~ To find the fist key to success you must go though the jungle that is the maze of life. You must stop the civil war. By now you should have realized what your goal is, so make up your mind and go chase after only what you want. You're the only ruler of your own world and you're the one in charge of yourself~
———
"Level five, Miroh. The first level of your second chapter of your journey, clé 1 : MIROH"
"Woah we've reached the second chapter" I said after hearing the speaker announce we were at chapter 2. "Took us long enough" I muttered.
"But what does clé mean?" Jeongin asked.
"Doesn't that mean key in French?" Felix said.
"You know French?" I asked and looked at him with surprise.
"Not really" he said before the speaker spoke again.
"Find the first key to success. Go through the jungle to win back your own world" the speaker said.
"I don't get the chapters" Felix said and looked confused.
I was happy because I was actually starting to understand the levels. "Last three levels, the I am series, it's about finding yourself, now the clé series as you said is the key series, it's about finding the keys to success by taking control over your own life" I explained my hypothesis.
He looked at me, not able to grasp what I said. "Yeah okay whatever" he said.
"You knew the word for key in French but can't understand the meanings behind the levels" I said and looked at him with a frown.
"She's calling you stupid Felix" Jeongin said with a smile he couldn't hide.
"It's quite funny actually that you call her stupid when she's obviously more helpful in this game than you are" Seungmin agreed.
"Yah!" Felix said and looked at the two younger.
"Let's not be too harsh here, at least he knew the French word for key" Jisung said, also he amused by the conversation.
"Should we not get going?" Felix said.
"Yeah so they don't report us for being afk" I said jokingly and started walking towards the edge of the high skyscraper we were on. "Holy fuck that's a looong way down" I then said as I saw how high up we are.
"Oh shit, we could die if we fall down" Jeongin said.
"We will die if we fall down" Felix said and looked at him with disbelief.
"Oh wow, you're so smart to figure that out" Jeongin said back, really looking as if he wasn't being sarcastic, but I knew he was.
Felix couldn't take the compliment since he also knew he was being sarcastic. He just glared at the maknae.
"My physics teacher thought us if we want to commit suicide we must jump from at least the fifth floor to ensure we'll really die, otherwise we might survive" Jeongin said with a completely straight face. Strangely enough I believed him because he actually looked serious.
"What a great teacher" Felix said with sarcasm.
"He really is" Jeongin defended his teacher and continued looking serious.
The rest of us just looked at him.
Bellow us were streets and buildings, it was a huge city that looked like it never ended. I really had no idea where to start this level. There was something about the city that wasn't right though. It seemed so dead. I saw a few small dots moving around bellow us that should be people, but the whole atmosphere was dead and depressing. Judging by the size of this city it should be much busier and much lighter. It was dark and gray and just boring.
I saw no jungle at least, this is a city, that's pretty much the opposite of a jungle. I came to think of a line from Empire State of minds by Jay Z and Alicia keys. Concrete jungle where dreams are made of. I guess there are similarities between a jungle and a big city. This wasn't a city full of dreams though, this city was dead and there were no hope for anything good to happen left, I could already tell from just seeing it. The only fun thing connecting the song to this place other than them both being concrete jungles were the keys.
"So shall we jump?" I asked with a straight face.
"We were just talking about dying if we fall down and you suggest we jump" Seungmin said and looked at me.
"Then don't jump, we can take the elevator down as well if you prefer that" I said and shrugged.
"I would prefer the stairs to be honest, I don't trust elevators in this game" Jisung said and looked a bit scared.
"Well, the stairs should take hours and I'm not waiting for you, so unless you wanna get ditched, let's just take the elevator, we're in a game, it won't malfunction" I said.
"I'm not afraid of it malfunctioning" jisung muttered but didn't say anything else.
We all headed towards the stairs leading down from the roof and found our way to the elevators.
"I don't like this" Jisung said as we stepped inside.
"Me neither" Felix agreed.
"Weak" I said jokingly, making Jeongin and Seungmin chuckle as reaction.
"Hyungs, why are you so scared?" Jeongin asked.
"Just shut up" Felix said and gave him a glare.
That kid's mouth is too big, I've already noticed that. The truth was, we were all probably going to have an elevator phobia if we even get out of here. I won't be scared of it malfunctioning and stopping or something like that, I'll be afraid of it magically taking me to a real life arcade game and force me to play it to get out alive.
I pressed the button for the first floor and the doors closed soon after. The second it came into motion I felt how something grabbed a hold of my arm. I looked and saw Felix who was standing next to me had grabbed my arm when the motion scared him.
I looked up at him with a raised eyebrow. He saw the face I was making and quickly let go of me again.
The elevator ride was silent because everyone was afraid of something happening, even those of us who didn't dare to admit it. Reaching the bottom and the doors opening up to show a regular entrance to a big building, made us all sigh from relief. A loud sigh with all of our sighs combined made us look up at each other and chuckle lightly.
"Guess we're all happy to have made it down with no surprises" I said.
"Elevators are actually kinda scary" Jeongin agreed and looked down at the ground a bit flustered.
I chuckled before putting an arm around his shoulder. "Come on, let's go explore this place" I said and lead him out of the building with the others following behind.
As we went through the opening and out on the streets we were met by kind of foggy and weird smelling air. I recognized the smell but couldn't really place it.
"Is it just me or does it smell like gunpowder here?" Jisung asked.
"That's what it was!" I exclaimed when the realization hit me.
Felix glared at me as if he was silently saying I was stupid and slow.
I just glared back at him. "Well sorry I couldn't recognize the smell of gunpowder the second I felt it" I said.
He didn't say anything though.
The foggy and gunpowder smelling air could be seen as a sign to stay inside, but who does what is smart really? We need to explore this place.
"Let's continue" I said and started walking again.
The others hesitated a second before following, but later walked behind me like a tail.
So far we hadn't seen a single person. So most people actually did stay inside when it seemed to have been lots of firing of guns just recently. But how were we supposed to make any progress by staying inside?
Suddenly I heard something. I stopped and the others stopped as well next to me.
"Did you hear that?" I asked them.
"I heard something at least" Seungmin said.
"Me too" Jeongin agreed.
"Then it probably was the same thing" Felix said.
We started walking again to get closer so we could hear more. It sounded almost like someone was yelling. It wasn't a sharp cry from fear, it was more like a chant of yelling people.
As we reached the scene we found ourselves at a big square. A red car with no roof was driving trough a big crowd of people. In the car was except from the driver a man with a brown suit and a fur around his neck, along with another man in black suit, a high hat and a leopard fur coat over his shoulders.
A second and third car followed after, and in all the cars were men in suits and fur.
The crowd of cheering people around were following the cars with banners and signs with things like city jungle and order - disorder written on them.
Many of them seemed happy, not all of them. Some people were protesting.
The men didn't care though. They made their way through the crowd and up on a stage or podium in the middle of the square. A group of security guards stood behind the men, ready to act if anything were to happen.
The man with the high hat took a strep forwards and was about to start speaking in the microphone when shoutings from behind us were heard. I spun around and saw a crowd of people, also them with signs and cardboards with written messages on, coming our way. Those were definitely protesting, judging by the texts on their signs and the fact that they yelled for the president to die.
"Are they protesting?" I asked while examining the scene.
"No they're praising the president" Felix said ironically and looked at me with disbelief. He opened his mouth to speak again and I already knew what he was about to say; 'you're so stupid' or something similar to that. I stopped him before he could say anything though.
"Don't say it" I ordered him with a glare as I looked back up at him. "I did understand they were protesting, I didn't actually mean it as a question because I was uncertain" I defended myself.
"I didn't say anything" he defended himself as if I were the one attacking him.
"We both know you were about to" I muttered back.
"You can't be so sure of that" he said.
"Really? Because you were about to say something and since you understood what I didn't want you to say that seems like the most logic thing you were about to say" I snapped.
"I don't know what you don't want me to say?" He lied and pretended to be innocent by looking at me with big eyes and a slight pout with his mouth.
"Then what were you about to say? Because it really seems like all you have to say to me all the time is about how stupid I am or how slow I am, or just anything like that" I continued. I wasn't in a good mood and I was getting fed up by Felix.
"You're not even dating yet and you're already fighting like you've been married for 20 years" Jeongin said and looked between the both of us with a raised eyebrow.
"Shut up Jeongin" we both said in unison.
"Okay sorry" he said and rolled his eyes at us.
"You two might not be best friends at the moment, but we're on a mission and I would like to live, so can you please just shut up so we can get an idea of what is going on in this city so we can clear the level before we die of old age?" Seungmin said and looked done with us all.
Me and Felix gave each other one last glare each before inspecting the protest in front of us.
As the protesters closed in on the stage, the guards surrounded the man in the big hat to protect him. So he should be the president everyone wanted to kill. Fair enough, he looked evil. Also if this was connected to the first level, it should be under this person's command the regime had taken over all districts and were brainwashing people.
It gave me hunger game vibes to be honest. So this should be the capital, this is we're all the fun stuff happened.
Suddenly a loud bang was heard followed by screaming.
Correction, I meant all the gun stuff.