Oh God. Oh God. What had I gotten myself into?! All I did was bump into the guy, and just like that I was already in the one form of trouble that I’d decided from the start that I absolutely could not afford to get into, no matter what?!

My mind reeled. I sat down at, it could have been a café or restaurant of some kind, it could have been just a public seating area, all I knew was there were tables and chairs there and I wasn’t in any shape to stand.

After about ten minutes, I calmed down and finally managed to approach my search for Mewi more rationally. Asking around, I found out that the contestants who chose to stay and celebrate—which was most of them—were being catered to in ten different cities, dividing the Ranks once again. I immediately teleported to the city where those who finished in Rank 7 and their celebrating friends, family, and in this case, a number of recruiters for Tower organizations and factions as well as fans of a number of the fighters, could be found. Asking a few staffers (and with some palm greasing, which I now was familiar with how par for the course this was, in Area 1) one managed to get a message to Mewi that I wanted to meet him, and where.

Minutes later, there he was. We hadn’t exchanged our appearances over the net much, but I still recognized him—and he recognized me. He ran to me with incredible speed and embraced me. “I—I can’t believe it’s really you!” he sobbed, “I thought, I thought I’d been taken to this crazy place, and I’d never, ever see you! I mean, I know I asked the Federation to let me know if a new challenger used your name, but...”

“It’s okay, Mewi,” I soothed him, “I’m here now. This is real, I promise.”

After a few more seconds, he finally let go. “But hey, it seems like you’ve got on pretty well before I got here, eh? Rank 7, 218 Smekkers prize money?”

“Yeah, things are looking up,” he said, “but it’s been pretty horrible.”

I cut in quickly, noticing we were attracting some looks. “Let’s talk more later. How would you like to ride back home with me, today? I booked a round-trip on a luxury Starliner to come here—first class. I bet that’s better than however you got here, right?”

“Um, but won’t there be a big guest fee? How are you doing for money?”

“I’m doing fine, I’m good for it, don’t worry.”

Mewi nodded. “I was planning to celebrate in safety for a while, since every city on this planet is a Safe Zone, but I guess we have things to do.”

I called my travel agent. “Hi, it’s Lheticus. I need to add a guest to my ticket back home.”

“15 Smekkers, and one more for my commission since this is short notice.”

“Fine.”

“Consider it done, sir.” Her tone brightened. I wondered for a moment if the guest fee really was 15 Smekkers. Oh well.

“Thank you.”

Mewi, in turn, phoned someone to let them know he would be leaving the celebrations after all, and that he needed no help to find travel arrangements. After exchanging numbers, we split up again, since my ship wouldn’t be leaving until that evening, and I had a bad feeling that for now, being shown to be together publicly would lead to more trouble.

I only relaxed when I was on board the vessel, with Mewi acknowledged as my guest. After takeoff, we shared a meal, reminiscing about happier days from before the Tower took us.

Once we returned to my cabin, which now had a second bed set in it for Mewi, I took a deep breath. “All right. Let’s compare stories. You’ve been here about 6 months longer than me, I think?”

“I guess so,” said Mewi, “I...I lost one life, in the Tutorial.”

I felt faint. One of his three lives gone before I could even reach him. “I picked Medium difficulty, and an Element Caster class.”

“I’d have thought a physical class would have been better for you...”

“Yeah I had that thought too but—I couldn’t resist. I mean, real magic, come on.”

I tilted my head, then straightened up, nonverbally conceding the point. “The mission got a little harder the second time, I needed to kill a few more wolves, but the second time around I finally got a real hang of magic, and I pulled it off...only my clear rating was barely 2.0 so I didn’t get much in the way of rewards and,” here he paused, “I appeared in a District really close to the edge of the Safe Zone, and I didn’t have much money at all...I only had 5 of those W coins from my mission reward. It would have been 10, but I got a penalty from dying without completing my mission the first time that cut it in half.”

My heart bled. “Seriously? That’s it? That’s not even enough to live off of for six months...what did you do?”

“Found a group, a like labor firm, that took me in. They had me indenture myself to them. I got room and board from them but...the debt was going up faster than I was earning money...”

I felt my heart go cold even as my head heated up. “What did they do to you,” I said in monotone.

Sensing the direction my mood was going, Mewi became frantic. “No, you’ve got the wrong idea—this group was actually one of the BETTER sorts that I found! Most of the others wanted me to sign a temporary slave contract, and if the ones I did sign with wanted to keep me on forever, they’d have stopped me from entering the Competition. But they let me go because they believed in my potential, they said. And they explained to me how things in the Tower work and a bunch of other stuff...”

The heat left me, but the cold remained. “This bloody Tower...”

“J--I mean, Lheticus—I should call you Lheticus, right? Anyway, I’m fine.”

“FINE?!” The heat came back in an instant and I exploded from it. “You’ve already lost a life, you got forced into becoming a freaking indentured servant, and you’re actually sitting there and telling me you’re FINE?! What the hell about this is fine, Mewi, what?!”

Mewi embraced me again. I buried my head in his chest and sobbed. “I thought I lost you. Even if only for three hours I thought I lost you and when I get here, I find out you’ve been lost and alone in this crazy place for six months without me or anyone else you knew or apparently even anyone actually charitable! Well maybe you’re fine with that but I’m not! I can’t lose you, not after the lengths I went to to get you back!”

Mewi waited until I calmed down again, then asked, “What lengths?”

I took that as my turn to tell-all about my Tutorial experience. At the very beginning, when I told him about how I begged what turned out to be the to take me too, he shivered for a moment then hugged me again. But as I went on and on about how I’d taken on High difficulty, then how I had cleared it, his eyes grew wider and wider until by the time I went into my rewards, they were nearly popping out of his head. “Ten Brocks, and a Bronze grade Compression Pack,” he breathed, “at least you haven’t been struggling like I have. But what I don’t get is the Class Evolver thingy. If it’s supposed to evolve a Class to a Common grade Class, then it’s completely unusable—Common is the lowest possible grade.”

“Yeah, I don’t get it either,” I said, “my guess is, there’s a lot it’s not telling us. Finding out more information about that thing is one of the major goals on my list. Anyway, there’s more to tell, but for now let’s just relax for this ride.”

For the three-day ride, we enjoyed our reunion together. When we arrived back on Erkolls-13, it was back to business. The first stop was for Mewi to pay off his indenture. He insisted on paying it from his own balance, and I didn’t really have a reason to object since his debt amounted to less than 20 Smekkers in total even over 6 months.

Next it was my turn—I needed to get Mewi set up to live in my apartment, with his own room key and everything. Once that was done, it was time for the big reveal. “Mewi, there’s something I left out of the story of my Tutorial. You know how when you first got here, you got something called an ‘Innate Trait?’ Something unique to you?”

“Yeah, my Innate Trait is called ‘Positive Energy.’ Basically, it makes it hard for people to hate me, want to take advantage of me or get me in trouble, or stay in a bad mood around me as long as I stay positive. So, I’ve done my best to...I think it’ll be easier now that you’re here too, hehe.”

“That probably really came in handy in the Tutorial, huh?”

“A little,” Mewi admitted, smiling.

I laughed. That was Mewi through and through, all right. I couldn’t imagine a more fitting Personal Trait for him. “Okay then,” I said, “as for mine, I think it’d be better to show you rather than tell you. And...don’t tell anyone. Like, don’t even think about my Innate Trait out loud to yourself if you think you can possibly be overheard.”

I showed him my status. “Lhet, this...this is...”

“I know,” I said, “Yeah, I’m set up pretty good. Remember absolutely no one can find out about it. People will be after me, it’ll mean SO much trouble.”

“Yeah, I get you.”

At that moment, a tone sounded throughout the apartment. “Someone’s at the door...”

“Should we get it?”

“I’m going to say no...”

The tone rang again. And again before it faded the second time, more insistently. “I guess I’d better.”

I opened the door to a member of one of the Tower’s “humanoid” races. Their skin was dark grey, they were dressed in formal business attire, and had a horizontal row of five bright green dots on their forehead. “You are Lheticus, are you not? I have come in regards to that certain matter that took place on Marital. My name is Aeselvell.”

Chung chung.