50 Going Back to the First District 1

"I don't see anything other than a tall building," Shelly grumbled.

Ben seemed to notice the cliff as his eyes widened from amazement. When we walked behind the blue skyscraper, we immediately found ourselves on a soft field of grass rather than the hard cement covering the grounds of the second district.

"I see it now," Shelly whispered while she admired the numerous white and yellow dandelions blooming around us.

"Race you!" I shouted to Shelly while running up the cliff.

"We're not in kindergarten anymore," Shelly complained as she refused to race with me while she walked to follow me.

We looked down to face a large bank vault on the ground when we were finally on the top of the cliff. "I think this is the entrance," I tried to open the vault while typing random numbers into the padlock.

"I don't think that'll work as there's over a million combinations with those sets of characters on the lock," Ben brought me back to reality.

"How about teleportation magic? I don't think it'll take up that much mana when we're just teleporting to the other side of the vault." I suggested.

When I blinked, I found the three of us at the other side. 'Ben must have teleported us to the other side,' I thought.

Unfortunately, when I looked up, I found an infinite amount of stairs endlessly spiraling up into the darkness. Right. Last time, we were too lazy to walk down all those sets of stairs and chose to jump down instead.

"Isn't this impossible?" I muttered my thoughts out loud.

"Intruders!" A person in a lab coat noticed us standing in front of the bank vault.

"Run!" I yelled as we started to climb up the stairs.

I didn't know how he appeared in front of us, but we needed to get out of there as soon as possible. My lungs started to burn as the time on the marble indicated that we have been running up the stairs for about an hour.

"I can't anymore," Shelly heaved while trying to grasp more air.

Meanwhile, I gasped when laser beams suddenly projected on every other stair to shoot intruders to their death. When one laser beam started to head towards my chest, the beam lightly scratched the edge of Ben's shoulder. I sighed in relief when I suddenly found myself in Ben's arms.

But, Ben's blood silently dropped onto my arm as he grunted from the pain. He left a trail of blood as he tried covered his wound with his hand. I flinched when the wound started to blister from the lack of care.

"Thanks," I mumbled to him as I tried to support him back up.

"Catch them!" I heard a voice not so far below from where we sat.

"Let's continue," Ben helplessly struggled to get back up.

The three of us walked carefully as there were laser beams targeted on random stairs unlike the ones below us. My legs felt like it was on fire from the agonizing exercise as we climbed up the stairs without a single break. We didn't even think of stopping as we could soon be caught by the people in the lab coats.

But, we were forced to take a break when Shelly fainted from exhaustion. "Shelly," I whispered to her with worry.

"She'll be fine," Ben checked her pulse.

Things were looking grim as it looked like there were no end to these stairs even though it has been five hours since we entered the vault.

"Let's use teleportation," I suggested as it was clear we couldn't continue to mindlessly climb up the stairs.

Ben didn't answer as he attempted to piggyback Shelly with his injured shoulder.

'Please place us as high as possible in these never ending stairs,' I pleaded while pouring a great amount of mana into my wish.

However, instead of finding ourselves on the never ending stairs, we were in the middle of a white lab. When Ben spotted a person behind the automated door, he quickly dragged me inside one of the big cabinets inside the lab bench while carrying Shelly.

"Yea, I'm looking for the intruders that came from the second district." The person talked to the marble.

"Ugh! More overtime again," The person in the lab coat pounded on the desk with one of his fists.

"Why did this have to happen during my shift?" The person continued whining.

Instead of searching around the room, the person relaxed on his chair while ordering a cup of coffee from his tablet.

"We should rest here until that person leaves," I whispered to Ben.

Ben agreed as we decided to spend the night here. When I woke up, I found myself drooling on Ben's shirt while noticing Ben was still asleep. Not wanting to wake him up, I tried to open the cabinet as soft as possible to have Ben suddenly stop me.

"We should take turns teleporting instead of climbing up the stairs," Ben quietly whispered.

"I'll help too," Shelly offered while rubbing her eyes.

Shelly instantly teleported us to another room that resembled a storage room with crates and boxes stacked on top of each other filled with mana crystals.

"Can we take some of these with us?" I asked while grabbing some mana crystals from the crates.

Mana crystals were one of the most expensive gems in the first district. As long as a person possessed mana, they could use mana crystals to restore the mana that they used up. Since the natural recovery rate of mana was usually very slow, many people used their mana sparingly.

Although my mana recovered fast since I had an unlimited amount of mana, it seemed like the mana of the elites in the first district recovered quickly too. They possessed a large amount of mana as their base (even though it was not comparable to mine) as well.

'If I were to sell even one of these crystals, I could get 100,000 Aris,' I thought.

"Drop them Rika," Ben glared at me.

'Fine! I have lots of money from what Luke puts into my bank account anyways,' I thought while putting the mana crystals back into the crate.

We then teleported to numerous strange rooms as we took turns teleporting further up while sweating heavily from the strain of using too much mana at once.

"Is this a bedroom?" I asked.

We were on a king-sized this time surrounded by countless pins on the carpet embedded into the floor.

"We could rest here a bit," Ben suggested to Shelly as he ignored my question.

Shelly nodded as she looked pale and sick from using too much mana. However, when I heard someone about to turn the doorknob, I panicked and my mana sprouted to activate. I instantly teleported somewhere else to not get discovered with no other thought.

'Who knows what will happen if we get caught,' I imagined the consequences.

"Rika!" Shelly complained when we were on the stairs again.

When I saw the familiar laser beams, I hung my head in despair.

"Look!" Ben pointed at the door at the end of the stairs a few floors away from us.