22 22 - Liza and Anna
Leo stayed in the forest until the night despite never having stayed that long in the forest beforehand. With the Wall-Hack active all the time, it was impossible for him to suffer a sneak attack, even in the moments when he was resting. Some of the food he left prepared was eaten, leaving only a little left in case an emergency happened. On the other hand, his Inventory was practically full. One cubic meter full of materials was a lot: just with these materials that he hunted today he could already complete another 20 – 30% of the list of materials that the old man had sent him, and that was disregarding the monsters he killed that weren’t on the list!
As he walked out of the forest, Leo opened his Status screen.
[Leonardo Lentz
Age: 17 Years
Rating: Bronze 2 Stars [0/2,000]
Talent: Hack
Experience Points: 18,810
Quirks:
Aim-Bot Lv 05 [0/1,600]
Wall-Hack Lv 04 [0/4,000]
Speed-Hack Lv 01 [0/2000]-(0)ᴠʟ.
Inventory-Hack Lv 01 [0/5,000]
Available Quirks: The next Quirk will be unlocked when the user reaches Pure Silver Rank.]
When looking at the amount of Experience points on his screen, Leo cracked open a big smile.
He had never made more than 10,000 Experience points in a day. If he wanted to, with those almost 19,000 Experience Points he had, he could already reach Pure Silver Rank without much difficulty, but he knew that if he did that, he would receive less experience points from Bronze monsters. So it was better to use those experience points on skills first.
Leo believed that these skills had a Level limit – that is, when he reached a certain Level with the skills he could no longer put points into them. He still didn’t know what the limit was, but Leo thought it might be Level 10. Compared to other Awakened who couldn’t even put Experience points into skills to improve them (or even use experience points to unlock new skills), Leo knew that had a lot of advantage.
The best / simplest example of this advantage of his was that he was already hunting Bronze 3 Star monsters alone with ease, while a regular Bronze 2 Star Awakened might be in danger when dealing with Bronze 1 Star monsters alone. Sure, an Awakened Bronze 2 Star with a special ability like Chris could probably also handle Bronze 2 Star monsters all by himself, but they could hardly handle Bronze 3 Star monsters like Leo was doing.
With a smile on his face, Leo greeted the soldiers guarding the city gate and went out to sell what materials he had. Considering the materials he sold to the old man and the materials he sold at other stores, Leo made approximately $102,000 today.
‘I got over $100,000 in a single day! If I don’t improve and just stay at this level for the rest of my life, I’d get over $3,000,000 a month. In a year it would be $36,000,000… damn, I’m practically a millionaire already!’ Leo thought very excitedly.
Before his sister disappeared, he knew she was very rich, as she was a Gold Ranked Awakened, but she never told Leo how much she actually earned. Even before he became a Pure Silver Awakened, Leo was practically on a millionaire salary. Leo began to wonder how much his sister earned.
Looking at the dirty clothes he was wearing, Leo knew he had to change. He was wearing Bronze 2 Star camouflage leather armor that he had bought a few days ago. As Leo wanted to hunt a Bronze 4 Star monster, Leo wanted to buy at least one set of Bronze 4 Star leather armor, but seeing the price of the armors, Leo finally understood that the $159,700 he had in his bank account now wasn’t as much money as he had first imagined… (O)ᴠʟ
To get the best Bronze 3 Star armor set, Leo would need at least $170,000, which was something he couldn’t afford. A normal Bronze 4 Star armor set started at $250,000 and went up to $360,000, while the best Bronze 4 Star sets were even priced at $500,000!
Leo looked at the green and blue camouflage leather armor and thought this armor was very pretty, but unfortunately the $500,000 price tag was something he couldn’t afford right now.
An ordinary Awakened Bronze 4 Stars would need to work for months, or even more than a year, to get enough money to buy this armor. What usually happened was that the group collected money and upgraded each group member’s armor a piece at a time, but Leo would only need to hunt for another 4 or 5 days to get the money for this armor.
With today’s hunting, he already discovered some good tactics to use against the Vulpi that he would have to hunt, and seeing this Bronze 4 Star armor, Leo knew that with this armor, hunting would be even easier. So Leo decided he would hunt still more monsters in the coming days to be able to hunt Vulpi while wearing this armor. With this goal in mind, Leo left the store and took a taxi to the Mall.
As much as his money was not enough to buy a set of Bronze 4 Star armor, that money was more than enough for him to buy new clothes for himself to wear on a daily basis. As he only received a very low allowance normally, Leo’s clothes were already getting old, so with his bank account so full, Leo decided to use some of his money to have some fun.
Leo’s advantage was that he was very handsome, so even though his clothes were older than most other men his age, his face had always attracted a lot of attention, distracting people from his clothes.
Of course, before getting into the taxi, Leo had already exchanged the armor he was wearing for a set of clothes that he had stored in his inventory, as it would be very strange for him to enter the Mall with blood-stained armor.
“Are you an Awakened, boy?” the taxi driver asked Leo curiously as he picked up Leo at the Awakened sales station.
“Yes, I became an Awakened not long ago,” Leo replied with a polite smile.
“Ohh, that’s good! It’s said that while being Awakened is a very dangerous profession, it’s also very lucrative,” the taxi driver said with a smile.
Leo agreed. “Yes, while Awakened have the advantage of making more money, the danger is also very high. I myself have seen a group almost dying to hunt some eagles.”
Hearing this, the taxi driver was shocked. As much as he noticed on the news that every now and then a group of Awakened had died, it always seemed like something very far away, but seeing this young man speaking of what he had seen with his own eyes scared the man a little.
“As much as a taxi driver doesn’t earn that much, security is priceless…” the man said, satisfied with his profession.
Leo just smiled and said nothing. He understood most men enjoyed security despite being paid little, in the same way that people accept to apply for public office wanting financial stability. But Leo, himself, didn’t like that kind of thing. Even if he wasn’t Awakened, Leo would probably have started a company to make money and be able to control his own destiny. Whether the company was going to grow or fail would be up to him, which was the kind of lifestyle he wanted.
After their initial conversation, the two were silent until they arrived at the mall. Leo gave the taxi driver a big tip before getting out of the cab and starting to stroll around the shopping center.
Initially Leo thought that with his money he could go to a Gucci store, or some famous brand like that, but after thinking about it, paying thousands of dollars for a single piece of clothing he felt was too much.
‘Maybe when I earn more I can spend money in these stores, but paying $5,000 on a shirt for me is too much. That’s almost 5% of my daily income! If I buy 10 shirts, half of my salary today goes away.’ Leo mentally denied that idea.
Leaving those famous brands aside, Leo went to an Adidas store and found everything he wanted.
With less than $10,000 Leo bought some sneakers, several shirts, and some pants. From the amount of stuff he bought, if he bought this at the Gucci store, Leo would have probably spent over $100,000.
Leo was satisfied with the things he had bought, so he went to the bathroom and put on a set of the clothes he bought and put the rest in his inventory and went to eat something, intending to go back home to spend his Experience points and sleep. But to Leo’s surprise, he found Liza at a table in the food court, talking to another girl who looked a little like her. So, instead of leaving, Leo bought a sandwich and then he walked towards the table where Liza was.
Leo only intended to wave at her and then look for another place to sit, since she was with someone else, but as soon as Liza saw Leo, she cracked a smile and waved him over to her table. Seeing this, Leo smiled and sat down next to Liza.
When the girl who was with Liza saw this, at first she was confused, as she knew that Liza hardly ever saw anyone her age as an equal. So for her to treat this boy that way, this boy probably had something special about him. Just deducing this already made this girl start to be interested in this mysterious young man.
Right away she saw that the clothes Leo was wearing weren’t expensive, but they weren’t cheap either. While Adidas clothing wasn’t luxury clothing, it wasn’t clothing that not everyone could afford either, particularly seeing as the clothing Leo was wearing was brand new.
“Hi Leo,” Liza said with a smile.
“Hi Liza,” Leo replied with another smile.
“This is my cousin Anna. She is studying at one of the four big universities.” Liza proudly introduced her cousin.
Hearing how she was introduced, Anna was very pleased, as few people could get into one of the four big universities. But to her disappointment, Leo just smiled politely at her as if what Liza said was no big deal. After all, Leo’s sister studied at the Military University, and he would probably get into the Military University too. No matter how much of a big deal the big four universities were, something too far away for ordinary people, for someone from the Military University this was no big deal.
“Hello Anna, I’m Leonardo, but you can call me Leo,” Leo replied politely.
Anna was a little displeased with Leo’s reaction, but still smiled politely.
Seeing Leo’s reaction, Liza was able to deduce what he was thinking, and knowing Leo’s strength, she also believed he could get into the Military University along with Chris.
“Which of the four big universities do you intend to enter, Leo?” Anna asked curiously. For Leo to have such a mild reaction about where she studied, the only possibility she could think of was that Leo would also be studying at one of the big 4 universities. “If you’re going to study at White Cloud University I can give you some tips.”
Leo heard this and was a little uncomfortable, but still answered what he really thought. “I don’t intend to study at any of the big four universities.”
Anna was confused to hear this, so much so that she looked at Liza and was disappointed. Apparently her cousin only liked this boy for his good looks, but maybe Leo’s talent wasn’t good enough to get into a big university?
Seeing that Anna had stopped trying to pay attention to him after the answer he gave, Leo didn’t get mad and just kept saying, “I’m going to the Military University.”
Boom!
(O)ᴠʟ A bomb exploded in Anna’s head. The Military University was the best university in the country, among the top three universities in the world! While the big four universities accepted 10,000 students per year each, the Military University accepted a maximum of 500 students.
While the big universities’ best graduates were almost all Pure Silver 1 Star students, the worst students at the Military University graduated at Pure Silver 1 Star. That was the difference between the Elite and the truly Elite.
Anna was shocked to meet someone who planned to study at the Military University, so much so that she even tried to feel for Leo’s power radiating off of him.
But when she saw that Leo was just an Awaken Bronze 2 Stars, her shocked expression changed to tense incredulity immediately.
———-
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