On the wall stood a dozen figures draped in cloaks, covering their whole body, including their heads. For some reason, probably magic, under their hoods was only darkness.

Only two of them had their hoods down, a serious middle aged man with a black hair and a somehow even darker goatee and a curvy lady with striking red hair. With her beautiful figure and her gorgeous face, she was almost like a goddess for the people of Earth

The earthlings unfortunately didn’t appreciate their wonderful entrance, because they started yelling.

“Where are we, what happened?!”

“What do you want?!”

“Can we at least get an explanation?”

Unfortunately, they never got one. The hooded group didn’t even listen to them before a stone dome started rising from around before encasing everyone. The plan was to lock them up before the hour passed after which they could do whatever they wanted.

Of course, that displeased the newcomers but it wasn’t like they could do anything about it. They tried shouting, banging on the stone dome, and pleading, but nothing worked. The captors didn’t care anyway, while the stone dome was at least 5 meters thick, so the only thing they could do was wait and pray that the hooded figures didn't have bad intentions.

I originally thought making a stone dome that big was awesome but I later found out that it wasn’t anything too special if you knew your way around magic. Though it took quite a bit of Mana to make one that encased a few thousand people. But that could be supplemented with a few artifacts or potions.

While others were yelling I was enjoying the shade. You could say I had given up a life ago. Hah

I was actually reminiscing about the lady in red, namely the Red Bitch, as we used to call her. The name was deserved, mind you, since not even her allies liked her. She was known for charming anyone she saw, then using her authority to punish them for ‘lusting over her’. Bitch.

I always minded my business so it never happened to me but I’d seen a few bad cases. And if she was bad then let’s not talk about the guy who was always next to her. When you see her you always see him, and if he’s not there, trust me, he’s around. I wouldn’t be surprised if he followed her to the bathroom.

Anyway, back to the present, after another hour passed the unwanted message appeared

[System configurations complete. All default functions enabled.]

[ [Saving Grace] has ended. Beware of dangers, newcomers.]

[Good luck!]

And with it, the stone dome came down. Good thing it just turned into dust, otherwise we would’ve had a very bad time.

Some idiots also took the message as the signal to start talking.

“Look, it’s gone, can you let us go now?”

“Can you explain what’s happening now?

Clamor rose among the earthlings again.

“Silence!” a strong manly voice was heard, causing the group to shut their mouth and look up.

Seeing the newcomers calming down, the man continued talking.

“Lady Alinna has given you the honor of coming for you all today! You should be glad!” His voice was like thunder, echoing across the group.

‘Oh yeah her name was Alinna,’ I thought. Good to know.

The people of Earth obviously weren’t pleased.

“Why do I care about some Alinna?! Tell me where the fuck I am and what is going on!”

“Yeah, stop talking shit and give us an explanation already!”

Hearing this, the man was infuriated. Before the idiots could say anything else, he waved his hand.

Woosh!

With a flash, blood started flowing. The people couldn’t even see anything as a thud was heard. The heads of the two people were on the ground, full of blood.

Silence. Complete silence.

They were terrified. How could they kill people that easily? Without them even seeing it, even?

The earthlings finally understood that the new world wasn’t that friendly.

“Anyone else?” the man spoke with a grin. One that froze the blood in their veins.

They’ll all remember that expression for the rest of their lives.

"Now that we got that out of the way, let's begin, shall we?" Alinna said with a smile.

'God I hate that bitch,' were my exact thoughts.

Right as the words left her mouth, a white mist started enveloping the newcomers. They all started panicking, running around or pleading for help, not wanting to die. Not long after, thuds were heard all over.

People started panicking even more, but unfortunately they also started falling.

"Don't worry, you'll just fall asleep. We need you alive, after all." Alinna smiled.

Hearing this, the earthlings heaved a sigh of relief.

'Well then guess I'll sleep a little. See you later.' I thought.

A few seconds later, I also fell asleep. Though things took a weird turn. I woke up after about a minute, only to see some hooded figures carrying the knocked out earthlings, along with a message from the system.

[Trait activated]

I was supposed to sleep for at least an hour, when the effect of the poison would end. Why did I wake up? And what was with the message? Was it so easy to wake up from poison?

Since I wasn’t coming up with any answers I decided to check my Status. Yes, the one from all the stories. Saying “Status” in my head, a screen appeared.

[Status]

[Name]: Lukas Clayton

[Race]: Human

[Bloodline]: None

[Trait]: Perfect Adaptability

[Title(s)]: Returner

[Skills]: None

'Crap'

…

I finally recovered from my daze after a while. Before looking, I thought I would see the same thing I remembered. I looked again just to make sure.

‘A Trait?’ Had I finally gotten what I always wanted? The famed Trait, the one that made you stand out from everyone? It seemed so. And I was livid.

Why the fuck now? After all the shit i went through, after a whole fucking life? You give it to me now? When I first came to this new world, even though I had no special ability and the start was shitty I at least had hope. Even after I saw what awaited me I still had hope! I only lost it after a few decades. And even then, I thought that maybe, just maybe. Then I died, and now you give it to me!?

I wanted to scream at the sky and bring out my beautiful vocabulary again but I didn’t think my captors were so nice to let my waking slide.

I eventually calmed down and decided to think about the situation. Cool, I had a Trait, why be mad about it? Even if it was after fuc- ok calm, calm. I then checked out what my Title and Trait were all about. It was pretty easy, just by focusing on what I wanted to see the information was shown to me.

[Returner: 10% discount on all Universal Shop items]

Ten percent did not seem that high, but when compared to the Universal Shop prices, it was amazing. Plus, the Universal Shop was the system's own shop and all of the items sold on there were nothing short of legendary.

And I was shocked at having such a good title. Right now it was pretty crap, gotta say, since I was dirt poor, but when I got out I was sure as hell going to splurge on the most random things just for the sake of it. Probably.

Ok, now that it was established that my Title was amazing, it was time for the Trait.

[Perfect Adaptability: the most needed ability for any being is to adapt. Your body and mind will automatically adapt to any environment or situation as fast as possible.]

I honestly wasn’t that shocked. The name said everything, and combining it with the messages I got it was pretty obvious. Though I was pretty surprised by the ‘mind’ part. Since I could gain immunity to poison I could probably do the same with any mental ailment.

Sleeping White Poison was the white mist they used on the group. As its name says, it came from the Sleeping White, a small flower growing in damp dark places, usually on trees. A whiff of its fragrance could knock a normal person for at least an hour. For any mage it wouldn't do anything so it was the best one to be used for some normal people from some shitty world.

I knew this mostly since scientists like to brag a lot and experimenting was pretty boring in silence. Even besides this one, I knew a lot more types of poisons and toxins.

Another surprising thing that happened was the reward I got for being the first among the newcomers to open my Status. I already knew there were rewards for such things but I honestly forgot. Anyways, good stuff was always welcome.

And so, I continued using my best acting skills to seem as still as possible. And it worked! They put us on top of each other, forming a human mound - which was not nice, I’ll have you know.

After that, the man who was next to Alinna came next to the mound of people and extended his hand. Miraculously, wind started gathering around it, encompassing the whole pile of people, going around, above, and even under it. Soon, it started shaking and riding up.

Fascinating!

Worst part? I was in the middle, squished against some not so good-smelling individuals. But I prevailed, for I was a brave boy.

After going through the canyon for quite a while, the horizon opened up to a wide plateau, still surrounded by walls, but also pretty spacious. But that wasn't the highlight of the scenery.

Right in the middle of the plateau stood a wooden ship. Like a boat. Yes, the one that was supposed to go on water. It was supported by thick wooden pylons on each side, each thicker than a few men. And the ship itself was a beauty.

Beautiful gold lines stretched across its body, looping around and going along the mast and the pylons. To a layman it may seem like long, squiggly lines, but to anyone who knew what they were, it was gorgeous.

The ship being insanely huge, it made quite a sight, wooden and gold.

When we got close to it, the side of the ship opened up to reveal more masked figures waiting for them. One of them stepped forward, took down his hood and politely said.

"Welcome back, Lady Alinna, Sir Drag"

‘Oh yeah, there’s that.’ The guy who always accompanied the Red Bitch apparently had a name. Cool.

Drag waved his hand and brought the rest of the people in, along with the pile of captives in the back. Seeing this, the man who greeted them exclaimed.

"We got a huge catch this time, didn't we?"

"Yes. I suppose you know what to do with them." he got a cold response. The only thing Drag cared about was protecting Alinna and nothing more. His tone only changed when it had anything to do with her, like what happened before with the earthlings.

They brought the pile in and put it on the ground, after which they took each captive and tied them before they put them in rows on the deck. The ship was so huge that the deck could accommodate a thousand people easily.

Finally being able to breathe, I sighed in relief - In my head, of course, can’t let the bad guys find out.

Following his words, a soft tremor was heard, along with a soft breeze coming from the back.. With the sails all puffed, the huge ship started rising and rising, until the canyon we were in could barely be seen.

'I always wanted one of these. Though I never got one before, I'll get one this life even if I have to steal it,' I thought.

Who wouldn't want a huge ship that can fly, go on water (it was a boat after all, just bigger) and also had huge cannons. Though they didn't use them now and not all ships had them, this one definitely did, considering how luxurious it was. I’d done my research in my previous life and he even saw some videos of the huge cannons blasting birds as big as planes out of the sky.

After a while, since an hour had already passed, people started waking up. At first they were confused but after they probably realized the situation they were in and started panicking. One of them got to the railing and looked down only to discover they were in the sky instead of the water.

"Holy shit! Come look at this!"

"What are you yelling about, don't you see we're all tied up?! What do you want!?"

"Yeah, I see that, but come here and look!"

Deciding to at least listen to this guy, some also got up and went to the edge, only to be dumbstruck.

"Holy shit you were right! This is awesome!"

"Haha, we're flying!"

They were all astonished! Of course, who wouldn't be, seeing something like this. They also realized that in some way they also weren't falling off, the only thing they could feel was a soft breeze, not the wind smacking them in the face as one would expect.

Either way, it was amazing. Though that happiness did not last long. They soon came to find out that there were people surrounding them and looking at them with a look of amusement.

"Look at you poor humans being amazed by something so simple. It's always amusing to watch them struggle, isn't it?" One of the men spoke.

At his words, they all started laughing, not caring about the earthlings full of anger. Two of them came forward and forced the ones who got up back down. They tried to resist, but alas, who could resist a Mage?

‘And… it starts. Man, I hate these guys. Though I can’t blame them.’ I started reminiscing about my time being bullied because my origins sucked.

"You are from some random planet in some random part of the universe. You don't have rights, identities, nothing. Nobody is going to care about you even if you get killed right now. We can do whatever we want with you and nobody would care, so be good and you'll be treated accordingly. Okay?” he smiled.

And his words were right. They basically didn't exist until they went to a city and registered themselves, thus having an identity. So of course, nobody cared what happened to these poor people.

That was also why I quickly went online and made an account on every site I could think of before they could put restrictions on us. They didn’t bother yet, but that was their problem.

Making an account didn’t actually help with anything for now, but it didn’t hurt to have them. I also got a reward for it, nice.

[You are the first in your batch of newcomers to register an account on any platform. Congratulations!]

[You have received Free Delivery (10 uses)]

'Pretty good'

It wasn't anything too good but it wasn't bad. The system had two types of markets. The Universal one that had the items coming directly from the system. When buying an item from this one, it automatically teleports it to you without any delivery fee.

The second type was the normal market, called The Marketplace. Basically you could shop online for anything and there were multiple ways to pick it up. One was to go to the actual shop and buy it, of course, while the other was to go to any major city and go to a Pickup Station. Basically any city had one installed by its authorities so people could pick items up easily. For both of these you only had to pay for the product.

The third and last way was to pay a fee and have the item teleported to you anywhere. The thing was that you had to pay a huge amount. That was why a 10 time free delivery was amazing.

But none of that mattered right now anyway.

The journey continued the same way, captors looking intimidating, and captives looking intimidated. No word was heard from the earthlings after they found out the situation they were in.

After many hours of boredom and worry, (for the captives at least, the rest were probably having the time of their lives ) we finally arrived at our destination. We passed a few beautiful sceneries, blasted a few flying beasts out of the sky, before seeing the place we would be staying at for a while.

The earthlings would've loved to see all that but they didn't even dare to move, they just heard some sounds when the cannons were activated.

The place we arrived at was just a small town, surrounded by a rather underwhelming stone wall. Still, it shouldn't be underestimated. And when I say small it really was small, compared to the size of most things in this world. Most cities had the population of Earth and its size, with the whole planet being 1000 times the size of my home planet (or more, I did the math myself but I also sucked in school so I wouldn’t count on it).

Anyway, they shoved us all the way to the stone gate, where a bunch of guards glared at us menacingly. Going in, the most surprising sight was revealed.

A bustling town. Stalls, people going in all directions, even animals running around. One thing that was missing were children. Which was self-explanatory, really.

One wouldn’t really expect this from a criminal organization, but there it was. Of course, it wasn’t all so sparkly. Every inhabitant knew what was going on with the prisoners and they had no problem with it. They even were a part of it. Well, kind of.

I found out much later that these people were either retired from the organization, or were related to the ones working here. And, in exchange for being given a place to live, they would defend it in case of an attack.

Of course, bad guys didn’t get along with other bad guys, so when a rival group attacked in about a year and a half from now, chaos would unveil. And that’s when I planned to sneak out. At least that was what I planned.

Anyway, the citizens didn’t spare a glance at the newcomers, letting them get herded further into the camp. After about 10 minutes, we got to a tower. The kind usually seen attached to castles or defensive walls, but this one just stood in the middle of a plaza.

Anyway, we went through the tower’s doors, down a really long set of stairs. Finally, when I thought I was about to die from boredom, we entered a corridor, where an old man was waiting.

‘We meet again, best friend.’