“I want to change handlers,” I tell her and wait for a pop-up message.
“That doesn’t work here,” she sighs and points at the storage cubes I brought with me. “White sand was made by a powerful Absolute long ago. It was his way of dealing with annoying mana users and he modified it to trap Champion Caius and others. You surely must know how dangerous it could be if someone were to release it on the Entrance floor.”
“There are people with damaged arcane weapons and surely there are others with full arcane weapons. Plenty of people would be capable of wiping out the entrance floor on their own without any need for a weapon or item.”
“Even arcane items need to be used with intent, while there is not a single attendee capable of controlling the white sand. Do you think you’re the first one to bring white sand here, to Beyond? What do you think would happen if you were to release it here in the highly mana-saturated entrance floor?”
“What happened last time?”
“Someone brought it here, it got out of the container, became charged by the abundance of ambient mana and the mana radiating from the people here. It wiped out one of the entrance outposts—and any attendees and locals that were there. A single pile that was probably smaller than two of your boxes combined.”
“Oh.”
“Yes, oh. So let’s do it like this: I will take these boxes, I will also take the weapons you made out of it. There are a few handlers with permission to play around with things like white sand, so I will sell it to them and give you a portion of the shards later. And if you try to bring more, I’ll just take it from you.”
“And you’ll take a cut?”
“Obviously.”
I can’t help but feel disappointed. Part of me expected this, but I was hoping for a different outcome. At least I’ll get some shards out of it. If I don’t get enough to make it worth it, I’ll be angry.
“Can’t these handlers just ask Rulers to get them white sand or find some themselves?” I ask.
“I know what you’re doing you know, but I’ll play along this time and give you this for free. It’s impossible to enter the tutorial twice. No one can enter the tutorial other than the attendees from the First Generation.”
“Not even the Rulers?”
The look she gives me makes it clear that’s all I’m gonna get.
After a while, she smiles from behind her table. “Weren’t you going to change handlers last time?”
“I forgot.”
“Did you?”
“Well, a lot of things happened. I might be thinking about it now though, so you better have some good information for me.”
“Nope.”
“I’m asking for a new handler the second I get out. What with your attitude last time, and now this situation with the white sand—I've put in a lot of effort, you know.”
“Sure, do it.”
Her smile widens even more as she watches me, resting her chin in the palm of her hand, “But I’m in a good mood, so if you ask the right question, I might answer. You only have a few more seconds before you get transported to the entrance floor, so be quick.”
“Who was the ruler on the first floor?” I ask.
She chuckles and leans back in her chair with a relaxed ease. A playful light flickers in her eyes, and she waits a bit, stretching the seconds until I feel myself getting pulled away.
As if that were the signal she’d been waiting for, she asks, “Do you remember that deer you skinned?”
Then I disappear, without even a chance to respond.
And there I stand, shocked to my core, surrounded by the dozens of Beyonders walking all around me, going about their business here on the entrance floor.
There is no fucking way.
An hour later, I’m 99% sure that old hag, asshole of a handler, was just messing with me.
I catch myself wondering why I haven’t already asked for a new handler. It would be so simple—just say the words out loud and go through the options. But to my frustration, I still haven’t done it. All because I believe her when she tells me she’s one of the few handlers who can provide the kind of information she gave me last time.
Damn it.
I still have a few hours until I have to go to the meeting I advertised on the board, so I take a moment to walk around.
“Hello,” I greet.
“Hello,” the woman smiles, turning to me. “Luna noticed your approach,” she says as she pets her dog, who wags her tail in response. “She said you smell like a human from Earth, so I thought you might be the one who left the post.”
“Luna’s pretty smart.”
“She is, right?” The black-haired woman smiles happily. “My name is Leticia, and this is my Luna as I’ve already said,” she states, introducing the golden retriever as if she were the most important member of their party.
Luna turns to me, the same gentle brown eyes retrievers usually have. But there’s an uncanny intelligence behind those eyes. I don’t feel any indication of a scan, but I’m sure the retriever is checking me out and appraising the danger I present.
“It’s fine, Luna, we’re all from Earth here,” Leticia says, smiling and petting her once again, prompting Luna to quietly turn away from me.
Leticia then gestures at the young boy. “This is Spacewolf. He’s really sweet, so please don’t mind the name! The mountain pretending to be a human next to him is CarrotCake.”
The bald man, who sits almost two heads taller than me and twice as wide, smiles brightly, his teeth gleaming in the light.
“My name in the community is Noname,” I introduce myself.
“Hello, Noname. I hope we’ll learn to drop these nicknames sometime in the near future. My handler told me that you can even change your Community name, but only once, and only to your real name. So please think about it.”
Spacewolf snorts while CarrotCake stands up and stops in front of me. Obscuring most of my view with his beard as I look up at him.
“Round?” he asks.
“Fifth, you?” I return, curious if he will try to lie.
“First round, winner of the 1st tournament. You?”
“I won our first tournament as well.”
The feeling of danger rises again and it’s immediate this time. Even stronger than before and the man’s smile becomes even brighter.
Then the two presences I felt coming closer reach us, Luna the retriever reacting exactly the way she did when I showed up.
“That makes three of us,” says a man a few years older than me, bringing himself to the muscular man’s attention, which he ignores. “I’m Derick, and this is Noelle, 8th round.”
Derick has long red hair tied into a ponytail. He’s slim and dressed in a pair of black pants and a long sleeved shirt. And to top it all off he’s unarmed.
Noelle is shorter, with brown hair, and wears a long bow strapped to her back, seemingly made out of metal with no string.
They, like the others, seem accustomed to each other’s presence.
“Isn’t that great! What a beautiful day this is shaping up to be!” The bald man, who I refuse to call CarrotCake, shouts as he stomps, leaving a crack in the cobblestones lining the street below him. It’s just a simple movement, playful, devoid of mana, yet it perfectly illustrates the power of his body.
I smell another single-attribute enthusiast. It's just a shame he chose Strength.
Leticia rushes to calm the bald man down, and I have a strong suspicion he wouldn’t mind starting a fight right here and now. He certainly seems like the type.
Derick and Noelle stand quietly off to the side, talking to each other. The winner of the 8th round's tournament, it makes me curious about what kind of abilities he could be hiding. Unlike the musclehead over there, it's not quite so obvious.
I check the countdown, the time for the meeting nearly up.
Exactly on the second, the last person enters the area, a young man with green eyes and long black hair tied back in a ponytail. He has a beauty mark under the corner of his left eye. That guy...
So we have three winners from the 1st round of tournaments.
An archer with a weird ass bow.
A woman who snuck her dog into the tutorial.
Spacewolf.
And lastly, the cowardly Savant.