Several people had already pulled aside or removed enough of their clothing for their friends to get a proper look.
The guys, naturally, took advantage of the brief excitement to sneak more than a few glances at the girls' exposed backs.
Not that Frost was particularly innocent himself. His eyes wandered once or twice before focusing on trying to see his own markings again.
'Looks like I'm going to need a mirror for this.'
He glanced toward Cassie, briefly considering asking her to check his back for him, but she was already speaking with Lois.
Frost immediately abandoned the idea.
'She'd probably say no anyway.'
Meanwhile, Steve seemed completely uninterested in the commotion.
He manipulated the holographic interface floating above his arm, tapping several unfamiliar symbols before extending his hand.
Frost watched curiously as a sheet of paper began materialising beneath Steve's palm.
His eyebrows rose.
The paper simply emerged from thin air beneath his hand, followed by another, then another, each covered in dense writing and several detailed illustrations.
'Okay...' Frost stared. 'Nonexistent printer. Why the hell not?'
Steve began passing the sheets around until one eventually reached Frost. Frost accepted it and looked down.
There were several illustrations depicting different rune markings, along with diagrams of what appeared to be a human back at various stages of progression.
Unfortunately, the paragraphs accompanying them were written in an unfamiliar script composed of symbols and characters he had never seen before.
Frost frowned.
"I can't read this."
"Give it a moment," Steve replied.
Frost looked up.
"Your System should translate it for you."
Frost looked back down at the page.
Nothing changed for a few seconds, and then his vision flickered. The unfamiliar symbols seemed to distort.
Frost blinked.
Individual characters shifted and rearranged themselves before his eyes, their incomprehensible shapes gradually becoming familiar letters and words.
His mouth slowly opened. Within moments, the entire document was perfectly readable.
Frost stared at it.
'Now that's useful.'
A small notification appeared at the edge of his vision.
[Foreign written language detected.]
[Translation synchronised.]
Frost's eyes moved toward the first illustration.
Now that he could actually understand the accompanying text, his curiosity immediately piqued.
At the top of the page were three simple words.
[Soul Script Runes]
...
Frost plopped down onto the small single bed inside the 'room' he had been given to stay in.
"Well, that was incredibly informative..." he muttered to himself, sighing deeply.
The Q&A session with Harod and Steve had finally ended, and unsurprisingly, they were all exhausted, so Harod had dismissed them not long after.
Before leaving, however, he had introduced them to the person responsible for handling communication between the Earthlings living in the slums and the authorities within Linden.
Of course, this person lived in the slums as well and was also from Earth.
He was an authoritative-looking old man with a stern expression who had introduced himself briefly before telling them that they could come to him with any important concerns or requests they wanted passed on to Linden's authorities.
Frost hadn't paid much attention beyond that; by then, he had been far too tired.
The rooms they had been given were less like rooms and more like slightly widened passageways.
Frost could probably touch both walls if he stretched his arms out far enough, and cleanliness clearly hadn't been a priority either.
There was nothing inside besides the small bed he was currently lying on, a table, a chair, and an air vent positioned near the top of one wall.
No windows whatsoever.
They had already been shown where the communal bathrooms were, and the only thing Frost could say after seeing them was that he felt quite sorry for the women.
He had gone there just to take a piss, and the place was very far from being even remotely hygienic.
Frost sighed again.
And this fucking bed was hard too. It technically had a mattress, but it certainly didn't feel like it.
However, Frost would be foolhardy to spend too much time complaining about such things.
He was alive.
After what had happened today, that alone was something he probably shouldn't take for granted.
Besides, there was something considerably more important weighing on his mind.
The Evolution System, Runes, and his future.
To put it simply, after everything Harod and Steve had explained about Runes and the hierarchy surrounding Evolvers, Frost had come to one simple conclusion.
If he wanted to maintain even a modicum of a comfortable life in this new world, he needed to become an Evolver.
Not just become one either.
He needed to become a decent one.
Strong enough to climb whatever hierarchy existed here and earn himself a better quality of life.
The strange trigrams they had seen Syrn using earlier were actually physical manifestations of Runes.
Runes allowed Evolvers to wield supernatural powers, although Steve had described the process somewhat differently.
An Evolver wasn't necessarily creating those phenomena themselves.
They were borrowing the power of the universe.
Runes were essentially keys.
Keys that interacted with the laws governing existence itself, allowing an Evolver to temporarily unlock and manipulate some tiny portion of those laws
For instance, one could gain control over the elements and wield them as they pleased.
Fire, water, wind, gravity, and countless other things Frost hadn't even heard about yet.
In theory, that meant Runes could allow someone to wield untold power.
In practice...
Well, of course it couldn't be that fucking simple.