Morning arrived and Anton woke up to the sound of a rooster crowing. When he checked the time, it was six in the morning, so he stood up and went to the toilet. After that, he went downstairs to the inn’s common room and saw Anna, Lunelle, and Devon eating breakfast. He joined them and asked for breakfast from the server who was gaping at him which he ignored.

“Where’s Father, Lucas, and Nemina?” Anton asked his sister.

“There’s a village hall in here and they rented the space so we can purchase things from the villagers. Father and Lucas will manage the armor and weapons and Nemina will oversee the other things. Me and Lunelle will join Nemina after this and Devon will follow you around as your guard,” Anna said then she giggled at the last statement which made Anton roll his eyes at her.

“I’ll join Father there so I can learn the business,” Anton said.

“Father told me to tell you that the villagers now know that you’re a wizard. That meant that what happened to that village we saved would happen here as well,” Anna said to her brother.

“Why what happened there?” Lunelle asked curiously.

“The villagers became overly respectful since Brother healed the injured villagers and they almost gave their items to us instead of allowing us to buy them,” Anna said.

“It should be different this time since I didn’t save anyone.”

“Maybe but everyone will still be distracted by you so it would be better for you to not join Father. You know what, why don’t you just write the third book of the Belgariad series,” Anna said.

“You haven’t even finished the first book yet, and you want me to write the third book? I’ll be in my room meditating so don’t disturb me if it's not important or I could receive a backlash that would injure me. I’ll go downstairs for lunch so please tell Father. Devon, you can join Father and Lucas but if you’re staying here, please don’t let anyone disturb me,” Anton told everyone.

“I’ll stay here and guard your door, Sir Anton,” Devon said.

“Fine. We’re going now. Enjoy your boring meditation,” Anna harrumph and Anton just smiled.

Anton went back to his room and decided to start playing the Nightmare Difficulty of his Diablo II game. As planned, he entered the game in person so he could play it virtually. There were so many advantages of playing the game virtually instead of using the on-screen option and the best one was his body would get used to casting the spells and would learn how the mana would traverse his body while he was casting specific spells. That meant that he would learn the minutiae of the mana of specific elements and maybe someday he would master enough of them that he could learn to create his own spells.

Anton then remembered that he was planning to learn one of the spell books that they received from the vampires and since they were only basic spells, the risk of backlash was minimal and if anything happened, he was sure that his Prayer and Meditation auras would be able to manage it.

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He minimized the game after taking the Mage Light spell book from his private stash. He opened the spell book and lo and behold, he couldn’t understand what was written. Anton felt stupid. He remembered that in almost all the fantasy novels, spell books were usually written in what wizards would call the “ancient” language and most of them were either in Draconic, Elvish, or another obscure language of a magical race. Even on Earth, the esoteric occult books that were considered genuine were written in Latin.

Anton sighed since it meant that he and Anna would need to learn another language before they could learn how to read the spell books. Then an idea occurred to him that maybe there were spell books that were written in the common language and that the spell books they received from the vampires were written in the undead language or something. He hoped since it would be a nice shortcut. They would have to wait until they were in a large city before he could check though.

He opened the spell book again to check if there was another way like maybe memorizing the symbols to imprint the spell in his mind or something then he would be able to cast it and then maybe the imprint would disappear and he would have to memorize it again like some of the novels that he had read from the Forgotten Realms series of books but after staring and memorizing some of the symbols which were very difficult since he was treating them as drawings instead of writings, nothing was happening so he gave up and kept the book in his private stash.

Anton went back to his Diablo II game, exited the current game, which was on Normal Difficulty, and then chose Nightmare Difficulty. He was level fifty-nine, so he was way over-level, but it was okay. It was good that he was powerful enough that he would be safe in leveling up. He would focus on hunting gears and learning how to defeat enemies using different spells instead of spamming Frozen Orb over and over again.

That meant that it would take a long time but right now, it was important for him to learn how to wield his spells since if he really needed to increase his level, he could always do so using the on-screen options which would be faster anyway.

After four hours of playing, he only reached the Countess in the Black Marsh zone since he was slow in killing the monsters, but he was learning how to wield his spells better in battle. His reaction was getting better too and strategy-wise, he was learning how to use his Teleport imaginatively. He did find a couple of crystal swords so he went back to the Rogue Encampment and would try to put sockets on one of them using the Horadric Cube since he used the Larzuk quest reward to create an Insight runeword weapon.

Once Anton put all the required ingredients in the cube to socket the sword, he prayed to RNGesus, and his prayers were answered. A four-socket crystal sword appeared so he created his Spirit runeword weapon. He was happy with the weapon because it would increase his damage by a lot since he was still using an ordinary sacred globe. The weapon would also help increase his strength in the real world.

Looking at all his items, they were still a bit mediocre. He only had a Lore Helm, an Ancient Pledge Gothic Shield, a Stealth Field Plate, a couple of Stones of Jordan rings, and now his Spirit Sword. His amulet was just a magic amulet that increased two to all Sorceress skill levels and plus five to all resistances. His gloves, belts, and shoes were just rare items that contained resistances and magic find stats so he would need to search for better ones.

Luckily, his Mercenary had an Insight Runeword which meant that he didn’t need to drown himself in mana potions anymore, but the mercenary’s armor and helm were just regular rare armor and helm.

At least now that Anton was in the Nightmare Difficulty, he would begin hunting for better gear.