Alice looked speechlessly at the young man she had teamed up with.
"Another one of those imposters?"
Kaizen blinked, clearly lost.
She sighed and explained, "When it was revealed that there also existed a fifth prince, albeit one who had been in coma since birth, a lot of people scammed the clueless and naive people by claiming to be the fifth prince.
"This trend later died down as people gradually became more aware."
Wow, so no one would believe me even if I expose myself?
Kaizen simply shrugged.
"Don't believe me if you don't want to. You can call me Kaizen."
As they continued walking on the dusty road, they continued chatting. Kaizen deduced after a few interactions that this Alice was someone who liked to gossip a lot.
And it wasn't just any kind of gossip. True to her identity of having originated from a major family of information gatherers, her gossip revolved around the upper class of the empire.
"Are you sure you can tell me all of this?" He asked eventually.
"Of course. None of the things I talked about are a secret in high society."
Her head darted left, then right, orange hair whipping in the breeze before settling again. She leaned in and dropped her voice to a whisper.
"Do you know? There are rumors that the emperor might've fallen."
Kaizen narrowed his eyes.
"Of this empire?"
Alice gave him an exasperated look.
"Or what? The Moriem Empire's? Their emperor isn't as weak as ours."
She continued walking as she talked.
"The race to the throne had started not long ago, which means none of the participants had much preparation in the first place.
"Now that the emperor might have died already, this means they have even less time to prepare before clashing with their cousins and seizing the throne.
"Personally, I think the crown prince and the second prince have the highest chance of seizing the throne."
Seeing no monsters nearby now that they had entered the Lyren forest, they pushed deeper into the woods. Kaizen eventually spoke again.
"Why do you think so?"
Alice shrugged and explained as if it was obvious.
"The crown prince is extremely wealthy, so he has the support of most nobles. You do not need me to explain how that support was bought.
"The second prince, with help from his mother, the empress, found enough dirt on a large number of ministers of the court to keep them in his hands."
She flicked a small branch out of the way before continuing.
"Sure, the third princess has influence over the army because of her mother, the Grand Commander. But she cannot use the army in the succession struggle, not while the borders with the Wildlands are so unstable.
"She would need something else entirely if she wants to win. If the borders were peaceful and she had the entire army at her command, she would have been the strongest contender without question. A pity."
Kaizen was not interested in fighting for the throne, but it was still useful to stay informed.
Staying alive tended to require knowing which royal siblings were preparing civil war plans for breakfast.
"Shhh."
Kaizen put a finger to his lips, signaling Alice to stay quiet. With his other hand he pointed toward a green scaled anaconda coiled around a high branch.
He had only noticed it because his gaze drifted that way by accident. He was not some trained monster tracker in his past life.
Guess I need to buy that draconic evolution of slit pupils. Its eyesight enhancement will help me in my future hunts, which I'll be doing more often.
With Alice in tow, Kaizen didn't use any of his cultivation skills. Naturally, it was because he had introduced himself as an Artifact Refiner to Steve, and that was the identity he intended to maintain.
One couldn't determine the class of someone else until and unless they exposed it themselves.
Honestly? In the past, Kaizen felt it was pretty useless given how anyone could determine your class by your skills and creations given how they were mutually exclusive.
A Cultivator couldn't learn alchemy or any other class, so if they were using a sword cultivation skill, they were sure to be a cultivator.
Now though? Once he exposed himself as an Artifact Refiner, others wouldn't take him as a Cultivator even if he said it himself.
Without using any of his three cultivation skills, Kaizen killed the green scaled anaconda.
[Killed an unranked green scaled anaconda.]
[Experience gained 5000.]
Don't allocate the experiences I'm about to receive. Can you put it in a separate tab for me?
[I'll do so.]
[Spare experience: 5000.]
After he finished killing the monster, Alice stepped forward from the tree she was hiding behind.
"You really can fight efficiently huh. Are you a cultivator?"
Kaizen smiled at her.
"Nope. An Artifact Refiner."
Qi could only be handled by people who had a class. Therefore she didn't ask if he was aiming to be a cultivator.
In this early age of domains, only people interested in fighting walked the path of cultivation, hence her question.
"Huh? That's strange. Are you actually better at refining artifacts then?"
Kaizen didn't reply, but pointed to the dead monster at his feet.
"What do we do with this corpse?"
He naturally didn't answer her question.
What would he even say? That he wasn't good? Then why take this domain? Could he lie and say that he was good? What if she asked him to make something for her?
Therefore, it would be better to just ignore her question.
"We'll divide it 80-20, or 90-10 if you prefer. I don't lack money, and I'm only giving a place to rest safely which only saves an hour or two at best."
Kaizen was in a hurry the first time, so he hadn't had the time to process the corpses of the monsters he had killed.
Just then, he spotted more monsters heading his way.
Oh well, time to kill all of them first.