The sounds of gunfire could be heard throughout the street, it had started raining again..
The people in the city did not know if what was falling on them was rain or the filth that fell from the castle.
The sounds of the trucks that never stopped coming into the city were something that everyone had been forced to accept, it wasn't hard for anyone to know why.
All that anyone had to do was look at a truck and they would see the drivers paying a guard every time that they entered and left the city.
Both children and adults looked past the giant towers and oppressive buildings and followed the lights of the advertisements that flew into the sky before reaching the edge of the castle.
People still claimed that the corporations and the people who were in charge of them were at the top, but everyone knew the truth.
There was a place just out of reach where the corporations couldn't reach, a place where everything was clean and trash didn't fill every alley.
There was no such thing as homelessness there and unlike the city that they called home, there was work for everyone.
The people in Night City stared at the sky and wondered how they could go up there, the videos of everyone who had won a ticket were still flooding the net.
Yet the people in the city weren't the only ones who looked at Aincrad with envious eyes, Nomads were people who drove from one location to another and didn't have any identification that the government demanded stared at the castle.
They had seen several of their members teleport away after they received the tickets, and they were angry, not at the Players and not even the ones who left them to live in the castle.
No, what they were angry at, was how hard it was to reach this spot, it was from here that they could see the route that the trucks took to come and go from the city.
It would be a while but they would eventually figure out where the trucks were the most vulnerable and then they would take everything that they needed.
][][]
David walked down the hallway it was just another boring, that was something that his new school always failed to be.
the school or better said all of the schools in Aincrad were divided into three groups, the new students, this group was nothing but kids, who didn't know how to do much of anything.
The next group was the ones that already had jobs and skills that they were trying to use in the castle and the last group was made up of people that were old and didn't have any useful skills.
He stops walking and looks at the blue sky, it's hard to believe that he is at the bottom and there are ninety-nine floors left to climb.
Everyone knows that the rulers of Aincrad or the Guild Leaders as they call themselves all live up there and people are already wondering what it's going to take to reach that point and join them.
He isn't one of them, truth be told he doesn't know what to think anymore, it's not that he is grateful for being here, but Aincrad is just so different from Night City that, he starts walking again.
The towering buildings that made him feel small are long gone and in their place is an endless sky, he can hear the sounds of gunfire in the distance, but he ignores it.
The hunters always had work and they were good at what they did. He had to admit that he was shocked when they showed everyone what they were fighting and why they were always looking for new members.
He had grown used to seeing gore, but there was something different about seeing a unicorn use its horn to stab a person through the heart while shrugging off normal bullets and only stopping moving when someone saw armor-piercing bullets.
This was the thing about Aincrad everyone had a place where they could belong, even if they didn't fit in any of the towns a person could just walk into the woods and live there alone.
"What am I doing here?" he asks himself as he reaches his next class.
"Mr. Martinez you're late please take your seat." the teacher says to him.
"Welcome to shipping, this class will be separated into two separate groups, one that deals with transportation and maintenance of whatever you are transporting inside the castle."
"The other deals with the same thing, but what you are expected to do when you are outside of the castle."
David ignores the teacher's words as he walks up to an empty seat and sits down.
"Now this is a standard Roket Lancher, it's useful for medium-level threats and average armored vehicles."
David blinked and blinked again, he looked around and thankfully he wasn't the only one doing this.
"Teacher I thought that this was shipping?" he says to the teacher.
'It is, but we aren't going to send you out there without combat training." the teacher answers him.
"What?" he says and can't help but shrink into his seat when the teacher raises an eyebrow at him.
"Transportation Mr. Martinez is just taking food, or materials from one place to another."
"The truck that you were put in charge of could have an important person in it, you may not have been told about them being in there, but you were trusted with the safety of whatever is inside your truck."
"Meaning that you are expected to make sure that your delivery reaches its destination no matter what." she says to him and David can't help but nod at the woman.
"Calm down there's no reason to talk like that, look you're scaring them." Asuna says as she walks into the room.
David couldn't help but sit up straight, he knew who the woman was, hell everyone knew who she was, even if they didn't know her name.
"Hello everyone, I'm Asuna." she says to everyone in the room.
"I need everyone that knows how to use a gun or a sword to stand over here." she says to everyone while pointing in front of her.
David doesn't move but he sees that more than half of the class walks up to Asuna.
"Everyone that knows how to hack into computers or people please stand on the other side of the room and everyone else please remain seated." she says to everyone.
David can't help but put an arm on his head when he notices that there are only a few people left and he's one of them.
"Everyone that's sitting down come with me, everyone else please follow your teacher to combat class." Asuna says to everyone before walking out of the class.
David turns to look at everyone who is still sitting down, they wordlessly agree to follow Asuna.
they soon find her standing in front of an antic helicopter.
"Get in," she orders them.
"Ms. where are we going?" David asks Asuna who smirks at him.
"Down, this is your training." she says to them before the pilot hands everyone a sword and a gun that has an automatic aim.
"Then shouldn't you use someone with experience?" the girl next to him asks Asuna.
"On-the-job training, means on-the-job training," Asuna answers the girl.