“Wait! I-”

The words died on my tongue as the interior of the bar winked away, replaced by a snug room with patterned wood-panel walls. An arcane diagram was etched into the marble floor, humming with clear blue mana.

The room’s only occupants were me and Suds, and he took the opportunity to raise a brow and frown at me. “Eh? I interrupt something? Well, no matter, you’ll be back soon enough.” He waved the concern away, despite the fact that it wasn’t his own. “Never mind that, though. Catch!”

In truth, I would have liked a moment to process everything. And then probably to curse the guy out for ruining my apology. Did he even know how long it had taken to psych myself up for that? It was even worse than getting a mouth full of soap!

Alas, it wasn’t meant to be. My attention was neatly redirected as Suds pulled out a large oblong stone and lobbed it in my direction. Although, lobbed was probably an unfair description — he packed the throw with a fair portion of superhuman strength, forcing my Dexterity into overtime as I tried to grab it out of the air. Thankfully, I succeeded. I was about to identify it with God’s Eye, but Suds beat me to the punch.

“Build stone. Open up your character sheet, focus on reading through it, and channel some mana into the stone. Should give me all your full sheet. And don’t try holding anything back.”

I balked at the unreasonable command. “Look, I’m not going to pretend I’ve learned all the social norms yet, but that’s, like, incredibly personal isn’t it? Plus, really dumb too? I feel like a person’s build is supposed to be private for a reason.” Not that he needed the advantage, but knowing all of someone’s skills would make it much easier to fight them.

“Yup!” He grinned wildly at me. “Awful idea! Never, ever, ever, under any circumstances give someone your full build. Ah! Except if it’s me. In that case, you should do it.”

I fixed him with a look that let him know just how I felt about that, but all he did was chuckle.

“Look, I get it. I do. But think about it, kid. I’m going to need to know who to contact to get you training. Also need to know what lie we’re going to feed everyone about who you are and what your class is. Plus, if you’re going to trust anyone, it might as well be the guy who already knows your big secret and has decided not to kill you!”

All compelling points, admittedly, but it still rubbed me the wrong way.

All of a sudden, the atmosphere in the room shifted, and I felt a pressure weighing down on me despite Suds not having moved a muscle. He spoke casually, as if unaware of whatever weight had descended on the room, but there was little doubt in my mind of its origin.

“On a more serious note, I want to be clear about this. I like to strike while the iron’s hot. I don’t waffle on the choices I make. But I don’t make them flippantly either. You’re here because it makes sense: We can both help each other out a lot. And I’ll admit, while I don’t like to let a soft heart into things, I’d rather not be complicit in having one of the boy’s friends die because I decided not to act. BUT…

“You’re an unknown. The boy vouches for you, sure, but the boy can be an idiot, and I don’t think you appreciate how much I’m sticking my neck out here. If I take you around and you go off on a killing spree, at the end of the day, that’s going to be on my neck. So yes, kid, I need it all. Need to know you’re not some budding mind-control mage or that all your skills are geared towards ritual sacrifice.” The pressure in the room vanished all at once. “And after that, I’m sure we’ll be great pals!” He laughed merrily while I sweated.

I mean… not ALL of my skills are about mind-control or ritual sacrifice… I considered trying to hide some of my less savory skills from the man, but decided against it. Frankly, he had a point. Were I in his position, I doubted I’d ever show so much trust to someone I barely knew, and I was already kind of at his mercy.

How long is it going to take before I stop meeting people that are way stronger than I am? Would be nice to be on the other side of things for once. I gave an exasperated chuckle. Probably… not soon. Unless I was mistaken, Suds was well over 100. Compared to my four months on this world, he’d had access to the system for a good… 300 times longer than I had? Minimum?

Well, in for a penny, in for a pound.

“Okay, ignoring the weird oppressive aura thing that just happened, a quick question. If I had some, um, maybe-not-so-nice skills, but they were at level one, would I be in trouble?”

Suds rolled his eyes. “Has to be pretty evil for me to care about it at level one. Just preemptively, mind magic is allowed until level ten. Then it needs to be registered with the city, and it’s a crime to level it further without state sponsorship. Most things are pretty similar, though you wouldn’t want to go around advertising it.”

Damn, good guess.

I shrugged, my last reservation removed. “Might as well get it over with then.” I followed his instructions, channeling mana into the stone while reading through my character sheet. A moment later, I could see Suds’ eyes unfocus as he presumably read through it on his own screen.

“Good! We can work with this! Don’t go telling people about the demonic summoning skill though, yeah? Now-” He took out a much smaller stone from his bag. “Have you left anything out?”

I raised a brow, not quite understanding the purpose of his question. “No?”

The small stone flashed green.

“Good! The truthstone says you’re not bullshitting me. Now bear with me for a while, all right? Standard boring questions.”

I blanched at the sight of the stone, realizing how bad things could have been for me had I tried to pull one over on him. Not that I even really knew how to, and with my pitiful level in Deception, I doubted he’d even need to stone to figure me out.

Well, best get it over with.

“Ask away.”

The interview was thorough, if a bit boring. He made sure I was actually a Protagonist. Asked how long I’d been on the planet. Asked if I had any intention of screwing him over, or any conflicting ties that might cause him or the city harm. A dozen of other minor questions that made sure I’d be okay working with him and wasn’t secretly evil. The wording was incredibly precise, as if pre-prepared by a team of lawyers — or capital L Lawyers, as it were.

While I didn’t mean to brag, the steady stream of green flashes meant that I passed with flying colors.

He also considered me taking some kind of minor Oath, but didn’t press when I declined. He seemed to agree that it wouldn’t be fair to me, as I had no idea how Oaths worked or what sorts of tricks could be snuck into them. And it wasn’t like I was currently doing anything that high risk for him — getting my assurance that I wasn’t going to do anything too wild or evil was enough for now.

And then, finally, it was over.

Rather than show me to my room or give me some sort of grand tour, Suds walked over to the door and opened it, yelling out. “Markus! I’m home! Gotta job for you!”

As if waiting for just that, a well-dressed man appeared as if out of nowhere, stepping into the room. He looked perhaps two decades older than Suds himself, and had blonde hair that was in the process of going gray. He struck me as some sort of butler, though instead of bowing, he merely nodded. I quickly analyzed him.

Markus: Level 19 Exceptional Majordomo, 400/400hp

Suds jerked a thumb in my direction. “Brought a girl. Name’s Tess. She’s Barb’s bastard child with one of those Yekkish women. Raised over there in the dead zone up until a few months back. Knows nothing, but we’re officially adopting the brat. Get her set up and civilize her a little bit, eh? And don’t let her leave the house or see anyone. Not even the rest of the house staff.”

I blinked. What? I replayed his words over again, finding they only grew more absurd on second listen. What?

Since when was I supposed to be Barb’s bastard? And “Yekkish”? Dead zone? Couldn’t really argue with the whole “knows nothing,” part, but it was still kind of rude.

Worse than that was the house arrest, though, and for a second, I thought I’d made a horrible mistake. I’d given Suds my entire character sheet, told him everything he’d wanted to know, and now he was locking me up.

Did I maybe rush into this too fast? Not give it enough thought?

Nah, couldn’t be. I was well known for fully thinking through all of my decisions.

“Are you really locking me up? What the hell? After all that? I was expecting a tour, not a glorified prison cell.” I’d suddenly gotten teleported to-

Hell, I didn’t even really know where I was, not like it would mean anything to me even if I did. I’d never seen a world map in the first place. Probably pretty far, though. I wanted to at least play tourist a little.

A droplet of water formed in front of my eyes before slamming into my forehead with enough force to form a welt.

“Think!” he commanded. “What happened the first time I saw you?”

I considered cursing him out instead of complying, but trying to see where he was going with this, I did as asked anyway. “You saw me and then-” Then he treated me like a lab rat after seeing my Prestige, and within a few seconds figured out I was a Protagonist.

Oh.

Seeing the realization dawn on me, he sighed. “At least we’ll have no trouble convincing people you take after that idiot boy of mine. Sit tight until I can grab you some obfuscation gear. Of course, that’s unless you want to go out and have a repeat performance with someone less cuddly than me.”

Okay, maybe I deserved that magical flick just a little bit. Then again, it’s not like it had been an issue in Ftheran, but I was starting to get the idea that things here might be a bit different.

“Sorry,” I muttered.

“Bah, I’m used to idiots being idiots. Nothing for it but growing up and having someone to whack you in the head once in a while.” Not giving me time to object to that one, he turned towards Markus. “Get her started on the basics. How the city works. The ten houses.” He gave me a long and deliberate frown. “Etiquette. Maybe some basic primary education, like world geography. Stuff about the system too. Girl’s got an Epic memory skill and over 25 Intelligence, so really just cram it in there, yeah?”

I was at once overjoyed and deeply pained. I did not miss my school years, and had little desire to start cramming. At the same time though, I couldn’t deny that I’d been hoping to learn a lot of that information for a while now.

Well, not the etiquette part, but you win some, you lose some.

Mark simply nodded, seemingly not finding this all that out of the ordinary. Considering how much Suds had just revealed to him about me (despite the odd lies I didn’t understand yet), he must have been pretty trusted.

He nodded once more, before beckoning me with a twist of his head. “This way then. It’s rather late yet. Let’s show you to your room?”

Wow. A completely reasonable thing to say, without calling me an idiot or flicking me in the head. Maybe my standards were getting kind of low, but I liked him! I nodded and he began to lead me off. With a wave, Suds bade us goodbye, off to do who-knows-what.

“While it’s a touch late, perhaps the lady would have the energy for a lesson before retiring?” The corners of his lips curled upwards almost imperceptibly. “If I might make a recommendation, I would say the lady might benefit most from starting with the etiquette lessons.”

Nope, okay. He was an asshole too.

I sighed.

That being said, he probably wasn’t an incorrect asshole. And I did have a little bit of energy left.

“Yeah, yeah. Let’s get this over with then.” I thought back to my time in Drawgin and how my weeks there had blurred together into my own personal sort of training montage. If anything, I imagined I’d grow even more in the next few weeks, though perhaps not in the same sorts of ways.

Something told me, however, that I might not enjoy it quite as much.

“Excellent! Although, I believe the lady may have misspoke. She must have meant to say ‘Yes! Let us get to it with haste so that we may learn as quickly as possible.” His lip quirked upwards a fraction of an inch more.

I groaned, and the butler chuckled at me. “Welcome to Sylum, Lady Tess.”