It seemed this dude just came to meet him, not knowing what just happened on the train. Thomas felt curious as to how this dude learnt about him coming. But when he recalled his scroll, that weird statue thing back there, he realised there must be an alarming system or something that notified Mark about him.
"It's thanks to that dude," Thomas wanted to tell the truth, to just shut up at the last moment when he got a glaring look from that dude when he mentioned his name and pointed towards him using his cane. It seemed this dude was quite attentive to every single action of his, despite not showing any sign of that except for now.
Thomas gulped, before explaining what happened, telling the same story he and that dude agreed on.
"Oh, isn't it the mad demon?!" just when Thomas finished telling the story, Mark said in realisation.
"Do you know him?"
"Sure, it's quite fortunate for you to be on his side," Mark shifted his eyes away from the mad demon, as if he saw someone he hated or despised, "that dude… He is simply a magnet for trouble."
"Tell me about it!"
"Don't worry, despite the two of us being C grade superheroes, I'm not as hard to deal with like him," Mark's smile made Thomas feel much closer to this dude than what he felt back when he dealt with the mad demon.
But what he said next made that smile pale, and even slowly vanish.
"That's great! Then who is stronger? You or that demon?"
"Well… There are many differences between superheroes, and it's not just about superpower and such…"
"Oh, I see," Thomas didn't need to hear the answer to his question. He realised that Mark was weaker than that mad demon.
That nice attitude of his was just enough to tell Thomas he wasn't on par with that cold hearted mad demon.
"Ahem," Mark felt a little embarrassed here, couldn't help but steal a glance back at the mad demon, one that was filled with envy more than hatred, "let's go. I got to take you towards the gathering place of others."
"Gathering place?" Thomas' thoughts shifted from the reasons behind the attitude of Mark towards the mad demon, and why the former didn't like seeing the latter, and focused on what Mark just said.
"What? Did you think you are the only one who got tested and got his superpower detected in the region? Come, we have to travel for two hours before arriving at our destination."
"But the train is…" Thomas looked at the train that seemed like it wouldn't budge an inch from its current spot anytime soon.
"We don't need it," Mark started to walk towards the nearby metallic bridge, "that place is inside the town. We'll go there using Monica."
"Monica?!" Thomas instantly realised what Mark meant. And that made him imagine the worst.
He tried Becky once, and it was a hellish experience that he didn't want to repeat again. But Mark already moved in fast steps, like he didn't want to be anywhere close to that mad demon for any more second.
The bridge wasn't like the one Thomas saw in the station of Dante settlement. This one was much broader and higher, with fine coloured glass decorations on the sides of it.
When Thomas arrived at the other platform following Mark, he couldn't help but turn his eyes towards the mad demon. And as he expected that dude was just following him.
As the two gazes met, Thomas felt hidden pressure falling over him. It felt like that dude was silently warning him from saying anything about what happened, issuing the last warning to him about this issue.
Thomas just shifted his eyes away, continued on his path, feeling like he totally turned out this page forever.
Yet he didn't know that fate got other plans for him and that demon.
"Here is Monica!"
Thomas went out of the station, to find himself standing on the side of a very wide street. This street was at least a couple of hundred metres wide, with a wide place for pedestrians walking on both sides and in the middle of it.
There were lots of big vehicles walking in this street. And Thomas could tell from the first glance how different these vehicles looked from Becky.
"At least they started to mind air resistance in designing these things," Thomas thought to himself while watching the more wind friendly vehicles and carts here.
He didn't just see vehicles like Becky, running on Qi balls, but also huge carts, looking like old caravans, being dragged by huge and weird shaped animals.
Thomas recalled what the mad demon spoke about pets before. And that made him guess that these animals were pets. Each one was in the size of a minibus on Earth, looking like bulls which grew bigger and fiercer.
Before he'd seen enough, Mark dragged his attention towards a huge vehicle that was like Becky, but with more air resistance care when designing it.
"What do you think of my Monica?" Mark stood in front of his metallic behemoth, and Thomas couldn't help but sing praise about it.
"It's the most beautiful car I've ever seen!"
"Car? What does that even mean?!" Mark was puzzled for a second, before turning again towards Monica, "but you got fine taste. My Monica indeed is the most beautiful ride in the entire town. Come, don't be shy, let me give you a nice tour around the town while going to my place."
Thomas didn't get what he said wrong, but it seemed the terms of cars wasn't known here in this world. "They call it a ride, interesting," Thomas took this note to heart, and climbed up Monica like he did with Becky.
Mark did like what Oliver did before climbing on Monica, placing one Qi ball at the engine.
Then he started to get busy dealing with the metres and gears once he climbed up there. As for Thomas, he was more attentive this time and leant to the side and started to examine his face without damaging that big mirror.
"A scar won't appear the longer you imagine it," Mark laughed, mistaking Thomas' actions here. The latter wanted to recall where he saw such a stranger's face before, and yet he failed.
It was a total alien face to him. And that meant the owner of this body was someone living in this world or used to be.
"Who was he?" Thomas didn't have any clue about that. He just appeared in front of the statue, without any lead about where this dude came from.
He read a few novels before speaking about people travelling with their minds and consciousness from one world to another, living in new bodies. But they were always armed up with memories of the owners of their new bodies.
He thought before about such kinds of stories, thinking how silly and unrealistic it was for such a thing to happen, always taking it as plot armour.
But now? He felt how silly his thoughts were before. Without having any clue about the memories of this body, without even having a single lead about who he was, Thomas was like a blind man walking in the middle of a landmine!
"I hope there isn't a big disaster linked to this dude's identity in the end," Thomas prayed inside, while Monica finally roared and released bellows of black smoke.
"Hang tight! We will roll on," Mark laughed, seemingly more comfortable when he was far away from the mad demon.
And then Monica got itself on the road, joining the bustling stream of carts and rides in this street.
Unlike Becky, Thomas didn't feel the same annoying experience when Monica went fast. "At least they got rounded tires here," Thomas thanked the ones who learnt from such silly mistakes in his mind, while watching the world around.
He thought before that Dante settlement was big, suiting more to be called a town. But this Retto town here was much bigger, looking more like a city or something.
It had more buildings, big ones even, reaching more than ten storey high. And it didn't just get a few of these, but as much as Thomas could count.
The street he was on got suddenly elevated, as if Monica was going up a hill. Then the street opened over a flat path for a few minutes, before starting to fall down.
It was like a hill. And when Thomas was at its peak, he saw that this hill was high, much higher than what lay at the distance, what lay at the heart of this place.
It was like he came over a high hill at a high ground, and the deeper parts of this town was like residing at a deep and low levelled valley.
This hill-like experience got repeated on regular intervals, making it look a bit weird. When Thomas looked back, he could see even at the peak of the further inside hills, he was still at a lower height than the first hill he boarded.
To add more to his surprise, the station seemed to be situated in the middle of the town, not at its border or something. And that meant, and if his thoughts went by logic, there were much higher hills back there.
Despite the presence of these hills, Thomas felt like everything around wasn't affected by them. Buildings were built normally, and people were walking like there was nothing wrong here.
When he looked right and left, he saw that each hill was going for the end of his eyesight. And that meant these hills weren't just like normal hills, but took a circular shape, like rings or something.
At certain places, the speed of Monica got lowered as there were lots of other rides and carts out there.
"It's the rush hour," Mark explained, "people are going back from their work by now. As you can tell, the sun is already setting."
"I see," to Thomas, the one who lived before in the most bustling and busy city on Earth, this was nothing like a real rush hour.
But the words of Mark made him realise something. "I was here for around ten hours. The sun was already high in the sky when I arrived, and now it's about to set. That means…"
His thoughts paused, looked at Mark, before hesitated to ask him about this. It was common knowledge to know how long a single day in this world would last, right?
Asking about such information, one that any child would answer, would place him in a tight spot. So, Thomas kept this question to himself and ran simple maths in his mind.
"The day here is around two times the day on Earth…" he got to such a conclusion, which made him realise even this planet was much different than Earth.
Thomas got used to the style of fashion people of this world used. It was close to the Victorian style. And seeing men with canes, hats, and weird vests and coats didn't startle him like seeing women wearing gowns and balloon dresses all over the town.
"By the way, what is that thing?" As Thomas got over the back of Monica, he removed his coat and placed his tree pot next to him on a seat.
The back of Monica was double in size compared to Becky. And that told Thomas that people of this world seemed to not love travelling alone.
Having a car with three rows was something extravagant on Earth. Most cars got only two rows, with five people riding a single car at most.
But here? He saw these rides looking more like small buses, with few even carrying close to fifty people on their back.
Mark motioned towards the tree pot while showing his curiosity about it.
"It's a token from my hometown," Thomas didn't know what to say except this. And he wasn't lying. This pot with the Bonsai tree inside was a token from Earth, something to always remind him that he came from there.
"Oh, it reminds me of how I used to behave when I first got my superpower detected," Mark said with a long sigh, "back then I used to hold an old hat of my father around, like it was the most precious thing in the world."
Thomas looked at him while feeling surprised that his little lie went through and had even stirred old memories in this dude.
But Mark mistook his look and seemed to get that Thomas wanted to hear about his old self story.
"I came from a town from a different sector…" Mark started to speak continuously for the next hour. He said lots of stuff about himself, even spoke about stories from when he was a kid!
Thomas didn't show any signs of annoyance, instead he was attentively listening to this dude. He was an alien to this world, and so he needed to learn as much as possible about this world.
And that dude was indeed quite the talkative, the total opposite of the mad demon.
Thomas learnt lots of stuff from him. First, he learnt that this sector was formed into different regions, all were governed by the central SA.
SA meant superheroes affairs, and SAs were the places where superheroes would work after getting their superpowers tested.
Superpowers were ranked just the same way the mad demon told him. But this dude was generous enough to explain more about the process of assessing these superpowers.
Youths like Thomas were going to be gathered from every corner in each region, then be assembled at the towns and big cities. They'd go to the SA department in these towns and cities, undergo an ancient superpower assessing test.
This test came from beyond the turbulent times, before even the Great Monarch time. No one knew for sure the ins and outs of this test, but in general all the discovered youths with superpowers would be granted a chance to absorb concentrated and pure Qi from Qi stones.
Then according to the reaction each of their bodies would show, superpowers would be assessed. And the one to do this wasn't any superhero, but something that laid there at the place of the test.
Thomas tried to understand better about the process, but Mark simply told him he'd get to know everything when he'd get through this. Mark then started to speak about this world in great detail.
Mark was someone who worked for the talent discovery department, a department that was in each big town and city in the sector. According to him, after each individual would be tested, he'd be sent towards an SA in another place. And there the new life of superheroes would start.
According to Mark, the test wouldn't just assess what power one had, but also decide what job the superhero would work at afterwards.
In brief, this test was like a life determining event for any superhero. And what sucked was that no one got any control over it.
Mark reassured Thomas when the latter showed signs of panic. He told him all the superheroes experienced it like this, and everything would end just fine for him.
Thomas learnt many things about the natural order of the world here. Superheroes were the higher class in this world, and SAs were the places which ruled over them.
Thomas learnt that Mark and other old superheroes came from other sectors when this one was discovered. And when Thomas asked about salary, Mark laughed, motioned his head towards the street, saying that being a superhero came with many perks, and money wasn't an issue for anyone like them.
Thomas didn't get what Mark meant, but he recalled how the conductor acted when he saw the mad demon before and didn't even ask him for a ticket. That seemed a clear sign over how things in this world worked.
"We are here!"
Thomas finally got freed from the endless stream of words that was coming out of Mark's mouth. Once he looked at the place they stopped at, he couldn't help but suck in a cold air of breath.
Mark told him already that there was a place designated by the SA of the town to gather youths like him. And he also got to learn that five other youths were in there, waiting for the big day that was just two days away.
Thomas imagined a big building, but not this huge land that got surrounded with a huge and well attended garden.
They stopped on a metallic gate, while a two storey big building, villa like one, stood in the inside of this territory.
"Come on, let me introduce you to the boys and girls here," Mark just waved his hand, releasing a wave of red Qi that instantly pushed the gates open.
Thomas was sure this dude didn't damage the gate using his Qi, but just used his Qi to get identified and gain access to enter.
That told him even if tech in this world a bit was rudimentary, close to the level of the industrial revolution era back at Earth, there were still few cool tricks like this one.
Mark drove his Monica towards the front of the villa, and there William spotted a fountain with a statue. It was a statue of a ball emitting water out from it over the heads of many people who were immersed under water.
"This is a sign of what the Great Monarch did to our world back then," Mark noticed Thomas' interest, so he didn't keep his mouth and added, "this ball is the Qi ball that you'll find in every corner of our world."
"And these people?" Thomas pointed towards the immersed heads of many people, who were sculpted in smaller sizes than usual.
"Well, I never noticed them before," Mark didn't place any importance over this. And this was a clear sign how superheroes, even the kindest and easiest to approach ones in this world, saw normal people here.
Thomas got the message of this statue. It was a signal that Qi balls were on a higher level than the normal people here, a blessing that normal people should bow and kneel, worship in virtue and veneration.