Nerran led Max toward the center of the city. Max didn’t have his bearings yet, but that they were headed to a more commercial district was evident in how the buildings grew closer together and sported flashy signs and brighter coats of paint. Pedestrians filled the sidewalks, drifting between shops and stalls, and their conversations and the hawking of wares filled the air.

“This is it,” Nerran said, angling toward a shopfront whose circular sign bore a complex coat of arms. “Be polite. I come here often.”

As they neared the door, Max got a closer look at the shop sign. A pair of scissors stood in the foreground, a needle and thread behind it, and several layers of clothes behind that. In his honest assessment, the scissors alone would have made for a much clearer logo. Was there a Marketer Blessing? Wait — what about Scammer? Tax Evader? He shuddered as he imagined what a multi-level-marketing Blessing would entail.

Inside, a thin middle-aged man greeted them with slight bow. His slicked back brown hair hung an inch short from his shoulders, a goatee completed the framing of his face, and round silver spectacles magnified his eyes slightly larger than they ought to be. He wore a waistcoat, trousers, and shoes that matched his hair color exactly.

“Welcome back, Master Nerran. You’ve brought a friend! Wonderful! Welcome to Shilden’s Clothing and Tailoring. How may I help you?”

In the center of the shop were tables laden with folded shirts and pants; along the walls, from wooden bars affixed to shelves hung a variety of jackets and other clothes. There was a counter toward the back of the shop, but it didn’t look like it saw much use. Shilden stood halfway between the counter and the entrance.

“For him, three sets of casual wear, the cheapest you have, nothing trendy or distinct, and a set of formal wear.”

“Of course. I can have those ready in two days. Anything for you, sir?”

“No, thank you.”

From his waistcoast, Shilden produced a rolled up tape measure and took Max’s measurements, starting with his torso length.

“Forgive my rudeness,” Shilden said as he moved to Max’s inseam, “but may I ask what cloth your trousers are cut from? I’m ashamed to say I don’t recognize it.”

“It’s denim,” Max said, belatedly noticing Nerran’s pointed glare. It was soon followed by a dark-furred hand on his shoulder, practically crushing it. “Ow, what do you — ” Max squirmed, but he couldn’t escape the cat man’s grasp.

“Can we get him an overcoat, too?” Nerran said, his expression smoothed over. “We’ll take it now. It doesn’t need to be perfectly sized.”

“Of course.”

Shilden flipped through a rack of brown coats. He pulled one out and helped Max into it, pulling and straightening it as he went.

“Good?” Shilden asked in a confident tone that said the question was a formality.

The trench coat ended about an inch above his knees. With his arms hanging, the sleeves covered his wrists and came just to the pinch in his hands. Max circled his arms around. Didn’t he look more suspicious in this? Parents would usher their children away from him in a hurry.

Shilden looked at Nerran, clearly aware of who was paying.

“We’ll take it. How much?”

* * *

As soon as the shop door closed behind them, Nerran pulled Max into the nearest alley.

“Don’t talk about your circumstances.” Nerran’s voice was low and threatening. “To anyone. Not even to the Red Handers, in public.”

He wanted to protest, feeling like he were in grade school again, being chastised by the teacher. It wasn’t as though he were handing out schematics for guns. It wasn’t even polyester or spandex. Jeans were made of denim, which he was pretty sure was made of cotton. What was he supposed to do, go pantsless?

“Sorry, it seemed harmless.”

“It doesn’t matter. Don’t do or say anything that makes you stand out. If you’re unsure, stay silent. It was a mistake taking you out like this. You should have worn my clothes.” Nerran said the last part under his breath, as if he were admonishing himself rather than Max.

Did he stand out that much? Sure, his clothes looked odd, and certainly he couldn’t pass for one of the farmers selling vegetables or an average pedestrian, but on the way to Shilden’s they’d passed many people in strange outfits. If anyone’s appearance had drawn eyes as they passed, it had been the nobles on carriages with unique and eye-catching dresses and suits, the people in expensive-looking robes or armor or all sorts of exotic garments (and lack thereof in the case of one enormous bare-chested man). Besides, Max felt walking around in a trench coat on a clear day was hardly less suspicious than jeans and a t-shirt.

“What would happen? If people knew about . . . my circumstances?”

Nerran looked around before lowering his voice and answering. “You have no idea. You’d be devoured. You’ve noticed how much you interest Scarlet, yes?”

Max nodded. The light in her eyes at every mention of teleportation, her unnecessarily difficult math test this morning. When she looked at him with eyes that made him feel sympathy for labrats and pigs on farms.

“Scarlet barely cares about normal Mage things; she takes interest in almost nothing besides what she finds amusing. She reads news on teleportation as a hobby. Real Mages would leave trails of bodies to find you. High-Level Mages. The nicest ones would try to use you or drain your mind. The rest would cut you open.”

Max could imagine. That was shared between worlds, although on Earth, he hoped, the practice had been nearly eradicated. Human experimentation. Here it would be magical human experimentation.

He’d never tell Nerran, but even that made him a little excited. That would be a war crime! But magical experimentation…

“If even one rumor pops up, opportunists will come sniffing around.”

Was that hippocrisy he smelled? Sure, the Red Handers weren’t dissecting him or poking him with needles, but they were forcing him to manipulate his Levels and training him to be their personal theorycrafter. Surely there were other groups that would offer him the same deal, a government that believed in human rights or a do-gooder knight in shining armor. But he could hardly ask the Red Handers about what groups he could jump ship to. On his own time, when they let him out of their sight, or through careful incidental questioning, he’d gather information.

On the other hand — the Red Hand, ha — they had saved him. Judging by their living arrangements, they were pretty successful. If he could figure out what the deal with Boss and Nerran was, it might be worth staying with them. He usually did his first playthrough as a lawful-good-aligned character, a knight in shining armor or a righteous paladin, and saved the thief run for when he knew where the good loot was and how to steal it without getting caught, but he’d probably get only one chance here. Being a thief might be fun. At the very least, he ought to give the Red Handers a chance to sell him on staying with the group.

“Isn’t that what you’re doing, though?” he asked in the politest tone he could muster. “Using me?”

Nerran snorted. “Of course we are; that’s why you should thank the gods above. We have a use for you that doesn’t involve your organs on a table. Besides the Blessing crafting, if you’re any good at it. Just remember: if you’re more trouble than you’re worth — if hunters start showing up — we don’t need you.”

Max flinched at the directness. “I get it.”

Don’t talk about Earth. The Red Handers were nice. Prove his worth.

Clearly, Nerran believed the Red Handers were doing Max a favor, at their own expense, by keeping him in the group, and that Max wouldn’t survive on his own. If he left the Red Handers, he’d have to make sure he’d done as much research as possible.

Nerran looked at Max as if Max had promised to exceed the speed of light. Come to think of it, was that was possible, here?

“You heard. We’ll see if you ‘get it.’ ”

* * *

After ordering shoes at the shoemaker — he was currently wearing . . . well, he wasn’t sure whose spares they were, but his VR shoes and gloves were stored safely in the mansion, not that they’d be of any use in this world — and then wandering the marketplace and learning about the foods common in Rhine, from vegetables and meats to the cooked sandwiches and pies and soups at the hot food stalls (but not eating any — Nerran said they ought to eat with the others later, but Max was pretty sure Nerran delighted in his suffering), and passing by the Temple of Light for reasons Max didn’t understand, Nerran finally announced they were headed to their final destination: the library at the Munav Mage Tower.

On the way to the Mage tower, Nerran gave a criminally brief explanation of what the Red Handers were and how they fit into the political landscape, but Max pieced it together using his powers of assumption.

Most countries, at least all the important ones, many of which were closer to city-states, had a trifecta of power: the government, the Underground, which was a loose association of criminal groups who somehow operated with tacit agreements with governments, and the Adventurers’ Guild.

Rhine was an exception. The tiny country stubbornly clung to memories of when it laid claim to the greatest of the gods, Aver, the god of light, the champion of humans whose Blessings gave the physically weak and magically unattuned race a fighting chance to survive in a world of magic and monsters. Most of the land of that glorious kingdom now lay shaded by the trees of the Twisted Forest. Wedged as it was between the Twisted Forest, the Kagrathan Empire, and the Alossian Council, to an outsider, it could be considered a miracle that Rhine continued to exist.

To Max, it sounded rather romantic. According to Nerran, it was monumentally stupid.

In keeping with tradition, in Rhine, the Church of Light was the third pillar of power, and the crown restricted the Adventurers’ Guild’s activities, which was especially unusual (or stupid, as Nerran called it), considering that Rhine bordered the Twisted Forest, and the need for trained, specialized, monster hunters against the Twisted was the chief cause of the Guild’s resurgence elsewhere.

It didn’t make much of a difference for the Red Handers. The group that controlled the Underground in Rhine was the Crimson Tide. Most large towns had at least one such resident criminal group, and larger cities might have whole webs of criminal groups. These groups were allowed to remain by the local governments for several reasons.

First, crime was impossible to completely eradicate, so it was easier for governments to have an organization they could negotiate with. Especially when it came to high-Level criminals, who were dangerous if not impossible to catch, it was cheaper to set a few rules and then leave the criminals alone.

Second, in emergencies, they provided a secondary power structure. Underground groups, as a rule, stayed out of international politics, so if a kingdom went to war and depleted its forces, the Underground would help fend off undead, monsters, and Twisted while generally maintaining order. For the war’s victors, a strong Underground was often the difference between claiming a profitable city and an undead one.

Finally, the Underground groups, who were mostly filled with sane people who judged avoiding taxes to be worth a little extra risk in their daily lives, helped keep the really terrifying criminals away. Nerran didn’t elaborate much on this part, saying that Max could look up the more famous serial killers on his own time.

The Red Handers were an itinerant Underground group. They shared many qualities with adventuring groups, except instead of hunting monsters at each city they travelled to, they stole. When they arrived at a new city, in place of registering with the local Guild branch, they introduced themselves to the local Underground rulers, often accompanied with a tribute and a commission, as the Red Handers were stealing on their turf. Occasionally, in order to avoid being thrown out or forcibly recruited, the Red Handers had to prove their strength against the locals, as they had done with the Crimson Tide.

As Nerran described what the Red Handers did, Max found himself nodding along eagerly. So their activities were criminal, but largely tolerated in a Mafia-style power-sharing agreement. And, as long as Nerran wasn’t whitewashing the Red Handers’ activities — and he didn’t seem the type to — to Max’s relief, they didn’t murder or kidnap or chop off people’s fingers. Their preference of stealing from the rich could be argued to in fact be morally correct, in a Robin Hood fashion, although they didn’t seem to do much giving to the poor.

“So what’ll my job be? Helping plan heists? Research targets? Oooh, I know — I bet I’d be a great at negotiating with fences!”

For some reason, Nerran looked at him as if he were a horse’s dropping. What was wrong with a new hire showing a bit of enthusiasm? The grump could use a bit of enthusiasm himself. Grumpiness was infectious in the workplace, and a workplace of grumps was a recipe for employees quitting for a company with better culture.

“We’re here.”

Nerran turned toward a large brick building. It was a little larger than average, compared to what he’d seen in the city, but that might’ve been bias from his expectations. Its weathered walls hinted at its age, the protruding brick edges rounded from the elements. Other than that ... it didn’t stand out. This was a Mage tower? A three-story brick building? Mage schools were supposed to have towers, castles, ethereal walls, and protective domes of protective magic, not crumbling bricks and a weekly event schedule hanging on the door.

“This is Munav?” Max gestured at the building.

“This is the Munav library. We’re on the Munav campus; all the buildings here are Munav.”

Oh. Now that Nerran mentioned it, all the buildings nearby were constructed of the same weathered brick, and they sported similarly styled signs, with crisp white text and a small stylized M in the upper left corner. The pedestrians walking along the street were all young adults wearing robes and surrounded by a studious air. It was a public university sort of situation. “Tower” was a common term; it didn’t mean that the entire Mage school was contained within a single building. Did they have theft problems? Surely they had valuable magical artifacts. Maybe they were stored in less accessible parts of the university. Max didn’t want to be killed by an artifact thief desperate to escape.

Opening the door, whose sign declared “Magical Research Club starts next Tuesday” among other things, the pair entered the library. An old man who looked like a librarian and not a wizard stood behind a counter, behind and around which were shelves of books. All in all, it looked disappointingly identical to a normal library.

Come to think of it, at the moment, the most likely people to engage in burglary on campus were probably Max and Nerran. He had joined a thieves’ group.

Max’s hands began to sweat as he looked at the stacks of books. Nerran hadn’t mentioned exactly what they were doing at the library. Surely they wouldn’t make Max steal on his first day. And not from a library. How many organizations could claim to have maintained a noble mission for millenia? Sure, it might vary between protecting or spreading knowledge, progressing or entertaining society, but Middle Ages or modern day, Earth or Rhine, Max wouldn’t steal from a library. He brainstormed ways to politely refuse Nerran without alerting the poor librarian.

“Are you members?” The librarian asked in a quiet voice.

“Yes.” Nerran placed his hand on a plate on the counter for a few seconds, then the librarian nodded.

A fingerprint reader? A biometric scanner? It had to be magic. A magic id? That implied there were ways of tracking and identifying people. Important to know, especially if he were to be a thief.

“You have a deposit of fifty gold.”

“I’d like to increase it to two-fifty,” Nerran replied, pulling out his purse. He counted out huge gold coins and laid them on the counter. When he finished, the previously bulging purse was nearly empty.

Max wiped his hands on his trousers. Of course they wouldn’t steal from a library. Nerran was an upright guy. Never doubted him.

“Checking out a lot today?”

“What are your best general references on Blessing crafting? I’ve recently taken it up as a hobby.”

“Hm, the standard textbook used here is Mirrigan’s, but that tends toward the theoretical side. If you’re more interested in practical applications, we have a copy of Duire’s Blessing-Crafting for Adventurers.”

“Would it be useful to read both?”

“In that case, unless you love reading textbooks, I would recommend supplementing Mirrigan’s with combo references.”

“We’ll take those, thank you.”

The librarian muttered something and flicked his hand, and three books, one much thicker than the other two, flew from the shelves behind him, landing in a neat stack on the counter.

Fucking awesome! Max tried to copy the hand flick and immediately turned red when the librarian shot him a glance as if asking if he were insane.

“Unless you have additional requests…” the librarian paused, and Nerran shook his head, “then for these, a fifty gold deposit will suffice. Mirrigan’s we buy in volume for the second-years, and the adventurer guides are rather cheap. I’m afraid they’re not the highest quality.”

With raised eyebrows that said, “You don’t have to tell me twice,” Nerran swept the coins back into his purse.

“Here you are, sir.” The librarian slid the books across the counter.

Nerran took the books and immediately gave them to Max. They weren’t that heavy, but Max, with a growing feeling of apprehension, tried to recall how far it was to the Red Hander’s mansion. Surely the tailor had been out of the way. A straight shot back to the mansion ought to be much shorter. Who didn’t bring a bag when they went shopping?!

“As your first assignment, you’ll copy them. When you finish, we’ll come back to trade for new ones.”

What was this, detention? Copy an entire book by hand?

“Isn’t there a spell for that?” Were there no printers in this world? Max wondered if he knew enough to make a printing press.

“There is, but it’s rare enough that copying books still pays well. This way you’ll contribute to the group and not be a complete waste of resources while we get you up to speed.”

Max sighed, filing away the printing press idea in the back of his mind for if he needed money in the future — and could guarantee he wouldn’t be hunted, caught, and gutted for his otherworldly knowledge.

* * *

By the time they reached the marketplace, about halfway back to the Red Hander’s mansion, it was the early afternoon, judging by the angle of the red sun, and Max’s arms were burning. Where was his superhuman Strength Skill? Status! Status! Give him a Blessing like Bodybuilder! Hell, he’d take Migrant Worker. He ought to have the distance-travelled record for Migrant Worker!

A young boy’s loud, foul mouth caused Max to tear his eyes from a stall selling enchanted amulets and bracelets and look for the source of the cursing. Nerran was holding a boy by the wrist, and the boy was cursing and pulling away, trying to escape Nerran’s grasp. When that failed, the boy started hopping erratically, trying to stomp on Nerran’s feet. Nerran eluded the boy with small, precise, unhurried steps.

“Are you finished yet?” Nerran asked sharply. “A tip, kid: if it takes more than one touch, you may as well take a sword to your own neck.”

Ah. Max finally noticed that, in the boy’s free hand, stretched out away from Nerran, the boy held Nerran’s purse that he’d spent breakfast stuffing.

The hand holding the purse pulled back, and then … oh, no.

The bloated purse sailed through the air, flying past Nerran’s lunge. When it hit the ground, it exploded into a glittering mass of rolling coins.

The entire street fell dead silent, frozen save for the turning of heads and Nerran, who dashed toward the coins, the would-be thief in tow. A young man nearest to where the purse had landed, a stiff youth who looked dressed above his comfort zone, perhaps on his way to his first job interview, watch a coin roll toward him and strike his shoe. With a dazed and curious expression, he bent down to pick it up.

And then, like a Walmart on opening late on Black Friday, the street erupted.