Alistair considered his options. He wasn’t sure what the average level was on mature planets, but he was fairly confident that the dark-skinned man was a higher level than him. His aura was more powerful, more congealed, yet also less deadly. It made sense that on already initiated planets, Classes would trend to be more and more utility-oriented over time. Still, if Alistair’s estimation was correct, he was at least five levels ahead of him.

He thought back to his decisions. With his negative Karma, he had an inkling it might cause him to have bad luck, so should he have stayed in the hospital, trying to cloister himself off from any possible negative event? His gut said no. Perhaps the probability of an incident was lower, but there were so many dangerous things in a hospital. For all he knew, his Karma could have made a patient with a deadly virus pass by him, or a crazy nutcase could have attacked him.

“He meant nothing by it, my Trexian friend. A mere accident,” Kevan said, trying to ameliorate the situation.

“I’ll decide what’s an accident or not, Sharder,” the man said. His accent sounded vaguely Russian, an artifact of the way the Dao archetypes translated speech between vastly disparate regions. “Do you know who I am?”

“No?” Alistair wasn’t sure if he was supposed to be aware of the Trexian’s identity.

“You may refer to me as Lang Aius Carellian. My Countess mother owns half of this entire planet. Now tell me, why were you being improper with my lady friend?” Carellian asked.

“I just tripped, I’m very sorry.” Alistair didn’t enjoy groveling for a stupid reason, but his danger sense was telling him that Lang Aius Carellian was not a man to be crossed. “I would never be so foolish as to cross the Lang Aius family.”

“Where are you from? To be making company with a Sharder and his slaves tells me you lack solid judgment.”

“I’m from a recently initiated planet,” Alistair answered truthfully. “I’m not on this planet by choice. The first match of Felons vs. Fellows just happened, so you might have seen me there.”

“You think I take part in the bread and circuses of the underclass? I have more important things to do,” Carellian said, taking out an iridescent coin from his pocket. Alistair didn’t know what the coin meant, but Kevan and Larsa went pale at the sight. “This right here is an Orichalcum drachma, more wealth than you’ll ever see in your miserable, brief life. It’s worth one trillion Gold drachma. Trexians are gamblers by nature, so why don’t I flip this coin? If it lands on heads, I’ll let you go. If it lands on tails, I’ll have you arrested.”

Carellian flipped the coin before anyone had a chance to interject, and Alistair knew the outcome from the moment it exited the Trexian’s hand. With his negative Karma, he could literally feel the poor strands of Fate manifesting as the coin landed in Carellian’s hand. It landed on tails, just as expected.

“I’m not sure all this is necessary,” said the woman Alistair knocked over. “Can’t you just let him go, honey?”

“I’m sorry, Ophelia. The trash needs to be put in its place occasionally. Garrion? Throw this man in jail for a night. One of the bad ones, please.” Carellian waved his hand and a demonic creature composed of darkness and fire stepped out of the Trexian’s shadow, causing Kevan and the other Sharders to jump back.

Alistair wanted to resist, but he had a feeling with his level of bad luck, that wasn’t an option. He looked over at Kevan, who wore an apologetic expression.

It wasn’t so bad, Alistair thought. He just needed to survive for twenty-four hours, and then his natural regeneration would bring his Karma to acceptable levels. The shadow demon grabbed Alistair’s arm with a surprisingly cold hand. Being sent to an alien jail was pretty far down his bucket list.

Alistair realized he might have overestimated cultivator society. Not that anything he had experienced made him overly partial to the Final Frontier Empire, but it seemed exorbitantly wealthy, and seeing the futuristic technology made him wonder if problems like poverty and homelessness were absent, as a counterbalance to their crazy warrior culture. That turned out to be completely false.

The shadow demon picked up Alistair and flew to its destination, a seedier part of the planet city. Beautiful pagodas and skyscrapers turned into run-down shacks and ultra-dense housing that looked like it would crumble from a small gust of wind. Vagrants and criminals dotted the streets, and Alistair saw two stabbings happen in broad daylight. Or moonlight? There wasn’t a sun in the sky, with three bright moons taking its place, creating a lighting situation that wasn’t as bright as day or as dark as night on Earth.

Garrion was by far the most powerful aura Alistair had ever felt, a dark and sinister miasma of evil that he knew he could not defeat at his current strength. The being was so far above him, that Alistair had no scale of reference to measure it. Was Garrion level 40? Level 50? Even level 60?

“What is it this time?” an exasperated woman asked.

The creature dropped him off at one of the more put-together buildings, a flat gray compound with no windows. The front door was barred and Garrion pressed a blue marble up to an indent at its side. Alistair found it somewhat funny that the demon fumbled around the sphere a few times before it managed to open the door.

“One night in the bin.” Garrion’s voice was quiet and thin but carried an authority that exceeded its volume.

“Very well. Please mention to the Countess we could use some more funding. I think it’s only fair, considering how much Master Carellian uses our services,” the woman behind the glass said.

“I will duly pass on your request, ma’am.”

The front desk lady ushered in a pair of full-body armored guards. Alistair felt like they were weaker than him after considering his deadly fighting style and skill advantage. It wasn’t like he was actually going to try an escape attempt, however, with Garrion holding him down.

The moment the guards fastened the familiar translucent cuffs to his wrists, he felt his connection to the Dao and his Mana vanish. Despite being just over a week removed from his previous mortal body, Alistair felt like he was wasting away. He lacked his previous vitality, every move taking so much more energy.

Checking his status screen, his stats were suppressed to pre-initiation levels, except for his Charisma and the bonuses from his Badges. He guessed the version of the cuffs he was wearing were weaker than the ones they put on Kellus Bratevalla, otherwise, the felon would have wiped the floor with the sub-level 30 contestants.

But he was more focused on the negative number slotted in the Karma location. It now read -6 instead of -15. Alistair’s heart raced as he realized negative Karma must work the same way as positive Karma. In the same way he paid his price for his [Eyes of Truth] and [Hand of Karma], he had paid back part of his Karmic debt with the bad luck he was experiencing. All Alistair had to do was survive a little more misfortune, and he’d be back to baseline.

Keeping that in mind, Alistair was in good spirits as he walked down a corridor with the guards. The prisoners banged on the fogged glass that held them captive, but no sound came out. One of the glass walls dissipated, revealing five prisoners in a small concrete cell. Alistair fell flat on his face after the guards pushed him in, not having his arms free to break his fall.

As the glass reformed behind him, Alistair gathered himself to his knees, spitting out blood. He could tell he chipped one of his canines, something that he hoped was easy to fix with a healing Skill after they released him.

“Look at the fresh meat, boys.”

Alistair looked up, finding a pair of reptilian eyes glowering at him. At first glance, he thought it was a lizardman, but his face was more humanoid and he had serpentine appendages in place of hair.

“I’m not looking for any trouble,” Alistair pleaded. But his Karmic senses buzzed with a feeling of awful lines of Fate. It wasn’t as bad as his luck bumping into the young Lord Lang Aius, but he knew his next few hours would be trouble.

“Oh, believe me, you’re gonna get trouble.” The reptilian man, whose cuffs weren’t linked together, grabbed Alistair by the scruff of his neck. “Jakobi thinks he can encroach naga turf and send some fucking kid to shake me down? I don’t think so.”

“I think you have the wrong guy,” Alistair said, as he felt his cell growing smaller by the second. The other snake-like humanoids stood up, crowding him into the corner of their small lockup. “I don’t know a Jakobi. I’m not even from this planet.”

“Yeah? Everyone knows Jakobi runs with demons. You think you’re so slick, but we got our methods. We saw you come in with the shadowspawn.”

Alistair could feel there was nothing he could say to dissuade the naga at that point. Despite the suppression of the cuffs, he still had the knowledge of {Assassin’s Fist} and his honed combat instincts, and he could feel a large haymaker coming. He acted first, launching himself from out of the corner, head-butting the talkative naga in the nose.

He counted eight of the serpentine humanoids in total. Eight against one, and he couldn’t use his arms at all. They were impossible odds, with his Mana and Dao sealed in such a tiny cage, combined with his ungodly terrible luck.

They charged him all at once, but Alistair used his tight corner against them. Because of the angle and their burly bodies, only two of the naga could reach him. Two jump kicks repelled them. That was where his over-reliance on his high Agility failed him.

His Agility inured him to his body responding perfectly in tune with his mind’s commands, yet with his cuffs, he lacked his previous kinesthesis. His physical stats still exceeded the naga because of his superior Badges, but not to a severe degree.

He landed on a single foot in an attempt to pivot and launch a side kick, but he misjudged the angle, his ankle buckling underneath him. Pain seared throughout his body as he took a punch straight to the solar plexus, followed up by a kick to the head that made him see stars.

Alistair curled up into a fetal position as blows rained down on him from above. He checked his status screen in between kicks, looking at only one number: his Karma. Alistair thought the big fat 0 that turned up was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

Jorel couldn’t believe his luck. His assignment as only a secondary cameraman for Felons vs Fellows was disappointing, but he was finally looking at his big break. His mother always berated him for choosing Cameraman as his Class, but she would rue her words.

One of the new directives from up top to keep things fresh was for candid recording of the contestants to see what they were like out of the public eye. Of particular interest was Alistair of FX-14752, who quickly became a fan favorite after the upset in the first match against Kellus Bratevalla.

Jorel had some potential ideas for drama, but the initiate found trouble all by himself. Bumping into the Duke of Faxor’s son, who turned out to be a pompous brat? The audience was eating it up, calling for the Trexian’s death for jailing their new hero. Then getting beat up in prison on top of that? Jorel didn’t understand how one man could have so much misfortune, but it was perfect for television. If anyone put the cash cow in real danger, Jorel would step in, but it seemed like Alistair was mostly fine.

The Magical Pugilist might have bruises for the next round, but that played even better to the crowd. An underdog from a planet nearly destroyed by a member of the Meloi, one of the most hated Progenitors in the Empire was a sob story in and of itself, but then having to deal with a pompous nobleman and bravely fighting gangsters in prison? Jorel practically salivated at the narrative he could build.

Jorel hadn’t even used the next part of the story. He reviewed the ExtraVision tapes of Alistair’s interactions on FX-14752. His female companion and sister had also been picked up at the request of the Clear Water Sect. So many juicy storylines to use, Jorel thought. It was only a matter of which one to choose.