The wait in what Solace was almost certain was a cargo holding area was fine, he supposed. Some of the people standing around him complained fervently but with murmured tones about having to stand for so long, but it wasn’t that bad.

It could have been worse.

“I wonder where we’ll land. Maybe they’ll take us to the capital!” Xu Wei enthused. “Do you think they’ll be people in those strange garbs? My father told me they were called ‘suits.’”

And then again, it could have been better.

“He also told me that the people are so money hungry that they sell as much of everything as they can. That’s why a lot of them have only one syllable names.”

While the others had turned away from Solace the moment he joined the crowd, Xu Wei, a boy about the age of fourteen or so, had immediately made his acquaintance and tried to drag Solace into inane conversation.

Solace wasn’t really in the mood for idle chatter, especially with everything on his mind. At the same time, he really didn’t see a point in making the boy stop when he was just trying to pass the time. So, Solace tuned Xu Wie out a bit, occasionally nodding or saying superficial reactions to keep the boy engaged, while he thought about his next steps.

The first step would be to figure out how to awaken. Well, actually it was to find shelter and food. It was always food and a roof, then the pursuit of unlimited cosmic power. After which, the search for the Token if it hadn’t shown up by then.

“Is your name really Solace?”

“Yes.”

He’d need a good bit of food too, to rebuild the muscle he always lost when restarting.

“Is that because you’re from Gu?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I knew it!” Xu Wei leaned in and whispered conspiratorially. “What about the other person from Gu? Do you know them too? Who’s stronger?”

He wondered what kind of unique jobs a reality like this offered.

Solace paused, realizing that he had perhaps “confirmed” something that sounded bad to confirm. Before he could think of a response, a snap could be heard.

It was the woman in armor again, floating above as she addressed the crowd.

“We have arrived. Welcome to Eston City, Ommoria. As part of the naturalization program, you have been allocated housing in several complexes; each building will have a number indicating available capacity. When the entrance behind me opens, leave in an orderly fashion or else.”

There was a brief pressure, causing Solace to wince.

The entrance opened, an entire section of the wall extending out and to the ground to make a ramp leading to the outside world.

“Now get going. Make sure to review our laws in the information packets provided soon. There will be no leniency for ignorance.”

With that, the woman flew off, and the crowd moved towards their new lives.

The first thing that struck Solace was the air. It was warm but dry. The sunlight pouring in made seeing past the entrance difficult, and it wasn’t until he made his way out that he could get a view of a true sci-fi society.

Except it wasn’t.

Eyes adjusting to the sunlight as he stepped down the ramp, all Solace saw was paved ground and concrete buildings. While everything was well-kept, it screamed of efficient design above all else. Near identical buildings, standardized signs on the path, anything and everything that seemed to have come out of a giant mold. If Solace hadn’t been following a crowd, he probably would have easily gotten lost.

They walked from the landing area, an expansive flat surface of pavement, and began to enter the streets of the city.

“They sent us to a tier five world.”

“Look at this place, so lifeless.”

“I can’t believe I left the Sects for this. How can we possibly advance here?”

More talking, more complaints, some merely plain observations. Solace tuned them out to just observe.

There weren’t any vehicles that he could see, which was interesting. Residents were out on the street, and many stopped to look at the procession of foreigners. Most had expressions of curiosity, but he could see a few with disdain.

Oh well.

At last, they reached the first building with a number on it. It was a five story complex, with an electric board near the entrance with the number 35. A line was already formed outside with people from the Sects, and Solace watched the number tick down as the line inched forward.

Xu Wei, who had been silently following Solace up until this point, stepped towards the line but quickly stopped when he saw that Solace made no move to join it.

“Are we not joining this one?” The boy asked.

We?

He wasn’t sure how to feel about Xu Wei trying to follow him, so he took a moment to assess. In the end, he mentally shrugged.

“No, not this one,” Solace replied.

Rather than joining that line, or any of the others leading into nearby buildings, Solace continued to walk down the road, deeper into the city. The closest buildings were clearly on the outskirts of the city. Despite their relative cleanliness, they would not be the best place to live. He wanted as much ease of access to facilities as possible, which meant living in or near the city proper if he could.

Which he couldn’t.

Less than thirty blocks later, the buildings changed styles to be a bit more varied. There were no electric boards on their doors. Solace walked another block with Xu Wei in tow to make sure, before turning back to the closest of the buildings with a numbered sign.

The line for this one was pretty short, barely extending out the door. Compared to waiting in the ship, in no time at all they were inside and talking to the person at the desk.

“Sects?” The guy asked in a bored tone.

“Yes.”

“Name?”

“Solace.”

The man’s eyes turned to the side as if staring at something only he could see. Solace wondered if there was some kind of machine implant that helped with digital things. It would explain the “translation function” a lot of people kept using.

After a moment the man hummed in thought. “Hmm.”

“What is it?” Solace asked.

“Nothing,” came the reply, a bit too hastily. He was strangely more animated now. Turning to the side, the man riffled through a box of keys before handing one to Solace. “Floor four, room thirteen. A reminder that you need to be awakened before being able to access your bank account.”

“And how would I do that?”

A wave of the hand. “Information in your room.”

Seeing that he was being dismissed, Solace looked for a way up. There was a simple staircase, causing him to shake his head in slight disappointment.

Space-ships, but no elevator.

A brief wait for Xu Wei, and then they began to ascend the concrete stairs.

“What room are you in?” Solace asked.

“416, same floor,” Xu Wei replied. “I asked for that and the man said yes!”

Ah.

The pair continued to walk up the stairs as Xu Wei chattered. It was clear that the boy was trying to endear himself, but Solace didn’t know how to react to it.

So he didn’t.

Second flight of stairs, third, fourth. The two then rounded the corner and entered the opening leading to the actual floor. When Solace reached his room, he interrupted the still talking boy.

“And then my dad said ‘by then, you—’”

“Xu Wei,” Solace cut in, “can we continue this later? It’s been a tiring day.”

“Oh, alright.”

The boy visibly deflated, walking past Solace to reach his respective room.

Solace put the key in the door’s lock, turned the knob, and opened the door.

Or tried to.

To his surprise, the knob turned but the door didn’t budge. Frowning, he pulled harder.

The wooden door, as it turned out, was much, much heavier than it looked. There was also a weight to it that seemed to pressure his spirit like what the woman in armor had done. By the time Solace pried the door open and entered his room, he was slightly out of breath and his nose had started bleeding again.

What is this door made of?

He took out the rag from his pocket to staunch the blood and then began to inspect the wood. A rap of the knuckles caused a sound like he was tapping something light and not something that could cause strain just by moving it.

It had to be a unique material, but one he obviously didn’t know. It confused him because it seemed counterintuitive to make a door harder to open for the resident of the room.

“Xu W—” Solace began but quickly stopped himself.

The boy had already entered his own room, the door shut.

Is it a “tier” thing?

If it was, the fact that Xu Wei was stronger than him just by being a higher tier, and thus able to open the door, mildly annoyed Solace.

Frowning, he shook his head and turned on the light inside with a flick of the switch to inspect the actual room.

It was tiny, barely enough for a twin sized bed and some room on the side that was probably barely his wingspan. Embedded on the wall opposite the bed was a monitor. The last thing in the room was a small, empty shelf in the corner.

With a grunt, Solace gradually closed the door behind him so that his nose didn’t bleed again before moving to sit on the bed. He inspected the monitor, looking everywhere until he noted the power button in the bottom right hand corner. He turned it on.

The computer, wherever it was, immediately booted up, taking him to a plain gray desktop with the words “413: Solace” in the top left-hand corner. There were only two applications that he could see, a folder icon with a tiny red dot that said “5” in the corner and the other an icon with the “H” as a logo.

How do I click on something though?

There was no keyboard or mouse in sight, so he hesitantly tapped on the folder icon with his finger. To his relief, the monitor was a touch screen.

The window that expanded had five documents.

Naturalization Program

Building Complex 2B Rules and Expectations

Additional Resources Available to The Public

Laws in The Corporations

Read These Pertinent Laws (Ignore At Risk, Sects)

Once done with reading the titles, Solace tabbed out of the window and quickly checked the other application. It was an internet browser.

Alright, time to do what I always have to do: learn the world.

Quickly tabbing the documents folder back up, he clicked on the first one.

The Naturalization Program document, written in the language of The Sects, was short and to the point. It stated that participants within the program were provisional citizens and required to meet certain requirements based on their tier to achieve full citizenship. For tier three and below, that meant reaching tier three without breaking any laws.

Provisional citizens were given access to most of the public resources for reaching higher tiers as well as various jobs; a comprehensive list could be found in the third document. In addition, housing would be made available for provisional citizens at specific locations with a standardized cost across The Corporations. Food was not provided and had to be bought on one’s own earnings at stores which sold low tier goods at standardized costs.

The document concluded with a warning to read the laws, observe the rules set by the building complex, and had a list of taxes that would be levied based on tier which provisional citizens had to pay. Solace didn’t know what the value of a “credit” or “mana stone” was yet, but the list did give him some contextual information about tiers.

The highest is… fifty?

He did a double-take before doing some mental math. Sloan, the person who had healed him, said that Solace had been beaten by a tier five who was thirty two times stronger. If Solace was unawakened, which he assumed was tier zero, then that meant that strength was doubled at each tier.

Solace tried to do the math, two raised to the power of fifty. He stopped after the number in his head reached somewhere in the millions, and hadn’t even reached past the twenty fifth doubling.

… That can’t be right.

He opened up the browser and looked for a calculator widget. When he couldn’t find one, he just typed “2^50” into the search bar.

1.1258999 e15

It was a number so huge that it lost meaning, which was in itself a meaning of its own. This had to be incorrect, or perhaps tiers stopped being exponential at some point. He didn’t know.

But he’d find out.

After mentally noting some questions to look up later, he set the thoughts of tiers aside to focus on the present. Solace closed the first document and opened the second.

Building Complex 2B Rules and Expectations began with the fact that housing was not free and that 500 credits would be automatically charged to a resident’s account at the start of each month.

Solace quickly stopped reading and looked up a calendar. A month was approximately the same here.

Huh.

He kept reading.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Each floor had common areas on one side of the hall: restroom, kitchen, and laundry. The floor monitorer lived on the opposite side of the floor. Residents were to contact the monitorer with concerns or issues.

At this point, Solace began to skim the rest. It was all standards for behavior like quiet hours or cleanliness in common areas. Eventually, he finished the document and moved onto the third one.

It was large, some fifty odd pages long detailing a lot of things. A bit overwhelmed, Solace also skimmed it for a moment before giving up. Instead, he spent several minutes searching for the search function and then using it to look up “awaken.”

There were several sites around the city specifically for awakening people. The facilities operated once a week and charged “only” 100 credits. Tapping on a hyperlink, he was sent to the website and signed up for the soonest appointment at the closest site. Fortunately, it was tomorrow morning.

Once done, he searched for resources to tier up. The search query highlighted entries involving access to something called “rifts.” Solace scratched his head as he tried to understand them through contextual information. Rifts also had tiers and generated monsters. The variations between rifts were so great that Solace felt extremely lost trying to imagine one or grasp the conventions of a typical rift.

It’s a rabbit hole of information.

Sighing, he took a step back mentally and decided to look more in depth later. He wouldn’t be interacting with a rift until after he was awakened and probably not until he could secure a steady income. Stability while acclimating to the reality’s norms was extremely important.

For the rest of the night, Solace went over the job listings and then the remaining documents involving the laws. There was a lot of information to cover, but he was up to the task.

—

When imagining the awakening facility, Solace had pictured a lot of different things. A lab with chamber pods to induce the abilities, or perhaps some kind of injection. He had woken up early and walked to the tiny building expecting for the procedure to be painful. Power was never free, afterall.

Once the doors were opened, he, along with a crowd of about thirty or so people, were ushered inside and made to sit on one of the many steel chairs arranged in neat orderly rows along the wall of the facility. Identities were checked, names confirmed, and then wires were attached to an arm.

“Solace?” A person in a bright orange vest asked as she consulted her pad.

“Yes.”

“What’s your age?”

“Twenty eight,” Solace lied.

A raised eyebrow, but nothing else was said. She strapped the wires on before moving to the next chair.

The line of questioning made Solace reevaluate something. Every other person in a chair was a teenager, and on the younger side at that. There had been some staring when he first arrived, but he hadn’t actually considered the implications until this very moment.

I’m going to be so behind the curve in terms of reaching a tier at a certain age. Well, appearance wise. I think I’m almost always one of the oldest people anyways.

One of the other workers began to count down once every person sitting was wired.

“Five, four, three…”

Solace tensed up a bit. Though he had long learned to do more through pain, it didn’t mean that it hurt any less.

“Two…”

He forced his muscles to relax.

“One…”

A moment of silence. An instant of stillness. For a second, Solace frowned at nothing happening.

And then he felt it.

Something coming out of the wires. Indescribable in sensation, shocking in feel, it seeped into his skin and then…

His soul.

Much like the suppression of the armored woman from before, it touched the same things. Unlike before, it wasn’t painful or uncomfortable, merely sinking into the spirit and making him aware of it.

The thing sent from the wires at last settled into something at the center of his spirit, and suddenly his senses sharpened. Not by a lot, but a noticeable amount. It also unlocked something new.

Around him, he detected faint “lights,” for lack of a better word. Foggy, tiny things around him in neat orderly rows. He quickly realized what he was sensing.

Those are the others’ spirits.

It was a short range, and exploring it was like trying to explore a muscle never before trained, but he began to test it to get more control over this ability.

The operator’s voice cut through Solace’s mental exploration of the awakening. “Your Tier 1 Talent information has been sent to your private messages. View them later in a secure location. Please make your way to the exit, we’ve already billed your accounts.”

Ah, right.

Money.

He could check out his Talent and open up his account back in his room using the supplied monitor, but one of the jobs that had caught his eye only had a single spot, and it was first come first hired.

“Excuse me, what time is it?” Solace asked the orange vest attendant that was passing by.

A brief pause.

“8:25,” came the reply.

He needed to get going.

Racing out of the building, he checked the street signs before running towards the train station’s address. The bullet train was, thankfully, for public use and did not charge. Unfortunately, the next train would be in five minutes. If he missed it, it would be another hour.

It was a mile away, a run that would normally take him eight minutes on average, having just started his journey in a new reality, minimal muscle physique.

Normally.

Arms pumping, legs moving, the air whistled in his ears as his stride ate up the ground. He was stronger, quicker, after having just awakened. Sure, it wasn’t the fastest he’d ever moved, not by a long shot, but it was a pleasant surprise. For once, it felt good to run at the start of a reality.

And I can’t believe all it took was a painless operation with a chair and a few wires.

Solace made it to the train station with moments to spare. The people loading onto the vehicle gave him odd looks as he came dashing in while breathing heavily, but he didn’t care. He was on the train. By the time he found a seat to settle down on, it was on the move.

As the locomotive took him deeper into the city, the infrastructure became much more complex. He couldn’t begin to describe it, but there was actual architecture that made the areas feel more human.

He mentally compared it with the place he was now living in, and quickly confirmed his suspicions about his new home being a place for the poor. It would also explain the door. Non-living things could have tiers as well, and making the uniform buildings out of what was probably cheap but higher tiered materials would cut costs down while reducing issues like property damage.

I can get behind the logic. And at least the area is kept clean.

Whether or not it was safe would be another matter, but Solace didn’t plan on staying there forever. The planet was Tier 5, meaning that he’d have to eventually leave to get stronger and to also search for the Token. He just needed a place to sleep while earning enough money to pay for food and eventually transport off of the planet once he too was Tier 5.

He continued to take in the sights until the train began to slow down before eventually halting, and Solace joined the shuffle of the crowd as they exited the vehicle. Firmly weaving around people, he began to run again towards the listed address for the job. It took him another six or so minutes to reach it.

Edison’s Rmory, Repairs, and Research

The building stood out without standing tall, being only a single story building while its neighbors had dozens of floors. A bell tinkled his entrance as Solace opened the door and stepped inside.

Shelves and display cases full of armor and weapons filled the immediate interior. As Solace took a couple steps inside, he noticed a case full of tools that he didn’t recognize.

“What do you need?” The woman behind the counter asked. Auburn hair tied into a neat bun, she was neatly cutting and folding material with a pair of shears, not even looking up to address him.

“I’m looking for Edison.”

“Manning the counter.”

Solace stared in confusion for a moment. And then it clicked.

“I’m here for the job listing, ma’am,” he said.

“Didn’t put one up.”

“It was one made available for the naturalization program.”

Edison stopped what she was doing, shears mid-air. She looked up and made eye contact with Solace before inspecting him. He took the time to do the same.

Late twenties or early thirties appearance wise, her eyes were blue and she wore an outfit that he couldn’t describe beyond the fact that it covered most of her body and was made of a thicker material. Streaks of black something were on the sleeves. His newfound spiritual sense saw her as a “bright” thing, but he couldn’t begin to guess her Tier without a comparison point.

“Sects?” She asked after a moment.

“Yes,” he said as he mentally shut off the sense. It was a bit distracting.

“You speak our language well.”

“Yes.”

A brief pause, as if she expected him to say more. He didn’t. Speaking the language of The Corporations so fluently despite his arrival yesterday was certainly suspicious, but he had weighed the pros and cons. If he insisted on pretending to only speak The Sect’s language, there was a good chance that he would be treated as part of the out-group in a lot of situations, and miss some potential opportunities. Better for people, if they even managed to discover his “origins,” to think that he was good at languages, which he was after having to learn new ones across realities, or that his Talent was somehow involved.

“Well,” Edison continued, “I do remember putting up a listing now. It was mandatory to accommodate you people, but I didn’t expect someone to arrive so early.”

“It did say one spot and first come first hired.”

“Right…” her voice trailed off as she pulled out a tablet from under the counter and unlocked the screen. “Well, you’re hired, but you have to sign a non-disclosure agreement.”

Solace furrowed his brow. “It was a cleaning and organization job, right?”

“You’ll be doing a lot of things, including cleaning my private lab.”

Ah.

“Alright,” Solace replied.

Edison quickly turned the tablet to face him, and he read the document carefully. It confirmed the pay and details of the job as well as outlined a pretty standard requirement of discretion. He double checked to confirm one of the clauses in the payment section and then put his thumb on the screen to allow the device to scan it.

“When do I start?” He asked when done.

“Now,” she said. “Follow me.”

Edison led the way to an unmarked door in the back. She unlocked it with a set of keys and then opened it.

“Breathe with your mouth,” she cautioned.

Solace, who was in the middle of taking a stride closer when she said that, stutter stepped and nearly tripped as the smell hit him like it was something physical. It was putrid, like dead bodies and fetid seas. His eyes watered but he didn’t gag.

“What is that?” He asked.

“An experiment with some crafting materials that went really wrong,” Edison replied. A pause and then a pensive tone. “Or maybe really right, if I can weaponize the stench.”

Solace stumbled a few steps backwards, but it barely helped as the smell followed him. It was so bad, worse than anything else he’d ever smelled in all of his lives. For a brief moment, he genuinely considered finding another job.

He immediately crushed his reluctance. Not wanting to do what was good for his goals just because it was disgusting was unacceptable.

Since when did I become so prideful?

First reacting to being spat on, and now reluctance at performing an uncomfortable job. At some point, he’d unconsciously started considering certain things beneath him. He needed to fix that.

“Is it safe to be down there without a mask?” Solace asked.

“Yes, it’s just a terrible smell.”

“Then point me to the cleaning supplies and I’ll get started.”

After a moment, he also added.

“I’ll have the meal when I’m done.”

Edison stared at him. “The what?”

“The daily meal, it was included as a payment in the job listing,” Solace reminded her. He had made certain the clause was in the earlier contract.

A flash of understanding. “I added that as a joke. Will you seriously have an appetite after cleaning?”

Solace shrugged. “I haven’t eaten since…”

Since I died… He thought, but he couldn’t say that.

“I got here. And I don’t have much money. Anything to defray my expenses.”

She continued to stare at him, until his stomach rumbled as if to emphasize his point.

At last, she sighed. “I guess I can scrounge something up.”

“Then I’ll get started.”

—

Eight hours later, Solace was back at the living complex, scrubbing the stench off of his skin in the showers.

The source of the smell had turned out to be some kind of black sludge, which had taken several hours to clean off the surfaces and tools in the lab.

Once the place was spotless, Edison had spent the remainder of the time training him on his other duties before sending him home with a bag of gifted clothes. She had insisted on it after hearing that he only had the one outfit.

“You’re an employee now, and I can’t have people thinking that I treat employees poorly,” she had said to head off any complaints. He didn’t voice any, of course. Accepting charity wasn’t beneath him.

I think I’m finally clean now… probably.

He turned off the showerhead before reaching for the gifted bag hanging on a hook nearby. Not owning a towel, Solace merely slipped on the newly acquired clothes while wet. A simple long sleeved shirt and pants that would have been skin tight on his frame if he wasn’t so skinny.

His old, dirty clothes were then washed by hand in a nearby sink before being wrung out and carried with him back to his room. Unlocking the door and opening it was much less strenuous than when he had done so yesterday or even this morning.

And now… my Talent.

Perhaps he should have been more excited about it, but he was tired and the novelty of, based on what he could understand through context, a unique ability had been lost on him a long time ago.

He set his bag on the bed with the hand-washed clothes on top before sitting down and opening the monitor. After a bit of tapping, he accessed his private messages. It was the first time, since one needed to be Awakened to do so.

Confirm Identification, the monitor read, followed by a block of text explaining how.

He quickly read the directions before doing as it said. Placing a thumb on the power button, he sent the essence, the thing that the awakening facility had put in him, towards the button. It was a weird feeling, like using a muscle he had just discovered.

After a moment, the process was over and he withdrew the essence back into his spirit as the monitor revealed his messages. He clicked on the one from the awakening facility and skimmed the contents to find what he was looking for.

Tier 1 Talent:

Primary effect: Allocated essence can be shifted to other attributes at will.

Secondary effect: Can store memories within the spirit.

Solace stared at the words for a few moments, processing them and what they meant. After a moment, he gave a sigh. He only understood some of the implications.

Essence, some kind of ephemeral thing that could be gathered and stored within the spirit, could be “cultivated,” as the things he had read called it, into one of two cores in the spirit. Once enough essence was cultivated, regardless of what core it was sent to, a person tiered up. Normally, a person could not change where they sent the essence to, either between cores or even within a certain part of a core, but apparently he could. It meant a lot of flexibility involving things he needed to read more about to understand, but it also meant that it was useless to him as he was.

I only have the tiniest amount of essence right now, afterall. I need to fix that as soon as possible.

He quickly tabbed off of the private messages to open up the Resources document and scrolled to the section on rifts. From what he understood, killing the monsters within them would be the best place to gather essence, though planets seemed to produce it naturally as well.

As a part of the naturalization program, he was allowed one free rift attempt, or delve, a week. So, he signed up for a delve at the closest Tier 1 rift on the information listings and scheduled it for three days from now. It would be plenty of time to do his research and prepare.

Once done, Solace settled in for another long night of research. He needed to understand the implications of his Talent so that he could take better advantage of it.

Before he could get too into his research, however, his door began to creak open. He had forgotten to lock it.

Solace jumped to his feet ready to—

“You’re back!” Xu Wei said. The boy seemed slightly out of breath.

“Yes,” Solace replied. “Did you need something?”

“You said that we could continue our conversation from yesterday… today,” the boy said hesitantly.

Right…

“I suppose I did,” Solace said. “Have a seat.”

And so, for the next while, Xu Wei eagerly continued where he left off about a story involving his father, and then another about the rest of the family. To be honest, the more Solace heard, the more thankful he was for deciding to leave instead of staying with The Sects.

There was a lot posturing in the culture, and sounded like a strangely backwards place for a futuristic reality.

Continuing to closely listen to what Xu Wei said, Solace began to form a picture that explained the last document he had read the other night, “Read These Pertinent Laws (Ignore At Risk, Sects),” which emphasized a lot of punishments for killing another person, regardless of reasons. One particular line, he recalled, was “being offensive does not mean a person is courting death. You may not kill someone over being upset.”

“And that’s why we ended up on the asteroid,” Xu Wei concluded. “We were told that the Ascension would improve my Talent when I awakened.”

An Ascension?

“Hold on for a moment,” Solace said as he moved to the monitor to type in information about Ascensions.

It was, annoyingly, a website that he had to pay to receive access to. So, instead, he began to search what he thought were related terms to try to understand through context.

Improve Talent through… No. Higher T—

“Solace,” Xu Wei’s voice interrupted, “you can read their language?”

Solace stopped his typing, turning to the young boy. “Yes, I can.”

“Could… could you teach me?” Xu Wei asked.

That made him think. It was one thing to humor the boy for an occasional conversation. It was another to take time and whatever other resources he would need and invest it into a virtual stranger for no gain.

Still…

A person in a drastically different place, struggling to even communicate with those around him. He had been there before, many, many times. It was annoying in a painful way, and he didn’t like the idea of letting even an acquaintance deal with that if all Solace had to do was give the occasional lesson and provide a few resources.

“Alright,” Solace said at last. “But only when I have the time.”

Xu Wei’s face lit up into a smile. “Thank you!”

“And not tonight,” Solace added. “I want to get some sleep soon.”

“Of course, of course,” Xu Wei replied. The boy stood up and bowed. “Then, talk to you tomorrow. Thank you!”

Xu Wei began to leave, and Solace turned back to the monitor to continue reading, only for the boy to say one last thing before closing the door. “Oh, and by the way, I think you need to tell the floor manager to fix your door hinges. It’s a lot harder to open than mine.”

…What?

Solace stood up and inspected the now closed door. He had thought that all of the rooms had equally higher Tiered doors but…

He reopened his spiritual senses to look at the door. The spirit was dense but unmoving, a dead thing but still powerful. Opening the door, he stepped out to look at the other rooms and their entrances. To his surprise, the others were less “bright,” a lower Tier relative to his room and a few select others in the hallway.

Frowning, he closed his door while thinking. Had he been assigned a troublemaker’s room? For what reason?

Questions swirled in his head that he couldn’t find the answers to using the browser. At least, not without paying money that he didn’t have. In the end, he went to sleep that night dissatisfied with how the day had concluded.