The Rules Have Always Been This Way: If You Want Something, You Have to Take It Yourself

Outside Shadowdeep City, a tremendous clash between the ratmen and the insect swarm was underway. Only after the players gradually arrived did the city's defensive perimeter barely manage to stabilize, and it would still take some time to redeploy before they could counterattack.

Meanwhile, the city itself was in utter chaos.

The swarms of flying insects alone were enough to throw people into a panic. Although the super hackers had used the city chatroom to warn people and evacuate some of them in advance, most of Shadowdeep City's million residents were still caught in the insects' attack zones.

The upper city was faring better. The family guards were defending it. Though they were all new recruits, the towering mage towers still kept the flying insects at bay.

The lower city, however, was in a much worse state.

Especially in the male residential districts on the city's outskirts. They received virtually no effective protection. Buildings lay in ruins from the kamikaze insects, and hapless people were hiding wherever they could.

Still, it wouldn't be quite right to say that the area had no defenses at all. Some neighborhoods had already formed clusters of people banding together for protection, and others had set up rudimentary "temporary shelters" in sturdier buildings. What was surprising was that these shelters generally had essential food and drinking water, along with a few crude weapons.

The men guarding these shelters showed clear signs of "organizing into gangs." In fact, anyone who frequented the city chatroom could tell at a glance from the shelters' various emblems that these were the "tough guys" active on the city network.

Much of the lower city's chaos in recent times had been instigated by them.

Some of their actions had been good, others bad, but with the swarm attacking the city, it