The rain pattered onto Zack’s cheap umbrella, the thin central shaft threatening to snap at a moment’s notice as he emerged from the convenience store into the night streets glistening with rainwater illuminated by the city’s nightlife lights.
In the distance, the sound of sirens were getting more intense by the minute as more police cars, ambulances, and fire trucks converged upon the earthquake zone and subway collapse.
Zack walked down the street while scrolling on his smartphone, when his contact card flashed.
Bzzzzz.
His coworker Yuri was calling him.
Yuri was around the same age as him, and what everyone around the office referred to as the ice beauty queen of the marketing team. Graduated from a top university, with top tier looks and figure, and the daughter of the vice president of a prestigious multiregional corporation.
Needless to say, talk about her was popular among both male and female coworkers during after-hours drinking parties.
Despite all of that, she went missing and possibly died during one of the dungeon breaks within the first year or two of the calamity.
Zack couldn’t figure out why she was calling him. He worked with her somewhat frequently, but didn’t remember being close to her in any particular way.
Anyway, he picked up the phone.
“Hello?” he said casually, still not sure if this was a telemarketing scheme that had gotten a hold of her phone through a hack or something.
“Zack!” came a feminine voice from the other side of the line. “Are you safe?”
“Hey Yuri,” Zack replied, relieved that it in fact was her and not some hacker who managed to obtain her number. “I’m okay. How come? And where are you?”
“Thank god! I’m at home, and just heard that there was an earthquake on the C line, and you were the last person to leave the office after me! I remembered that you were working late on the case presentation,” Yuri said quickly. “Have you seen the thing about the earthquake? It’s all over the news right now!”
“Yeah, I just got out of the subway when it hit. Got lucky. There’s police and ambulances all over the place now,” Zack answered while walking past a seedy looking side street that marked the beginning of the red-light district. He was getting close to the downtown area and Gamdu Communications Tower.
“That’s a relief,” Yuri responded, the sound of pots and pans in her background. “Sorry, I’m cooking some ramen right now. Anyway, I’ll see you tomorrow for the case presentation, right? Assuming that it isn't cancelled after all of this.”
“Yeah,” Zack replied. “Will do, assuming it isn’t cancelled.”
He paused a second before adding more. “Yuri, try to avoid the subway for the time being.”
“I will, and– Oh!” Yuri shouted all of a sudden, some metallic sound clanking onto a counter. “Water’s boiling. Talk to you later, get home safe!”
“Thanks, I will,” he replied, as the call ended.
It felt nice to be remembered, especially by someone like Yuri. Now that he thought about it, he did remember his coworker, and how she came in every morning looking like her shirt and black skirt could barely stop her figure from bursting out…
Zack had to wipe the stupid grin that was beginning to appear on his face as he shook his head clear of extraneous thoughts and remembered his priorities.
Focus, Zack, focus. Stop daydreaming about the office beauty. She was way out of his league anyway.
First things first, he had some important errands to take care of. He opened up his smartphone and navigated to a popular and trendy auction site, before posting some listings.
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[Would you like to put the item ‘Mahogany Guitar’ up for auction?]
[Confirm.]
It pained him to part with the guitar that he’d been playing for years, but it had to be done for his plan to obtain one of the world’s most expensive ginsengs to work. If he was lucky, the guitar would go for around two thousand zed.
[Would you like to put the item ‘Caller Laliquer Whiskey’ up for auction?]
He was saving his Caller Laliquer Whiskey for a special occasion. It was a rare and expensive whiskey that he got as a prize from a trade show giveaway, with a one in a hundred thousand chance of obtaining it with that one raffle ticket he bought. Its market price was at least twelve thousand zed, and he wanted to open it on a very special occasion or just keep it around as some great bookshelf decoration in his apartment. Now it was too bad, since someone else was going to get to enjoy its company.
But still, all of this was going to be worth it in the end, Zack told himself. He was put back into his immature and novice body from four years ago, but he carried with him some important cultivation wisdom from his future self. And that was that there were certain catalysts that could dramatically increase the efficiency of his cultivation.
It took him several years to master the body awakening technique through strenuous training and daily meditation. Only much later on did he find out certain rare roots and other substances could dramatically increase his cultivation speed, but it would come at a great cost to his body and those ingredients were incredibly difficult to obtain.
One of these substances was the Thousand Year Old Bitter Ginseng sold by the ancient Qidao sect, which had incorporated recently into the Qidao corporation.
Stopping at an intersection for a red light, Zack went on the Qidao website and navigated to their app storefront. He was greeted by a man bowing with his hand covering his fist in a respectful gesture, followed by rustic music and a selection of different medicinal herbs and other products.
Tapping into the exclusive products tab, he went down to the ginseng section before pausing in his tracks.
[Thousand Year Old Bitter Ginseng – out of stock!]
[Next restock will be in two days. Check back soon!]
Well, that was tragic. Zack marked that date into his calendar, making sure to check back on it later. Hopefully in two days his auctioned items would’ve sold and he’d have enough to buy the ginseng.
For now, he could maximize his training by encompassing himself in the mana-rich hotspot at the Gamdu Communications Tower building. That would help him develop his martial arts base and his awakening level to the second realm.
As for the demon summoning app side of things and increasing his VIP level from 1 onward, Zack wasn’t too worried about that right now. VIP Level 1 was a breakthrough power spike that allowed him to use physical manifestation, which was all he needed for the time being. For now, he needed to accumulate as many paid and free demon crystals as he could and simply hoard them for something called the Lucky Fountain.
Of course, nobody could possibly know about the Lucky Fountain yet. Zack was only privy to this knowledge because he had gone through this in the past.
The Lucky Fountain was a random event on the Demon Summoning App that multiplied demon crystals up to double, provided that he had enough crystals to throw into the fountain and cross each threshold level. Those threshold levels were 30, 300, 3000, and the infamous 30,000 threshold.
In essence, the longer you held your demon crystals without spending them, the more likely you were to multiply your fortunes with the Lucky Fountain event. These fountain events were repeating too, meaning that Zack had to prepare to keep a bank of roughly 30,000 demon crystals and freely spend the excess if he wanted to take full advantage of the system. The drawback was that this elusive fountain’s spawn rate was completely random.
Also, one obvious drawback to hoarding demon crystals was that doing so left you too weak and prone to dying to demons during one of their frenzy events. Saving was a risky strategy, but Zack was confident that he could pull it off with enough training and meditation.
The faster he whipped his body back into peak shape through rigorous exercise and cultivated his body awakening technique, the more strength he would have to face the incoming waves of monsters without having to raise his VIP level too early.
After walking for a bit longer, Zack had arrived in the downtown area, just a block and a half away from Gamdu Communications Headquarters.
“I’ll probably need a jacket or something first,” Zack said to himself, finding another store before quickly emerging with a raincoat to cover his bloody shirt and appearance. He then headed down the block and arrived in front of the Gamdu Communications Headquarters, where the tower was just behind.
The lights were still on in the building, and he stepped inside. A bald security guard sitting at the front desk held up a hand.
“The communications tower is restricted for employees only,” he said gruffly. “And it’s after hours now. What are you doing here?”
Zack threw his hands up. “Oh, sorry I must’ve made a wrong turn. I'll head out now." He said that with a smile, but internally he was cursing at his luck.
First the ginseng being sold out, and now his first hotspot being denied by a security guard. Things were not going to be easy for him, were they?