The Tender Palm

At night, the gang members still handed out shriveled black bread.

They could no longer eat it, so they saved the bread.

Because the gang leader was drunk, they did not have to hand over their copper coins. That counted as a stroke of good luck.

Mel Carlo lay on the straw, making up his mind.

He had to speed up his understanding of this world. If it truly overlapped with the game's setting in some way, all of it would become valuable treasure to him.

"Lily, I met a knight today. Shining armor, silver hair—he was seriously cool!" Akai lay on the haystack with his hands behind his head, talking about what had happened that day.

He was grateful to the knight, but an explosion had happened in the city at the time.

If he could, he truly wanted to take these children away from the gang's control. It did not matter what they did afterward. Even if life was harder, it would still be fine.

"Really? Did that knight give you those loaves of bread?" Lily was also interested in the topic. Knights were far too distant from people of their station; they could only learn a little about them from stories.

Mel Carlo listened quietly. He did not want to interrupt children's conversation. He could hardly share how he had stolen a little girl's mother's keepsake with these two children. That would have been too inhuman.

He did not have that much of a conscience. Ensuring his own safety came first. If he had honestly handed over the wallet back then, who knew what consequences there might have been?

"An explosion? I saw it too. It happened not far in front of me," Chubby suddenly cut in from the side.

When the explosion happened, he had been nearby. The Knight Order had arrived quickly, and it seemed that cultists had caused the explosion.

Seeing that none of the three paid him any attention, Chubby added, "I heard that the Knight Order is out tracking down cultists. We need to be careful these next few days. Those cultists are cruel!"

Hearing that, Mel Carlo quickly sat up from the haystack. This world had cultists too? In the original game, cultists were generally between level 30 and level 70. But this world was not a game. Anything was possible.

Cults generally involved forbidden arts such as necromancy or blood sacrifice rituals. If he was unlucky, he could very well become a sacrifice.

It seemed best not to take these deserted alleys over the next few days. Sticking to the main roads would be safer.

In the pitch-black room, only moonlight shone through the window. Lily was examining the Grape Hairpin in her hand by that faint light.

"Chubby, how much do you know about cultists? Are they dangerous?" Mel Carlo pressed.

If he could come into contact with magic, then no matter what kind it was, it might become something he could rely on in the future. Even forbidden dark magic would do. At least in the game, dark magic was not anything terrifying. To plenty of edgy teenagers, it was an unbelievably cool class.

"I don't know. I've only heard rumors. They say cultists use human sacrifices to practice dark magic." Chubby scratched his head awkwardly. He had not expected his words to actually catch Mel Carlo's attention.

Mel Carlo confirmed another crucial piece of information: dark magic might exist in this world. Still, until he saw it with his own eyes, he could not fully prove it.

He would not naively treat this place as a game world. Otherwise, he would pay the price for it sooner or later. Practice was the only criterion for truth.

In a medieval fantasy world like this, the setting was bound to be a mixed bag. If there were technologies far ahead of their time, people might even mistake them for magic.

Looking at his tender palm, he could not help but sigh. The world was too vast, while he was too small. Even trying to understand the world had become difficult.

He swiped a finger across the system menu. It was similar to the game menu, except it was completely empty. He could only see his level and the red and blue bars, with no exact values and no way to improve them.

The way to level up in the game was to fight monsters. But he was so weak now that even dealing with a Level 1 monster would be difficult.

The low-level monsters in the Imperial City were the rats in the sewers. Most rats were only Level 1, and there were plenty of them, making them suitable for leveling up a new character. But there was a problem: rats were poisonous in the game, and getting bitten by one in real life could be even more dangerous.

There was a chance of contracting rabies or the Black Death. He did not know the Purification skill, so those negative effects really could be fatal.

That slightly restless heart was suppressed by reason once more. Who did not want to accomplish something after arriving in another world? His former life could not exactly be called regretful, but it was certainly not the path he would have chosen.

Chubby watched Mel Carlo swipe his finger through the air and found it eerie. He quickly turned over and lay down. What he could not see was none of his business.

After continuing to study the system carefully for a while, Mel Carlo finally gave up. The extra lottery tab did not even say what could be drawn from it. Other than checking his level, the only useful thing for now was the 100-slot inventory.

"Did I reincarnate too early?" Mel Carlo had read plenty of web novels in his previous life. There was a common trope where the original owner had already achieved fame and success on his own before the system came online and issued a beginner's gift pack.

"Or maybe I need something to activate the system. Or perhaps the game's plot hasn't gotten on track yet."

As Mel Carlo considered all kinds of possibilities, it never occurred to him that the system had met its business target for the year, so it had let him go without assigning a system to follow him.

He could only explore everything on his own. There were no issued missions and no deliberate guidance. It was as though he had been abandoned in this unfamiliar world, a true orphan.

Lost in wild thoughts, Mel Carlo fell asleep. When he woke the next day, everyone else was already awake as well. He felt sticky and uncomfortable. He had not bathed since reincarnating, and it seemed that the previous owner of this body had not bathed for some time either.

But given his current status, getting a change of clothes was hardly possible. The weather was not too cold yet, but washing and drying his clothes would take a whole day, which meant he might have to go naked for the entire day.

Mel Carlo left the room and went to the water vat to wash himself. If he could get a new set of clothes, that would be ideal. The stains on this linen outfit had already hardened into clumps.

"Mel, you seem a little unhappy?" Lily followed behind Mel Carlo.

"I feel a little uncomfortable. I really want to take a bath and change clothes," Mel Carlo answered honestly, continuing toward the exit.

"But we don't have any clothes to change into." Akai stood nearby. He was used to it and did not think it was a big deal.

"Come on. Let's head out." Mel Carlo left the courtyard with the two of them. Although they still had copper coins on them, that did not mean they could do nothing.

The coins in the system could cover their tribute, but if they could not explain where the money came from, the gang's informants would easily notice. So they still had to do what they usually did.

Steal when they had to steal, beg when they had to beg. Once they had the chance to escape the Imperial City Gang's control, they could naturally live like normal people.