As night approached.
Garen sat on his bed as he inhaled and exhaled quietly.
The light wasn’t switched on in the room. Everything was pitched black, and through the tree leaves and branches outside, one could faintly see the lights from the streets blinking from afar.
The Watch Terminal on Garen’s wrist suddenly lit up.
Beep beep…
He immediately opened his eyes, raised up the watch and the contact number was shown. It was Kendall.
“He finally calls,” he gave a sigh of relief as he answered the call.
Kendall’s head appeared on the terminal.
“The stock has arrived. Do you want me to send it directly to your place?” the beardy uncle’s eyes were red and he looked very tired.
“I’ll meet you outside the entrance of the academy,” Garen nodded. “Thank you for your hard work.”
“It’s fine, just prepare the Universal Points,” the beardy uncle gulped down huge amounts of water. “I’ll be there in about ten minutes or so.”
“I’ll go out now.”
“It’s a truck numbered c563171.”
“Understood.”
Garen hung up the terminal and swiftly donned his coat uniform. He then grabbed his keys and left the dorm.
It was extremely cold and quiet outside and no one could be seen moving about at all. He looked at the time and it was two hours and forty-two minutes past midnight. Almost all of the students had already fallen asleep.
As he walked out of his dorm, the cold wing welcomed him. The street lights formed a line by the side of the road, stretching it into the darkness. Moonlight wasn’t present as it was covered by the clouds.
Garen wasn’t able to differentiate the direction as he walked towards the illuminated streets.
He walked across the field in the academy. The academy’s buildings stood silently as if it was a huge black box placed on the land. Some had some electronic lights blinking on them while some were completely dark.
As he arrived at the emergency area, Garen took out a coin and placed it into a coin box for a white academy car.
The white academy car suddenly lit up and the driver’s dashboard turned green as it rang.
‘Welcome to using the Blackboard Academy’s car, please enter your destination,’ a female robotic voice rang loud and clear in the quiet night.
“Number 1 Gate Entrance,” Garen sat in the passenger seat.
‘Please fasten your seatbelt and press # to confirm once more.’
Garen started laughing as he heard her because he recalled the days back on Earth where the phone would say the same thing as well.
He sat down before the car activated and started moving along the road inside the quiet academy.
Along the road, he occasionally stumbled upon some students who came back late at this hour. Some of them were so tipsy that they slept in the academy’s car. There even were couples who were groping one another in the car without any shame or fear of people seeing them.
However, there were very little people present.
After ten minutes or so, the pitched black number 1 gate came into sight.
There were levitating vehicles from the outsiders parked at the entrance. The Academy’s car beeped twice as it reached the entrance.
‘We have arrived at the destination. Please leave the car.’
Garen jumped down from the car and walked out of the gate as he squirmed through the gaps between the levitating cars. Further out there was a lively night market with many blinking lights. The whole area was filled with yellow and red lights, music and the sizzling sounds of a midnight barbeque.
There were a lot of people on the streets who were enjoying their supper. Some of them were drinking while talking about random stuff while there were some who were about to leave the area. There were also people who had just arrived. A portion of these people were students from the academy as they were in the Blackboard’s uniform.
Garen looked around and saw a middle-aged man in a thick coat exhaling white vapor at the side of the street.
Behind this man was an old black car. He stood beside the car as he kept rubbing both of his hands. His nose was red and he kept taking out tissue paper to blow his nose.
He towards him and gently tapped the man’s shoulder from behind.
“Ahhh…!!” The middle-aged man was startled as he turned around quickly. He gave a sigh of relief when he saw that it was Garen.
“Don’t you know you can scare out my soul like that!” Kendall looked very fragile as if he had lost a lot of weight. “I’m sorry I couldn’t attend your competition as the location was quite far away this time. However, the quality of the items are good so I went a little further than usual.”
“Thanks for your hard work,” Garen felt bad as he realized that Kendall was doing his best for him. He also could see that he was very sincere towards him this time around. “Let’s go find a place and drink.”
“Everything’s on you!” Kendall immediately said so.
“Fine. I’ll treat you,” Garen didn’t care in the least as he gestured his hand.
He locked the car and then they proceeded towards a drinking place that was still open and requested for a single room.
The white drinking place’s environment was pretty good and the noise isolation of the single room was pretty good as well. As the majority of the Blackboard Academy’s students were rich and didn’t care how much they spent as long as they enjoyed themselves, the shops just outside the academy were very expensive but the quality and services were top notch.
Piping hot milk and coffee were soon served to them along with a few almond cakes. The yellow and soft cakes looked very delicious and there were even fresh red cherries placed at the center of the cakes as well.
“Please enjoy yourself,” the young female worker bowed smoothly before leaving the room.
“Alright let’s hear it. How many have you gotten this time?” Garen sipped on the coffee. This world had a drink that was similar to coffee. Although it had a lot of other drinks available, he preferred the drinks he was used to as this brought forth a slight nostalgia.
Kendall slurped down the whole cup of coffee and stuffed the cakes into his mouth as swallowed them whole before taking a breather.
“The total amount is two thousand five hundred and sixty-two pieces. The quality will not disappoint you! I’ve taken all of these from a few merchants who sell these white stones. I even bought their items for the whole season!”
He then took out a white stone from his shirt and passed it to him.
“Take a look at it. This is a sample that I’ve taken out from the stash.”
The moment Garen got hold of it, he instantly felt that the White Peacock Stone essence within the stone was much purer than the previously obtained one. This meant that there were less impurities and the high energy fuel and white peacock stones were more concentrated.
He raised the stone up and placed it by the light as he carefully examined it.
“Nice. Where are the others?”
“It’s in the car outside. There’re at least two thousand of these and it’s huge!” Kendall took up a wet napkin to wipe the dirt off his face.
“I need to check the rest.”
“Of course.”
Garen wasn’t in a hurry so he waited for Kendall to rest for a while more and had something to eat while checking his the current amount of his Universal Units. He had been earning his Universal Units through the battlenet and had earned about fourteen thousands six hundred Universal Units from the countless of games that he had played.
There were a total of 2562 pieces of the stones. If each stone costs 5 units, then he would need a total of 12810 units.
This was a huge sum of money. Kendall, who had forked out his money beforehand to buy this huge amount of white stones, had taken a huge risk. Ten thousand universal units were considered a few months’ salaries for a small timer like him. If Garen were to reject all of these stones, he would have been at a loss. You could say that Kendall had wholly invested in Garen with the utmost sincerity.
After Kendall had finished eating the food and rested for a full ten minutes, Garen then stood up and walked towards his car to check the material.
All two thousand of the stones were of good quality unlike last time, where there were a few fake ones. This made Garen very satisfied with him. With his Peacock Technique, he could instantly know the quality of the stone by just pressing on it. With his hands, he had examined the stones in no time.
Two of them then walked back into the single room and sat down.
Without any hesitation, Garen immediately sent 13000 points to Kendall, leaving himself only 1600 points.
“You can keep the change. Take it as the reward for your risk.”
Kendall didn’t reject it and accepted it with all his heart. He knew that Garen was the standard person who didn’t care about money from his previous encounter. This time around he decided to show his sincerity so that he could earn his rightful amount.
“I still have another thing I need to raise to you,” he continued after receiving the Universal Units.
“What is it?” Garen took up a dessert and ate it slowly.
“All of the merchants were shocked that when I wanted such a huge amount of Rainbow Stones. You have to understand that those who really wanted the high energy fuel from these ingredients would never use the Rainbow Stones as it contains too many impurities. Furthermore, it’s simply not profitable if they were to increase their price. Hence the sales of these stones were mediocre at best. However, with the number of stones I’ve purchased from them, the owner caught wind of it and wanted to meet the true purchaser of the Rainbow Stones in person,” Kendall explained honestly. “I’m not certain if you still want these stones in the future but if you do… it’s better to establish a long-term partnership.”
Garen crossed his fingers. The reason he purchased these Rainbow Stones was to train his technique. Although the Hellfrost Peacock Technique would not require these stones in the future, it could still enhance the training process and it was very important to him as it could bring him back to his strength within the shortest time frame.
Currently, he wasn’t lacking in Secret Techniques nor Secret Methods. The only thing he was lacking was energy accumulation, and the Rainbow Stones were able to fill this hole.
“That man is trying to bypass you to make a trade directly with me. Are you not concerned that I will bypass you?” Garen felt rather puzzled and fired back a question.
Kendall smiled.
“The only good point about me is that I know my worth. I’m not needed in this business and if you were to bypass me and deal with him directly, I’m fine with that since I’m not in the loss at all.”
He was very sincere and truthful towards Garen.
Garen smiled back.
“How about this. I may still need your help in the future. Our chances of working together are still plenty so you don’t have to worry at all. I’ll take these items for the time being so you can wait for my news.”
“No problem!” Kendall nodded as he sent the source owner’s number to Garen. He then sat comfortably on the chair. “You can go back first as I still need to rest a bit more. You don’t get to have a rich person treating you to this place often and I wouldn’t even dare to enter this expensive place! It’s simply not worth it to leave within such a short amount of time.”
Garen shook his head and stood up, speechless. “Alright, then you should take a good rest. I will call you once the finals are over.”
“I’ll wait for your news,” Kendall waved his hand.
Garen paid for the bill and walked out of the shop. He then walked towards the car and took out a big sack of stones. The sack was very dense but due to his physical changes, it wasn’t too heavy for him.
With the package in hand, he swiftly returned to the academy, sat in an academy’s car, threw in a coin and went back to his dorm.
There were no hiccups between the journey and by the time he had reached his dorm, it was already four o’clock. As the final would start at nine in the morning, he still had another five hours before the competition started. Although Garen only slept for a few hours, he felt very refreshed.