4 First Friend

Thoughts are blazing through Sorin's head as he weaves through all of the new players and party invites. 'Ok, obviously I want the S rank completion so that means I need to only use one contract scroll to bag the biggest and baddest familiar. Emily gave me [Omni-lingual] so that is a hint that I need to find a monster that has a language.

[Party Invite]

"No I don't want to party thanks"

'Goblins? No, too weak. What if it's that Goblin King? Still, too ugly. Emily looks like a child and acts like one but she is actually a kitsune Tier 6 Lord from one of the Beast Kingdoms so she could be 500 years old for all I know.'

[Party Invite]

"I said I don't want to party!"

'I there is no way I could contract the specter as it is already contracted to one of the Demon Gods. Since she showed me it is possible to contract NPCs, should I try to contract one of the NPCs in the village? Impossible, like Emily everyone around turned out to be ridiculously high level on the continent, I'm handsome but not subjugating 5 tiers above me handsome.'

[Party Invite][Party Invite][Party Invite]...

"AAAAHHHHH fuck this, lets just scour the island looking for something and WHO THE HELL IS SENDING THESE PARTY INVITES!!!" Sorin's voice boomed suddenly in the middle of the square. The years of battle and leading Astria's top guild for 7 years showed itself in an invisible pressure that radiated off of him. Everyone 10 feet around him feel to their knees and the rest quivered in place. Even the stupidly high leveled NPCs glanced at him with lights in their eyes.

Sorin stares at a shaking lithe figured brunette. After an uncomfortable few seconds the formless pressure recedes. 'Whoops, I forgot these are just noobs. Relax...relax. You want a different life then one filled with blood and corpses. Breathe, she didn't do anything wrong… and… smile'

"I apologize that was a little sudden of me. Though spamming party requests when you have been denied once is rude on your part. Can I help you with anything?" Sorin said with a choked up smile.

The female user SpringRain, is in real life a secretary to the CEO of one of the largest French Insurance firms, Nous Prenons Votre Argent. She is here to expand her horizons on how far technology has come before the world powers destroy it.

The main reason Astria isn't flying off of the shelves at launch is that all of the marketing was heavily restricted by most of the major countries as a way to intimidate the makers behind Astria, DreamTech, to release the secrets of AI technology to them. Now that Astria launched to the public, countries are trying to hack it to obtain the AI software Gaia.

In her line of work, she has learned to spot successful people just by the way they carry themselves. The man she thought seemed innocent just with a determined face seemed to transform in to a general that has sifted through wars.

"I-I am so sorry I didn't know. I j-just wanted to get your attention. Are you by any chance a military man from somewhere?" SpringRain stuttered out awkwardly.

"No, I stream games for a living" stated Sorin in all seriousness.

SpringRain was shocked. The aura he had was one like her brother sometimes had when he came home but on a much lower scale. She could also tell he wasn't lying as being the lead interviewer for her company trained her to spot lies.

As SpringRain was dazed for a few seconds, Sorin frowned. The years of running a guild had him always on a strict schedule so stopping to wait for this girl to get her act together was getting his fingers itching.

Spotting his displeasure, she quickly got her act together and asked, "Would you like a job?"

"No thanks"

"Just think about it. Where are you from?"

"Canada"

"Oh, do you know any French?" she said hopefully.

"Yes fluent, one of my girlfriends was French" Sorin said again with a straight face. Its true and false as it's true he had a french girlfriend before but false that he learned it from her. 7 years from now a learning program with every major language was introduced that turned you fluent in a day of mental rewiring. One of the applications the VR tech will utilize. At the time, Sorin was convinced that his sponsors were insulting him when they talked in their native tongues, so sped up the program 10x and learned most of the world's languages. Astria comes with a built in translator but honestly he didn't need it.

"...Oh that's great. Have you been to Paris?"

"Not yet...I know you are profiling but can we call it a day I have things to do." sighed Sorin

"Oh…of course, um can I have a way to contact you?" SpringRain said with the sexiest look she could do.

Sorin thought about it. It wouldn't be too bad making connections just in case. Currently he's single and unknown to the world right now. He can tell she is interested in him from her eyes.

Well, it could backfire and lead to her giving up my username when Astria gets popular and corporations try to profit off of popular players, but I have already taken every safety measure in that even if I am wanted by the guilds, they cannot threaten me irl. Besides, I don't have any contacts right now so see could be a friend that I could call in if I need it. A friend…with benefits.

[Friend request sent...accepted]

"All right bye now." Sorin said as he disappeared

"...huh" SpringRain looked at the space in front of her where Sorin was standing

SpringRain looked at her friends list in a daze where her only friend stood, Wanderer.

'Damn' she stomped her feet in anger. She couldn't get his irl contact information and all she got was a friend request. The game was about to be destroyed so a friend request was useless.