I take full advantage of my remaining time hereby pestering every crafter I meet for as much free information as I can get.

My D-rank Obsidian Black identification emblem may not be worthy of note, but having a damaged arcane ax helps. Some of the crafters definitely seem to be intrigued by it.

I also have the mana stones with Lissandra’s three mana exercises, her improvements on mana cycling, and a Restrictive Training Emblem. I'm sure they are worth a lot.

Like, a lot a lot.

So they stay as hidden as possible. Otherwise, I'm sure I would find an “accident” coming my way. The same goes for the arcane-grade alloy Nevan left me with.

That's why I’m only using the ax, and even that seems to be pushing the bounds of whatever unspoken rules guide this place, at some point I just become a newbie with some cool stuff worth enough to justify the consequences.

These unspoken rules seem to be the only reason this place isn’t completely lawless. However, I fully expect this to change from outpost to outpost, especially in the dungeon. There, you can find better facilities and stuff, but it's also more dangerous, and the guilds made most of the rules.

Of course, if you were to kill an attendee, you’d risk angering their handler. Handlers often saw their “person” as an investment. A talent they intended to grow. There was apparently a whole field of politics around the relationships between handlers, the forming of contracts, the trading of talent, and more besides. It's like we’re football stars and our handlers are playing the role of managers while the guilds act as their personal football teams.

Some of the higher-ranked attendees even get contracts from guilds and receive monthly or yearly salaries. The higher ranking guilds can even double the duration of your stay tokens. And if one did well they could even gain access to their facilities, contacts, and information.

There is so much, and I’m only scratching the surface.

Clearing my mind, I turn my attention back to the man who’s examining my Flamebearer.

“I can't fix it.” He says, shaking his head.

“Yeah, I expected that.”

“Listen here, you brat, it's not…”

I quickly interrupt him, “Don’t misunderstand, I didn't mean it that way. It's just that I know how difficult it is to work with these items, and after months of trying, I didn't expect it to be as simple as finding someone on the entrance floor to help.”

His eyes squint, but in the end, he accepts my explanation.

Damn, dealing with people sure is difficult. Tess, please help.

“Got it, so what do you want?”

“I got curious if it would be possible to change its shape. I would prefer a sword or maybe a javelin over the current one.”

That makes him laugh, and he returns the ax, the fires of his smithy burning behind him.

“What you want would be more work than just fixing the weapon. You would need to redo everything while adapting it to the new shape. In the end, you would only recycle the material the ax is made of, and everything else would be new.”

I tilt my head in surprise, “What if I melted the weapon just enough to change its shape while removing the damaged parts and repositioning the working ones?”

“Do you even realize how crazy something like that would be? With an arcane weapon? You could end up dropping the rarity, you could ruin the inscriptions, you could screw up the weapon’s balance. Not to mention the level of heat you would need to melt a weapon of this grade while retaining enough raw power to work the inscriptions and the skills to do so.”

“So it would be possible?”

“Did you hear anything I just said?”

“Sounds good.”

He sighs but thinks of it, “You would need someone with a fragment of eternal fire, primordial thermal energy of high level, or a high-tier fire skill, over level 60 most likely. Then someone who could work on the weapon in all that heat or a way to isolate it. It would take a lot of mana just to keep the inscriptions from melting much less to be able to work with them; an inscriber would be able to tell you more.”

“If you succeeded in all that, could you repair the weapon and revert it to its arcane status?”

“Probably? It could end up a weaker arcane than it was before. It's currently low tier but it’s pushing mid arcane - without damage, of course. Decreasing its size and reforging it could leave it on the weaker end of low arcane or drop it as far as strong upper epic.”

I hand him the ax as he gestures to request another look, and ask, “How about adding some additional inscriptions or some other metals to improve on it or add another function?”

“Hmmm,” he murmurs, flicking the blade with his fingernail and seems to think for a moment. “That could work, but it would increase the difficulty even further. I'm sure there are people capable of doing so, deep in the dungeon, but they would want so much money it would be easier just to buy a new weapon.”

This blacksmith in front of me is one of the locals, probably one of the best in the outpost. It's amusing to watch the excitement blossom in his eyes whenever he gets the opportunity to talk about his thoughts on the subject.

“Weapons don't matter much. It's not like you get the opportunity to work on an arcane item all that often, and the things you could learn would help a lot more than the item itself,” I say.

And I mean it. Even as I am now, I can buy the cheapest arcane items, and if I were to wait a bit longer and save my funds until I had around 150 thousand, I could buy an arcane weapon of low grade that could probably be comparable to Flamebearer. A bit longer, and somewhere around 200k, you can buy low arcane weapons that would be equal to or stronger than Flamebearer when it wasn't damaged.

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The prices are just crazy like that.

Even so, I think of this damaged arcane ax as an opportunity for me to learn and improve. It's a fun side project I could work on and maybe, sometime in the future, I’ll be able to use the alloy left to me, and in combination with Flamebearer, create something of a mid arcane rarity. And sell it. If it were my own work, I would get 50% of its system shop value instead of getting the 10-20% I do for the items I find on the floors.

And that would mean a lot of cool stuff for me. Mid arcane weapons in the system move around 300-500 thousand shards, with upper arcane being from 500 thousand up to a million shards.

However, in the end, I still strongly prefer to buy passives, and my current goal is to grow my shards again to buy one. I could even try to make some shards here in Beyond.

There is no system-managed shop for me to sell through as I did during the tournament, but there are shops I could sell to, and interestingly, there are auction houses. There’s a whole economy at work down here.

The smith nods at that and breaks into a smile, “Maybe I judged you too harshly, young man. I'm willing to pay 25 thousand shards for that damaged arcane weapon.”

“No, thank you.”

“What is a few thousand shards among people like us? 26 thousand.”

“I have to go now,” I say, quickly leaving and ignoring the pleas of the man behind me, as I turn my mind to other things.

I still have a few more hours, and my legs have regrown, so that's good. At this point, I don't bother looking for shoes and instead find myself a dark alley where I can sit for a moment. Lifting my sleeves, I start painting on my skin with mana conductive paint I bought. It might be a good idea to go fully prepared like that. I also have a small mana orb inside my body that I've been feeding with my mana for the past day.

It is not as good as the crown, but it's the second-best option without bringing undue attention to me. Besides, I’ve begun to find a kind of beauty in the way others seem to underestimate me without giving me a second look.

I prepare my mind. I know I will probably be forced to kill or use those who plan to betray me. This time they won't be fakes, shadows of people, destined to die when the floor ends. No, they will be real people. Attendees from their own tutorials with their own hopes and goals for the future.

Even so, it doesn't matter. I have goals and hopes of my own, and mine are more important than theirs, for me at least. My sister, my mother on Earth left to endure 5 years of Earth's awakening and who knows what kind of changes brought about by the system.

Then there is also that group of mine.

I want to live, I want to master my abilities, I want to explore what the system has to offer. I want to see how high I can climb before my pride crumbles and my body breaks.

So as much as I'm trying to change bit by bit, I won't hesitate if anyone tries to abuse me.

Out of curiosity and because I don't have much time left, I seek out the anchor I left on Duncan.

Locals, the descendants of people who got into Beyond. The most talented members of their tutorials - rounds of people chosen from millions, billions of people on the planet. Do their efforts leave a mark on their descendants? Are the locals more talented than normal people?

So far, from most of what I've seen, they don't seem all that strong, at least not here. But I know you can hire them for expeditions to the dungeons. As guild attendants mainly, but sometimes they will help you.

I don't think it's that simple though, and they probably come at a high price. But unlike those of us from the tutorial, the locals could spend tens, hundreds of years in Beyond. The amount of information they’ve collected in all that time cannot be overestimated, and neither can their value.

That's what makes me so curious about them.

Duncan is a year or two younger than me, at least that’s how he looks and feels, and upon reaching his anchor, I hide my presence as much as possible.

It's in the poorer-looking part of the outpost, even though it's still nice.

I train, shaping the mana inside my body, as I watch the timer tick down and observe the locals and attendees rushing about on their business. This time, I'm trying to count each of the different races I see while waiting to see if Duncan will leave the house he just entered.

When I count over 20 races, I stop.

There seem to be a lot of humans and other races with weird eyes, oddly colored skin, or any number of other small changes. Then there are the lynthari who have a pretty decent representation. There aren’t many demons, though each one feels more dangerous than the average attendee. Each has red eyes and horns.

The time we arranged for our meeting is growing close, and I glance at my feet and I wiggle my toes. Some time ago, I joked that I had probably lost enough limbs for Lily to build a Nathaniel or two. The thought of that is still as amusing as it is scary.

The flesh is weak, embrace the sanctity of blessed mana, Is that how it goes?

I lift my fingers and touch my lips, noticing the corner of my mouth twitch into the barest hint of a smile.

I’ve been having a lot of fun lately, haven’t I? As dangerous and dirty as this all feels sometimes, it also feels so beautifully real. Important. Consequential. I make mistakes, and I have to deal with them.

I do not regret making these mistakes. Because every time I correct one, there is that clear feeling of progression.

It's hard to properly explain. At least it is for me. But that's what makes it fun, the slow process of discovery.

The door of the house finally opens, and Duncan steps out, still chewing his food. His huge bag rests on his back, and he smiles brightly, turning back to the people inside the room.

There is a boy and a girl, both children about the same age as Isabella and Vega. Each wearing a clean set of hand-me-down clothes. There is a clear resemblance in the cast of their faces which all but confirms their status as siblings.

The way they look up to him reminds me of something.

Duncan says something, and with a serious nod, the kids close the door, and Duncan checks to make sure it's locked. Only then does he rush away.

I observe that house for a while and then, with a sigh, place an anchor inside, the house bare of protections against it.

Inside, the house is clean but mostly empty. Sending my senses through it, I avoid the children who are upstairs and seek out the kitchen.

The fridge-like appliance is broken, and there is just enough food for a few days. The water tank is running low as well and getting close to kicking the bucket, as is the stove whose mana stone might explode soon if not handled carefully. It's so simple to fix, it's not even a bother.

Quickly, within a few seconds, I find each non-working appliance and fix it, putting all of the food I have on me in the fridge and refilling the water tank with water from my vial.

I know how expensive the food and water are here in Beyond, and Duncan, even though he’s earning some shards, seems to need them for something else. After all, I can't sense the items I bought for him anywhere in the entire house.

Everyone has their problems, I guess, and he said as much, and it's not like I need food or water. I’ll be leaving Beyond soon, and I can last a day or two without it. It would just be too annoying to carry it all with me.

Teleporting away, I make my way to our meeting spot.