7 We live in a SOCIETY! *honk-honk*

This was quite possibly the most productive two weeks Helmut had in years.

Despite ignoring Dust World for the most part, he still managed to find out a couple things with a few quick tests and a camcorder. Apparently, this indeed wasn't a dream world where your consciousness gets whisked away - on the count of 60 body fades away in light particles and is probably reassembled in another dimension. That was something he couldn't deny or confirm, as any footage or digital photographs taken in Dust World became corrupted and unwatchable. Surprisingly enough, ancient Polaroid tech worked just fine without any issues.

Speaking of home videos: after filming himself in the trance-like state of mixing the miracle meds and watching the footage, his Pharmacology skill made a big leap from Advanced to Expert rank, filling his head with knowledge and proper manufacturing techniques; and no longer did he fall into trance after kickstarting the crafting process - now everything was done consciously and manually with raised efficiency and quality of final product. That was the moment where Helmut promptly erased all the evidence and lost any hope of streamlining and mechanizing the process to build his own Big Pharma with poker and courtesans; although half the process was strictly scientific and required knowledge of potential effects of the ingredients used, but the second half involved using an unknown energy surging from within his own body to dramatically amplify said effects. Manipulating it consciously during the mixing stage also tired him out mentally, limiting the output.

It didn't matter much anyway, since after a while the permanent buildup effect stopped working. But thankfully the temporary stat buffing and night vision effects were still present, leading to Helmut keeping a couple doses of the powder on his person hidden in a secret compartment of his wristwatch.

He still wanted to make a liquid solution version for easier ingestion and transportation, but that would most likely require a special type of water that wouldn't ruin the medicine. Barker had a good feeling about the Dust World's version of Cui Hu Lake, but those weird midget fishmen had to come out from *somewhere*, right? And waltzing in on what most likely was a breeding ground of man-eating monsters while being completely unprepared and uncertain in your ability to outrun said beings didn't exactly sound like the best of ideas.

Which was one of the reasons for coming in contact with Xu Xiaodong and attempting to enter his tutelage. Thankfully he wasn't uptight like the traditional chinese martial artists who would demand official discipleship with all following ceremonial atavisms, however there was a different problem of the two entering a heated debate over tuition fees with both sides being misers trying to pull the blanket over to their side.

At first Helmut attributed this to supposed hard financial straits the Xu family was traversing, but that notion quickly fell through when he noticed the well-off looking interior of the house, relaxed elders and pudgy energetic kids running around, clearly well fed and cared for. Barker had a hunch Xu might've had a less..."official" ways of earning good money, but it was way too early to try and stick his nose in someone else's pie when he knew them for a couple of minutes.

And although a little over ten days really wasn't that long of a time period, after eating well and getting professional coaching from a former champion Helmut did manage to get a little more meat on his bones and a piddly +0.1 to Muscle, Endurance and Courage. As much as he'd like to complain about miniscule gains, at that point he simply couldn't due to something unfortunate that he figured out about the evolution point system a little while ago... But I'm getting ahead of myself.

In a short amount of time he managed to firmly ingrain himself into the little society, becoming well known and loved in several blocks wide radius. This, however, was something that he was far from being able to claim full credit for - being in no rush to become incarnation of Superman and having no real motivation to brave dangers of the Dust World, fighting toe to toe with its denizens, he simply enjoyed the slow life with his evolution point expenditure being semi-frivolous and semi-centered on research.

Playing scientist and savoring the feeling of discovery amused him to no end; it reached the point where he got so immersed filling his new diary with data that a certain magical tome couldn't stand such shameless cheating of its partner and ravenously devoured the diary whole. Before Helmut could complain, tome shined with a dull light and grew another page. After a quick inspection, all of Helmut's haphazard notes ended up recorded and neatly sorted in categories without him even asking. To say he was surprised at such abrupt show of clinginess and thoughtfulness was to say nothing.

Feeling awkward from always calling such a loyal entity "hey you" all the time, Helmut bestowed the tome with the name 'Booker'. And no, this definitely didn't happen because both narrator and the author got sick and tired of thinking of new ways to call the flying yak something different every time.

But anyway, we went on a bit of a tangent there, didn't we?

As previously mentioned, Helmut's reputation among locals skyrocketed from "that mad sus white monkey reeking of blood and fish fat" to "such a polite and hardworking young man, I should marry my daughter to him". Such a drastic change was actually initially unintended and came as a result of pouring majority of points into Judgement in a gamble to try and find more medicine herbs eligible for making new types of doping, and Appearance to see if there would be any changes in skeletal structure of the body (and indeed there were - x-ray comparison had shown that not only his facial features, but his skull too reached the point of perfect symmetry without any lumps and bumps).

Turns out, Appearance heavily affected first impressions and made people have a positive bias towards you as long as you don't mess it up by saying something out of line. And how convenient it is, that Judgement (despite being a very different stat from Persuasiveness) affected decisions concerning speech too.

It became easy to understand the locals and how to properly butter them up.

The older ones had a cult of importance of Age Seniority and were fairly nationalistic in their views. All Helmut had to do was to treat them with fake respect and casually stroke the throbbing ego of 'how amazing and superior to others China is in general' and not forget to pour moderate amounts of verbal sewage on their asian neighbors - especially Korea and Japan.

Young frustrated housewives who quickly got disillusioned about married life after the initial euphoria worn off, leaving a only chaotic children and a cold cheating husband, found a good friend and listener in the friendly and handsome butcher who always seemed to find just the right words to make them feel better. Helmut was quite happy to help too, since he could bring some hap-penis to those who desperately needed it while simultaneously grinding his Endurance stat.

Making friends with young adult debauchees was an unexpected surprise, but a welcome one - the amounts of their daddy's money they were willing to burn (or "accidentally lose somewhere" when their unconscious bodies were brought to their homes by Barker) were quite substantial. Despite previously being a teetotaler due to his health issues, Helmut felt a dire need for a drink after acquiring a certain skill and entered the Wild Doors nightclub. One thing lead to another, and somehow Helmut ended up punching out the lights of young silkpants Shang Bing who got angry after his dirty thoth...erm...his at-that-point girlfriend gravitated towards Helmut who was discovering the world of alcoholic beverages for the first time. After Shang Bing came to, Barker skillfully smoothened things out by helping the guy fish out another less-than-reputable lady from the crowd and the two quickly became pals. Naturally, Helmut wouldn't have bothered if he didn't find out that Shang Bing was the owner of the club and knew a ton of fat second generation sheep like himself, just begging to be shorn for all their worth.

And neither did Helmut ignore the kids, sir Arthur Conan Doyle had shown good examples of just how useful a gaggle of slippery ankle-biters whom everyone ignores can be. After colluding with a retired soldier who opened his own airsoft shooting range business, Helmut sponsored a series of daily micro-tournaments where he would pay for the first 32 entrants with age range between twelve and sixteen while he himself grinded Shooting skill in the corner away from others. This served to further boost his good reputation among the residents. He also met a little fatty by the name of Zhang Kun who bragged about his rich single businesswoman mother which piqued Helmut's interest. Suddenly the lonely child got himself a kind and understanding father figure which made him very happy.

...back then Helmut knew neither that all this networking will lead to unforeseen events in the future, nor that a certain someone will come to remind him that after you've been marked, the only way to leave Dust World is in a coffin.

The time of the first small scale collision grows near.