The journey to Grandell City ended without anything going wrong, which, honestly, I was pretty grateful for. Our cart rolled toward the main entrance while the city’s massive walls loomed over us, towering against the horizon.The last time we entered Grandell, we only had to pay a simple travel fee, but moving here was a completely different matter. To stay in the city, you needed proper documentation, and unlike back on Earth where I remembered cities being more open, here you needed specific permits issued directly by the city authorities.There were several kinds to keep track of. One-time permits were the easiest to get and usually took no more than a day to process. Weekly permits allowed you to enter and leave freely until they expired, while monthly permits cost more, took longer to issue, and had to be renewed every thirty days.But even those weren’t enough if you actually wanted to live here. For that, you needed a citizenship permit, which cost a small fortune and still had to be renewed every ten years. I remembered listening to Grace and Daniel talk about it back in the village, though at the time I hadn’t fully understood that last part, because it almost sounded like nobody could ever truly become a permanent citizen of this land.Like anywhere else in the world, corruption was unavoidable, and honestly, paying a guard was often much easier than dealing with the city's endless permit regulations.Eventually, it was our turn at the checkpoint. The guards stood clad in heavy metal armor, resembling medieval soldiers, though far sturdier and far more practical than the ceremonial or judicial armor I remembered from Earth’s history books.“Your permit,” one of them said.Daniel handed over the one-month permit he had arranged in advance, but then I noticed him subtly slip a small leather pouch alongside the paper. The guard barely glanced at the permit itself; instead, he weighed the pouch in his hand, peeked (...)