{Outside the Nexus Hub}
Seeing that he had the attention of the crowd, Lukas continued selling his point, "You know from the starting point, the deeper we went into this maze the difficulty kept on increasing, first there was a panda that was too slow. Then you met fellow humans whose help you needed to reach here otherwise you might not be able to escape the bear. And since the difficulty increased, this shouldn't be the only safe point, there should be more villages or towns or cities..."
He didn't need to spell it out, the rest of the stuff the group would talk among themselves. The officer on the other hand was looking at the riled-up crowd and then turned to Lukas and spoke with a sharp tone, "Maybe we need to talk at a quieter place."
Lukas lifted his hands up in surrender, although he was in a hurry, he didn't actually lie. According to his calculations, there must be another bigger town ahead. While the need for a safe point might be one option, the second one would be the fact that there were just humans in this town.
'And since I killed the goblins on the way here that means that there are more than 1 race in this title. In addition, there were 4 suns mentioned in my unique title. So at the very least, there should be 4 more races out there participating in the trails.' Lukas thought he didn't voice out any concerns as he followed Brandon.
The tutorial village was quite big, he had just walked through one street, the main street, for now. Brandon apparently on the other hand already had a basic understanding of the area. Unlike the village it proclaimed it to be, the tutorial town was built like a modern-day city.
The shops on the main street were in control of whatever was controlling everything else, when one ventures deeper into town they encounter actual aliens. Lukas had to suppress himself from double backing several times at the reddish skin of the person walking casually by.
'Wait who's that, why can't I sense them.' Lukas was surprised that the reddish brute didn't have a sense of existence.
"Don't react too dramatically," Brandon warned as they kept moving, the streets were slowly filled with more aliens, and even alien kids were playing on the streets. Lukas was a little overwhelmed as a lot of questions popped into his head.
[Grockichick Bangrull Chalthur Lv 31]
[Screpple Pithick Bullosh Lv 43]
'I kind of understand though why Brandon would warn me not to antagonize them... The difference was a bit too much wasn't it?'
They walked a little more and then turned to arrive at an Inn. At least that's what the sign said, the man in the reception was another red brute who recognized Brandon and didn't stop them as they walked upstairs.
'I thought this was just a testing space that the system had taken over, but it seems like this is an actual place in the world. And who are these people living here, did the system simply invade their world and summon us to start a tutorial.' Lukas thought.
He was interested in talking to them and since the system does the job of translation he wasn't that worried about there being a language barrier. First, he had to deal with Brandon Harris and his fellow officers.
Lukas sensed that there were 2 more officers upstairs, he walked into the hallway but when Brandon went to open the room within which he could sense 2 more people, she stopped.
"Alright we can talk in the hallway, no need to go into too much trouble..." Lukas spoke as he stopped, he smiled as Brandon turned around to look at him, he left the door open as he took a step toward Lukas and stopped.
'Since they are military they must have better weapons, although the notifications said this was a safe zone there is no need to test this theory, at least not with my body on the line.' Lukas thought as Brandon finally spoke.
"Why did you purposefully antagonize the crowd?" Brandon asked.
"Because we are in a crisis and without enticing their greed most of them would simply stay in this safe and contribute nothing. They get 1 copper coin daily which is enough for their needs, they would just waste away 30 days in hopes of a rescue when even the military is quite stranded." Lukas replied obviously.
Throughout his life the best way to lie was that he had figured out was to mix as much truth as possible. So the entire persona that he had created was that of a cunning opportunistic. And truthfully he was one, there was just no limit to what he would do for something that he wanted.
'And there is no need to overly change that persona in a do-and-die world, no one would really be super careful around an opportunist. Especially only the opportunists would normally survive...'
"What contribution do you want them to make, is it to collect TP?" Brandon asked, the 'for you' part was almost at the tip of his tongue but he held it back. The red name was influencing too much of his negative emotions at the moment.
"You're quite aggressive for someone who wants my help don't you," Lukas asked as an annoyed look appeared on Brandon's face.
"Come one you can ask, I'll answer one of your questions truthfully," Lukas spoke. He figured that the opinion of the officers was biased because of his red name, maybe they had encountered something along the way so he must know that Lukas must have killed another human to get a red name.
'I need to figure out a way to get rid of my red name... there are so many shops of the natives here, maybe they would have some way.'
"How many classes are there," Brandon spoke, he only asked one question.
"Just one question huh... alright, don't play my game. Inside the nexus hub is a nexus crystal, once you have 5 levels you can go in there and select a class. You get to choose 1 class of the 10 presented to you based on your status screen." Lukas replied honestly.
Brandon looked doubtful and Lukas nodded and then continued cheerfully, "Thanks for the walk through the village, hope you manage to figure out which big bad civilization managed to capture all the humans." Lukas shot as he turned around and walked away.
He purposefully made his steps louder as he walked down the stairs. He was planning on using the military officers to increase the rumors but that officer was way too suspicious of him.
...
Brandon looked at the man named Lukas walk away, his footsteps were slightly heavy but his name was glowing bright red. After a while, two more officers walked out of the room and looked at Brandon.
"Well at least we got some info, and since he's not dead and none of the natives cared then that means Micheal can come into town safely," Hector spoke.
"It's my fault I annoyed him with my suspicions," Brandon sighed, he was debating what to consider the information that they had just got. Things escalated a little too quickly, at first he wanted to bring Lukas to his room and then slowly wear his guard down by sharing about what happened with Micheal.
"It's just the way he didn't want to come into a room screamed suspicious to me. Except for a criminal, a normal citizen would always trust an officer..." Brandon spoke but then he sighed and shook his head.
"Ignore this encounter, we'll keep an eye out for him, according to the innkeeper the red name should automatically disappear after a day," Brandon spoke and the other two nodded.
"Let's pool some money and help Micheal level up, once he gets a class too we will have two classes and then we can move out with confidence," Karim spoke. The proud expression on his face was replaced by a stoic face, his entire demeanor was a little different before when he was working on gathering Lukas's attraction.
...
Lukas walked down the stairs and walked straight for the Innkeeper, rather than disturbing a resident and being smacked around he would rather talk to a businessman.
"What does it take to book a room in this place," Lukas reverted back to his polite tone.
"1 bronze per night," the reddish brute replied, his voice was gruff but fortunately it worked and Lukas was able to understand what he was saying.
For the most part, the man...? in front of him had the physique of a human male. He had a squarish face and wide jaw with facial scarring around his mouth. Lukas could see no teeth anywhere and his nose was like Voldemorts, flat and almost nonexistent except for the 2 holes.
Lukas leaned forward and asked, "Can you tell me where I can find a potions shop around here?"
The brute looked at Lukas and frowned, after a moment of silence he spoke, "Left, $%&%$ down the river."
'I'm not sure about what he said there but presumably I should go left... and there should be a river.'
Lukas nodded in thanks but the brute had already stopped looking in his direction.
'I'm, not sure it was his face or something but that guy was rude...'
'Now where would this potions shop be?'
...
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AN- I know the encounter with Brandon was random and weird but it would make sense a couple of chapters later!