“District 15. Songdu.”
A whole group of people who’d just clawed their way out of death’s jaws were now sprawled every which way across the starship.
The only one still sitting in anything resembling a dignified posture was the so-called crude, uncouth beastwoman everyone loved to badmouth.
Bai Long sat cross-legged against the cabin wall, a supply pack propped behind the small of her back, her face deathly pale, cold sweat streaming unstoppably down her forehead.
She felt as though every single nerve in her skull had never been so vividly clear.
The nerves throbbed violently, each one tugging at her flesh and blood.
In a moment of finding-humor-in-misery, Bai Long thought she could probably sketch out a full map of her own brain at this point.
“Boss, how are you holding up? Is there anything we can do?”
Chi Zao hovered around Bai Long anxiously, fretting like an eager little puppy.
Chi Wan shoved her useless little brother aside and reached out to feel Bai Long’s forehead.
“She’s running a fever.”
Chi Zao reached back in, glancing back and forth between his sister and Bai Long, then said in a grave, thoughtful tone, “Do beastmen need a vet?”
“Ow!”
He got smacked away by Chi Wan’s palm.
None of them had ever dealt with a beastman before, but Chi Wan at least knew that vets don’t treat beastmen.
“Have you managed to reach Mom and Dad?”
Chi Wan frowned.
This was her first time encountering a beastman’s physiology too, and she didn’t dare rashly try to ease Bai Long’s symptoms, terrified she’d only make things worse.
“No good, still can’t get through to Mom and Dad’s end. You don’t think something’s happened to them too, do you?”
Chi Zao was beside himself.
Yue Li and the others gathered around too.
None of them knew the first thing about medicine, so all they could do was crowd around Bai Long and fret.
“What? What did you say?”
Chi Wan was closest, and she noticed Bai Long’s lips moving, like she was trying to say something.
She leaned her ear in to hear it clearly.
“…hungry… food…”
Bai Long’s voice was thin as a mosquito’s whine, but Chi Wan still caught it.
How to put it—Chi Wan’s emotions got a little complicated for a second there.
Boss, you’re in this state and you’re still thinking about food?!
She didn’t understand it, but Chi Wan decided to trust the Boss’s instincts. She fished out the softest bread from the supply pack, tore it into little pieces, soaked them soft in water, and fed them to Bai Long.
The sweet, soft bread slid down her throat along with the water.
Slowly, it soothed Bai Long’s body.
The instant Bai Long opened her eyes, she was greeted by several big faces crowded right up in front of her.
Bai Long: “…Maintain a distance.”
She reached out and pushed Chi Zao and the others back.
This was far too close. She wasn’t used to being so near to people.
Chi Zao didn’t mind, and obligingly backed off, worry and curiosity mingling on his face. “Boss, you’re okay now? Do beastmen heal by eating?”
Bai Long had no idea either.
It’s my first time being a beastwoman too, you know. I was a pure human in my last life.
“I’m fine for now.”
She didn’t say much more.
But now Chi Zao understood that Bai Long’s whole search-for-medicine situation really was a ten-alarm emergency.
He turned away to fiddle with his star-ring, hoping to get in touch with his doctor dad as soon as possible.
Seeing that Bai Long wasn’t in much of a mood, the others stopped pestering her too, giving her space to rest while keeping watch nearby.
The truth was, Bai Long really did want to know what was wrong with her body.
Going by her past experience as a human…
…she couldn’t figure it out.
She had no idea what kind of illness produced this reaction in a water-snake spirit.
But Bai Long had always been an easygoing person, and now she was an easygoing snake too.
So she simply stopped thinking about it. Curing illness and saving lives was a job best left to the doctors.
With that thought, Bai Long dug out a whole lot more stuff from the supply pack and ate it.
She was surrounded by several big bags of supplies, enough to bludgeon a zombie to death one bag at a time.
All things considered, she was a little end-times landowner who never had to worry about food or drink.
Once she’d eaten and drunk her fill, the pounding in her head eased a bit, so Bai Long just pulled her cloak over herself, shut her eyes, and went to sleep.
After she fell asleep, she felt as though her body had slipped back into that state from when her powers first awakened, the sensation of being wrapped in warm, flowing water.
What Bai Long didn’t see was that the dusty grey tail coiled around her waist was faintly flickering with delicate golden light in the darkness, like stars had settled upon it.
The scattered, twinkling motes of light didn’t slowly fade away until the dead of night.
No one saw it, and the tail looked just as it had before, dusty and grey, coiled around Bai Long’s waist.
It was only near the tailbone that a very faint mark had surfaced.
Like a cross.
…
Bai Long felt like she’d slept for a very long time.
And she really had slept a long time, because by the time she woke up again they’d already reached District 15.
The Star Alliance divided its various star regions strictly.
District 15 was an upper-middle district of the lower regions, leading the lower star regions in both economy and environment.
The zombie mutation had already spread across the entire star region, District 15 was no exception.
But as an upper-middle star region within the lower districts, District 15 looked far better off than District 19, a lower-middle star region of the lower districts.
From the starship, Bai Long could look down and see the lights of one shelter zone after another.
The lights weren’t bright, but daring to keep lamps lit at all in a zombie-infested area was proof enough that the people here had a certain capacity for self-defense and resistance.
The starship was descending toward Region 36 of District 15, once the economic capital of the lower districts—
Songdu.
Bai Long found a rough introduction to District 15’s various regions on her star-ring.
From the holographic projection, Songdu wasn’t the largest of District 15’s several regions, it was barely half the size of the others.
And yet, under the management of the star region’s governing authority, it had become the most economically prosperous region in District 15.
After the apocalypse, it was also the fastest place in the lower districts to establish a shelter.
Songdu’s shelter went up far faster than the Star Alliance’s own relief efforts.
After the starship touched down, a team was waiting for them at the starship station.
Before they disembarked, Chi Wan mysteriously pulled Bai Long aside.
“Boss, wear this over your eyes. That way ordinary people generally won’t figure out who, what you are.”
In Chi Wan’s hand was a brand-new pair of colored contact lenses.
She’d found them in a shop at the Region 64 transfer station.
With the advance of interstellar technology, colored contacts no longer needed to be replaced on a schedule.
As long as they weren’t damaged, Bai Long could wear this pair all the way into her coffin.
“We don’t mind what you are, but other people might give you trouble over it. Wearing these will make things a lot easier for you from now on.”
Chi Wan smiled.
Bai Long knew the girl was genuinely looking out for her. She took the contacts and thanked her.
By now, after all this time, she’d realized she was probably the only beastman in the entire lower districts.
And judging by how others had reacted before, advertising her beastman identity carried nothing but downsides.
Better to just hide it, more convenient that way, too.
“Boss, now you’re being too distant. You’ve saved us so many times, we’d be saying thank you well into next year.”
Chi Wan blinked, taking on a touch of liveliness she didn’t usually show.
Bai Long put on the contacts in front of a mirror.
Her sharp beast eyes were covered, replaced by a perfectly ordinary pair of brownish-black pupils.
Human pupils.
…
As a crucial transportation hub linking the major star regions, the starship station had been cleared and reclaimed by the authorities first thing after the apocalypse.
It was also the most strictly inspected place in any star region.
Even though the starship had been arranged by Xu Yunyi’s parents, the required inspections couldn’t be skipped.
“Routine inspection.”
The team, holding firearms, stood guard several meters away from Bai Long and the others.
After the apocalypse, people still traveled between the various star regions.
To prevent zombies, or people who’d been bitten by zombies, from slipping in among them, the starship station’s basic inspections were far stricter than before the apocalypse, with several new screening items added.
Among them were physical condition and esper-power checks.
The physical check was to see whether the arrivals had any external wounds, or any latent risk of turning into a zombie.
The esper check was to sort people by where they’d be sent.
Bai Long and the others all had a few external injuries here and there, but the instruments determined none of them had been caused by zombies.
The one difference was that Bai Long and Xu Yunyi were detected as espers.
“You two are unregistered espers? Oh, just came in from District 19. Then once you’re through customs, remember to go register more detailed information at the Esper Management Center.”
The inspectors hadn’t found any esper records for the two of them, so they gave the standard reminder, though their tone sounded a lot gentler.
When the inspectors saw that the bags Bai Long and the others were carrying were full of food, they were even more astonished, and they regarded this bunch of young students with a new measure of scrutiny and admiration.
“Your powers must be pretty impressive. After you register, try joining a mid-to-high-tier squad. They’ll be glad to have you.”
These were clearly veterans with real end-times survival experience, and they could tell at a glance that the credit for all these supplies had to belong to Bai Long and Xu Yunyi.
“No, no, it’s got nothing to do with me. I only just awakened my powers. These were mostly all found by the Boss here.”
Xu Yunyi scratched her head and told the truth.
At that, the inspectors looked at Bai Long with even more fervor.
As if gazing upon a golden treasure.
The rarest thing since the apocalypse began was espers, especially ones who could gather this many supplies while also keeping a dozen-plus students alive.
She had to be at least a B-rank esper.
And a B-rank esper was rare talent even in District 15.
The inspectors’ attitude toward Bai Long warmed considerably, even bordering on enthusiastic.
They told her all sorts of things about Songdu’s current situation that weren’t available on the star-net.
“Do you have any credits?”
“Credits? What are those?”
It wasn’t just Bai Long, even Chi Wan and the others had never heard of the thing.
“It’s a new currency system the Star Alliance just rolled out recently. You need credits to buy anything now. For people like you coming from other star regions, you’ll need credits to find a place to stay too.”
As it happened, Bai Long’s group were the only ones needing inspection at the moment, so the inspector simply explained the Star Alliance’s newly announced rules.
Mostly, he just wanted to score some points with Bai Long.
Their group had come from a lower-middle star region, but the supplies they carried were quite considerable even by Songdu’s standards.
In the apocalypse, food was the one currency that never lost its value.
Even with a new currency system in place, nobody would ever turn up their nose at having too much food.
As the main combat force collecting supplies, Bai Long, even as a still-unregistered esper, was bound to do pretty well for herself down the line.
The inspector didn’t mind cementing a relationship with one more capable esper.
In the apocalypse, beating zombies to death with sticks and clubs was already a pretty primitive method.
Even the lowest-rank esper’s combat ability was nothing an ordinary person with a knife could compare to.
“These credits you mentioned, how do you get them? And what’s this esper squad for? Do I have to join one?”
Bai Long zeroed in on the key points.
The currency system had changed, which meant the money she’d robbed off Simon was now useless.
In other words, she was flat broke, overnight she was right back to square one!
This was a serious problem, and it had to be dealt with immediately!
Get money! Get money! Get money!
“Once you register as an esper, you can join an esper squad. Only esper squads can take on the missions issued centrally by the Esper Management Center. Completing missions earns credits.”
The inspector explained patiently.
There were actually other ways to earn credits, but none of them made money as fast as an esper taking commissions.
“There are a lot of people who camp out at the entrance of the Management Center. Most of the jobs they’re offering are scams, either uncertified by the Center, or with unknown danger ratings. I wouldn’t recommend taking those.”
The inspector added one last note.
Bai Long made a mental note about the Esper Management Center, planning to check it out when she had time.
After they cleared inspection, the inspector handed them off to the administrative staff.
Only then did the administrator begin registering Bai Long and the others’ basic information.
If they hadn’t passed the earlier inspection, there’d have been no need for the registration that followed.
“Please present your citizen ID codes.”
The administrator held a light-screen and scanned the star-rings of Chi Wan and the others one by one.
Star regions under Star Alliance management issued each citizen a unique ID code, used to register their every action.
But Bai Long didn’t have one.
An ID code had to be applied for by one’s parents.
On the junk planets, undocumented people were a dime a dozen, and the ID code system was barely enforced.
Bai Long had grown up on a junk planet, nobody had ever applied for one on her behalf, and she’d never had any use for one.
“No ID code?”
The administrator frowned. “You’re from a junk planet?”
Bai Long admitted it openly.
She’d anticipated being found out and hadn’t planned to hide it.
If she wanted a normal life going forward, then figuring out how to obtain a legitimate identity to integrate into interstellar society was the first step.
The administrator didn’t press her further, just made a special registration entry for Bai Long.
“When you head to the Esper Management Center later, they can issue you an ID code there too.”
On the light-screen the administrator was operating, Bai Long saw that she was the only one in the special-registration column.
It made sense. Ordinary people all had ID codes and didn’t need special registration. And anyone from a junk planet who could make it to District 15 wouldn’t have ID-code problems either, or else they simply wouldn’t have been qualified to set foot in District 15 at all.
Bai Long was probably the first person from a junk planet to ever make it to District 15 in all these years.
The administrator sent a temporary access code to Bai Long’s star-ring and let them go.
As luck would have it, not long after they left, another batch of people came down from a starship.
“…What? My ID code’s expired? Where from? District 29? Sorry, we can’t let you through.”
“Why won’t we let you pass? Without an ID code, who knows what you are. District 15 doesn’t accept undocumented personnel.”
The administrator who’d just been all smiles with Bai Long now wore a stony face, and without a shred of mercy had the guards drag away the undocumented arrival who was kicking up a fuss.
“To be honest, doesn’t even look at what times these are. Think we’re running a junk depot here? Not even an esper and you’ve got the nerve to show up…”
The administrator tapped his fingers on the light-screen.
The screen happened to be on the special undocumented-registration page.
And right under his fingers was the information box for Bai Long the esper.
…
By the time Bai Long and the others emerged from the starship station, two hours had passed.
“Dad still hasn’t replied to me.”
Chi Zao frowned, then just went straight to a nearby guard post to ask.
“Sinai Hospital? You’re new here, so you wouldn’t know, lately every single hospital in all of District 15 has been put under protection, and the medical staff inside are practically working themselves to death.”
As the guard spoke, he pulled up a directive that Region 36’s governing authority had issued a couple of days earlier.
【Per District 15’s latest guidance, in order to protect medical personnel across the entire district, effective today all medical personnel within Region 36 are to report to Sinai Hospital under fully sealed management. Medical personnel may not leave Sinai Hospital without good reason, and are to remain on standby for rescue operations.】
“Right now the doctors are taking in injured people one wave after another. Where would they find the time to check their star-rings?”
The older guard shook his head, cradling his metal thermos and spitting out a bit of tea froth.
“The doctors can’t come out? Then can we go into the hospital to find them?”
Chi Wan felt something was off.
“Were you bitten by zombies too? Doesn’t look like it, though.”
The older guard eyed them up and down suspiciously.
Chi Wan and the others all shook their heads.
“The people going into the hospital these days are either dragged in by the guard squads, or carried in tied up.”
As the guard spoke, he raised a hand and pointed outside.
A few people in special protective suits were strapping a man who was on the verge of turning into a zombie to a mobile gurney with restraint belts, then shoved him into a hovering ambulance.
“Word is the higher-ups gave an order for the doctors to figure out the cause of this mutation as fast as possible. Right now they’re probably busy cracking open zombie skulls.”
At that, Chi Zao and Chi Wan fell silent.
Their father had once been a brain surgeon.
Cutting open a human brain is cutting, cutting open a zombie… should be about the same, right?
Once they left the starship station, the group split up.
Region 5 had basic security guarantees, and the students also wanted to try reaching their families again.
On the principle of seeing the actual situation with their own eyes, Bai Long went with Chi Zao and Chi Wan to the entrance of Sinai Hospital.
Calling it a hospital didn’t quite fit—”fortress” was more apt.
The entirety of Sinai Hospital was ringed by a thick metal wall.
The wall stood a full two stories high, and at the entrance was a tightly disciplined guard squad, clearly they wouldn’t let anyone in easily, and wouldn’t let anyone out either.
Over by the hospital entrance, the guard squad was already eyeing the three suspicious characters that were them.
“Why does it have to be right at this time…”
Chi Zao irritably rubbed a hand through his hair.
Bai Long, by contrast, had a very even-keeled attitude.
She’d long been used to bad luck.
Watering the flowers at the cemetery only for the hose to burst, delivering takeout to the cemetery gate only for some senior dog to eat it, slipping on a wet floor and instinctically going into a baseball slide, then sliding the customer right out the door…
She was used to it, really.
“The Esper Management Center happens to be not far away. I’ll go register myself first.”
Bai Long told Chi Wan and the others, then headed off down another street.
It looked like she’d be staying in Region 5 for a while. Before she could figure out a way to see Chi Wan’s father, Bai Long first had to solve the matter of her own food, drink, and basic needs.
Survival is the primary productive force.
And the one place that could solve her identity and money problems in one stop was the Esper Management Center.
…
The Esper Management Center, by contrast, wasn’t under siege, in fact, with people coming and going, you could call it downright bustling.
The building looked like it had been requisitioned after the apocalypse, sitting at the very end of this street.
A three-story little Western-style building stood out especially.
At the entrance, Bai Long even spotted a small advertisement that hadn’t been cleaned up yet.
—Red House Men’s Clinic. Helping every man rediscover his confidence.
Bai Long: …
She’d noticed it, a moment ago, two male espers had let their gaze drift over toward that ad.
The advertisement was pasted right on a pillar at the Esper Center’s main entrance, ensuring every esper who passed by would see it.
Bai Long kept her eyes fixed straight ahead and strode into the Esper Center.
She was plenty confident to begin with.
The Esper Center had three floors.
Right in the center of the first-floor lobby was a service desk.
On either side of the desk were two spiraling staircases. Faintly, at the top of the stairs, you could make out a silver-white metal automatic door, three people wide.
The door opened and closed, every so often someone hurried in or out.
Bai Long observed for a while.
The people going in and out of the second floor seemed steadier than anyone she’d seen before.
Once she had a rough grasp of the situation, Bai Long turned her attention to the first-floor service desk.
The service desk ran along the wall, divided into three windows.
Right now, only the rightmost window had a female clerk in it.
Bai Long drew closer and heard the clerk seemingly in the middle of a call with someone.
“Uncle, how many times have I told you, I am not in the men’s-clinic business. Besides, aren’t all the men’s-clinic doctors over at Sinai now? If they’re treating anything, it’s zombies, and if they’re doing any massages, those are for zombies too!”
The clerk sounded exasperated, and then she turned her head to find a figure clad head-to-toe in black standing outside her window.
The clerk: …
She hung up the call without hesitation, turned around, and put on a practiced, standard eight-teeth toothy smile. “What can I help you with today?”
Clearly professionally trained.
Bai Long: “I’d like to register esper information.”
The clerk smiled. “Certainly, ma’am. Please hand me your ID code, ma’am.”
Bai Long: “Oh, and I need to get an ID code made too.”
Not renew an ID code, make one.
The clerk’s smile froze.
The destructive power of that sentence was roughly equivalent to a person in their mid-twenties announcing they needed to apply for their first-ever birth certificate.
Once she’d sorted out the situation, the professionally trained clerk quickly produced a form and had Bai Long fill it out per the rules and submit it.
Ten minutes later, an ID code had been applied for on Bai Long’s behalf.
Bai Long looked at the brand-new ID code on her star-ring, the one beginning with “1.”
In that very instant, she suddenly felt that her days in the interstellar world had taken on a sense of reality.
She was no longer an outsider.
For both her and the body’s original owner, that was true.
“To register esper information, you’ll first need to go to a room in the back and do a test.”
The clerk handed Bai Long a small chip.
“Once you’re inside, find the testing room that matches the one on your chip, insert the chip into the sensor by the door, and go in. There’ll be operating instructions inside.”
Bai Long took the chip.
The chip was silver and white, with “A03” written in silver right in the center.
“Can I ask, this test, does it detect the condition of my body?”
Thinking of the tail coiled around her waist, Bai Long glanced left and right, then leaned in close to the clerk and asked in a low voice.
“Uh… you mean…?”
The clerk had a momentary blank look.
But she quickly recovered, drawing on her superb professionalism.
“Don’t worry. We’re a professional department established by the Star Alliance, and we protect every citizen’s privacy. The test is conducted on your powers. If your body happens to have a few more, or a few fewer, parts than a normal wom, than a normal person, that won’t be detected.”
She explained in great detail.
But Bai Long couldn’t tell whether she was imagining it, the clerk’s smile seemed to have gotten a little wider.
In any case, having gotten the information she wanted, Bai Long went off to do her test with peace of mind.
This way her extra tail wouldn’t be discovered~
And after she left, the clerk swiftly whipped out her star-ring and excitedly shared the news with her bestie:
【Listen to this! An esper who came in today is a she-male! Ah, or maybe a he-female!】
【What?! Spill the details!】
【She came in to get her powers tested, but she asked me whether it would detect the condition of her body. She must’ve gone next door to that urology-plastic-surgery place and gotten a sex change!】
【Oh my god! That’s wild!】
Bai Long still had no idea that her gender had become a mystery in that clerk’s eyes.
Following the clerk’s directions, she entered a long corridor.
The left side of the corridor was lined with silver-white doors.
To the right of each door was a scanner, that had to be the chip-sensing area.
The interior of the testing room was a sea of pure white.
The square room had not a single thing in it besides the walls.
After Bai Long entered the testing room, the door closed automatically.
“Beep—”
“Hello, A03 at your service.”
A genderless electronic voice rang out in the empty room.
Next, Bai Long saw a square virtual light-screen project down from the ceiling in front of her.
“Please remain standing and do not move, examinee.”
The light-screen scanned Bai Long’s entire body twice, front and back, then returned to its original position.
“Please react to the targets that appear on the virtual screen, examinee. Work within your limits, but give it your best.”
The moment it finished speaking, a red dot of light appeared on the screen.
Bai Long thought for a moment, then released a thread of water from her right fingertip, sending it drifting leisurely toward the dot.
“Put some muscle into it! You didn’t eat your goddamn breakfast or what?!”
Suddenly the mechanical voice switched into a gruff, macho man’s voice.
It caught Bai Long completely off guard.
What… is going on here?
The robot does cosplay now?
“Let me catch you slacking again and I’ll hack your star-ring and dump your entire chat history for the world to see!”
After that line, the gruff male voice signed off, and the genderless mechanical voice returned.
“Please react to the targets that appear on the virtual screen, examinee. Work within your limits, but give it your best.”
Bai Long: …That’s a flat-out threat!
What kind of privacy protection is this supposed to be?!
Although Bai Long was certain that since transmigrating she hadn’t browsed any sleazy websites or gotten into any heated sparring matches with people online, she still put her full strength into her next strike.
It seemed this system could automatically tell whether the examinee was giving it their all.
But the powers Bai Long had expended earlier hadn’t fully recovered, and her body had been aching faintly the whole time, even threatening to flare up.
So what was this system’s standard for “full strength”?
Surely it couldn’t expect someone to walk in upright and get carried out horizontal without a drop left to spare?
Bai Long weighed it, and within the limit of making sure she wouldn’t exhaust herself, she put out her maximum power.
A thick column of water surged up from both her hands.
Bai Long gripped the base of the water column with both hands, took a big stride forward, and swept the column down and across in one motion.
“Take this!”
With a great shout, Bai Long reenacted a baseball grand slam, the water column smacked the bullseye dead center.
“Calculating results, please wait.”
This time the mechanical voice didn’t turn into a macho man, she’d probably passed.
Bai Long’s understanding of this world’s intelligent technology grew a little deeper.
This esper-testing system could not only detect when an examinee wasn’t going all out, it could also independently judge the optimal level of their power output.
The calculation took longer than Bai Long had imagined, a full half hour before the results came out.
During that time the light-screen flickered with static now and then.
Bai Long half thought this piece of high tech was about to explode.
“Esper rank: C-rank. Esper classification: Summoning type.”
Setting aside what kind of level that rank represented, Bai Long was more curious about why her powers were classified as Summoning type.
Could it be that when basic elemental powers activated, the water and flames and so on that appeared counted as a kind of summoned thing?
The moment the test results came out, the testing room door opened automatically.
As Bai Long stepped out, she happened to hear a sound coming from the testing room next door.
“Eek eek eek, stop pushing so haaard! Everything in moderation, okay~ Keep this up and you’ll breaaak!”
It was that same macho voice, but the content this time was even more nauseating.
Bai Long thought she could even hear the dry-heaving of the examinee inside.
Soon two people in work uniforms walked up to the door and dragged the examinee out of that testing room.
“I swear these people are something else. Every time, someone thinks overdrawing their powers will get them a higher rank. Aren’t they underestimating the Star Alliance’s system a little too much? We literally tell them to work within their limits. If you ask me, we should just delete the ‘give it your best’ part, they only ever hear ‘give it your best.'”
The target audience of “give it your best” · Bai Long: …
Feeling personally attacked.
Then again, most people don’t go around being all coy and secretive during a power test like she did.
Everyone else came in with powers blazing at full, practically itching to exceed their own limits, the very target audience of “work within your limits.”
This also confirmed her earlier guess.
This system really was quite intelligent.
…
Bai Long took her test results to the female clerk and successfully completed her registration.
“Your esper information has been entered into the database, and your esper certificate is now on your star-ring. If you want to take commissions, go to the second floor, that’s where the esper commissions posted within District 15 are. But since you’ve only just registered, I’d suggest finding a reliable squad to show you the ropes.”
Bai Long nodded, but she was in no hurry to take on missions.
Getting into Sinai Hospital would probably take a while, so she planned to first find a place to settle down and, while she was at it, get a general sense of Songdu’s situation.
She glanced at the Esper Center’s second floor, then turned and left.
Not long after she’d gone, a man in a work uniform came out of the testing rooms and found the female clerk.
“Suspend testing in Room A03 for now. There’s a problem with the system backend that’ll affect the accuracy of esper-rank assessments.”
The clerk tapped a few times on her screen, and the cursor for Room A03 dimmed from bright to dark.
“Huh? That girl just came out of A03… she won’t have a problem, will she?”
But on second thought she shook her head. “She finished her test a while ago. The system shouldn’t have affected her.”
…
Bai Long still didn’t know that her esper test results might be faulty, but she’d now discovered another enormous problem.
Without credits, she couldn’t move a single step!
Wasn’t this supposed to be a freshly switched currency system? The Star Alliance worked this fast? It had been no time at all and they’d already unified the whole thing top to bottom?
If she hadn’t still had a bit of food stockpiled, she probably couldn’t even afford a cup of water.
In three days she’d become a different kind of corpse from a zombie—
a dried-out mummy!
To say nothing of finding a place to stay.
Even the seedy little motel that looked like it was for hanky-panky cost ten credits.
And Bai Long didn’t have a single credit to her name.
It looked like making money was a pressing emergency.
Bai Long made up her mind, turned around, and headed back into the Esper Center.
As she passed by the entrance, someone suddenly darted out of a dim alley.
The person wore a trench coat that wrapped up their whole body, looking shifty and decidedly up to no good.
“Friend, I’ve got some good stuff here. Wanna take a look?”
The person gave a suggestive jiggle of their trench coat, eyes hinting that there was something inside the coat.
Bai Long’s gaze grew complicated: …
How is there a flasher pervert out in the interstellar age too?
But Bai Long’s mentality was a cut above the ordinary.
She drew her own black cloak a little tighter and lowered her voice. “I’ve got some good stuff too, and mine’s even bigger than yours. Wanna look?”
The person froze: “?”
The person got annoyed: “You should’ve said you were in the same trade!”
With that he turned and crouched right back into his dim little corner.
Bai Long found this a little odd.
What? The interstellar perverts have gangs now? Or is it a whole industry chain?
Just then, a Center staff member happened to be getting off work.
He saw Bai Long standing at the entrance, then saw the person in the corner, and kindly reminded Bai Long, “You’re an esper, right? If you want to take on missions, I’d recommend going up to the second floor. Those guys are all scalpers, don’t be fooled by the high prices on the commissions they offer, none of their jobs have been officially verified.”
In other words, very likely scams.
Bai Long: …
Oh no, so those were the touts the inspector warned about!
“Okay, thanks, bye!”
Bai Long bolted into the Center in a puff of smoke, terrified of exposing something.
She used her esper certificate to unlock access to the Center’s second floor, and another wide-open space came into view.
A pure silver-white metal space, with people coming and going, registering at the front-desk counter and then leaving, each holding a different-colored chip.
Bai Long observed from a corner for a while and figured those chips had to be something like commission slips.
In the center of the hall and along both side walls were rows upon rows of chips, with a sensing area set into the lower-middle portion of the wall.
After watching how others did it, Bai Long placed her esper certificate on the sensing area.
The star-ring interface jumped, transforming into a full wall of esper commissions.
Bai Long only skimmed through them, and quickly realized the Esper Center must already have full interstellar coverage.
The commission locations weren’t just in Region 5, or even District 15, they spanned the entire lower districts.
There were none from the middle or upper layers, but Bai Long didn’t think that meant the middle and upper layers had no commissions, it was just that, due to layer-district restrictions, espers in the lower districts weren’t qualified to see the middle and upper layers’ content.
Each commission also listed a recommended esper rank for completing it.
The staff member managing the commissions saw that Bai Long was an unfamiliar newcomer and dutifully gave her a rundown.
“You’re new, aren’t you? Let me explain the current official esper information for you.”
She explained clearly, and Bai Long grasped it right away.
According to the esper classification currently published by the Star Alliance, espers were divided into five ranks: S, A, B, C, D, E.
E-rank powers weren’t much different from ordinary people’s, while S-rank was currently the scarcest, and the best treated.
Espers of A-rank or above would even receive officially allotted housing and supplies.
Bai Long: Dammit, I’m hardcore jealous!
Having gotten a handle on the Esper Center’s commissions, Bai Long browsed carefully.
【D-rank commission: Take the chip with my homework on it and feed it to a zombie. Be absolutely sure it chews it up and swallows it!】
Zombies aren’t here so you can dodge your homework, hey!
【B-rank commission: Help me cut off the dick of my scumbag ex who’s turned into a zombie, put a dress on him, and film thirty minutes of video. (image)】
Bai Long took a look. The image showed the dress the client specified.
A death-Barbie-pink, sequined, ultra-short slip dress.
Bai Long: Nicely done.
No wonder it was B-rank, against a zombie you’d have to cut off the dick and put on a dress and film a video, even if that scumbag were alive it’d be hard to pull off.
【C-rank commission: Escort a batch of medical supplies to Sinai Hospital.】
Bai Long was immediately drawn to this one.
Escorting medical supplies, in other words, there was a very good chance it could get her into Sinai Hospital.
This was an opportunity.
And even if she couldn’t get in, this C-rank commission still paid 1,500 credits.
Not a bad deal.
Just as she’d finished running the numbers in her head and was about to accept the commission, she saw a notification pop up on her star-ring.
【*The client requires that this commission be completed by at least one two-person esper squad.】
【You currently do not meet the commission requirements. Please try again later.】
Bai Long froze.
She looked at herself, then looked at the people around her hurrying along so fast they might as well have trained in Foshan Shadowless Footwork.
Hold on.
She didn’t have a second teammate!