Noah, A Potential Friend

Like he was told, Liam had lost consciousness a few seconds after the serum was injected into his body. 

'Oh well, since there is no need for me to be here right now, I guess I'll go back to my main body and see what's needed to be done.', he thought and a second later, he opened his eyes to find himself in his hotel room.

He was currently on a planet called Norf while his avatar was in his home planet, which was called Rhyno. While it was around noon for him on Norf, it was close to midnight back on Rhyno, which gave him a better flexibility to work with. 

"To think that I still have most of my money with me... it's a good deal so there is no need to worry much.", he muttered to himself and picked up his phone out of habit, only to realise that there were not many social media apps on the phone. 

There were only two notifications and those were from his messages inbox, which he checked since there was nothing else to do, only to see the messages come from an unidentified number. 

Nonetheless, he went ahead and took a look, only to let out a grin. 

[Achievement: Made a deal with Mad Rick]

- Reward: Bronze Avatar Creation Card

[Achievement: Borrowed money from a Gang Leader]

- Reward: Bronze Avatar Creation Card

*Ding*

He got another notification right after he was done reading the two messages. Again, the third message also gave him a Bronze Avatar Creation Card for getting serum injected into his body. 

Once he was done checking all the messages, he couldn't erase the smile off his face as it made him incredibly happy. That was only until he realised something. 

'I honestly don't know if getting these cards will be as easy in the future. Based on my current situation, I feel like it's better to keep Bryce alive and use the avatar as much as I can until something unfortunate happens. After all, I don't know if I can get the same offers the next time I make an avatar. If it gets sent to a planet that I don't know much of, it'll be a huge pain.'

Placing his phone in his pocket, he walked out of his room and headed to the gym that was in the hotel. It was lacking compared to a professional gym but it had most of the basic things. The gym was mostly empty except for a couple making out at the far corner but Liam ignored them. 

Instead, he walked towards the dumbbell counter and picked them up one by one before placing them back in their respective places. He was doing it for only one reason and that was to check the effectiveness of the transfer of abilities and stats from the avatars to his main body. 

He could feel his body become stronger as time passed and he wanted to check the limits. 

'My avatar is currently undergoing some kind of internal transformation so the feeling of getting stronger every second makes sense. The moment this feeling stops, should mean that the transformation should have been complete.', he thought as he continued to go up in weights. 

At the corner of the gym, the girl who was pinned against the wall, glanced at Liam and stopped whatever she was doing. Noticing his girlfriend's sudden lack of interest, the guy turned to check what she was looking at. 

"Babe, doesn't he seem really strong? That's double of what you can lift normally.", she said as she pointed at the 20kg dumbbell that Liam was lifting. 

Frowning, the guy stared at Liam, "That's only because you haven't seen me lift after I got the serum injected in me. A high grade serum is nothing to scoff at since it costs half a million Rudo."

"Yes babe, you're the best!", she yelped as she gave him a hug, "Won't you buy me a designer bad today, please?"

"Hahah, I spent all my money on my serum so you'll have to wait for a month.", he said, his expression awkward but his girlfriend just scoffed and looked at Liam instead. 

Poking her boyfriend's biceps, she challenged him, "You say that the serum is amazing but I've never seen any difference in your performance. I feel like you're just putting on airs so why don't you show me the greatness of your serum by beating that guy?"

Annoyed by the girl's provocation's, he took a step away from her and walked towards Liam instead, his face red with anger. 

Before he could reach the dumbbell counter, he saw Liam turn to look at him before smiling. 

"....", stunned by Liam's friendly smile, he slowed down before turning to look back at his girlfriend, 'Just what am I trying to do...'

When he got closer to Liam, he returned the smile and spoke in a friendly manner instead of how he had originally planned. 

"Hey, looks like you're new here. Do you wanna workout with me? It gets a little lonely here since no one uses the gym most of the time."

Liam looked at the guy and placed the dumbbells back where they were supposed to be before nodding, "Sure but I'm really new to all this gym stuff so you'll have to guide me. Before we start though, I'd like to give you a heads up that I'll be leaving this hotel after around forty to fifty days. Oh yeah, I'm Liam by the way. Nice to meet you."

"You can call me Noah. By the way... forty to fifty days and a guy who seems pretty young... are you the guy who got sponsored by the academy?", he asked and was pleasantly surprised when Liam nodded in response.

"Yeah, I'm really nervous about the exam that I have to take. It's really stressful so it's getting hard to focus on studies.", Liam said while sighing while Noah just laughed.