After grabbing whatever loot they could, Miri and Anne went to set up a small camp near the exit of the catacombs. During their way there, Anne had offered to heal Miri up as well as curing her of her poison and paralysis status, which Miri gratefully accepted. The two sat beside the campfire, immersed in the warmth of its flame, as Anne ate the food Miri had provided her.

  “Thanks for the heal, by the way,” Miri said as she poked at the flame of the cracking campfire with a tree branch while occasionally adding more pieces of wood to fuel it.

  “Oh, it’s no problem at all. Besides, you’re the one who saved me first. It’s the least I can do,” Anne replied as she munched on a piece of bread with ravenous hunger, eating it so messily that a couple of crumbs managed to stick themselves onto her cheeks.

  “By the way, if you don’t mind me asking, are you the only one who’d been left for dead? I don’t see any other bodies within that scorpider’s nest back there.” Of course, it’s possible that the other members of the party had simply been eaten, but even that would have at least left some remains to indicate their presence such as weapons and armor lying around.

  “Yes, I’m afraid so. Out of all the members of my party, only I was left behind,” Anne confirmed, suddenly overtaken by a slight sense of melancholy.

  “But that doesn’t make any sense,” Miri said. “Usually, in an adventuring party, the healer of the group was supposed to be the most protected. That’s just basic combat tactics. If a non-healer of the group gets injured, the healer is gonna be there to save them. But if the healer of the group gets injured, no one else is going to save them and everything just falls apart after that. Therefore, it is imperative that a party should defend their healer as well as possible. Even if the battle got too difficult for the party to handle, I’d expect at least some of the members to go down with you instead of you being here all by yourself.”

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  “Yes, well, you see, that’s not exactly how it works in practice,” Anne said with a low tone. “Out of all the members of my party, I’m the one with the lowest social class, which means that I’m the one with the lowest priority in keeping safe.”

  Miri furrowed her brow. “What do you mean? What does that have to do with anything?”

  “You really don’t know? I would have thought this is common knowledge.”

  “Well, I…uhh…” Miri stammered a little in her speech. She couldn’t exactly tell Anne that she’s actually from another world; it’s not like she’ll believe her anyway. Best to keep that secret under wraps to avoid making people see her as some sort of crazy person. “I…came from very far away, so I don’t exactly understand the customs around here.”

  “Oh, I see,” Anne said with a nod. “Well, to put it simply, when a party is comprised of members of different social classes, it is the social class that determines who gets to be prioritized in being kept alive. Even though I’m the healer of the group, because I am of the lowest social class out of the group, I was sadly left behind so that the other members of the party get to prioritize saving the ones with a higher social class.”

  “What?! That’s bullshit! Who the heck came up with this system anyway?”

  “It is the way our society works, I’m afraid. Has been for hundreds of years. There’s very little we can do to change it.”

  Miri saw how depressed this topic was making Anne feel and couldn’t help but sympathize with her situation.