Chapter 95: Impersonation

Sila and Varee got home while Rashane was still out. They entered the house to discover several bags in the living room. Varee took what was hers and told Sila that she would log in to meet her friends. She also told Sila that he was free to eat anything in the refrigerator if he was hungry.

Sila went outside to get some fresh air and entered the small dojo next to Varee’s house. He took a deep breath of the distinct smell of a dojo and sat down on the cushion in the middle of the room.

Varee’s mother’s dojo was different from his dojo. First of all, the cushion in the dojo was softer than his. Secondly, there were several wooden swords hanging around the room, unlike his dojo that was quite empty.

Sila tried to perform the footwork of Twelve Celestial-Traveling-Steps for a while. He found that, except for him not having qinggong, he could follow the stepping techniques of the art just fine.

‘So, it’s really a skill that can be used in real life.’ Sila thought. He practiced the stepping techniques several times until he got a hang of it before sitting down and concentrating his mind. He was thinking about using Genesis Punch.

Genesis Punch was much harder than Twelve Celestial-Traveling-Steps since it was a skill that relied on inner force, not movement. Sila tried to do it for an hour but there was no sign that he was close to success. Sila wasn’t in a hurry, however, since Poluk once told him that it would take years for him to be able to do that.

Sila started to intensify his workout. The dojo didn’t have any training equipment so he performed exercises that didn’t require them. Sila was drenched in sweat. At first, he planned to do some running. However, as the dojo was small, he changed his mind to practice Twelve Celestial-Traveling-Steps instead.

Several hours passed. Sila was lying on his back on the cushion, breathing heavily. Once he got up and looked outside the window, he found that the sun was setting already. Sila entered the house and heated up a frozen meal to eat before taking a shower.

Sila inserted his card into the brain scanner and connected it with his new smartphone. Then, he opened a bottle of nutrient pills that he had bought from the shopping mall. They were the latest type that allowed consumers to spend more time inside the game. He had bought them following Varee’s suggestion. With them, he no longer needed to consume so many pills at once.

These new pills could allow consumers to stay in the game for an entire day for each pill consumed. More importantly, they were cola-flavored that matched Sila’s taste more than Varee’s strawberry-flavored ones.

Sila poured three of the pills into his hand and gulped them. The taste of cola spread throughout his mouth until Sila swallowed them. He then equipped the brain scanner and went to bed before pressing the start button.

The real world was engulfed in darkness, sending Sila’s consciousness into the world of Monster Soul.

***

Sila exited a cheap hotel in Colossia City. He agreed with other players that when using a hotel just to log out, how fancy it was didn’t matter.

The first thing he did was contacting Sangdao. She suggested that they should meet in an hour at the bamboo hut.

Since Sila had nothing to do in this city, he returned to his mansion to kill time.

“Hello, Master.” It was Julia again who was the first to greet him. Lately, Sila was very familiar with Julia’s greeting.

“Hello, Julia. How is everyone?”

“Lookhin is completely healed. It is now playing with Lady Bow in the garden. Mister Butler left to do some business. He didn’t inform me where he was going, though he did tell me he’s going to increase Master’s funds as he noticed that most of Master’s capital vanished some days ago. As for Mister Poluk, he only visited this place once to tell me that he had something to do so he wouldn’t return for a while. He also asked me to take care of Lady Bow and said that he would return to this place using the invitation card if he wants to.”

Sila nodded. He didn’t worry about Sebastian anyway. The reason behind his missing capital must be due to him buying back the land and his dojo. As for Poluk, he once told Sila that he would like to find someone strong to fight against. He must be on his way to do that.

Sila asked Julia to lead him to Bow and Lookhin. Once he arrived at the garden, Lookhin flew around him happily. Similarly, Bow also happily jumped into Sila’s arms and wanted to be carried by him.

“Big Brother Sila, you finally came back. You were gone for many days.”

“I had many things to do. What about you, Bow? How are you?”

“I always played with Lookhin and ate Big Sister Julia’s desserts. It was very fun.”

“That’s good, that’s good.” Sila gently rubbed Bow’s head. “How about you, Lookhin?” Sila turned his head to talk with Lookhin who was resting on his shoulder.

Like usual, Lookhin didn’t make any sound. It only rubbed its head to Sila’s cheek. Recalling he had gotten a card from Solaria, Sila handed the card to Lookhin and ordered it to use Star Swallow.

Lookhin’s body radiated heat. Sila opened his system window to check its status.

[Pet Status: Lookhin]

[Rank: Squire]

[Level: 1]

[Race: Dark Brown Sparrowhawk]

[Health Points: 20/20]

[Magic Points: 0/0]

[Qi Points: 0/0]

[Psychic Points: 0/0]

[Satiety: 85/100]

[Affection Level: 89%]

[*Dark Brown Sparrowhawk couldn’t accumulate experience points.]

[Actual Status]

[Pet Status: Lookhin]

[Rank: Marquis]

[Level: 700]

[Race: Dark Brown Sparrowhawk]

[Health Points: 1,800,000/1,800,000]

[Magic Points: 40,000,000/40,000,000]

[Qi Points: 2,000,000/2,000,000]

[Psychic Points: 800,000/800,000]

The status was not that different from before, only the amount of magic points increased. Sila wondered whether it was due to him feeding it cards of magic-type monsters more than other types. As for the additional skills that it got, they were only (A) Underworld Sword and (B) Abyss Dragon Claw.

“Hmmm, the power is not quite balanced, is it? I think I need to find monster cards of other types to feed it.” Sila thought that Lookhin’s weakness lay in the unbalance of its power. This was because he didn’t have a chance to see it fight against Francine and Solaria. He missed that Lookhin’s actual weakness was its lack of basic skills.

Well, to be fair, even if he knew, he wouldn’t have a way to immediately fix this weakness since Lookhin couldn’t gain skills aside from taking them using Star Swallow, at least until it reached Lord Rank. Sebastian was aware of this so he didn’t hurry to warn Sila.

“How long will you stay with us this time, Big Brother Sila?” Bow asked.

“I can only be here for an hour. I will have to travel to another place soon.”

“Please let Bow go with you, Big Brother. Please, please, please~” Bow pledged.

Sila knew that Bow was bored. She just didn’t dare to say it out loud.

“Hmmm, how about this? Do you want to go back to the Slime Kingdom to meet with your friends? I will come and pick you up once I arrive at my next destination.”

“Really? Can I?” Bow asked.

“Of course, you can reunite with your friends this way.”

“Yay~ I will tell them about Big Brother Sila’s stories.” Bow showed a big smile. Although she liked the outside world, she was still longing for her hometown.

“Okay, let’s prepare for the journey. Ah, let me seal Lookhin first.”

Bow nodded using her entire body and jumped down from Sila’s embrace. Sila lifted up the ring on his left hand. “Seal, Lookhin.”

Lookhin’s body emitted a light. However, it didn’t enter the ring. Instead, the ring shone a light. It cracked and broke into pieces.

“Eh? What happened?” Sila bent down and collected the pieces of the ring on the floor. He called for Julia, the expert regarding items, to ask what was happened to the ring.

“The Three World Ring, B-grade, can be used to seal up to three pets and has the skill Light of Forest attached to it... This level of damage is beyond repair, Master. Lookhin’s level is too high for the ring to contain so it broke. I suggest Master use a superior accessory than this one to seal Lookhin.”

“Is that so? Hmmm... do we have something like that?”

Julia closed her eyes and scanned items in the treasure room for five seconds before providing an answer.

“No, there isn’t one in the treasure room. There are only inferior ones.”

“Is that the case? That’s too bad.”

Sila regretted losing the skill Light of Forest since this skill had helped him several times before. Good grief, Poluk had told him not to rely too much on in-game materials so he tried not to mind it. He just needed to become stronger to fill its part.

Since items in Sila’s treasure room came from people in Colossia City who mostly were close-combat players, they were mainly weapons. As for Francine, her accessories were all S-grade which could enhance the ability of her pets. However, the weakness those items shared was that they were bonded with the registered pets. Thus, when her pets permanently died, her accessories also disintegrated along with them.

“Well, we can just go like this,” Sila said. Lookhin flew and landed itself onto his head like it had done when Sila got it the first time.

Bow jumped into Sila’s embrace again. Later, Sila sent Bow to the Slime Kingdom and returned to the city.

***

Sila entered the Slime Kingdom and didn’t see the Slime King. The other slimes informed him that His Majesty was training in seclusion. As for Bow, she totally forgot Sila as soon as she met her friends. Thus, Sila said his goodbye to Bow and returned to the city, waiting for the appointed time with Sangdao by sipping a cup of tea.

He decided not to wait in the mansion since communication was cut off. It would be bad if Sangdao contacted him before the appointed time. He planned to fix this problem later by consulting with Julia about whether he could add the outside communication function to the mansion.

The employee of the tea house unnaturally took a glance at Sila many times.

Feeling curious, Sila called him to inquire.

“Is there something wrong? I saw you looking at me several times,” Sila asked the employee politely.

“Oh? It’s nothing, Mister Customer. It’s just that you’re so brimming with radiance so I couldn’t take my eyes off you.”

Sila frowned. He might be dense, but he wasn’t that stupid. “Tell me directly, Is there something do you want?” Sila asked again.

“Ermm... Ahem, actually, I have an item to offer you if you are interested, sir.”

Sila put his cup down on the table. “What is it?”

The employee showed a big smile. “There it is, the Beginner Clothing. The price for it is only 100 gold, sir!”

Sila became more puzzled. “Beginner Clothing? Isn’t this price too expensive? Wait... Actually, doesn’t everyone have that for free at the start of the game?”

“No, sir, it’s not expensive at all. Although it’s true that everyone has gotten the Beginner Clothing at the start of the game, most players sold it away so the supply is low. It’s normal for its price to be quite high.”

“Anyway, why do you want to sell it to me?” Sila wondered why would he need the Beginner Clothing?

“So that you can complete the set, sir.”

“Complete the set?”

“Yes, sir. I see Mister Customer tamed a sparrow so I believe that you want to be like Weapon Subduing Fist, don’t you? Of course, the Beginner Clothing is hard to find so I would like to offer you this deal.”

“Weapon Subduing Fist? What is that?” Sila wondered.

“Ah? Please, don’t act like you don’t know, Mister Customer. He is the player who won against the vice-leaders of the Royal Armament Guild in three consecutive matches. No, that’s not right, I heard that he also won against the Silver Knight before. He is the champion of this month’s battle tournament; Weapon Subduing Fist Sila. I didn’t personally watch the tournament but I heard the rumors that he used only one hand to defeat all three of them.”

Sila was shocked. “What did you just say?!”

“Oh, please, don’t pretend like you’re shocked, sir. It’s fine. Everyone wants to impersonate him. If you don’t believe me, please take a look over there.” The employee gestured Sila to look outside.

The streets were full of people. However, five out of ten would have a sparrow flying alongside them, while three out of ten were wearing Beginner Clothing. There were even some of them who both had a sparrow and wore Beginner Clothing.

“What the...?” Sila was greatly confused. He just felt that something was off when he walked into the tea house. However, now that this employee pointed it out, Sila just realized that there were many players out there that were trying to impersonate him.

“How about it? Do you want to buy the Beginner Clothing now? I will give you a discount. It will cost only 90 gold especially for you, sir.”

Coincidentally, Sangdao contacted Sila at that moment so Sila hurriedly left that table, paid the bill, and walked away.

“80 gold is fine, Mister Customer. To complete the set!” The employee still shouted from behind him.

Sila’s body was teleported to the bamboo hut, leaving the employee stomping on the floor, feeling upset.

“What’s wrong with that guy? Does he wanna impersonate but isn’t ready to make an investment? You stingy bastard!”