"Show your pass."
Shang stood in front of two huge gates, almost 200 meters tall.
This was the entrance to a city, something Shang hadn't been to in a very long time.
At the moment, two Mages sat in some chairs beside the gate.
Surprisingly, they were only Late High Mages, which was unusual.
Most cities Shang had been to had Archmage guards, but this place only had Late High Mages as guards.
However, that actually made sense. After all, this wasn't actually a city but a town.
In Area 23, this town would have counted as probably the biggest city in the entire world, but out here, it was just a town.
The town had a diameter of barely five kilometers, which was quite a lot for Area 23 and for Earth, but it wasn't that big for this world.
In Aterium, Ancestral Mages could create such a huge town in a matter of days. Construction time basically didn't exist. After all, powerful Mages could just summon huge columns of stone, earth, and metal that perfectly fit the attributes the Mages wanted.
The only problem was citizens.
Why would anyone visit a new town? After all, everyone was already living in other towns and cities.
But wait, what about villages?
Villages didn't exist.
High Beasts were abundant.
Archbeasts were also rather common.
Ancestral Beasts sometimes appeared.
Who could defend a village from those?
The village would need a very powerful Archmage to deal with the day-to-day problems, and that Archmage would also need to have a method to get rid of an Ancestral Beast somehow.
But would such a powerful Archmage want to create a village?
No, they would just directly make a town. A village didn't even nearly give enough taxes to make all the work worth it.
Because of all of this, villages didn't exist, and everyone was already living in towns and cities.
It was very difficult to create a new town due to the lack of citizens, but if one managed to do it, one would earn way too much money.
Shang took out a metallic sheet and showed it to the two guards.
This was a citizens' pass, something that was issued by the town or city one lived in. If one decided to move, they would need to show their old pass to verify that they were not some criminal. After that, they would get a new one, and the old one would be destroyed.
This was one of the biggest issues why Shang couldn't have entered a city earlier.
He didn't have an old citizens' pass to show, which made it impossible for him to enter any towns and cities.
Back when Shang had traveled to the Twilight Dusk Family's territory from the Lightning Manor's territory, Shang had mainly waited near the entrances of the cities and towns to find a group.
There had been very few towns that let him in either way, but they were truly rare.
Yet, with the Temple of Blood's help, Shang had easily received a citizen's pass.
In the past few years, Shang had seen the advantages of being part of a powerful organization. Problems he couldn't have solved on his own just dissolved like they had never mattered.
When Shang showed his pass, the eyes of the two guards widened in shock.
What was this supposed to mean?!
Realm: Early Impose Stage.
What the hell was an Impose Stage?!
The two guards immediately suspected that Shang had shown them a fake pass, and they used several tests to verify the pass.
Shang didn't say anything during all of this.
The guards grew more and more shocked as all the tests came back positive.
This was actually real?!
As a last resort, one of the guards contacted the city that had issued the pass.
After several minutes of bureaucracy, one of the guards finally got someone that could verify the pass.
"Yes, we issued that pass," the person on the other end of the Communication Crystal said.
"Sir, could you please elaborate? You must understand that it is difficult to believe that this pass is real," the guard said with a lot of respect and care.
The guard was talking to someone from a major city. Nearly every employee was an Archmage, and he couldn't risk angering the other side.
"You're standing in front of a scary-looking guy with no eyes, right?" the other person asked.
The guard glanced at Shang.
"Yes," he said.
"Yes, his name is Shang, and he doesn't have a last name," the other person said. "I still remember when he showed up in our city. One of my employees asked for help since she had no idea how to create his pass. I think that was about 120, maybe 130, years ago."
"You're calling regarding the Realm field, right?"
Nervously, the guard nodded but then remembered that the other person couldn't see his nod. "Yes, sir."
"Yeah, that was a memorable day. Turns out, the guy is not a Mage," the other person said.
The two guards froze and didn't say anything for several seconds.
Not a mage?
Then, they looked at Shang with confusion.
Then why did they even bother? Non-Mages were all weak and worthless.
Why go through all this trouble?
"Oh, let me give you a warning," the voice from the Communication Crystal said. "Don't make a mistake and underestimate him. More than one Mage underestimated him and treated him like trash. Most of them aren't alive anymore."
The two guards took deep breaths. "Wait, so is he a criminal?"
"No," the voice answered. "He just challenged them to life-and-death duels, and the Mages always agreed since they thought that they would earn some easy money by killing and robbing him. He made a loooooot of money that way. In fact, he's kind of a small celebrity in our city. It's a bit of a shame that he's moving to your town. Although, he might just directly purchase your town with all that money."
"Do you need anything else?"
The guard with the crystal didn't answer for a while before the other guard lightly shoved him.
The guard quickly shook his head. "No, sir. That was everything. Thank you!" he said.
"Have a good one," the voice from the Communication Crystal said before cutting the connection.
Over 500,000 kilometers away, inside a humongous city, a Mage with black and white hair leaned back on his chair after putting his Communication Crystal away.
"Shang is a worse name than Secret," Mosuma said with a chuckle.
