“Ror…” Bear subconsciously grabbed his right eye, still traumatized from past events.

“You’re still stuck up on that?!” Braun jumped back, avoiding the rocks falling his way. “I just helped you bite the bullet since you were being a pussy!”

Bear roared back, “Ror!”

“Fuck being gentle!” Braun gritted his teeth, his left eye shining blue. “And we still have work to do, bitch! I can’t handle all these sandworms myself!”

The bear grumbled before rushing forward, his right eye dripping with the same blue hue as Braun’s.

[Unique Skill Activated: Eye of Truth]!

The world slowed down and transformed into a conceptual land of information. Bear, entering an entranced state, a flow state according to Braun, rushed forward to the sandy dunes with incredible speed.

His body listened to him as he wanted it. His fingers twitched with his wish, his legs thumped the ground at just the right strength, angle, and speed. His aura coursed through his veins like water that bent to his every whim.

The bear ran at extreme speeds, his strength having reached greater heights, not only because of his eye, but also because many of his skills had reached A rank! The compounding effect of high-rank skills caused his strength to grow by leaps and bounds, and with his overpowered body, he already had strength halfway through the realm of epics.

Of course, Braun was far stronger than his, with physical attributes firmly cemented among epics, but he, as a conman, kept his cards close to his heart; he kept acting out his part, an artificer who wields magical contraptions and guns.

But he’s really starting to love his guns. Bear might have not noticed it recently, but Braun had even forgone his sword entirely at this point.

Nevermind, he still had work to do.

Jumping up, he pulled back his fist and roared. Magical light erupted out of his brass knuckles to transform into a giant fist, which he then promptly used to punch a sandworm frotting rocks and sand from its mouth.

The giant sandworm flew into the sky due to the sheer force packed by the punch. Taking this opportunity, Braun, rolling across the sand to dodge another boulder of sand from landing on him, aimed his gun at the sky and pressed the trigger.

Bang!

A beam of light blasted through the sandworm, hitting it straight from its mouth and out of the end of its tail.

[Marksmanship (C) -> Marksmanship (B)]

He could now shoot better, at a supernatural level even. Shots that are almost impossible to hit, he can do; shots that shouldn’t have made it, he can do; the target is too far away for the gun to hit? He can do.

Braun grinned and whipped his gun at the sandworm on top of a sand dune that had been bugging him all this while. Empowered by his marksmanship, a new, more powerful beam of light zapped the sandworm on its head, lodging a hole through its mouth. Even though it didn’t have a brain, it still implicated its ability to shoot out sandstones from its mouth.

Bear then came flying in from the air, his already giant fist having already expanded twice in size.

“ROR!” Bear grunted loudly as he smashed the fist against the sandworm, splattering it into a meat paste, which was quite terrifying considering he’s only an uncommon class entity while the sandworm he just killed was a rare.

Braun surveyed the area, with the obstructions in his view transformed into transparent grids. Other than entering a flow state, heightened perception, accelerated thoughts, and greater precision when it came to controlling his mana, the Eye of Truth provided more and more surprising abilities that elevated his strength to a whole new degree.

There! He aimed his gun at the empty sand hill and pressed the trigger. The sand melted into molten glass, while a sandworm shrieked from the inside.

At this pace, they would be done with their quest and officially become gold-plated adventurers!

…

Three months had officially passed since Braun and Bear had met in that fated cave, and things had been one heck of a journey. From exploring a haunted manor, scamming an alchemist by acting as a prostitute, killing some hideous slimes that copulated with rats in sewers, to finding a mystical artifact, and now hunting sandworms in the desert, it had been arduous, stressful, and most importantly, fun.

This past journey did make him ponder about his life.

I’m of course going to keep adventuring, maybe for about a year straight, but there’s still many things I want to do. Braun hummed. For example, attend the academy, become a billionaire, take over a demon lord’s kingdom, and become one myself, but many of those are still far off into the future.

When he first arrived in this world and got used to his life, he believed that, unlike his past life, he wasn’t bound by some invisible ticking timer that would usurp his breath when it ended. However, just like those incredulous four months facing against Aegis, maybe he does have a time limit, with an impending disaster looming just around the corner, a disaster of which he had very little knowledge.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

Well, I do have access to it… He glanced at the miniature replica of Cody Gray he kept safe in his storage ring, and fiddled around with the figurine’s body. “Just what kind of secrets do you guys have, hmm?”

Braun had finally decided to embrace this one cruel part of reality that he had been averting his eyes to all this while—the conspiracies, the overarching plots, and the big bad impending doom that he hated with all his guts.

“Bear!” Braun held the miniature Cody Gray firmly in his hands.

“Ror?” Bear peeked out from the cabinet, snacks dangling from his mouth.

“I’m gonna enter a coma for around a few hours, and would at most last till morning, so go protect my body, alright?” Braun instructed the bear.

“Ror…?” Now more confused, the bear approached the bed. Still, he nodded his head and accepted the request, even if it was quite strange.

And so, Braun closed his eyes, miniature at hand. This time, it’s time to delve a little into the secrets of the Otherworld Alliance.

…

Turns out, Cody Gray himself knew little because he never joined them in the first place!

Cody Gray hailed from a strange futuristic version of Earth, one where humanity had conquered their local solar system and was well on their way to creating their first-ever Dyson Swarm, a mega structure that could suck the power of the sun and grant humanity a nigh-limitless source of energy.

Cody was a part of the military, a high-ranking officer who was given access to state-of-the-art nanotechnology. He was implanted with nanites into his skin, transforming him from mere human to superhuman.

Everything was going well. He was just doing his usual work, when all of a sudden, spatial tears erupted all around.

Monsters, creatures that didn’t belong to their solar system, swarmed out of the rifts in space. Some were the classical western monsters, like goblins or orcs, while others belonged to more eastern legends, like spirit beasts.

While he managed to fend off the monsters along with his team, new spatial tears formed; some of the spatial tears showed a desolate void with green flames; others showed depictions of gargantuan mountains, vast seas, and a sky with rolling clouds, and the one that he fell into showed a normal sea.

Landing in the southern oceans was how Cody Gray first set foot into the world of Arte. The system had bonded with him, transformed his nanites into unique skills, and he gained his first class.

He found his way back to human civilization, became an adventurer, and slowly became famous in the southern regions as a new budding hero of an unknown class—the Tech Hero, or maybe Nanite Hero?

Case in point, he was a goddamn budding hero, and he was getting strong fast. This caught the attention of a certain group, the cloaked figures, the Otherworld Alliance, and they weren’t on a recruitment pitch either, heck, they didn’t even go talk to him!

They just simply… attacked.

Cody Gray ran through the woods, his thoughts running at an accelerated pace. Nanites swarmed on the wound on his leg, healing it in an instant.

He looked back at the forest behind him, and quickly saw another mana bullet trying to hit him. Cody rolled on the ground and dodged, while his nanites covered his body from head to toe, transforming into the familiar exoskeleton he always used to wear in the army, and in this world when adventuring.

If it were any other naive bitch from normal everyday Earth was in this situation, they would be scrambling around, shouting useless crap like “Why are you guys attacking me?!” or “Wait, we can talk this out!”

But Cody was different. He knew they were out to get him, and he wasn’t going to let himself die. The shadowy forest turned bright and clear, and with a casual aim from the tiny laser on his back, the source of the mana bullet died with a single blow, impaled by a condensed mana bullet.

He kept running and attacking, dodging all of the attacks that came his way, while retaliating with one precise laser beam with each strike.

This continued and continued until what felt like forever, and even with how strong he was, Cody eventually fell exhausted.

He collapsed to the ground, breathing weakly. His exoskeleton had long fallen off and he was bleeding from head to toe. Cody thought everything was over, that he was going to die when the light at the end of the tunnel arrived.

“H-Help…” Cody called out weakly, glancing at the young boy who stared at him like a deer caught in headlights.

“Hell naw, bitch!” The child whipped out a freaking magnum.

On second thought, maybe this wasn’t the light at the end of the tunnel, but the dark abyss that led to his death.

…

“Oh…” Braun woke up from the illusory dream, his head aching a bit from the twenty-plus years of memory jogging his brain. Luckily, his body quickly adapted to the change, healed itself, and developed his mind’s ability to handle more influx of information.

Rubbing his forehead, Braun finally knew one thing, “They really are bastards!”

He grabbed his head in frustration at the weird stunt they pulled. It just smelled, no, it reeked of evil!

Worst of all, he could clearly discern their attention when they were chasing Cody. They didn’t plan on killing him at all, they were planning on abducting him! Capturing him! But why? To sacrifice so many of their members, just to capture one lone hero.

Why would I, a potential evil overlord, capture a hero?

Numerous ideas raced through Braun’s mind as he tried to pinpoint the truth, but quickly enough, the answer struck him like a clear light in pitch darkness.

Oh… he’s a hero.

Every hero has such an absurd potential that they could reach transcendent class in their lifetime if they were diligent enough and could survive the journey along the way to reach their limits.

If Braun was an evil overlord, he would try to capture those heroes themselves and transform them into slaves, and while Cody could have been an Otherworld Alliance member himself, would a smart evil overlord really rely on some fickle relationship in hopes of having a potential transcendent be their loyal minion?

Nah.

Braun would enslave them, and put them under so many layers of mind control that it’s not even funny. Who wouldn’t want to have a living nuke as your slave? More importantly, it would be better if you could be that living nuke yourself…

“Two things—either slavery or some higher-ups from Otherworld Alliance wanting to do a brain transplant and attain hero status themselves.” Braun crossed his legs, the truth easily piecing together in his head. This wasn’t his first rodeo dealing with shadowy organizations, so he knew what kind of mindset they had.

Moreover, with the guidance of destiny and his strong spiritual intuition, Braun was pretty darn sure his guess was spot on.

You wouldn’t reach the status of a True God, deceiving an entire world-reaching organization as a lone man without picking up a couple of tricks along the way.

“Sigh, do I really have to look through that gun guy’s soul too?” Braun stored Cody’s figurine. “No. That’s for later when I lock in and deal with them for real.”

“For now though.” Braun glanced at his sleeping companion. “We’re not gonna stop adventuring till we at least reach platinum.”

Whether Braun wanted to admit it or not, the laziness ingrained deep in his heart and soul had gradually resurfaced, and his procrastinating habits had slowly crept up on him.

He would rather go on fun adventures than deal with an undeniably stressful problem known as secretive organizations with evil goals. It’s not like he was being specifically targeted by them. If he could do it for later, then he’d do it for later.

Besides, it’s way better to tackle them when I have at least attained demigod status, right?

Yeah, he was just being cautious.