The man who claimed to be the chaperone looked down at the girl slumped unconscious against the wall of the alley, "You'll need to finish cleaning up this mess before we go."

  "Go where? I'd like some answers, if you wouldn't mind."

  "And I will be more than happy to give them to you, as many as you want. But we're exposed here. So before some other potential witness comes bumbling along it would be quite wonderful if you disposed of her."

  "I have questions for her too."

  "I assure you I can answer any question she can."

  "Why should I believe you?"

  The man groaned, "This is too much damn work… Listen, neither you or I are readily equipped to move her, and I'm certainly not going to stand around all day in an alley full of blood and dead people. So either you can either get rid of that witness or you can kiss whatever deal you made goodbye."

  Devon had to admit the man had a point. They were exposed as they were, and the longer they spent arguing the more likely it seemed like somebody else could come along and find them. He also had no real idea of how to move the girl without drawing a ton of attention to themselves.

  Besides, he's right. She's a witness who knows our names and faces. She's a vulnerability we can't leave alive, even after we question her.

  Devon had purposefully left The Mask deactivated for the transfer process specifically in case his name was what the one who invited him would be looking for. That bid had clearly paid off, but this girl could no longer be allowed to live because of it.

  Well, it's as Trey said. They came after us, so no matter what this isn't on us.

  "Trey, you come do it. The experience would be wasted on me."

  "...Alright, sure. You come finish cleaning these three up."

  While Trey pulled a knife out of his tile and dealt with the girl, Devon dumped whatever was left in the trio's tiles into his own inventory and finally threw the bodies into his inventory. Once the tiles were completely cleared out he was prompted with the option to destroy them, which he accepted.

  As the three tiles dissipated into nothingness he looked over the ground. They didn't really have anything to take care of the remaining blood.

  "Will this be a problem?" Devon asked the man keeping watch at the mouth of the alley as he motioned to the ground.

  "No," The man said simply.

  "Really?"

  "Not right now it won't. But your clothes will. You got a spare?"

  Devon wanted to ask what that meant, but he knew the man would just push his question off til later. Besides, the man had a point about his clothes. He'd pushed the bisected body of one of the thugs aside, and it had left him covered in blood.

  "Here, I got you," Trey said as he took a spare set of clothes out.

  Once they were all ready they moved out of the alley and into the street. Devon and Trey's previous fascination with the city was gone, ripped away by brutal necessity. The man led them through winding streets for about half an hour until they reached their destination.

  It was a somewhat rundown looking bar near the edge of town. The man pushed through the door and the 'closed' sign that hung on it. Devon and Trey followed him inside.

  Once they were in the man locked the door behind them and took a deep breath, "Okay, hardest part should be past. Listen, officially this place rents out rooms. If anyone asks, you're staying here because you want to get a better feel for the local culture. That thing I gave you should keep the seekers off your back, but it'd be better to err on the side of caution and avoid the free lodging. That place will be like a hunting ground over the next few days."

  "I think it's about time we got an introduction and an explanation of the basics," Devon said.

  "Sure thing. I'm Kalion, and I'm something of a do-it-all for my boss, the one who called you. I should mention that I don't know the exact details of that encounter and I'm not allowed to tell you who it is I work for. We'll have a little meeting in about an hour where you'll be able to talk to them yourself. I'm sure you have more questions, so just ask away."

  "The group in the alley."

  "They're what we call seekers. As the name suggests, they seek out people who've been cursed and kill them to gain marks of affection. By the looks of it, that group in the alley was about as amateur as you can get, a side effect of humanity's unique disposition for showing up cursed."

  "I think I've run into people like them before, but the ones I fought were in a memory dungeon and called curse hunters."

  Kalion gave a hollow laugh, "Similar, but very different. Here, toss me that piece of amber you took off the gal."

  Devon did as asked and Kalion looked it over, "Oh yeah, very crude. Definitely amateurs. Here, I think this'll take a while, so I'm going to pour myself a drink. You two want to try anything? I got an updated list of nontoxics for humans." He put the chunk of amber down on the bar as he started looking over the bottles on the shelf.

  "I'm good," Devon said as Trey said, "Yeah sure, I'll try something."

  Devon shot his friend a questioning look while Trey glanced back with a meaningful gaze. His friend understood that Devon didn't trust Kalion or the person he said he worked for, so Trey was creating opportunities to gauge them. If Trey ended up poisoned… Devon preferred not to follow that train of thought. It wasn't a risk Devon would have supported, but Trey had evidently already prepared himself to take it.

  I guess we'll never get anywhere if we can't find a reason to trust these people. I still find the situation from before oddly timed, but it's entirely possible it was just a coincidence.

  Devon pulled out a water flask from his inventory as they both sat down at the counter. Kalion poured a drink for himself and for Trey, then took a seat on the opposite side of the bar.

  "Let's start with seekers," Kalion said. "Seekers use pieces of the Amber Dragon's essence like this one to find cursed beings like yourself. They then kill or capture people like you so as to gain marks of karmic affection."

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  I remember Eve said something along those lines too.

  "Sorry to cut in," Trey said, "The Amber Dragon? I was a little curious whether that's supposed to be an emblematic figurehead or whether the emperor is actually an amber-colored dragon."

  "Your second guess was closer, but still didn't quite hit home. The Amber Dragon is the patron god and unifying force of the empire. And this little stone is a fragment of its essence, a shard of its divinity made manifest."

  "Woah there, a god? Like a real, actual god? A physical, unmistakably divine being?"

  Devon couldn't help but laugh softly at Trey's reaction. He'd known about the potential for their existence since one of the first days of the tutorial thanks to messing around with his profession, so it wasn't much of a surprise to him. But like pretty much everything else about his profession, he hadn't told anybody.

  "What, you didn't have gods where you come from?"

  "I mean, we did. Kind of. We, uh-"

  Devon cut in to save Trey, "The existence of the divine was a subject of great debate where we come from. Bear in mind our gods didn't make a regular habit of descending to our earthly plane and were therefore subject to great scrutiny in the modern era. Frankly, I can hardly imagine the crisis of faith any devout Muslims or Christians are gonna go through when they learn about the gods here. But I'd like to get back on track. What does the Amber Dragon have to do with the cursed?"

  Trey took a swig, still trying to wrap his head around the fact that the concept of divinity was much more palpable here.

  "One of the core blessings the Amber Dragon bestows upon its faithful is the ability to use its essence to locate the cursed. According to the church, the cursed present a very clear danger to the empire because after a certain amount of time the curse drives them insane, causing them to lash out at anyone around them."

  Trey shot a worried glance toward him but Devon ignored it and asked, "What's the time frame on that?"

  "One or two imperial years I believe."

  Devon did the quick math and realized that an imperial year was roughly equivalent to two and a half earth years. He scoffed, "What a load of bullshit."

  "I never said I believed them, but I'd still like to ask what makes you so sure."

  "The world our tutorial took place on once held a kingdom led by somebody called the cursed king. I witnessed firsthand through that memory dungeon the civilization he had created around him and saw with my own eyes his final words. They were not the works of a man who was losing his mind."

  "Then why spread such a blatant lie?" Trey asked.

  "Simple, you spread fear to more easily control the people. That seems to hold as true for this world as it did ours."

  "I'll admit, it's a very plausible theory," Kalion said, "Marks of affection are highly sought after. It's easy to see why the higher ups would want to villainize the cursed when they could benefit."

  "I'm guessing seekers are financially inclined to capture instead of kill so they can sell their captives to the highest bidder," Devon said.

  "Bingo."

  "This is fucked up. I'm gonna go take a piss," Trey said as he got up and left toward the sign that said restroom.

  "Shifting away from the theological, I'd like to ask why you said the pools of blood we left behind wouldn't be a problem."

  "Honestly, you could have left the bodies too. But I know what you mean, usually murder in the streets is a rather large deal. This three day period after you lot arrived is something of an exception."

  "A three day period after initiates arrive? Why?"

  "Oh, not for normal initiates, no. You humans are something else, let me tell you. I mean from what I hear, you guys show up cursed in rates way higher than normal. Then you factor in the troublemakers that showed up in the first wave and you've got the perfect recipe for abnormal procedures."

  The logic clicked in Devon's head, "So the empire wants to take advantage of the fact that we have a lot more cursed among us than normal. That must be why the streets seemed oddly empty, the people were warned in advance that things would be more dangerous than usual with our arrival. People have bunkered down while the seekers hunt down the cursed that have come in through the initiation's second wave."

  "Pretty much. Let me tell you, it's crazy how long the system took to initiate your world with how advanced your tech is."

  That's right, there were probably more armed initiates than would be expected, even given America's unique stance on gun ownership. I remember rumors that military and paramilitary groups had a higher chance of being taken. But due to unconfirmed reports I never took them to be anything but rumors.

  "It all comes back to our guns, huh? I don't suppose you guys've got any of those."

  "We do on higher tier worlds."

  "Wait, really?"

  "Oh yeah. Bet you wondered if the entire empire looked like this town, huh? Most E grade worlds are pretty similar, but once you start going up the grades the tech just gets more and more advanced."

  "That seems… odd."

  "Why?"

  "Well if you're able to use a gun at D grade then why would you settle for anything else? I mean, what's the point?"

  Kalion smiled, "You're still too set in the thinking of an uninitiated. The greatest advantage the system gives is the ability to grow. As a general rule tech can't grow with you. There are a bunch of ranged classes that lean into using guns, sure. But they're very limited in what they can do."

  "Yeah, but how am I supposed to fight against a bullet?" Devon asked, exasperated.

  Kalion raised an eyebrow, "You just cut three people in half not an hour ago. Do you really think guns are still as much of a threat?"

  That brought Devon up short. The more he thought about it the more he realized he didn't know the answer.

  If nothing else, I've seen ranged power that's far beyond what my old glock could put out. When Eve and I fought the apes it seemed like she could fire arrows with the force of a howitzer.

  Trey came out of the bathroom at that point and rejoined them, "Damn, dude. What's in this drink?"

  "Hm? Oh, that's one of my favorites. I'll show you the plant it's made from later if you're interested."

  "Sure, sure."

  Devon tried to steer the conversation back towards more important matters, "So roughly what's the tech level of each grade, and why don't lower grade worlds take advantage of more advanced infrastructure? I can't imagine it gives marks to people who'd try to use concrete here."

  "It does, actually. Well, I'm not sure about concrete in particular, but there are planetary restrictions on technological advancements. I think the highest an E grade world could go is maybe a steam engine to run some lights or something, but at that point it's so much effort for something people could accomplish with magic anyway there isn't much point. D grade worlds are generally the most populated and are probably pretty close to what you guys are used to."

  "Wait, really?" Trey asked, clearly unhappy, "You mean if we keep ascending we're just gonna go back to living in the same old? God dammit, I was looking forward to something more high fantasy."

  Devon chuckled softly, it seemed he'd been right when he'd pinned Trey's appreciation for the town's ascetic. Even so, "You alright there? You seem like you've had a bit much."

  "Nah, I haven't even finished the glass. There's no way I-" And he bent over and threw up on the floor.

  Devon's suspicions flared red hot and the tip of the golden spear was pressed up against Kalion's neck faster than Trey could finish throwing up. "What did you give him?" Devon all but screamed at the bartender.

  "It's on the nontoxic list, I swear! I didn't do anything, I swear on the dragon's claw!" The man put his hands up in a show of surrender, and Devon could clearly see the panic in his eyes.

  "Trey! Trey, are you alright?" Devon asked as he moved over to his friend, keeping the point of the spear toward the bartender. Kalion didn't try to move, he just watched with fearful eyes.

  "Dude, what is in that drink?" Trey asked as he stood back to full height and turned back to them. His face came a bit close to Devon's and Devon got a whiff of a very unpleasant but familiar scent, one most college students knew. Even students like him that avoided parties sometimes got roped into them by their soccer captain friends.

  "...What proof was the drink you gave him?" Devon asked Kalion, his anger fading away.

  "It's usually an 80%, but I mixed it with a dash of my favorite fruit juice. Brought it down to about 70% maybe? Why? I could have sworn alcohol was on the nontoxic list. I know a nearby doctor if I messed up."

  Devon couldn't help but burst out laughing when he looked at the almost empty glass of a 70% drink.