It was still dawn when we reached the bar. Poppy slammed the door open to a too cramped room with a too low ceiling. The smell of spiced meat and alcohol warred with sweat and blood. Trailblazers occupied the room in a swell of bodies. But there was something about the room that was off.

The plaster of the roof was uneven, sloppily applied. But the floors were perfect stained hardwood. The furniture was undamaged. And the air suffocated with foreign qi. As I used [Identify] on the people around me, more than half of them returned question marks.

A sinking unease settled in my gut. I was surrounded by people who had reached level eighty or above. They looked at our party. Most looked away, disinterested, almost immediately. A few waved to Poppy or Eros.

The tables here were huge, long things. Multiple parties occupied all of them, eating food next to discarded armor that piled on tables.

The healing enchantment applied to the bandages wrapped around my chest and arms itched uncomfortably. The healer had told me not to scratch them. They were the only reason I was still decent in my robes. The holes and burns left behind didn’t even earn me an extra second of consideration in the glances thrown our way.

“Is this whole place enchanted?” I asked, having to half shout to be heard over the din.

“It’s reinforced.” Eros replied with a shrug. “It’s a bar for high levels.”

A bar girl swiveled around to face our approaching group as Poppy shouldered us through bodies. Poppy was taller than me when standing straight up. That was new. She had been tall before, but not that tall. She absolutely loomed over both the bar and the girl behind it.

“Poppy!” She said with a smile. “Usual room?”

“Yeah. Give us the sound enchantment again, too.” Poppy replied. She slid silver across the table.

“Not a problem! Do you want the usual meals…” The girl asked, then looked over at me nervously, then back to Poppy.

“Bring a menu too.” Poppy said.

The girl nodded happily, taking the pile of coins from the counter without counting them before turning to open a door behind her. I saw the briefest glance of a sprawling kitchen with a dozen giant men working before the door slid shut. The other side of the building had been painted in sterile lights, and opening the door had released a rush of heat that rapidly cooled.

“The building has a temperature controlling formation?” I asked, stunned. My estate had something similar, but we lived in the desert. The building we were in looked like a downtrodden bar from the outside and poorly built from the inside.

But it was a deception.

“Something like that.” Poppy said. “I’m going to wake Anna up. You want to head up to our booth with Eros?”

“Sure. Good luck with that.” Eros said. “Come on, Sai.”

Up a small staircase where the walls pressed in on either side was a second floor full of booths. It was dead quiet, despite the animated conversations apparently happening in each of them. I couldn’t even hear the downstairs.

One of the booths was occluded entirely by a wall of black.

Eros trampled through with cold indifference before practically falling into one of the booths. He sighed as he collapsed backwards. The sight cut off half way through his fall and he landed on soft cushioning.

He mouthed something to me, and I stepped into the booth to join him.

The world grew even quieter as I slipped into the booth.

“This place is… unique.” I said.

“It’s a bar and restaurant just for Trailblazers.” Eros said. Then he groaned as he stretched. “Cool, yeah? We stop here all the time when we’re in the city. We travel pretty far from it these days.”

“Your group seems stronger.” I remarked almost idly, hands folded over each other.

A server brought a menu. It seemed to be hand printed, the dishes on it changed. Almost all of them included Titan Meat and cost dozens of silver at the minimum.

“We reached the First Tier. Shit, you don’t even know, do you?” Eros looked over, making eye contact with his one good eye. He searched my face. “There’s a qualitative leap in power at the first tier — level 50. Not easy to cross it. You — you didn’t level up when we cleared the dungeon.”

Stolen story; please report.

Eros frowned.

I pulled Littlebird’s egg out of a pocket inside my damaged robes, showing it to him.

“I got this instead.”

“An egg?” Eros asked.

I nodded.

“I think it contains the nascent spiritual body of the Gale Titan.”

“Probably would make a damn good breakfast.” Eros stared at it.

I put it back into my robe and stared at the menu.

“When I entered the dungeon, those people you were with — Dale’s party — almost immediately betrayed me. They were both at level 49. Is that common?”

Eros made a sour expression and sat up.

“Many people get stuck at level 49. The wall to the first tier. Going past that is a bit more involved. You need to balance your stats and have one of the three branches ready to advance. I advanced the Mind Branch — Agility and Perception. That happens when the sum of your attributes on that branch reaches 80, by the way, plus another requirement. The Trailblazer guild charges for this information, by the way. But Poppy’s family provided it for us.”

I pulled up my own system.

[STR 24][CON 20]

[INT 17][WIL 30]

[AGI 20][PER 15]

“The branches are… each row of stats?” I asked.

“Yeah.” Eros said, leaning forward. “So if you dump all of your points into the wrong things, you can end up screwed and having to grind skills for years to catch up.” Mid way through him talking, Anna and Poppy rejoined the table, sitting down next to each other.

Anna looked half asleep. She yawned.

“Goodmorning Sai. Glad you lived.” She said. Then she leaned against Anna’s shoulder.

“Sai has an egg.” Eros said.

“An egg?” Poppy asked.

I pulled the egg out again. Poppy leaned forward as she used [Identify] on it.

“Did you… lay it?” Poppy said, looking Sai up and down. “You’re… from another world, yes?”

“I — we don’t lay eggs there!” I said, louder than I intended.

Poppy made a sigh of relief.

“Good. Eros was just telling you about the Branches? You’re level 30 now. You’re level 30 now? That’s… fast. Regardless, you need to be considering these things. Which branch are you planning on progressing first?” She asked. Poppy was right to business.

She had ditched her armor, wearing much less formal loose fitting clothes. Despite this being a jungle, it was hot. The humid air didn’t help in that regard.

“I feel like I must emphasize that I am physically the same as you.” I said, bringing back the conversation. “But I’m closest to advancing the… the row of Intelligence and Willpower.”

“The Spirit Branch.” Poppy nodded. “Is that because of your — ”

Poppy stopped talking as a server bustled in. Poppy leaned back against the seat, folding her arms and staring with a bored expression at the server. Anna blinked repeatedly, then stretched. Her eyes lit up at the sight of food.

The server held gigantic trays of food with apparent ease, fingers splayed to hold two trays wider than she was on one hand. She slid them onto the table with inhuman grace. She had an [Innkeeper] class.

“Have you decided what you’d like today?” The server asked me, hands folding over each other. “I can recommend the Cyclone Steak, if you’re unfamiliar with the menu.”

I looked at it. The “Cyclone Steak” was made with meat from the Gale Titan. I thought about asking how you made steak from a bird, but decided against it.

“That sounds excellent.” I replied. She smiled and nodded and slipped out of the room.

Poppy leaned back over the table, making eye contact with me. There was a wild fervor in her eyes.

“Are you progressing the Spirit Branch because of your Old Magic?” She asked.

I grimaced.

“Where I come from, we have no System.” I said.

Anna gasped.

“But then — you — how do you?” Her face was a mask of horror.

I debated how much to say.

“When you that copy of me in the dungeon — why did you travel with it?” I asked.

“I assumed it was an [Infiltrator] class, not a monster.” Poppy grimaced. “But either way, we figured that they would have been the last person who saw you. So we traveled with them to try to track you down. And… avenge you.”

“I believed you were alive the whole time.” Eros added happily.

I nodded. Then I breathed out an anxious sigh.

“Where I come from, progression toward power is born through cultivation. It’s like — it’s like leveling, where each step through it gives you power. But not everyone can do it. I myself, the scion of a clan that rules a country, was misled, and stagnated in my progression for years.”

Poppy nodded.

“When I use the [Void Fist,] I can feel the residual energy. It’s like mana. And it wants to be used. I can sense the same energy in the world all around me. I can almost pull on it. The System does it for me when I use the skill. That’s part of your… cultivation, isn’t it?”

She was describing the feeling of qi.

I nodded. Then I closed my eyes. Then I opened them.

Imparting cultivation on these people wouldn’t end the world. They already had people who could level. If Poppy’s siblings rivaled the Patriarch, then this wouldn’t offset the balance of power so massively to be a concern.

“That’s qi. And I… could teach you how to use it. In exchange…”

“We’ll help you level up.” Poppy said. “Did Eros tell you what it takes to reach level 50?”

“Reaching 80 attribute points in a branch.” I nodded.

“And the other thing?” Poppy asked.

“The other thing is to understand why you’re killing.” Eros said.

“Sort of. The other thing is understanding what you want to become. The foundation of your leveling.” Poppy said. “You need a clear image of the direction of your class.”

“And lots of killing.” Eros said.

I did some quick math on the remaining skills I had.

“Even if I put the remaining 19 points from levels before 50, I’ll need 14 more levels in skills that add to that branch to reach the first tier.” I said.

Poppy waved a hand.

“We can train you on your skills. Then you can gain the rest of the levels on your own anytime. The important thing is that you start thinking about your progression right now.” Poppy said.

“I crossed level 50 when I decided I wanted nothing to do with my family anymore.” Eros said. “My class became an archer class specializing in Lightning and Shadow spells.”

“My class gave me the ability to support Eros and Poppy better.” Anna said.

“Do you have an idea of what you want to become?” Poppy asked.

The fact that she didn’t share the details of her own class didn’t elude me.

I leaned back in the seat.

“I want to become powerful for my own people.” I said.

Poppy nodded. I thought the conversation would end there. Then she continued.

“Why?”