Chapter 192: Purchasing a Smartphone

He woke up to another day as the morning sunlight fell into the hotel room through the narrow gaps between the curtains. Alen lay on the soft bed, feeling his face warm up because of the light. After a few seconds, he stirred awake, looking around the room in a daze with a blank expression. For a brief moment, he wasn’t able to comprehend exactly where he was. As a few more seconds passed, he finally sat up and realized he was safely back in his hotel room in Verrant City. Yesterday evening, he had immediately fallen asleep right after returning from the grand auction.

He sat up while rubbing his eyes, trying to blink away his lingering drowsiness. He immediately felt a hard object resting below his hand on the mattress. He looked down toward it.

The plain white mask lay there right under his palm. It had fallen from his face the night before while he slept.

"Sigh, it seems I forgot to remove it. I am glad it didn’t break, or I would have been heartbroken after paying so much for a supposedly cheap thing like this..."

He shook his hand, grabbed the mask, threw it securely inside his Shadow Inventory, and stood up from the bed.

He walked inside the washroom to brush his teeth, took a refreshing shower, and put on clean clothes. He walked out while drying his silver hair with a towel and looked at his reflection in the mirror again. His face was still just as handsome as before, without any new changes.

"Sigh... I feel tired of seeing such a handsome face. Is there no guy present in this world more handsome than me?"

He shook his head as a vain smirk curled up on his lips. He stepped back, wearing his stylish black jacket. He immediately summoned back his dark cloak and white mask, wearing them to hide his recognizable face as he pulled up the hood.

"So, shall we go? Well... Who am I even asking... By the way, what is that notorious spirit doing?"

He asked himself out loud, or more appropriately, he mentally checked his other manifestation that was secretly following her. He had sent his other manifestation out without any worry—not because he trusted her, but because he had sent the manifestation to stop her from causing any trouble.

He didn’t want her to kill someone ’accidentally’ or ’deliberately’ while playing around the city.

He knew her true nature. Even though she had absorbed some of his emotions and wasn’t as emotionless as she was in the past, she was still the same sadistic girl who felt pleasure from watching others suffer. He had to prevent any mishaps from happening.

’Hmm... Damn, she stole chocolates?! F*ck, that girl really did learn my bad habits. I have to teach her properly...’

He shook his head and walked out of the room. Today, he had a much more important task than checking around on the kid. He was going to take his very first step into the business world, counting both his past and present lives.

Not that he believed whatever he did would result in success, but he believed that if he kept his hopes up and gave his all, he could do better than yesterday.

After leaving the hotel, the first place he headed toward was the city mall. Before doing anything else, he had to buy a decent smartphone. This way, he would always remain updated about what was going on around him. He also had to keep in contact with many people, as he needed strong connections and companions to expand whatever business he ended up working on.

After arriving at the luxurious, high-tech mall, he climbed the grand crystal staircase rather than taking the escalator. He preferred staying in a working mindset so that his brain remained in running mode.

He had noticed one crucial thing: whenever he was physically active, his mind sharpened, and he could think much deeper.

After climbing up the staircase, he could see several shops. He chose to go to the biggest electronics store so that he could browse a wide variety of devices.

Though he had extensive knowledge about smartphones from his past life, he had zero knowledge of how smartphones operated in this world.

After entering the bright shop, he expected to see some customers bargaining with a shopkeeper. But his expectations shattered after seeing no shopkeeper was present in the entire place.

Literally no staff members were present. Just a few people checking out the smartphones placed on the different compartments of the display tables. Alen could see people making payments by simply scanning their cards on a scanner placed on the same platform as the smartphone. Just after they took the purchased device, a new phone with the exact same model teleported onto the display stand again.

Alen was amazed by the seamless mechanism of such a shop. It was an incredibly easy method. In true business, if there is no clerk or shopkeeper, then there is no need to bargain. The customers ultimately just have to pay the fixed price and get their item.

He stepped inside the shop, looking around at the different smartphones, which looked far smarter than him. As he approached, the display quickly sensed his presence. Holographic screen displaying information floated up right before him, showing the phone’s description and its expansive feature list.

Alen looked at the holographic screen, which looked surprisingly similar to his own status screen. He raised his finger and tapped it to see the details of the features, and the hologram explicitly started to explain them in detail.

Alen checked it perfectly. After reviewing everything, he thought the device was amazing. Lastly, he checked the price tag. He immediately paused, forgot the phone existed, and switched to the next aisle.

That previous phone cost 150 million gold coins alone! That was enough wealth to buy a grand mansion like Ava’s. If he chose to invest that much money just in buying a phone, then he would be left with nothing to start his business.

’Let’s look in a different section. Every phone in this row is way too expensive...’

He chose to walk toward a section where the prices were relatively lower and fit better into his budget. After checking the other features and testing the touch sensitivity on the holographic screen, he finally decided to buy the smartphone.

Since he had no personal bank card for the payment, he decided to pay with the VIP card he got from the Serene’s father. He scanned it on the platform, and just as he expected, the payment was authorized instantly.

As he lifted the phone up in his hand, a small holographic screen floated above the surface, and a prompt popped up.

[Analyzing the new owner...]

[In order to bind the device with the owner, a small amount of mana is required.]

Alen immediately imbued a tiny trace of his mana into the device to register it with his magical signature.

[Binding the device with the owner...]

[Binding successful!]

With a flash of light, the screen changed, opening into the home page where several unfamiliar applications existed.

He decided to go buy a SIM card to use the phone, but his steps suddenly halted as he learned that this device didn’t even need a SIM card for the network. The network was already connected with the device, and he had already been granted a free annual recharge just by buying this model.

He immediately checked his caller ID. He registered his display name as ’Alen’ and set his profile picture as a cute cat. He quickly memorized his ID number so that he didn’t need to regularly check it when handing it out to people.

After placing his new phone safely in his pocket, he walked out of the shop. He took the crystal staircase again, descending to walk out of the mall. He flagged down a taxi and headed straight toward the central bank. The second task he had for the day was to make a legitimate bank account for himself. He needed certain information that could only be processed by scanning his Ascender card, and his smartphone ID was also required for receiving any transaction notifications that would come in the future.