Rein had already decided to join the Divine Scale Pavillion and as for Colinde, after thinking about it for some time they decided to join the Demon Slaying Division of the empire itself. There were several reasons behind that but the most important fact was that in this place Colinde would be able to get a very good treatment without losing her freedom.
The empire was the true ruler of this world. All the sects and clans needed to submit to the Empire in order to exist. Obviously as it was able to maintain its rule for thousands of years so the empire was definitely very powerful.
Your source for fiction: m-vlempyr.
The emperor was the person who was overseeing everything from the high heavens. But they had declared themselves as holy beings and did not bother much with mundane things. That was the main reason why many common people did not know anything about their own ruler at all.
As for the place where the ruler of the world lived, it was actually on an island that was floating high in the sky. This place was named Celestial Mystic Palace. That was the residence of this world's royal family. There was also a rumour that the skills were a gift from the almighty emperor. Obviously as Rein knew the truth, he knew that was not the case.
There were quite a few organisations that were helping the emperor in ruling the nation and the demon slaying division was one such organisation. The biggest enemy of the empire was the demons, so this division had the duty of cutting down all the demonic creatures and to protect the empire from them.
There were obviously clans and sects who were also experts in hunting demons but the Empire never completely relied on them. As a super power, they took care of all the duties on their own without depending on anyone else. That was also the reason why the royal family had invested a lot of resources on the demon slaying division and it was a very good place for learning.
There were three big book stores in the city and Rein was planning to check all of them out. The first book store was run by the government so he was not very hopeful about it as from the rumours this store mostly sold books that glorified the current emperor and the royal family.
Just as he had expected, most of the books of this store were of that kind. But still Rein brought two such books. One was about the history of the Royal family and the other book had some information about the current state of the imperial power. These two books could give him some ideas about what the top power of this world was capable of even if the details were a bit exaggerated.
But that was not the only great thing that Rein was able to find. He was also able to find a section of the book store where old books were kept and from that bundle he was able to find two gems. One of them was a ancient book that depicted the world before the rule of the current imperial family. And the other book was about the origin of skills.
There was a achievement where Rein needed to find the truth behind the world's system and that rewarded a lot of achievement points. This book might be able to help him for that achivement even though most of the things written here were only speculations made by the author.
Those four books were quite costly even after the price of two books were reduced due to their bad condition. But for Rein this purchase was worth it. That same night be finished studying all of those books and what he was able to find out was fascinating. Specially the writer of the last book about skills was very intelligent and what he had guessed in the book was very close to the truth.
He had even managed to guess that their was a higher will that was giving skills to the people and that will was not the emperor or any other living being. This was mostly true and Rein was quite impressed by it.
So the next day Rein decided to visit the other two shops and even the smaller book shops as he wanted to see if he could find something this valuable again. He did get his hopes up he knew that the first time he was just lucky. But still he was really hoping to get lucky once again.