Zion clicked the shop from the menu and glanced at the list of items available in that section. He could already see the one section for identities, modern technology, ancient items, and miscellaneous utilities. He automatically chose the identities section as a form appeared on his screen.
The system poked his head from behind the form and tilted his head. "What are you doing, host?"
"Solving the case." While saying that, Zion filled up a fake name, Rupert Biermann. He had noticed that most of the people belonging to this elf race had German names, so he chose the name of one of the people he knew from his world. No one would know anyway that Rupert was actually a famous German singer from his world. Then he filled out other details such as age, race, and social status before clicking on the confirm button at the end.
After that, a popup came in front of his eyes telling him to wait a minute before the authorities could verify this form.
The pop-up kept blinking as the system walked over and stood right in front of the pop-up and stared at the human with narrowed eyes. "Why aren't you telling me the details?"
"You won't understand." Zion waited for a few more seconds before the pop-up disappeared from the screen and instead, another pop-up flashed in front of his eyes that wrote: "Your identity will change into that of a lower grade elf citizen within five minutes. Please wait."
Then and only then Zion exhaled a breath of relief and glanced at the system, who poked his head from behind the form again. Then the human said, "Let's go. We have something to investigate."
After a few minutes, an elf guy emerged and walked on the dark street who looked like he didn't have enough money to buy clothes for himself. He wore ragged robes of mud color that had patches at the bottom. It was Zion.
He looked down at his clothes and then turned to glance at the points that remained: 80. A frown crossed his forehead at that. "What kind of b*llsh*t is this?! I can understand that identity can cost 10 points, but what about clothes? Why do clothes as bad as the ones I'm wearing cost so much?"
The system came out and shrugged before he looked at the host with a sympathetic gaze. "I can't do anything about it. It's been designed to make sure that the hosts don't end up with imbalanced karmic points. If it's imbalanced, the souls would be punished severely for multiple lifetimes to get those points back."
Zion's eyes narrowed at that. He had heard about karma points before from Methu man and the system, and this was the second time he could hear about it again. The more he heard that word, the more curious he became about it, but he knew that this wasn't the time to dwell on it. He put it aside and walked toward the direction of the palace.
After finally reaching his destination, he opened the gates to a familiar beautiful palace, and since he looked like an elf, no one stopped him. Even if he had worn a ragged dress, the elves who guarded the gate didn't spare a single glance at his face as if they were habitual of seeing beggars entering the palace.
He walked inside the palace without any difficulty. He remembered that day seeing the queen elf sitting there while sipping tea. But this time, both the elf queen and the table were absent. The porch was empty, and it was filled with pots of flowers.
Zion actually didn't know where to go after this to join the palace servants. Since he didn't know anything about elf powers and didn't know whether he even had a constitution for that, he could only join as a servant. But how should he go about after this?
Just as he was thinking about this, a soldier walked out of the palace while chatting with his colleague.
"Her Majesty used severe torturous methods to get that dhampir girl's mouth open, but her mouth was sealed, and the only time she parted her lips, she only cursed badly at her majesty!" The soldier got angry all of a sudden and shook his head. "If only I was powerful enough, I would have dealt with that dhampir killer rather than troubling her majesty with it."
"Big talks." Another soldier scoffed and crossed his arms over his chest. "You belong to the third level, not even close to being powerful enough. How do you plan on leveling up when we can't even get access to spiritual power?"
"Don't worry, friend." The first soldier had a determined expression on his face. "As long as we solve this murder case, the ancient tree will forgive us for our sins and start giving us spiritual powers."
"You seriously believe this rumor?"
"Of course, everyone has started to believe it. And it's not a rumor, but reality. I-" The first soldier was about to say something else when his eyes narrowed at an unfamiliar elf standing in front of the porch with a dazed expression on his face. After seeing his ragged clothes, the soldier confirmed that this person must have entered the palace to get started as an imperial servant. "Hey, you. What's your name?"
Zion pursed his lips and glanced at the elves standing in front of him. He had heard about how Lia was tortured in the cell to get a statement about how she was the killer, so his mind went blank as he ended up imagining such a scene. It was only when the elves asked him his name when he came back to himself and glanced at them.
For some reason, he felt an urgency in his heart after hearing of how Lia was tortured. Even though he didn't like her that much, she at least didn't deserve to be treated like that. At the very least, she was his first-ever master who taught him sword-fighting skills. He felt a sense of responsibility toward her, so he couldn't help but feel sad after hearing of her condition.
He took a deep breath to calm his restless mind and said, "Rupert Biermann."
The soldiers nodded and pointed at the narrow path on the right. "Go there, and keep walking until you see a building half as big as the main palace. Go inside, and find the head servant there."
After saying that, the servants walked away while chatting about something else.