I moved away from the larger cages, feeling quite disappointed. Not by this world’s variety of animals, but because of the zoo itself.

Although humans had not domesticated dogs in this world, they did seem to have domesticated some other creatures.

I saw a group of silver foxes which had been bred to be pets and were even being offered for sale. Something about their eyes and faces seemed vaguely different from those of usual foxes and even reminded me of dogs in some way. Instead of looking at me with anger or apathy, they seemed to be quite curious and eagerly followed me around with their gazes. It looked like they wanted to be petted, and I did just that. However, I was not going to buy one of them. I already felt guilt-ridden enough when it came to leaving Cheddar back on Earth, I did not want the burden of another pet I might have to leave behind in this world when I went back.

After that I just walked out of the zoo. I had thought it might cheer me up but it had the exact opposite effect. I usually thought of zoos as happy places, but that had been close to the most depressing experience I’d had since coming to this world.

The animals - forget about them looking happy, most of them didn’t even look like they were being taken care of well. It honestly sickened me.

And yet, what could I do?

I couldn’t free any of them. Most of them were not from around here, and if they got outside most of them were dangerous enough to nearly guarantee several deaths.

They were clearly operating under the letter of the law to be so open with what they were doing. I also saw other people at the zoo, some of them families, who were enjoying the sights they were seeing. Was I just wrong for thinking the way I did?

I shook my head. There was little I could change these people, no matter how much I thought over a way to do so. In the end I just cast [Fragrance] over myself to try to wash away the stench and the guilt that I felt had lingered on me even as I walked back into the city.

The meat skewer I bought along the way back to the gates tasted like ash in my mouth. I couldn’t help but see memories of Cheddar in my mind. Back on Earth, I had heard stories of dogs being mistreated in kennels and the like.

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They just felt like far-away stories from a distant land, but back there, in the zoo, they felt all too real. Sure, some of the animals might’ve been happy like the elephant and the foxes, but the others…

I was interrupted in this train of thought by one of the guards at the gates saying, “Halt! Are you a Liberomancer?”

“Yes,” I said absentmindedly.

“All new Liberomancers entering the city must submit themselves to inspection before walking in,” the guard said.

That caught me off guard - then again, this was my first time going outside the city walls. And I had spawned right into the city, so I wouldn’t know if this was a rule or not.

“But, this isn’t my first time in the city,” I told him. I guessed the guard might’ve thought I wasn’t from here because of my facial features - which was true, but I couldn’t see why I would have to submit to inspection when I was already living there for so long. I took out a token that Mark had given me that signified I worked for Lauren’s shop - it had helped in some places to show that I belonged to the city and that I worked for her shop to get the occasional discount.

The guard peered at the token and seemed to recognize its authenticity. “Where do you live?”

I told him, and he squinted at me as if wondering if he’d seen me before, but then just said, “Alright, off you go then.”

He waved me inside and I walked back into the city, heading towards the familiar building for the next round of the tournament.

This time, I was pitted against a lizardman and the referee was also a lizardman like last time, but no one bothered to inquire about my pen. Maybe that other referee had just never seen anything like that before?

Whatever. I was trying to get over what I had seen at the zoo and focusing on this contest instead.

The referee reached into the pile of slips, and opened up a slip that said, “House.”

Two possibilities immediately came to mind - I could’ve written about my house in particular, and the memories I’d had there.

Secondly, I could talk about the form and function of houses in general, and how they differed over the ages.

I went with the first idea - although this was a more personal way of approaching the problem, the second one seemed a bit more abstract and I wasn’t too confident in it succeeding. I was no architecture major, and although there were numerous differences in the houses here in Arconia from Earth, I wasn’t sure whether I could give that kind of work a satisfying conclusion.

And so, I started writing about the first time we had moved into the house my parent’s currently lived in, which had been when I was four. I also added a few notable anecdotes, like that time our roof had started leaking and made the dining room uninhabitable, and lastly, ending with the time when I had to leave to go to college.

As I finished the last letter the blue glow changed to the telltale sign of success- green. My opponent was still writing, and unless he could pull out a Rank Two manual the game was as good as mine.

However, despite the fact that I had won I didn’t feel happy in the slightest.