Chapter 36

Stephen sighed heavily as he folded his fourteenth response letter. Sending letters to each person or organization that had given us invitations or letters of congratulations was something Cora had insisted on, claiming that doing otherwise would be considered rude.

I vaguely recalled seeing my mom send thank-you cards after receiving gifts, so even though it wasn’t something I’d ever done before, the concept wasn’t foreign to me.

“I guess it serves me right for being lazy,” he muttered. “I should have just walked to the shop instead of teleporting there.”

“What was that?”

Stephen put down his pen and shook his hand. It wasn’t a pen like what I’d used during my childhood on Earth, but it functioned similarly enough.

“I was just grumbling about how my laziness caused me to get all of these invitations,” Stephen replied. “If I hadn’t gotten caught teleporting into the shop by a couple of my fellow Leatherworkers, I doubt I’d be doing this right now.”

“You never mentioned getting caught teleporting. I thought someone with a super advanced identification skill must have scanned us.”

“I thought I told you?” he said, tilting his head. “It happened a couple of months ago when I was focusing on pushing my Leatherworking skill. You remember when I was spending basically all of my free time in the shop?”

I nodded. I remembered the month or so he’d spent focused on Leatherworking before we’d entered the dungeon to evolve. Anytime we weren’t delving, he’d been in the shop trying to get the system to recognize his skill.

Eventually, he’d given up when the system refused to upgrade his Leatherworking skill from (Rare) to (Epic).

“I got careless one day and just teleported to my workstation, thinking nobody would notice.”

“I guess they did?”

With a sigh, Stephen said, “Yes. I asked them to keep it quiet, but obviously, they didn’t.”

“So maybe nobody but the clergy has scanned us, then.”

That was comforting, even if there was no real guarantee that nobody in the church would sell such information. They shouldn’t, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything when it came to people.

“Are you going to meet with any of them?” Stephen asked, motioning toward my own pile of invitations.

“Aside from the guilds, probably not,” I said, grabbing the next invitation from the top of the pile. Giving it a scan, I shook my head and said, “Most just ask to meet, but a few, like this one, actually mention specific compensation they’d be willing to offer.”

I held up the fancy card, embossed with gold filigree, marking it as coming from a household with a gold-ranked backer.

“The Gorshen family is offering a steel-ranked set of armor in exchange for a twenty-year contract where I basically become their slave,” I said with a sneer.

“Of course, they don’t phrase it that way,” I continued, “but it’s basically the same thing. The flowery talk about supporting my progression and guaranteeing I do not enter stagnation during my time of service just means they plan to force me to delve with their teams to take advantage of my status as an Ascender to get a tax break.”

I scoffed and shook my head. “That kind of deal might work with natives, but I don’t know why they would offer a lopsided deal like that to an Ascender. They have to know we’re not naïve children.”

The offer was really quite offensive when I thought about it.

Still, I planned to pen a polite letter thanking them for their interest but declining their offer. I’d already updated my membership with both the Enchanter Guild and the Healer Guild, and I had no intention of joining any other groups or organizations beyond that.

Even a contract with the City Lord probably had all sorts of hidden pitfalls. People didn’t get into positions of power like that without being at least a little ruthless.

No matter how nice and friendly he and his wife seemed, there was no way I was going to trust that they wanted to help out of the goodness of their hearts. While it was possible, I’d learned long ago that very few people were genuinely altruistic.

Even my former master hadn’t recruited me purely out of altruism.

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“I received a few like that, too,” Stephen said. “Actually, I’m pretty sure I got the exact same offer from the same family.”

After flipping through the pile of invitations that he’d already addressed, he pulled out an invitation that looked almost identical to the one in my hand. Placing them side by side, it was clear they’d merely replaced one name with another, not bothering to personalize the invitations beyond that.

Though they looked high-quality and fancy, the fact that so little actual care was given only lowered my impression of this particular family.

“They should fire whoever they have in charge of sending these,” I said, as I started writing out a brief response. I still had quite a few to get through, and it was already getting late.

“Emie! Congratulations on your evolution!” Illia said as she pulled open the door. “Come on in. You have good timing. The kits are playing in the sunroom right now.”

Though not an asolade breeder by trade, Illia’s home was set up with the rambunctious creatures in mind. Having been there a few times before, I knew the way to the sunroom and eagerly made my way there.