Tyre! (Sixteen)

The shopping mall had long since closed, and heavy bars had been hung over every window.

A gray-haired old man stood atop a filthy convertible, begging the people around him for precious rations. Beside him lay the charred shell of a car, its front end embedded in a narrow alley ahead.

Above them, the remaining spherical bulbs in the streetlights struggled to dispel the darkness of the night, but unfortunately, most of them had long since burned out.

Ever since Ork had appeared a hundred kilometers outside the city, everything had fallen apart.

A young couple, Julia and Alex, had already witnessed three armed brawls here. One had even drawn the patrol's attention, but the culprits—three young men and an old man—had vanished into the vast crowd the moment the patrol appeared.

"They won't let you see any of this."

Alex sounded rather displeased.

"When you travel with your father, they pretend none of this exists. But look around. This is Tyre. This is the world we live in."

Julia was the beloved daughter of a great noble. Her family was immensely influential throughout the Imperium.

Alex was merely an accomplished Wizard apprentice, without any particularly illustrious family or background. He was just a country boy who had struggled to climb to his current position through his own talent.

The difference in their status was as vast as heaven and earth.

"I heard they might all just be rude country people."

Julia truly said it.

"That isn't their fault."

"Is that so?"

The young Wizard shook his head.

"It was country people who spent generations building Tyre, until the palace where your father lives nearly reached the sky. Yet the foundations of the Imperium are so rotten. Sooner or later, their short-sightedness will destroy us all."

"But our world is