Alyssa sighed as she checked the cabinets. Due to a promise her parents had made, Alyssa’s future in law parents had given them some money. The promise? Alyssa had to go to the Upper Ring next week to attend a ball. It was a ball where participants had to bring their partner and Alyssa was sure the universe hated her when her fiancée couldn’t find any damn girl except for her. They had offended them even more by giving a tailored dress, which Alyssa had to put on to the ball. She hated formal stuff like this and she absolutely didn’t want to go, not with someone like him. At least they would be at a public place where he couldn’t touch her. Her cheek had healed and she didn’t want another bruise, which she surely would receive if he would ever find out what she had been doing in the Agrarian Ring while they were apart.

Alyssa had to blow of some steam. While she was relieved that her parents would be able to trade well this week, she hated that those upper snobs were using them for their own amusement. And then there was another worry that could be added to the pile. Her father had become sick in a short amount of time and the whole reason this marriage ever existed was because her father had been able to do business with father of that snob from the Upper Ring. If her father would be unable to continue his business, would the marriage been blown off? While Alyssa didn’t mind if that would happen, so also didn’t want to see her parents in despair again. She was marrying that guy to keep her family alive, after all.

While she was strolling around the Agrarian Ring, she saw a man around her age standing around with a few other people. They were doing something weird and Alyssa cocked an eyebrow as some kind of machine was plugged into the ground. And then it started talking. Intrigued by this, Alyssa couldn’t help her curiosity and approached the man, who seemed like another rich snob from the Upper Ring. What was someone like him doing here? ”What’s the meaning of this?” she asked, her voice not sounded hostile in the slightest.

No, it was mostly filled with curiosity and some slight confusion.

Alyssa smiled friendly at the man to show him that she had no hostile intentions. She wasn’t the type of girl who would get mad at strangers if they weren’t doing something wrong anyway. She would only get mad when someone was treated wrong or if someone had a problem with her, but these strangers weren’t doing anything wrong. She cocked her head to the side when the man spoke his words, her eyebrows raising in both confusion and admiration when he spoke his words. So the machine had the ability to accurately tell others what kind of temperature it was in the environment it was stated in? That was amazing. ”That sounds amazing. You must have done a lot of studying to pull something like this of,” she spoke admiringly, taking a closer look at the machine. She had never seen anything like this in her whole life, which probably wasn’t that strange because the Agrarian Ring wasn’t really relying on technology to help the people around here.

”So you’re saying you’re working on something even bigger than this?” she asked, looking from the machine back to him. ”I bet that if you can make something grand out of this, you will make a lot of money.” A world her and her parents could only dream of if Alyssa would retreat herself from her marriage with the snob that was currently dominating her entire life. But she wasn’t jealous. She could never bring up the knowledge to make money like this, so this kind of world wouldn’t belong to her anyway.