Alicia stared at the notification for a long time. Unlike normal ones, it didn't fade away after a few seconds.
She knew a scam when she saw one. A special offer coming out of nowhere and not telling her the reason why? It couldn't be a good thing.
Yet, the Alliance hadn't scammed them until now, had they? Not that she knew of, at least.
She bit her lower lip hard enough to taste blood. They claimed she only had to say "yes" to learn more. That wouldn't harm anyone, right?
Her heartbeat accelerated.
In the end, the draw of reaching the E rank was too much for her. That's exactly what she needed to walk beside Shen.
"Yes," she said and was teleported away.
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Wizard O had received that nickname not out of his mana abilities but his lawyering skills. They were magic of a particular kind. He specialized in binding the other party in contracts they couldn't get out of no matter what they did.
Well, they could get out by going through the due legal process, but they were usually too ignorant to do that or couldn't look for the authorities for whatever reason. The contract holders also made sure to keep the contractees as far away from the judicial system as possible.
Getting an F-rank to sign a bad contract was so easy he hadn't bothered with it for the past decade. Today, however, was a special day. Today, he had been paid handsomely to get a cub from a newly integrated planet into debt for life. She would get a pittance in exchange for her eternal obedience.
He had taken a couple of days to study her culture—more judicially advanced than he liked—history and personality. Now, he was in a small white room with a table and two chairs, waiting for her to arrive. He wore a holosuit to look like a kind male human with features close to her best friend's—Asian, he believed his ethnicity was called.
She materialized in the chair opposite his, and he immediately sent a mental command for his holosuit to show a kind smile.
"Alicia Winter?" he said. "Thank you for coming."
She looked around, and he detected discomfort at the small room without exits. Humans were easy to read after you got the knack for it. Wizard O was a master of the art of reading others.
"Sorry for the room," he said apologetically, then commanded his holosuit to bend over. He whispered, "I tried to tell them to send us straight to the classroom, but they said everything there is a secret until you sign in." He returned to a straight position.
That was a standard opening move. Make it look like you're on the target's side, sharing a common enemy, and bait their curiosity.
Indeed, she tried to hide it behind more distrust, but he could see the shine of curiosity and the greed for a secret in her eyes. The Guardian System had classified her personality under category AB6. He had corrected it for himself as AC17 and had been spot on as usual.
"So, you want to grow strong," he said with a more businesslike tone.
Yet, despite his tone, he still kept warmth in his holosuit's voice. From what he had studied of humans, he sounded like a stern father talking to a daughter who wanted to do something intelligent and adult. Alicia had lost her parents early in life and showed all the signs of abandonment and what humans aptly named "daddy issues." This would be so easy Wizard O felt terrible for charging so much—well, not really. But he thought he should feel bad.
She straightened up at once and nodded like a young cub at the mention of power. There was still distrust there, but it was disappearing. His invisible calming skill was undoubtedly helping, and since she hadn't asked him to not use any skills on her, it was technically legal. Rude, yes. Illegal, no.
"The price for guaranteed advancement to the E rank is equivalent to 4.7 million AP in the Multiverse Alliance," he said in a heavy voice.
That quote was only technically accurate. It was based on the price a high elf had once quoted to a demispider who had eaten her cousin. Then he applied gem dwarven inflation to the cost and converted it to AP using the APEM index, which only the most desperate agreed on.
Her eyes predictably widened in surprise.
"But," he continued, "your magic talent has impressed someone with a good eye. You're what is called a late bloomer."
She was a late bloomer—biologically. A couple of her biological functions were behind the average of her species. It wasn't his fault if she applied the "late bloomer" term to the wrong context, magic talent, just because it was mentioned in the previous sentence.
"It would take you at least a couple years to catch up to some of your peers," Wizard O pushed, "and that someone would hate to see it happen. They offer to pay the entire course to E-rank for you."
Alicia's suspicion increased again. She crossed her arms. "What do you want in return?"
"Not me," he corrected. It wouldn't do for her to see him as an enemy. "That someone only wants you to help them when they ask. Nothing much, just answering some questions." Espionage could be technically considered just information sharing.
The cub frowned. Wizard O knew she had had issues with the law in the past, and contracts couldn't be signed without some trust in the enforcing figures. So he would pretend to give her control.
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"Don't take my word for it," he said and took the contract from his Inventory. He put the three-page long thing on the table in front of her. It was simple but worded with enough legal terms and open-ended agreements that she would end up owing his client for the rest of her life.
She looked suspiciously at the sheets, then took them and read. Her frown deepened the more she read.
Wizard O didn't worry about it. When she was almost at the end, he delivered the final bait. "We also know where your uncle and aunt are and could teleport you to them—or vice-versa." He, of course, never promised to do it, nor was it in the contract.
That made her look up in surprise. Anger flashed in her eyes. "Really?"
Wizard O made his holosuit smile paternally. "Of course." He produced a mana pen from his Inventory to bind her mana signature to the contract. "Just sign your name, and power and revenge will be yours."
Alicia Winter smiled widely.
Wizard O could already taste the victory. He had considered a more long-term approach to rope her in, but he had correctly determined he wouldn't need one. A quick job, in and out. The human had never had any chance.
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Alicia's heart started beating wildly when the damn lawyer—she could smell the sulfur in lawyers nowadays—talked about her aunt and uncle. She knew a scam when she saw one, and she could easily identify the most perfect bait to catch her.
Yesterday, Alicia would've sold her soul for vengeance.
Today, she faced the darkness in her depths, found herself lacking, and wanted to change herself.
It had happened when Mark forced her to admit to herself that, yes, she had betrayed him. She had entered the agreement with him out of her own free will. Yet, she had then tried to kill him for no apparent reason other than her dislike of him.
Shen was also a big part of that. Alicia remembered how he had looked at her with guilt and regret when he had been about to tell her he would give up on the tutorial. The final bosses were living beings, and he didn't want to kill them to advance his own power.
He hadn't said all that, but she knew it because that's how she had felt when he greeted the bosses, and she considered, for the first time, that they might be actual people.
But Alicia, unlike Shen, hadn't even considered the possibility of giving up for them.
Mark and Shen, each one in their own way, showed her that she wasn't the good girl she liked to think of herself. She had been betrayed, yes. She had been a victim indeed. But she wasn't a paladin of purity facing a cruel world she was too good for.
Like everyone else, she was just a random person with her own shortcomings.
Some other day, she might've told herself that if she was like that, there was no reason to fight it. That she should embrace herself. That self-acceptance was essential to a happy life.
Today, she recalled Shen's eyes and chose to improve herself.
"Really?" She asked and tried to think of what she could do to get out of this situation. Outright refusing a mobster never went well in the movies.
"Of course," the guy said and produced a crystal pen from thin air—which she had to admit was cool as fuck. "Just sign your name, and power and revenge will be yours."
Alicia imagined the taste of glory as she made her aunt and uncle suffer and almost took the pen.
Almost.
Instead, she recalled how the Overseer had reacted to Shen's actions at the end of the second stage. Maybe someone was watching this exchange too. And perhaps she might use it to her advantage.
It would also serve to tell her how much she could actually trust the Alliance.
"Guardian System," she said, "I want to make an official complaint against the man in front of me. If I can? Does it even work like this?"
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Wizard O froze for a split second. He quickly reviewed the entire conversation in his mind. Nothing he had said could be used against him, and he would make her pay him handsomely for the false complaint. The Alliance hated people who wasted its resources on baseless accusations.
"Oh, reason?" she replied to the notification she had likely got. "I don't know; I'm still in the tutorial. Can't you get someone from the Alliance to find a reason for me? A pro-bono lawyer or something?"
At that, he relaxed even more. This Pioneer Tutorial was under his client's thumbs. No one there would go against the Dreamer and take the case.
"Accept," Alicia said, and to his surprise, he got a notification.
| Alvaerelle Elafir (C) of the Mana Guild (A) is now the official legal representative of Alicia Winter (F).
| Alvaerelle Elafir has asked for and been given access to this conversation's recordings.
| Alvaerelle Elafir has asked for and been given access to all your access logs about her charge.
What?!
"That's impossible," he said quickly. Few organizations would go against the Lawyer Guild, but the Mana Guild was one of them. Fortunately, he had an easy way out. "This is a Pioneer Tutorial, and Alicia Winter is a trainee. The Mana Guild cannot represent someone who wasn't fully integrated to the Alliance yet."
| Rectified. Alvaerelle Elafir is acting under the authority of the Talent Reevaluation Committee (S).
The TRC was involved with this tutorial?! He hadn't been informed of that! Luckily, he always took care of not leaving any traces. All data he had accessed about Alicia—more than he should—had been through someone else's account.
He realized his mistake as soon as he thought of it.
Other people investigating him wouldn't have access to all his actions, and they couldn't force him to say where he had gotten information about an F rank. But someone in the TRC could legally analyze his entire life under the guise of reevaluating his talent. If doing that, they found something wrong related to this investigation, it would be just "dumb luck."
When they found out he was using access that belonged to other people to get classified information on his targets...
Ionized fire! He should've known when the damn hydra refused to give him free information and paid a premium for him to use his own means to get it!
He tried to teleport away at the exact same moment a yellow-titled message appeared in front of him.
INVESTIGATION NOTICE
You're being investigated by the World Integration Protection Services.
You are not to leave this galaxy under any circumstances for the duration of the investigation.
Your intergalactic travel permits have been temporarily suspended.
His teleportation concluded, but not where he had been trying to go. Instead, he found himself in empty space, right outside the mega world where the Pioneer Tutorial was taking place.
Wizard O knew a defeat when he saw one, but he had connections and favors to call upon. Not enough to stop the TRC, but enough to get him a deal. He would tell everyone about his client and—
He felt when the attention of a distant massive octopus-like being turned to him.
He felt when the Dreamer released an incredible amount of mana against him, in a spell he couldn't even begin to comprehend.
Then he felt nothing else, for he ceased to be.
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Alicia could barely believe it had worked. The lawyer was gone. She had won against them for the first time in her life!
All it had taken her was to accept being legally represented by someone she didn't know.
The sheer stupidity of that act dawned on her an instant after the shady lawyer disappeared. Then the most gorgeous woman she had ever seen teleported into the room.