Chapter 497 - The Least of the Surprises

Chapter 497: 497 - The Least of the Surprises

Hearing that statement, especially when it came to money, the group’s eyes shone even brighter.

For Players from the Low Zone like them, even as part of a gang that had more freedom and average income than an ordinary person, money had always been a problem.

The earnings after joining the Astralis had really helped everyone there a lot, but even so, hearing that their daily credit earnings would probably increase by at least 30% was already staggering news.

"Wait," Kai said, slowly, looking at his own backpack. "Does that mean that, just today, I made..."

"Four hundred ninety credits, according to the standard calculation." Dylan confirmed, reading a line from the scroll. "Yesterday it was three hundred eighty."

Kai went very quiet for a moment, and then let out a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob.

"I can pay two weeks of rent with just this," he murmured. "I’ve never made this much money in a day."

"I was able to buy the parts Zach asked for to fix the motorcycle," Jenny added, her eyes damp and a huge smile on her face. "I’d owed him that for a month."

The conversation spread through the group like a wave, with each person remembering a bill, a postponed payment, something that had always been left for later because the money never stretched far enough, even with the already high earnings after joining the Astralis, and Dylan, watching it, felt a quiet satisfaction totally different from just analyzing those numbers on a spreadsheet.

They were people, after all, who came from hard lives, from sectors where every credit counted, and who were now realizing, little by little, that all that effort had begun to turn into something much bigger than a simple game.

In the corner of the lobby, listening to everything, Lohan felt his heart, or the equivalent of it, tighten in a good way.

"You look like you have something to say," Lisa commented, beside him, in a low voice, without taking her eyes off the group.

’I’m just thinking that... it’s nice,’ he replied, and the sentence came out simpler than he had intended. ’I never imagined that helping us level up could change someone’s life like this.’

"I did," Lisa answered, and he noticed she was looking at him, and not at the group. "I always knew you’d do this."

Before he could respond, a small, firm hand touched his shoulder, and he turned, surprised, and saw Dan and Sam, who had approached in silence.

Dan, the decrepit warlock, with his hunched posture and weathered face, stood with a shy, almost unrecognizable smile, and beside him, Sam, the ghost, floated, his ethereal form glowing brighter than usual.

"We wanted to thank you," Dan said, in a hoarse voice. "For today. For what your clone did."

"I was just there," Lohan replied, and felt that the answer was inadequate.

"That’s not true," Dan insisted, and his smile trembled. "My whole life, I’ve never been able to stand in front of a monster without feeling like I was going to fall apart. Today, with that armor, I stood there. I faced two of them. And I wasn’t afraid."

Sam, beside him, shook his head with a soft glow in his ghost eyes.

"He cried after the fight," he said, in a conspiratorial tone, and Dan made a fake face of indignation, but didn’t deny it. "Me too. But I have an excuse, I don’t have a body."

Lohan didn’t know what to say, and it was Lisa who saved the moment, with a soft laugh and a touch of her tail on the warlock’s back.

"Don’t be so surprised by this, you two are the second best duo in our guild and this power of yours will only grow from here on out." she stated, with an affectionate seriousness. "Right behind the two of us, haha."

"And it’s not like I’m not getting anything out of this either, guys, remember that part of the experience you earn also comes to me, and part of the money earned from the hunt is mine too, hehe." Lohan joked to lighten the mood, which wasn’t a lie.

Not only had the other Players’ income already increased by 35%, Lohan’s income had also increased directly because of it.

If the Players were satisfied with the more than $100 they earned per day, Lohan was grinning from ear to ear at his daily earnings, which by that point had already gone up by more than $1,500 credits just from accompanying them.

Counting what he already earned before with the clones and with his main body, Lohan’s daily income at that point was close to $10,000 Credits!

Dan and Sam smiled, and went off toward the guild’s mess hall, and the conversation in the lobby slowly returned to its normal rhythm, full of laughter and sums done out loud.

The next day was the most intense.

With Lisa’s experience bar already at two thirds, Lohan and she set out before dawn for an even more dangerous region, where the creatures were Level 22 and 23, and where every fight demanded almost perfect coordination.

He restrained, she cut, and between fights, the two chatted about everything and nothing, about the food of Orvyn, about what she would do when she reached Level 21 and went through her evolution, and with every hour that passed, the distance between them seemed to shrink a little more, in a way so natural that neither of them could point out exactly when it had happened.

When the artificial sun began to set, the two were sitting on a tall rock, looking out at a plain covered in mist, with her experience bar at ninety eight percent.

"Two and a half," Lisa commented, with a tired, happy sigh. "You almost won the bet."

’Almost?’

"I still need one more bear."

’Damn, so only tomorrow morning...’

"Yes... only tomorrow morning." she agreed, and laid her head on her front paws, her eyes half closed, and her tail wrapped, with no hesitation at all, around his body.

This time, neither of them was embarrassed.

Her white light and his, a few centimeters apart, blended at the edges, and the silence between them was the most peaceful of all.

At the highest window of the headquarters tree, kilometers away, Dylan and Alice watched the sunset with two mugs in their hands, and Alice, looking at the distant spot where two lights, one white and one blue, seemed like one, let out a satisfied sigh.

"I have a feeling," she said, "that her next evolution is going to be the least of the surprises."

Dylan smiled, and clinked his mug against hers, in a silent toast.