After having built a road for the Asphons, I felt like I deserved a bit of a break. Sure, I was taking breaks quite frequently ever since I got here, but it’s not like I was dealing with a shitty employer. In fact, I was my own boss, free of obligations and shitty coworkers, able to do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. And right now? I felt like not doing more quests. Building this damn road had been annoying at worst and boring at best, actually managing to feel like work. There were still two more village quests for me to complete, and after that, three city quests.

  It was a no-brainer to complete the bonus objectives since the rewards were always good. So far, there was only a single objective that I hadn’t completed, and I was kind of annoyed that my perfect track record was broken. Still, when I was on the third layer, I was still feeling like I needed to rush for some reason, not wanting to spend possibly weeks looking for a fruit. I stood by my decision, but I sometimes wondered if I might be on a completely different evolution path if I’d taken the time to look for it.

  Maybe I could go grab one once I was allowed to teleport again.

  Similar idle thoughts were going through my brain as I followed behind Nimma as she led me through the busy streets of Lophan. When I proclaimed my intent to do nothing for a while earlier this morning, she had invited me to observe the guard training. This took me a bit by surprise as they had been oddly secretive about the whole ordeal before. It wasn’t like I had been pestering them about going to watch or anything, but not even my status as a traveler was enough to gain me access to certain areas of the city. Of course, the Asphons were entitled to their secrets. I wasn’t exactly snooping around, asking for state secrets or anything. But still, they were oddly protective of certain things and often would clam up if I asked.

  I’d long since learned to drop the issue whenever this happened, so it was extra surprising when Nimma suddenly invited me to one such location that was previously barred. Since she was the one to suggest this activity, I couldn’t help but believe that this was a premeditated thing of sorts. Maybe Lophan had told her to take me there since I’d asked once before, or maybe they wanted to show me something specific when we got there. Since I’d been too surprised I’d completely forgone asking any questions, simply agreeing and then following Nimma, and now it felt like I’d missed my window.

  So I continued to tag along, occasionally greeting one of the Asphons that initiated an interaction. I had always been some sort of celebrity, but after having built the road, I felt like things were getting worse. I could barely walk down the street a few meters without being spoken to. Well, a lot of them actually couldn’t speak the void language, so most of those interactions consisted of them bowing to me in respect, which was even weirder than being thanked by random people. When I had somebody from the team with me they would often act like translators, but Nimma was just trucking ahead, completely ignoring the Asphons that wanted to address me.

  Nimma’s no-nonsense behavior made me believe even more that she was on the job, once more making me wonder just why we were suddenly going to watch the guard training.

  “We’re here,” Nimma said, stopping in front of a large building close to the city wall.

  The buildings both inside and outside of the settlements usually belonged to one of three types, all of which I’d gotten intimately familiar with while demolishing hundreds of them. There were the skyscrapers, usually occupied by either flying monsters or Asphons. There were what I’ve come to call office buildings. They were usually three to four stories high and came in a variety of shapes. Then there were the regular houses. Small buildings big enough to host one or two families, feeling oddly out of place among all the other buildings.

  But then, the Asphons weren’t limited to those types of buildings only. Within the borders of their settlements, they were allowed to build anything they wanted. Usually, they left the system-spawned buildings and enhanced them, since doing it like this would save them a ton of work. But, every now and again, they needed something more specialized. This building was one of those. The training facility was only a single-story high, the building shaped into a big square, leaving the center empty.

  It wasn’t exactly all one building, since frequent gaps were leading into the center plaza, which was filled with training equipment and various arenas where Asphons were fighting each other.

  “There are more specialized training spaces underground,” Nimma explained unprompted. “The enclosed spaces are enchanted in a way that makes them almost indestructible, which makes them more suitable for more destructive bouts. That way we don’t need to constantly rebuild, and the citizens aren’t disturbed by the constant noise.”

  “That’s pretty cool,” I replied honestly. “But I have to ask, why did we come here? Why are you suddenly allowing me to check out the guard training?”

  “It’s…” Nimma glanced down at me. “Lophan told us that it was okay to show you some things you weren’t allowed to see before.”

  “He did? But why now? What is the purpose?”

  Nimma sighed and gestured for me to follow her a bit to the side so we wouldn’t be in the way of people wanting to get to the training grounds. “Look, we Asphons, as a race, have quite a few… secrets. No good comes from advertising all of our dirty laundry to every random traveler that passes through here, even if you guys are a great asset every time you show up. Usually, we use each other, benefit as much as we can, and then we go our separate ways, everybody wins, right?

  “But you’ve proven to be different from the random travelers. You’re strong, and if you follow through with your plan to complete all of the quests, we stand to gain so, so much. I don’t think you quite understand how much this will benefit us. Which is why Lophan has decided that the least we can do is show you some trust. You’re helping us out, so you deserve to know more about us, our struggles, as well as the goal we’re striving to achieve.”

  I took a few moments to process what Nimma had just told me. I had assumed that this was a show of goodwill because I helped build a permanent road for them, but it would appear that there was quite a bit more going on than I originally assumed. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t curious, of course. The Asphons were a mysterious race and I had tons of questions. Still, they were people, just like me. They had a society. I felt like it was rude to constantly dig around for the things they didn’t want me to know, so I’d been careful to not seem too pushy with my questions.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  Apparently, my cautious approach was paying off now, and I finally had an opportunity to get some answers.

  “That’s… very nice of you guys,” I said lamely, unsure how to react to being trusted like that. “So why are we here, specifically?”

  “It’s just a good place to start,” Nimma once again led me to a gap in the buildings and guided me through, the inner yard coming into view where Asphons were embroiled in their training. “In fact, it serves to showcase our plight on a fundamental level.”

  “It does?” I let my eyes wander, watching some of the fights trying to figure out what she meant. I racked my brain trying to figure out what it was about this place that was so different that it should somehow show me something. “I don’t get it…”

  “It’s about us being able to use weapons,” Nimma said, leaning back against a wall.

  I once again looked over the training Asphons, all of whom were using some sort of weapon in their fights. Truly, the fact that Asphons seemingly relied more on their weapons instead of their abilities as monsters had been a point of confusion for me. Then again, I’d started to assume that this was due to their history. The Asphons used to be members of the intelligent races and their new forms were humanoid enough for them to keep wielding weapons. Surely this tendency would have been passed along through the ages. But now that it was pointed out to me, I realized that I hadn’t seen a single Asphon NOT use a weapon. By all rights, there should be those who leaned into their monstrous nature and evolved to fight without weapons.

  Yet, there weren’t.

  “Did you know that the system doesn’t allow monsters to equip weapons?” Nimma continued after I stayed silent for a while. “Not even the monster-type travelers are allowed to wield weapons. Sure, a monster can pick up a weapon and use it in a limited capacity, but they will never be able to learn the necessary skills to truly use it.”

  “Then, why are you guys allowed to use them?” I asked after having the paradox spelled out to me. “You guys ARE monsters, right?”

  The archive of asphon worked on them, so they should definitely be monsters. And, while I could equip an incredibly limited amount of items, they were not physically present, and I was certain that weapons didn’t count as items for me as I tried equipping some before. Either things worked differently for me as a traveler, or there was something different for the Asphons.

  “The system does categorize us as monsters, yes, but that’s not quite the end of the story,” Nimma wistfully looked at the guards training with each other. “You’ve seen our origins, and you know that we have a deal with the system. We help the system by researching monsters and archiving all the data we can. In exchange, the system grants us favors, resources, and even entertains the odd request we have.

  “One of those odd requests our leaders posed to the system early on was that the system reverses what happened to us,” Nimma looked at her own claws, flexing them a bit. “Naturally, for me and every other Asphon alive today, this is our normal state of being. We never knew what it was like to not be… a monster. Still, when we first entered into this relationship with the system, a deal was struck. The system could not reverse what happened, but it would consider changing our categorization from monsters to one of the intelligent races. If we could provide definite proof that we were not… monsters.”

  “Which I assume was difficult since a lot of the Asphons at the time inexplicably lost their minds and attacked their fellow Asphons…” I still vividly remembered the scenes I’d seen play out in the memories. It was a jarring sight to see the Asphons turn on their own, reduced to a thoughtless monster. “Did you ever figure out why that happened?”

  “Not exactly,” Nimma sighed. “We found some countermeasures to prevent it from happening, but never the root cause or how to reliably stop it. It still happens every now and again, we just got a lot better at reacting to it and… eliminating the affected Asphon…”

  “I don’t remember ever hearing about this happening around here,” I said, trying to remember if I’d ever caught wind of anything like that.

  “We’ve been keeping it a secret,” Nimma said, guilt evident in her voice. “No reason to expose a visiting traveler to our problems. There’s at least one case every week, at the worst of times there might be twenty or more in a single week.”

  “That’s… horrible,” I had to think of the poor Asphons who leisurely enjoyed their life, only to turn into a pure monster due to no fault of their own, most likely attacking their loved ones in the process.

  “It is,” Nimma stayed silent for a while, letting everything sink in. “It is incredibly rare that a traveler decides to tackle the city-tier quests. The rewards will be worth it for you, amazing even. But we… we hope that we’ll be able to trade in some favors with the system that will help us advance the research for our problem. The biggest issue is that we don’t know exactly what it will take for the system to acknowledge us as an intelligent race, but solving this problem should be the first step.”

  “That’s quite a lot to put on a guy,” I sighed, suddenly feeling pressured to succeed when I did the city-tier quest. Maybe that was their intention all along. Tell me their depressing story, betting on the fact that I’d want to help, forcing me to stay the course instead of deciding to call it quits after completing the necessary village quests. It felt like rather blatant manipulation, but in the end, it changed nothing. “You know, I was going to do the city-tier quests either way, you didn’t have to guilt trip me.”

  “I thought so,” Nimma smiled. “But when Lophan tells me to do my job, I kind of have to.”

  “I suppose you do,” I nodded sagely, noticing that I still hadn’t received a proper answer to my question. “So, why can you guys use weapons?”

  “Oh yeah, that,” Nimma laughed out loud, the bummed-out atmosphere slowly dissolving. “We, as a race, have made quite a bit of progress over the thousands of years we’ve been here. Researching ways to stop ourselves from turning into monsters is but one solution we’re pursuing. A few hundred years ago, one of our cities made a great breakthrough and they exchanged their achievement for the right to use the system of the intelligent races. That day, we lost our ability to mutate and evolve, and instead regained access to classes and the right to equip weapons and armor.”

  “You do realize that I now have thousands of questions regarding how that system works, right?”

  “I do, and I’m willing to answer them,” Nimma said. “But why don’t we focus on one thing at a time? We came here to give you a tour of the training facility. You can ask all the questions you have when we’re back home.”

  “Alright, alright,” I conceded. “I suppose that gives me some time to sort out all of the questions I have.”

  “Good, now, we’re going to start our tour over there,” Nimma pointed at a building whose side was open, revealing a ton of weapons sitting on racks. “Follow me.”

  I did as I was told and followed close behind, but I couldn’t help but think back on the revelations that had just been dumped on me. I had gotten some answers, but I had even more questions now. Maybe a few too much. For the entire tour, my focus was mostly on what I’d learned and the many questions I had. The Asphons were a lot more complicated than I thought at first, and I was wondering if I could truly help them. Before I’d realized, our tour of the training facility was over and we’d returned to our house. I excused myself to my room, intent on processing what I had learned after a good night's sleep.