"They just vanished like that?"
A Black man with a pair of Nike sneakers hanging around his neck spoke to another companion beside him.
"No. I got his call. He was talking over there when it suddenly cut off. He was probably eaten. If we want to deal with that island, we probably really can only buy tickets to get in. Our ordinary bodies don't give us much of an advantage."
The Black man who had received the final call wore a wistful expression.
Unfortunately, although the US Federal culture encouraged people to spend a little money learning basic Mission Space knowledge, Black people clearly were not included.
In the World of the Living, Black people were no longer treated like honored elders. Racial discrimination was politically correct.
Still, because of their bad habit of glorifying violence, their social status was considerably higher than that of Great Xia laborers.
Compared with laborers who kept their heads down, worked hard, and lived frugally, lazy Black people had not the slightest competitive advantage within the major corps. But they were loud enough.
They had not entered this Punishment mission deliberately. Deliberately planning around the special weighting of a Punishment mission was not something they could afford to play with.
They had merely followed a major corps to take on a job last time and been brought in along the way this time.
No one was there to guide them in a Punishment mission.
As a result, their method of probing things out had been robbery, followed by charging straight at the island.
Thanks to the sacrifice of an entire boatload of people, they had finally, through sheer luck, learned that the best way onto the island was to buy tickets.
"We don't know how to make online reservations. It's a real pain.