Adam sat with his three friends, bringing back their attention to him. After a moment, Joe, one of his friends, slapped him and on the shoulder and said "Look at you, drawing everyone's attention. A real diva!"
Adam rolled his eyes and Joe got slapped behind the head by his girlfriend, Sarah, who sat next to him. She smiled at Adam and said "Don't listen to this idiot. Care to explain though? Did you join Aeolus?"
"What do you mean? How could I possibly join them?"
Adam's third friend, Laura, snickered "You didn't even hide your face, did you think we wouldn't find out about your achievements, Valiant Heart?"
He smiled and said "I guess I should have expected it. But to answer your question, no, I didn't join them. In fact, I am creating a guild myself. Divine Predators."
Laura whistled "Wow, impressive big man. I'm sure mommy's proud of her little boy!"
Adam sneered back "She sure is. What about you, I heard they run speed datings in a nearby bar. Is that why you're here loner?"
Laura clicked her tongue and said "Not my fault if they don't have taste." Adam replied "Even a masochist would get scared of you."
Laura screeched "What did you say!" Adam quickly raised his coaster, blocking a spit from Laura, and took a sip of his beer before saying "That's what I am talking about. You can't just spit at people, you'll get arrested once again."
She crossed her arms under her chest, making it a little bigger as she said "I didn't do much…"
Joe intervened "You broke that guy's knee Laura." She looked away and didn't say anything, she was ignoring him.
Joe said "You little…" But Sarah patted his arm and said "Don't be a child. So, let's…" She was about to speak when she suddenly halted, looking at the sit next to Adam, as did the others.
There, East Wind had taken a sit, handing her hand to Adam. She said with her graceful voice "Hi, I'm Samantha."
Adam felt it was quite rude of her to just sit next to him, but because she didn't seem to have any bad intention, and maybe, maybe, because she was beautiful, he didn't break her hand but rather shook her hand.
As expected, she didn't try a vain contest of strength because of what he allowed her to sense, so he said "Adam. What can I do for you?"
Samantha smiled and said "I want to know you. Or rather, I want to know why I don't know you." Adam replied "I would say because we never met. And you probably haven't been paying attention to the news recently."
She crossed her legs and wiped out her phone, which looked more expensive than Adam's house, and said "What should I search?"
Adam replied "Valiant Heart. Be quick, you are making this awkward." She looked up from her phone and said "Who cares what those people think, they've got nothing better to do than gawk at celebrities. Since you game me an ID, I guess you are playing Epoch. Which guild are you in?"
"Divine Predator."
Sam was confused, she never heard of that guild either. She knew the names of all the Super Guilds in the world, and although the same couldn't be said about First Tier Guild, she was at least familiar with the vast majority of them.
She quickly found everything about Adam on the net, and after a moment she said "So you are the newcomer who has been making waves recently… Interesting. My ID in game is East Wind, send me a friend request, in case you ever need help. Well, it was nice meeting you. Good night to you and your silent friends."
She got up and walked away under the stares of everyone, while Adam smirked inwardly. She was obviously talking about tomorrow's fight, offering her help in exchange of a favor. What she didn't know was that he didn't need her help at all.
Once she was gone, the last two of Adam's friends joined them, the were two guys, a Japanese and a Tunisian, Saito and Sami. They sat next to Adam and Saito asked "How? Why? What?"
Adam shrugged and said "It just kind of happened. And you don't need to be shocked, she's just the member of a First Tier Guild."
Saito took his head between his arms and said "She's not just the member of any guild, she is a member of Aeolus, and its potential guild leader. My guild is under Aeolus!"
Adam raised an eyebrow, so that's what the fuss was about. Since the moment he had created his guild, he hadn't even thought of inviting his five friends in it even once, because they already had their own guilds, and he knew they cared about them, and putting them in a dilemma by asking them to join his guild would be cruel.
All five of them were elite members of Second Tier Guilds, Saito was in Ronin, Joe and Sarah in Chrisan, Laura in Savage Land and Sami in Exodus.
Now all sat down, Sami said "The guild you are going against, Blue Cemetery, my guild is actually at war with them. If you want, I can ask my guild leader to help."
Adam shook his head and replied "I'm thankful for the help, but I really don't need it. I would have ignored them in normal times, but I accepted the challenge because I want to use this as an ad for my newly formed guild. Asking help would make this useless. And don't worry, I'm fully confidant I will win."
His friends looked at him with some doubt, but said nothing. They knew Adam had his pride, and he would rather fail than ask for help for such a matter.
Moreover, with his recent achievements, they actually felt like he could pull off a miracle. After all, they had seen too what he did in Rosewatch, including pulling off that super powerful spell from within the scroll.
Following that they all talked about the start of their own adventures in the game, which were smoother than Adam's since they already had guilds to help them, but they mainly got low ranks quests.
After some time, they decided to go home as it was getting late, and thus bade their farewells to each other.
Once back home, Adam saw both his parents were home, but they were already asleep. Adam walked to his room and started training.
He had two things to train in. First was the 4th Gate, the Gate of View, which he needed to open. Then, there was also his cultivation which he needed to improve.
For his Gate of View, he already knew how to train it. Once opened, the Gate of View would give its user a perfect sense of space and balance as well as a perfect equilibrium. Adam believed that this Gate was like the first two and the conditions to open it would be no different from those he already knew.
That's why, all he needed to do was to train his balance to the max. But that wasn't the only thing he needed to improve, he also needed to improve his cultivation.
Right now he was in the Bronze Realm, and in game one needed to gain XP to level up and get stronger in the realm. However, this wasn't an option in the real world.
Adam still had an idea though about how he could strengthen his cultivation. The name he had given his current realm was Bronze rank, but since he entered the realm a name constantly came back to his mind, and that was Qi Gathering.
In many novels Old Adam had read, the first two realms were Body Strengthening and Qi Gathering. And from what he saw, that was exactly what was happening. The Iron Rank would make someone strengthen their body to the max, and then the Bronze Rank would be about accumulating more and more Qi.
That would mean he is currently in the first level of the Qi Gathering Realm, and Samantha was probably in the last level.
What made him think like that was that she had just a little less Aura, or Qi than him despite not having opened the Third Gate.
In Cultivation, foundation was the most important. That's why, in game the more Gates one has opened before their promotion to Bronze Rank, the higher their class. Someone who has a body five times stronger than others can also store five times more Qi.
Samantha probably had broken through to Qi Gathering when she had opened the First Gate, so she had an S grade Talent, and would have the strength of someone of that rank. This means at the same stage, Adam would be five times stronger than her since he was an SSS Talent.
For her to be just a little below in him in Qi quantity, then she was five times stronger than a normal person who just broke through, so that's why he believed she had reached the top of the realm she currently was in, and was probably waiting to open her Second Gate before breaking through.
But he was going off track. If he really was in the Qi Gathering Realm, then what he needed to do was simple, he had to gather Qi.
Normally he would need a cultivation technique, but he didn't have any, and couldn't get any. If he asked for one in the dojos, he would be forced to join them. And there probably didn't exist any in game, since all they needed to do to grow stronger was to kill other beings.
That meant Adam had to create his own cultivation technique. The problem was, experimenting with his Qi could be very dangerous, he didn't want to suffer from Qi Deviation, but it's not like he had any choice.
First, he would just try to absorb the surrounding Qi, if that was even possible, and then slowly try to make the process smoother and smoother.
For the rest of the night Adam trained relentlessly, not sleeping at all. But it's not like he needed to anyway, just opening the Gate of Healing made him capable to go on days without sleeping, and opening the Third Gate and breaking through had pushed that limit farther.
Next morning, once connected Adam summoned Neith back and the two of them once again ventured into [Serpentine Canyon]. This time they were quicker than yesterday since they didn't have to check all the small passageways and just focused on going deeper.
For today, Adam's goal was to find traces of the Serpentine Gang, and possibly the egg in the morning, then at lunch he would have to go fight against Blue Cemetery.
Honestly, the more the moment approached, the more Adam felt like this was a waste of time. But he had to do it, his guild needed the advertisement.
But he had to do things in order. First, find the egg.
It didn't take long for Adam to reach the cave where he had met the snakes yesterday, and was surprised to see a group of adventurers in front of it. It was a team of five Level 50 Bronze, and they didn't seem that powerful.
Adam shook his head and said "I wouldn't go in there if I were you, only death awaits for you in this cave."
The five turned around to look at him, they were a group of Lizardkin. Their leader hissed "Who are you, a seer?"
Adam replied "I don't need to see the future to know you will die if you enter that cave. What's inside will kill you."
The leader sent a glance above Adam's head and was about to make a comment when one of his comrades said in a barely hearable voice "Captain, look at his mount…"
The Captain looked down and looked at Neith status, and was shocked by what he saw. One had more chances to see a dragon than see a Chosen monster, explaining why he was so shocked.
After a moment he bowed toward Adam and said "Thank you for your advice!" This time, he really looked grateful, so Adam nodded to him and he ordered Neith to continue advancing in the canyon.
As for the group of Lizardkin, one of the subordinates asked "Captain, why did you bow to him? Even if his mount was good, there was no need to go to such an extent…"
The Captain suddenly started emitting a powerful aura, one more powerful than what Adam had been able to feel earlier. At the same time, a ring on his hand started turning a little blurry, and his rank changed from Bronze to Silver.
He said "You idiot, we are here undercover, we aren't supposed to get sighted around here. And especially not by this guy."
The subordinate asked "What's up with him?"
The Captain hissed and took his aura back as he said "Will it hurt you to think for a moment? This was a Chosen, they are normally impossible to tame, and they absolutely wouldn't serve someone weaker than them, which means he defeated and tamed this monster on his own. Only one kind of person is capable of doing this, and news about one such person spread through the entire world recently."
The other Lizardkin remained silent for a moment before putting on a shocked face and saying "Captain, are you saying this is the Sovereign that appeared in Fjora?!"
Another subordinate rolled his eyes and said "Of course that's who Captain is talking about. I swear, if it weren't for your strength I would wonder what you are doing here."
The Lizardkin scratched his head and said with a goofy smile "Mom said I should be proud to be a simpleton because that means I'm always honest!"
The Captain patted his shoulder and said "And she's right. Come now, we mustn't stay here."
Another Lizardkin asked while looking at the cave "What about the mission captain?"
The Captain replied "This isn't our main goal, we were told to complete this one only if we can do it discreetly. The Sovereign has already gone inside, so if by chance he comes back and sees something is missing, he will connect it to us, and that could endanger our identity, we aren't supposed to be strong enough."
The rest nodded and the team of five walked away, gradually creating a mist as they walked, slowly disappearing.
Meanwhile, Adam had no idea the NPCs he had just met weren't what they seemed. For the moment, he was focused on finding traces of gang while killing the monsters standing in his path.
Despite having killed many snakes, both today and yesterday, neither Adam nor Neith had leveled up yet, although Adam was getting there.
From Level 20 on, leveling up becomes much harder, especially for Adam since he was three times slower than the average player. If he wasn't hunting Level 50 monsters, but ones of his level, it would probably take him more than a week to level up even once, and that was him being optimistic.
That didn't bother Adam in the least though, because he needed that time. He had to open the 4th Gate before leveling up anyway, and he would need time for that to happen.
After four hours of search, Adam felt like he had been cursed, and his luck stat had become negative, if there was one such attribute.
The Serpentine Gang was said to be an active gang, and that in normal times it would be hard to avoid them. But here he was, searching for them for four hours, and yet no trace could be found.
So it was either his bad luck, or something was going on with the gang, which was actually probable since they stole what seemed to be a special egg.
Because it was made of ice, Adam hadn't seen what color the egg was, but he knew it was bigger than the other two that were actually present. Now, Adam was pretty sure a bigger egg meant that this snakes' grade would be higher than the other two eggs, and that was probably why it was stolen in the first place.
Anyway, four hours of exploring had allowed Adam to go deep in the canyon, and he could see he was getting near the end, meaning he probably would soon get to see his prey.
And as he thought, a few minutes later, he saw a group of three Wood Elves, whose name tags all showed they were part of the Serpentine Gang. Adam grinned, he would finally get to have some real action.
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