to his father, it was torn at both ends but it could still hide the number completely fine, he could also show it to people when he needed to.
The man nodded."Smart choice."
The man took out a strange device, like a gun, it was made out of metal with growing runes around it, heavy sparks of blue energy was flickering around the barrel, giving it a magical look. He pressed the machine into Ash's forearms. It didn't hurt but he felt a faint sense of power around it.
The machine tattooed 77K onto his skin, the numbers growing faintly for a while, finally turning into black ink.
Ash stared at his forearms in pure disbelief, His hand was shook after touching it, the glow was fading and it was turning into normal black ink, leaving the black number staring at him. He felt a mix of fear and also excitement, did that mean he was strong? He didn't know.
The man gestured for ash to follow him back towards the area where everyone had been, the fog was thick in the air, it was around walls, abandoned buildings, covering the whole entire place
"You're now a newly registered Unit holder." the man said. "Past that chamber we were in… there's a line, after that line is a deadly amount of monsters roaming inside. You'll have to fight them to survive here."
Ash was frozen
"Fight them? How... How am i supposed to fight them? Why?"
"Figure that out yourself kid." the man replied "You wont last here long anyways"
Ash trailed behind him silently, his mind was spinning. The fog. The grave with the crown. The huge walls. It was all too mysterious to him, yet he felt like everything was connected some way. And it wasn't nice.
As they reached the way back to the entrance, the man stopped and looked back at him.
"Don't let your units go to waste, at least help us a little before dying brat." he said as he went through the entrance gate, the gates shutting behind him
'He didn't even let me speak!'
Ash stood alone, feeling the weight of the mans words, he now had to know what was happening.
The ground was cold stone, cracked in many places.
Ash looked all around him. There were a lot of people moving around him. On the right of the entrance were the training grounds, and beyond them were rows of graves. On the left were ruined buildings, cracked and broken, some were leaning, some were blackened. The place stretching far in every direction. He swore he could see more things in a distance, but the unnatural fog made it hard to tell.
People moved around the area; training, running, practicing with swords. they had the same tattoos as him, but the difference between his number and their number was vast, he saw some with, seventeen thousand, twenty two thousand, but he never saw someone who had a number close to his.
And that could potentially harm him somehow.
Ash spotted someone fearsome, someone about his age, looked below 18, was standing nearby. His blonde hair was covering his eyes, his hands were wrapped in bandages, and his ear piercings was shining in the dark dim light of this place. His shirt was stained with old dried blood, and there was a menacing aura around him that made Ash uncomfortable.
The boy had a massive sledgehammer. One of its side looked deadly, with dried blood. The other side was glowing with a strange bluish light, it looked like it had a life of its own
Before the boy returned to his group, Ash gained his confidence and went up to that anonymous boy to ask him what was going on.
Ash swallowed hard as he approached the frightening boy. His heart was pounding
"Hey… so uh… what's your name?" Ash asked, afraid
The boy looked at him with one of his eyebrow raised, and then smirked. "Cyrus, and you are?"
"I… I'm Ash. I just got into this place."
The boy looked at him with interest. "You must be new here. Welcome to hell."
Ash winced at his words. "Hell?"
"Didn't the guards tell you?" Cyrus asked, tilting his head to the side.
"No…" Ash said.
Cyrus's expression turned from playful to serious. "This place… it's made for people like us. Homeless and orphans with Units. We do labor, fight monsters, collect their gems. Each gem has a powerup of some sort. If you have an extra gem on you, breaking it could give you new skills or increase your number of units a little. But there's a rule: if you don't bring a gem to the guards every day, you'll be punished."
Ash was confused. "Punished… how?"
Cyrus's gaze have darkened. "You die. Every monster you kill drops a gem. You have to bring it to the guards. Fail, and that's over for you. But new kids… you get three days to learn, to figure out how to fight before you have to collect gems."
Ash nodded listening. "Can you teach me? Teach me how to use my Units… or my skills?"
Cyrus looked at him for a moment, and then grinned. "Hah. You're bold. But fine, I'll train you for a while. But you'll help me too. Fight monsters, get gems. Help you, Help me"
Ash's eye shined with hope. "Deal."
The boy put his sledgehammer aside, the blue light warm across its edge. "Alright brat. Let's start training, you ready?"
Ash took a deep breath and said. "Yeah… I'm ready."