The sanctuary representatives were at the right end so they were the last to do an introduction. Mira said to Jola as the other settlement representatives began to talk to each other “Are we really going to just call ourselves ‘the sanctuary’? I think we need a less ambiguous name”

Jola said “What do you suggest?” Funmi proposed “Let’s call ourselves Drip City. We have so much drip compared to these cavemen” Funmi had been ecstatic when she saw the fashion state of the other representatives.

Many head shook in rejection to Funmi’s idea. Anita said “Blessed City; since we are so blessed”. Many heads shook again; they didn’t want to be named after the works of their helpers.

Other names were proposed and through a weird turn of events, High Sanctuary caught on as the other names were extremely boring, lacking any depth and nostalgia. Most settlements had between 3 – 40 Rank 6s, 40 – 300 Rank 5s, 100 – 20,000 Rank 4s and 3000 – 800,000 Rank 3s. Most settlements were in this range and they usually had 90% of their population at Rank 1 and 2.

The exceptions were the settlements like: Venuri Kingdom which had about 99% of its population at Rank 0, 1 and 2 while approximately 1% were Rank 4, 5 and 6 having 7 Rank 6s and 187 Rank 5s and 30,418 Rank 4s. The Leader of Venuri Kingdom was the one who had a mutilated man as his pet.

The Martial Nomads had 8 Rank 6s, 3,457 Rank 5s and 3,697 Rank 4s with no other members of other Ranks.

The sanctuary’s, now High Sanctuary’s, turn was next and Jola came out and said “My name is Jola and I am the head administrator of the High Sanctuary. Our settlement has about 3 million Rank 3s, 200 thousand Rank 4s, 500 Rank 5s and exactly 23 Rank 6s.

As if the sanctuary didn’t stand out enough it caught the other settlements’ attention again. Jola was told by Anita not to mention the number of Rank 1 and 2s to keep the other sanctuaries guessing just how many people they had even though they only had 1.5 million Rank 2s and a few extremely rare, Rank 1s. This gave the illusion that the High Sanctuary had a very high population.

The High Sanctuary’s population of about 5 million was second highest population among the settlements. The average population of the settlements combined was 200 thousand; the High Sanctuary had an abnormally high population that was only topped by the Venuri Kingdom.

After their introduction many people were hoping that the numbers were a lie but that didn’t happen as Lara didn’t say it was. After Jola went back to his seat and Lara went to the center and said “That will be all for today. Tomorrow we will have a party, on the 3rd day we will have a competition, on the 4th day we will have another meeting and on the last two days we will have leisure time, you can leave any time you want at that point” and she left the room through the door she came in from while the representatives of each settlement were escorted to their temporary residence outside of the humongous building.

The High Sanctuary representatives were escorted to a mansion that had robot attendants and they were told that they could not leave the mansions compound or they would attract the enmity of Lara.

When the sanctuary representatives were left alone by the escorts, which were surprisingly superior High Humans they had much to say. Deji began with “Don’t ask me, I don’t know what the Meta Human race is, from fiction I can only assume that they are humans with special abilities”.

Mira said “They can’t be her children right? They would have grown up too fast… or maybe that’s how Meta Humans grow?” Other members began speculating but Anita interrupted with a “We have better things to discuss” and the group kept quiet.

Anita said “Bella, did you feel anything abnormal?” Bella and Gbenga had been silent throughout the meeting and the escort to their residence. Bella head was down, she looked at Anita and tears began to uncontrollably fall from her face.

Anita seeing these tears immediately understood why and said “We can’t do anything about them”. Bella cried even more and said “I know that but it just hurts to feel it. Not just only the dehumanized man, there were other attendants that were in so much pain, rage and sorrow”.

Gbenga put an arm on her shoulder to comfort her. Bella said “They all felt amazed when they saw our armor and heard our numbers. Even Lara was amazed. I felt suspicion and jealousy from most the representatives I could monitor.

Few leaders showed positive reactions to us. Lara was surprisingly one of them and the High Nomad leader, Semilore had a positive reaction to us. The rest were borderline negative to extremely prejudiced”

Bella continued “The atmosphere of this city seems quite bright while we were flying I could even sense an amount of pride and smugness from the people in the city”. Jola said “It makes sense since they have such a powerful leader”.

Anita said “I’m sorry for putting you through this” to Bella who nodded weakly. Anita continued “We have people who we can approach then. At the party we will talk with the High Nomads and after that we will hear what the other leaders have to say but won’t come to an agreement with them and just postpone our decision. The reason for this is because the people with positive reactions to our technology and high Rank ratio probably have something that they feel is worth trading for our technology. While those who showed negative reactions probably hoped that we would be in need of man power or other things that we already have. In the absence of nothing else that should be all”

The representatives retired to their rooms.

The experience of coming to Terrania was really surprising for Mira. Seeing Lara had made her understand that Jade was really not the best, she thought ‘I know Jade would have improved since it’s been about a year since I met him but I’m not so sure he can wipe the floor with Lara considering he wasn’t confident about defeating every Rank 7 before… Who knows though, maybe he can. But this just resounds to me that my world view was quite limited. I wonder how powerful the people in other countries will be. Will there be entire races that have all their members at Rank 7 and above? That would be quite interesting to see’

She sighed and thought ‘When I get to Rank 7 I will have get a job so I will have a chance of getting an evolution ticket from the job quest. Many people will probably wonder how to get the second evolution ticket without doing an impossible quest. I wonder what job Lara has, I wonder if I can become an Origin Meta Human too’.