Chương 140: Sudden Danger

Having finished his meal, he licked the last traces of fat from around his mouth and, patting his stomach with satisfaction, paid the bill — pressing his wrist to the same small scanner standing by the register — then rose unhurriedly from the table and stepped out of the modest little shop onto the street, seen off by a short, polite bow from the cook behind the counter.

Taking one last look back at the shop he was leaving — the warm, cozy glow of the paper lanterns, the scent of ginger and sesame still drifting out through the open door — a faint, almost peaceful smile crossed his face, and he set off once more through the streets of the vast, towering city, feeling a pleasant fullness in his stomach for the first time in a long while.

The evening air had grown noticeably cooler, and in the distance, between the spires of the skyscrapers, the first scattered stars had already begun to show through the glow of the city lights. He strolled unhurriedly past shops closing up for the night, past street vendors packing away their stalls, past a couple sitting on a low parapet, talking quietly about something while gazing off into the distance.

A train rumbled somewhere in the distance once more, and a snatch of someone's song drifted out from an open window, dissolving almost instantly into the city's general hum. A stray cat with unusually long, semi-transparent ears darted past, pausing for a moment to look at Lloyd before vanishing into a dark alley between two buildings. But he didn't get far.

Suddenly a piercing siren blared overhead, drowning out every other sound on the street at once — the hum of conversation, the music drifting from nearby establishments, the rumble of passing traffic. The sound was so sharp and unexpected that Lloyd flinched involuntarily, and several passersby nearby lifted their heads in unison, as if expecting to find the source of the noise somewhere up in the sky. — Attention, a Phantom-rank monster has escaped from a dungeon! Attention, a monster of rank...

A woman's voice, clearly belonging to some kind of mechanical alert system, repeated the words several times in a row, flat and almost indifferent, echoing between the tall walls of the skyscrapers and making Lloyd tense up involuntarily, his heart picking up a slightly faster pace.

He glanced around instinctively, trying to figure out exactly where the threat was coming from, but there was still nothing suspicious in sight — just the ordinary evening bustle of a big city, carrying on as though the siren were nothing more than another piece of the city's background noise. But everyone around him, strangely enough, kept going about their business as if nothing had happened.

Not a single person even turned to acknowledge the alarm, as though it were just another well-worn part of the city's daily routine — something like rain or a traffic jam that nobody bothered noticing anymore. A couple nearby kept calmly sipping their drinks, and a group of young Players actually burst out laughing at something, not even pausing their conversation. A vendor nearby went on arranging his wares just as placidly as before, as though he hadn't heard the announcement at all.

The sight made Lloyd relax a little, though his shoulders remained tense, and his palms grew slightly damp with a nervousness he couldn't quite shake off. The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

"I guess something like this is normal for this city. There's probably a ton of high-level Players around here. That monster won't even have time to fully come out before it gets..." Lloyd never got to finish that thought.

Somewhere behind him, he heard a strange, low sound, nothing like a passing train, nothing like roadwork, nothing like anything else he'd grown used to in this city — something like a dull, swelling rumble, interspersed with the crack of breaking stone, which sent an immediate chill through Lloyd's insides and raised goosebumps across his skin. The other passersby around him reacted to the sound too — no longer anywhere near as relaxed as they'd been just a couple of seconds earlier.

A ripple of uneasy motion swept through the crowd; someone froze dead in the middle of the road, someone else quickened their pace, while the group of Players who'd just been laughing turned suddenly serious, all wheeling around toward the source of the sound in unison, as though some shared, years-honed instinct had kicked in all at once.

Some began backing away slowly and uncertainly from the source of the noise, glancing back over their shoulders, while others, by contrast, pulled out their phones, clearly intending to film yet another monster destined to get lost in the news feed among thousands of identical clips of identical monsters, filmed somewhere else entirely. Someone even let out an excited shout, visibly anticipating quite a show, as though this were some kind of street performance rather than real danger looming right over their heads.

Suddenly, it burst straight out of the wall of the nearest building with a deafening crash — a massive cloud of brick dust and chunks of concrete blotted out everything around it for a moment, stinging eyes and filling lungs, sending passersby stumbling back, coughing. It was an enormous serpent, its long, writhing, scaled body covered in massive purple plates that shimmered with a dull, sickly gleam under the streetlights, as though the scales themselves gave off a faint, unnatural glow.

Lloyd could make out its gleaming crimson eyes even from a distance — they burned with a cold, inhuman malice, scanning the crowd for anything worth its attention, and a harsh, threatening hiss escaped its jaws with every movement, sending shivers down the spines of everyone nearby.

The serpent surged forward at breakneck speed, crushing and scattering everything in its path — street benches, signs, bags abandoned in haste — slithering straight toward Lloyd and the other random residents of the city who happened to be too close to the spot where it had suddenly appeared.

Several nearby streetlamps went dark with a clang as its massive body clipped one of the posts, and a nearby food stall toppled over with a deafening crash, spilling the contents of its display across the pavement — vegetables, packaging, shards of broken dishware. The ground trembled noticeably under its swift, heavy movement, and the air was suddenly thick with the smell of hot dust and something acrid, almost like sulfur, which made Lloyd's nose sting and his eyes water.

Everyone nearby scattered at once, nearly dropping their gadgets and shopping bags, shouting something unintelligible at one another, shoving past their neighbors in a desperate bid to get away. Someone's dropped bag spilled open right in the middle of the road, scattering its contents under the feet of the fleeing crowd; someone slipped and nearly fell, caught just in time by a stranger running past without so much as slowing down.

Without a second thought, Lloyd did exactly the same, bolting toward the nearest alley, feeling his heart pound wildly somewhere up in his throat, every muscle in his body flooding with a cold, searing wave of adrenaline.