Almost two months have passed since my transition to the bronze rank; a couple of days ago, the new year arrived, which Xu ZhaoTing and I celebrated together, getting very drunk. He cried to me about how hard his life was and that he had lost everything during the tragedy, and that he would never let it happen again. Thanks to training with the old man, my body became much more resilient, so I didn't get sick from drinking. But the old man didn't cancel training on holidays, so the next day I had to go to training, and then to underground fights. Thank you, old man, for a wonderful new year.
In these almost two months, I participated in almost sixty fights; the opponents in the bronze rank were stronger than in the iron rank, which is logical. Firstly, most teams consisted of mid-level mages; no, of course, there are bronze teams with initial-level mages. After all, for a team to be bronze, at least one person of the corresponding rank is needed; they simply didn't put them against me. Secondly, in the bronze rank, teams were more cohesive and had more combat experience; moreover, they already knew my abilities from previous fights. But to their deep regret, I didn't lose to any of them, remaining undefeated. Still, the bronze rank is no match for me.
The odds on me dropped significantly due to my constant victories, so I abandoned the idea of coming and registering under a different name without a mask to be able to place bets. It just wasn't worth it, and the old man continued to catch even such small profits. For the fight, after becoming bronze rank, I also started getting paid more, five thousand yuan, although all this money was still taken by the old man.
As for my financial situation, it is at an incredible height! Hunting with Xu ZhaoTing brought in huge money. Firstly, after each sortie, we earned about a million. Secondly, the souls that I successfully collected during the hunt were successfully sold on the market. Besides servant-level souls, I once again encountered a chieftain-level soul, which I successfully sold. Thirdly, the artifacts I made became of higher quality and can now protect against high-level servant monsters and even last a couple of times against a supreme one, so I started selling them on the market too, getting about one and a half to two million for each. Thus, in two months, I have accumulated a decent fortune of seventy million yuan!
I haven't decided what to spend such a sum on yet, but most likely I will buy a couple of wind and lightning spiritual seeds to develop my own, and perhaps I will look for quality armor. Why won't I make it myself? It's simple; it's too difficult for me at the moment, and it requires expensive materials, a lot of space, and special expensive equipment that takes up a lot of space. It's clearly not something to do in a small rented room. Xu Zhao Ting earned much less, as he didn't sell souls and artifacts, only about twenty million.
My skills have increased significantly during this time; I can now create mid-level magic, both lightning and wind, in just over three seconds. Yes, and the elements themselves are gradually approaching the second stage, although it is still far away. But the space element, which I have been working on the most, has shown particular growth. It is confidently approaching the second stage of the initial level. I also constantly practice spatial claw spells and develop my spiritual boundaries, although I think they are still at the first level, but they are already good. As for experiments with space stars, when changing the star path, the shape of the claws changes, to the point where they can become an ordinary tentacle!
I tried to control daggers at a distance using space magic. For example, recalling them when I threw them somewhere, or directing them at an opponent, piercing their skull. All these attempts, not immediately, but turned out to be quite successful, so I'm thinking of going to the city of Bo area and killing a couple of three-eyed wolves to increase the number of my fangs. But this is not a one-day task, so I will have to wait until the first stage of training with the old man is over and I get more freedom. At least that's what he told me.
But his training definitely has a terrible effect; during this time, my strength, speed, body toughness, and endurance have reached eighty percent of the strength of mid-level servants. However, the training has also become much more difficult, and fatigue constantly accumulated without stopping. My muscles constantly ached, and during fights, I had to overcome this, as well as fatigue and almost exhausted muscles. Also, constant nightmares, although they didn't matter much to me, were slowly unsettling my psyche once again. However, all these nightmares, which I've had for more than two months, can hardly be called nightmares, as they were monotonous and not very frightening.
Today was another day of training with the old man, and after that, a rather exhausting fight against a top-ranked team. There were a couple of mid-level mages of the third stage, but not at the peak level; two others were second-stage mages. I had to struggle quite a bit with them to win. After all, the third stage of mid-level is not simple; such mages can easily cause me big problems, as they can unleash a large number of mid-level spells, and with a large number of them, it becomes difficult to dodge them.
By the way, the number of my points exceeded three thousand, which allowed me to take the twentieth place in the branch's ranking. Although it's not the first place, never in the history of the branch has a newcomer become bronze rank in two weeks, let alone. No newcomer has entered the top twenty in two and a half months. So I'm still a record holder, and given my speed of earning points, in another couple of months, I will rise to first place.
After all this, I cultivated a little and went to sleep at the old man's, as I was too lazy to go back. There was another nightmare related to today's battle. I calmly watched as Asura killed my former opponents before my eyes. But after the last mage fell into a puddle of his own blood, the nightmare didn't end. Instead, Asura turned to me and, with his usual devilish smile, headed towards me.
"How do you like it? Isn't it a beautiful job?" - He asked, pointing to the corpses and puddles of blood behind him; this statement sent shivers down my spine. - "Oh, come on, it's beautiful, isn't it?" - He smiled even wider.
"Well, how to say." - I stammered, shifting my gaze from him to the bloody puddles behind him. Gradually, they began to spread, forming a bloody lake.
"I think it's time to return to the forgotten question?" - He asked, turning his back to me.
"What question?" - I didn't understand what he was talking about.
"Which of those circling around you are we willing to sacrifice? It's important!" - Asura said with a smirk. - "Look, here they are!" - He exclaimed, pointing to a group of people kneeling with their hands and feet tied. Among them were Mo Jiaxingg, Mo Fan, Jiaxing Xia, Lin Yun Er, Xu Zhao Ting, and others.
"Can they really be sacrificed so easily?" - I asked with doubt in my voice, looking them all over, and remembering what happened last time.
"And why not? They are just characters from an old story; they have their place in the plot. Some have more, some have less, don't they? You became a little more attached to some, but they remained only characters written by another person." - Asura spoke calmly, pondering every word, his tone sent shivers down my spine.
"But I lived with them for so long; I saw them in person; how can they remain just characters?" - I asked, looking at him with doubt.
"Yes? And did that affect the plans written here?" - He asked, taking my notebook out of his jacket, then opening it and starting to read. - "Page twelve - Incident at Mingzhu University. Goal: entry into the three-step tower and inclusion in the student exchange list. Main event: the death of Xu Zhao Ting, triggering a chain of actions leading to the goal. Isn't he your friend? It's written here as if you don't care about his life." - He said with an indifferent face.
"It's..." I tried to answer, but couldn't disagree with him. Even though I had grown fond of Xu Zhao Tin and wouldn't want him to die, his death was predetermined. I couldn't change it, I could only use it to my advantage.
"If he can be sacrificed, why not others when the time comes?" Asura asked, putting away his notebook.
"But some aren't destined to die, why should I kill them or set them up?" I asked, staring intently at him.
"Why?" He seemed surprised, looking at me. "Everything is possible, you must be prepared for anything. If you aren't decisive enough to sacrifice a piece in your game, how can you win? Wentai voluntarily went to trial and was killed by Hail, just to become the King of Darkness. He left behind adopted son and daughter, a loving wife, and a biological daughter who barely understood anything at the time. And she couldn't, what could a three-year-old girl understand?" Asura spoke calmly, pacing back and forth. "He left them, sacrificed them for his goals, and what about you? Are these characters so important to you that you're not willing to go all the way? Didn't you say you were going to gain a power that would surpass the King of Darkness?"
"They aren't just characters, they are living people!" I shouted, barely holding back tears at his words, everything he said was true.
"And since when do you think that?" He smirked, looking me in the eyes, sending shivers down my spine. "Her, you decided to help her, wasn't it to have an executive light mage?" Asura asked, pointing at Lin Yun Er, which made my heart clench and sink into my heels. "You wanted to use her, possibly sacrifice her if needed. She was just a passing character, mentioned once and that's it, so tell me how did she become so important? How did you manage to fall in love with a tool?"
"She's not a tool!" I yelled, about to lunge at Asura and beat him up.
"Stop," he replied coldly. "We'll talk later." With that, he lightly pushed me in the chest, and I woke up.
After saying goodbye to the old man, who was already awake despite the early hour, I headed back to the apartment that Xu Zhao Tin and I had been renting all this time. Approaching the door, I saw a note attached to it, which read: "Come to the border of the safe zone in the north, don't forget the dragon's tooth. For good measure, we've taken your friend, so don't think about running away."