A local tavern was Alexis’s nearest representative spot, and all she had to do was walk in, confirm her age, and walk out, but for a few reasons, she was internally panicking.

‘If they can check more than age on the stone, there is a high likeliness of my status screen being found out! If they send me to the higher rank stone, they could even force me to pay the tax, which is money I don’t have..’ as Alexis was thinking, she nearly slammed into the tavern door. ‘Ok, go with the flow Alexis.’ She tried to take a deep breath but that failed, so she decided to wing it.

She walked into the tavern to see a line of people with a few men and women in dark hooded cloaks with steel masks, the Night Watchers, and she got in line. She was trying not to do anything suspicious but that made her glance at the Night Watchers a few times. She forced herself to stop and thankfully nothing bad came of it, or so she thought.

“Hello there miss” With a muffled, creepy voice, one of the Night Watchers came up to her. “Is there any issue?”

A few people backed away from her “No. I seem to have lost count of how many winters old I am.” I lied.

“For such a young lad like yourself, that would be possible.” He emphasized the word ‘possible’ to show his doubt “Can I have a checker over here please!” The Watcher yelled to the front desk, in which a large bulky man come forth. He held out a stone to me, in which the Watcher said “Please place your hand on the stone.” I quickly did what was asked and the stone showed a blue icon which I pretended not to see. “Name: Alexis, Age: 17” The Night Watcher stares at the checker and whispers “Has there been any issues with the stone recently?”

“No Sir, it has been accurate all day.”

He turns to me “You are free to leave, let me escort you out.”

I follow him as we walked out of the tavern. He scribbles something out on a paper and I walk out the door, feeling revealed. I take a few minutes to walk back to my house and get back in, locking the door.

I was panting heavily and tried to calm down.

‘I need to leave this place.’ I hurriedly thought to myself ‘My current class is scribe, and that is useless in the slums. The issue becomes I don’t know how to make a living besides steeling, and I already have a reputation in the city as being a thief, so I can’t do much in this city. With my system being abnormal I have to avoid any checkpoints as they will see my class, and question me why I have a class at 17.’

She quickly packs up everything to her name: a rusty metal cooking pan, the stone, some clean clothes, and a quarter of a healing potion for emergencies, about 4 bronze coins, and a few slabs of old deer meat on the verge of being rotten, and leaves.

She leaves the key in the door indicating the house is vacant, put her items in the pan wrapping it in cloth, and held the pan in her hand and the coins in the other, and head towards a smuggling route.

…

“What will you be smuggling” The old man leaning on the wall with a long gray beard and a shredded cloak asked. “Myself and my items on hand.”

“3 Bronze Coins” I handed the coins to the old man and he directs me to a small shed. After walking in I see a small human sized hole in the floor, with a wooden ladder leading down. Me and him slowly go down the ladder and we end up on the wall of a sewer system. We start walking left of the ladder and head down the sewer walkway. For about ten minutes it was a relatively peaceful walk until we heard shouting coming from behind us, and a handful of soldiers wearing the viscounts emblem came running down the passageway.

“RUN” the old man shouted and we ran down the sewer. The old man was sprinting which was quite surprising and I was making a mad dash down the sewer. We were outrunning the soldiers just barely and we had made decent ground ahead of them, but a few of them pulled out long bows and started firing. The old man, being slightly slower than me was a bit behind me and he was the first to be shot. A gaping hole went through his chest and he stumbled and fell onto the stone tile. One soldier stopped to grab his body and the rest chased after me, still firing at me. While one barely missed me, I had a disgusting but good idea and as another arrow wised by me I acted like I was hit and went into the water. We were quite far away from the city so the water wasn't that terrible, but I quickly went deeper into the water, and started swimming away. I kept swimming till I stopped hearing shouting and quickly went up to get air.

Cough Cough “*amn it, that was exhausting.”

I tried to get back onto the ledge and after a few attempts got back up and started walking. I just kept walking and walking until I saw a large grate that was slightly opened and squeezed into it, and finally made it into a river, seeing the massive walls of the city a few hundred Li away. I quickly started walking towards the forest in the distance.