There were few things as boring as having to follow his father around for social events. He liked showing off and having his son who happened to be a Cultivator at his side was the greatest form of it.

The number of Aural Beasts in the area had grown too large. It was threatening the merchants who couldn’t afford several Cultivators as bodyguards during their travels, and natural threats like this didn’t distinguish between Independent Merchant or Merchant Sect Member.

That meant they’d mobilize the Steel Fang Company to hunt them down.

Adrian had shown his face enough and he wasn’t needed during the discussion. It was boring to hear the old men trying to outwit each other needlessly, and it was most certainly not something he enjoyed listening to.

They’d left the house at dawn and it was now noon.

It was an urgent meeting, they’d said, but they were taking more than six hours for it. The meeting itself had only started an hour ago, to boot. Before that, the merchants did their best to show off as much as possible: bragging to each other about their most recent accomplishments.

“Dad!” groaned an all too familiar voice, without a hint of elegance or self-control. The smell of alcohol was strong enough to reach his nose from around the corner and the sound of his gait included dragging one boot.

“Remus?” mumbled Adrian, an eyebrow raised.

He walked across the corner, holding a bottle of wine in his hand. His shirt was missing buttons and was drenched with sweat and wine, apparent from the purple stain on it. His snow-white hair, which was due to a unique condition of his, was also stained with a slight bit of it.

“Remus,” said Adrian out loud and scoffed, “You’re outside!”

“Huh?” grumbled Remus and peered at him with one eye, which let Adrian notice his other blue eye.

Now that Adrian looked at him, it looked as if he’d earned himself one hell of a beating. Blood had rushed down his nose, leaving a trail of brown, crusty blood on his face, and he didn’t seem to be walking like he normally should: one of his ankles was twisted.

It would be an insignificant injury to a Cultivator, but for a mortal… that’d take a while to heal.

“What happened?” asked Adrian and put a smirk on his face, “Pissed off Erwin’s gang again?”

“No, no,” said Remus and shook his head vigorously, “There was this chick, see? She just beat me up out of nowhere!”

“You probably got handsy with a friend of hers,” suggested Adrian.

“But still, that’s bullshit!” shouted Remus, “She at least has to announce the reason. It’s proper etiquette.”

He hadn’t changed one little bit, even after six months.

“Where you been, anyway?” he asked, “Haven’t seen you for what? A year?”

“Half a year,” corrected Adrian, “I was busy. Don’t mind it.”

“I suppose. Either way, move aside. I gotta talk to dad,” said Remus and he tried to push Adrian away, but failed. His eyes widened as he stared at Adrian’s face, “Did you work out? You?”

“You’re just too drunk,” said Adrian and stepped aside, hands raised.

If he was going in there to cause some trouble, then so be it. There was no reason for him to care about that, but the guards would, and therein lied the struggle.

Remus’s father, being a sensible person, would never let him ruin a meeting like this so he’d probably warned the guards ahead of time.

“There’s a meeting going on inside. I’m afraid you cannot pass,” said one of the guards grumpily as he stood there, a spear in hand, guarding the Merchant Sect’s office.

“Huh? What’s that? My dad’s in there, you know?” grumbled Remus, but the guard didn’t budge, “How much do you get paid in a year? I’ll give it to you, so get the fuck out of my way.”

Adrian chuckled quietly as he watched the situation unfold in front of him.

Seeing Remus make a fool out of himself tended to be entertaining and this time was no exception.

He tried to walk past the guards but was pushed down to the ground by one of them, and fell rather painfully. And he was already injured.

That had to hurt.

“Stop that,” said Adrian from the side.

One of the guards glared at him, but within a moment, that glare turned into a bow. The other one bowed his head as well.

The authority he had just by being a Cultivator was immense. Just being the son of a rich merchant wasn’t enough. Just being a Cultivator wasn’t enough as well. When you added those two together, then he became someone you wouldn’t want to piss off. Add onto that the fact that he was the betrothed of a noble and you got someone that could kill you in broad daylight and walk away, and not be held accountable in the least.

“That’s a drunk and injured man. You can afford to stop him without pushing him around. You’re guards. You’re supposed to be strong. That’s why you’re being employed,” he said.

“For fuck’s sake!” roared Remus and climbed back to his feet, “I’m telling you. My father is in there. I need to get in. You have no right to stop me!”

“Mr. Easton instructed us to not let you in. I’m afraid that we do have that right,” said one of the guards —the one that had been speaking before.

“What?! That’s unfair!” shouted Remus and he rubbed his forehead, then he shouted at the top of his lungs, “Ugh, hell. Fine. Fine! I’ll get lost. You happy now, dad?!”

It wouldn’t be possible for his voice to reach the meeting room, but it was probably a rhetoric question meant for himself rather than anyone else.

Adrian let out a deep sigh.

It wasn’t as fun anymore.

Nothing was.

“Let’s go somewhere else, buddy,” said Adrian and tapped Remus on the shoulder.

“With this leg?” he asked with his teeth bared out, “It took all I had to crawl all the way here, and that bastard’s locked the damn door!”

“You’re out of money,” said Adrian, and Remus shrugged as if it was obvious.

Adrian grabbed Remus strung him up on his shoulder as if he was carrying a bag of dirt. It wasn’t difficult, but it wasn’t easy either. Despite his strength that was superior to that of mortals, he wasn’t at the Muscle Refinement Layer yet.

After he reached that, he’d be able to toss around mortals like they were tiny stones, let alone carry them.

“You did work out,” shouted Remus.

He was naturally loud and obnoxious.

“You’ve missed a lot,” said Adrian and gave Remus a pat on the back while he was on his shoulder, “I’ll pay for it. Don’t bother paying me back.”

Red Crystals were expensive and most mortals wouldn’t even dream of getting their hands on it, and while the merchants dealt with crystals in masses, it was unlikely that Remus ever got his hands on it.

Even Adrian didn’t get any until he became a Cultivator.

Daily needs could easily be paid with coins, and Adrian happened to have half of his Spatial Ring stuffed with golden coins.

While using the crystals in the Shadow’s tomb was risky and would make others question him, having an abundance of gold coins wasn’t a problem, because one Red Crystal was worth a thousand gold coins. Each golden coin, then, was worth ten silver. Each one of those silver coins was worth ten coppers.

Only wealthy commoners ever got their hands on gold, let alone crystals. Most merchants that couldn’t afford to find and sell priceless treasures like herbs or Aural Weapons only dealt in gold.

It was like there was a rank among merchants: those who sold ordinary goods at the very bottom, and those who sold goods for Cultivators perched at the apex of the food chain. And the difference between them became more and more apparent as the scale of their operations grew until someone like Adrian’s father could be richer than most Nobles and half of the Merchant Sect combined.

Mr. Easton, Remus’s father, was the former.

That also meant that most taverns only got paid in copper and silver coins, which was what Remus’s allowance amounted to.

“So, what’s broken?” asked Adrian as he walked through the busy streets of the Market District that was full of stalls and salesmen shouting at the top of their lungs.

“No idea. My ankle’s twisted and my eye’s throbbing. It hurts all over,” said Remus, and Adrian could feel his muscles tensing, probably as he clenched his fist, “That girl. Who the hell even does that?”

“Something tells me that there’s a reason behind her actions,” said Adrian.

“I swear there weren’t any,” argued Remus.

Before he got lost in the conversation, his attention got drawn to a shop to the left. There were few shops in the Market District, as most of them were stalls. Anything that was inside a building was called a shop, and anything that was outside was called a stall.

It was to make taxing them easier.

The particular one that Adrian was looking at had a carving of a herb on a wooden plank hanging from a stick that protruded from the building. The herb looked like a berry branch, but every berry was a star.

That was the first herb that his father sold: the Star Drop Branch, used to grant a massive growth spurt to whoever used it, which was sold to the Royal Family in the Capital Imperial Auction House, garnering his father enough crystals to kickstart his career.

As he walked on in a trance of his own making, Adrian realized that yet another situation had unfolded, and in this one, he was at the very center.

“So you’re his friend,” said the Titan’s daughter, a glare on her face. This time, she was wearing leather armor that covered her upper body but for her lower body, she had loose pants of the same brown color as her armor.

“Who? Remus?” asked Adrian, his expression blank and tone innocent, “I guess so.”

“Ha! So you’re here to make trouble?” questioned Diana, “Just so you know-”

“Nope. Not at all,” interrupted Adrian, “It’s his fault. Sorry about whatever he did, now please, step aside. I need to get him to a physician. As you can see, or as you might remember, you’ve roughed him up quite a bit.”

“Huh?” asked Diana.

“He’s drunk, can’t you see? He obviously couldn’t be right,” said Adrian and shrugged, “And he’s a troublemaker, to boot.”

“I did nothing!” shouted Remus from behind him, as his head was on the other side of Adrian’s shoulder.

“You obviously did,” Adrian retorted.

“She’s a thrice-damned beast. Do you think I’d stoop so damn low?” growled Remus from behind him, and that was when Adrian realized his nose had gotten used to the alcohol.

“No, but it could’ve been one of her friends. Didn’t I say it before?” asked Adrian, as calmly as possible. Then he turned to Diana, “Excuse him. He gents handsy with too many girls that he mightn’t remember touching your friend.”

“Uh-huh,” said Diana.

Her expression was weird. It couldn’t be called angry and it most certainly couldn’t be the face of saying enjoying the situation. If Adrian didn’t know better, he’d probably say it was an expression of confusion, her mouth slightly agape and eyes blank.

“You still… haven’t moved away,” said Adrian awkwardly as Diana intercepted him just when he was about to walk around her.

“Put me down!” shouted Remus, and Adrian casually gently placed him on his feet, “For god’s sake, I’m not that injured.”

“Fight me,” Diana said suddenly and pointed a finger at him.

“No,” said Adrian almost instantly.

“Huh-” said Diana.

“I mean, you’re stronger than me. The only way I could win the match before was by a ring-out. There’s no way I’ll beat you on the streets,” said Adrian and chuckled while shaking his head, “And there’s no way I’m fighting out here, in the market of all places.”

Diana was frozen with shock.

“Well, that’s that. I guess you’re walking to the physician by yourself. Here, pay him with this,” said Adrian and placed ten gold coins on Remus’s palm, “That ought to be enough. If it isn’t, just put it on my tab, alright?”

“Wait!” shouted Diana but Adrian jumped to the top of a nearby building, using the reduced weight granted by the Cloud Body Technique to his advantage.

And he was gone.