Swiss Cheese

Luke thought for some time, and decided not to directly enter the village but to sneak in and gather some information before decided on whether to recruit all the villagers or shoo them away and recruit people from other places instead to build his base and be a part of Card of Destiny.

Luke had planned from the very beginning, that Card of Destiny could not be limited to just 72 members as depicted by the cards. He had already planned to add a ton of more members, and create a hierarchy with his as the leader, the other 71 members as the upper echelons, and thousands, if not millions of normal members divided by ranks below the 71 members.

But that was talk of the future, for no, he had to first create his base. And to do that, he needed money. The best way to get money was gambling at casinos with a large amount of money.

But his Luck stat was pathetically low, and personally, Luke did not need this useless stat. He would much rather put everything into energy and increase his fighting power and beat up some monsters and sell their corpses to earn money.

And after searching through the villagers and their actions, Luke decided to do just that. In the village, most of the villagers were normal people who he could use as cheap labour. There were some irritating buffoons, but they could be dealt with later. There was also a single child, around 10 years old, who seemed to have a hard time living life since he was left on the streets to live, and given food by some people every day which allowed him to survive till now.

Being curious, Luke used analyse on the fellow, and was shocked.

'A protagonist all the way out here?'

…

But he left the kid to whatever he wanted for the time being, and went to kill some monsters and earn enough money to build a base. He could have to kill many Level 25 or above monsters to gain enough money from the sale of the materials to the Guild of Magic to build his base. And he only knew of one place with so many Level 25 monsters that were just mob of the area and not bosses.

And that was the sea. The Sea that surrounded Gamin, and all the other continents, which was so dangerous that even Level 74 peak NPCs would be in grave danger. Naturally, that was in the depths of the sea, and Luke intended on only exploring near the coast to kill Level 25 or above monsters. This would also give him a tonne of exp in the process, which he always welcomed.

'The old-fashioned grinding is always more fun than running around delivering letters' Luke thought to himself as he dove into the sea wearing all his clothes, remembering the good-old days were MMORPGs were based on PCs and people would grind levels by hunting mobs since it was far more efficient than doing quests that were too long or gave too little exp, and way more efficient than using a whole squad to fight a world boss and dividing the exp.

Thinking about PCs, Luke remembered the technology giant 'Pear Inc.' which started off as a joke by two friends, but grew at an astonishing rate, eventually becoming a competitor of, and later taking over 'Apple Inc.', and later taking over companies like Samsung.

Naturally, the government had to step in to prevent the creation of a monopoly, and encourage many of the other top brands in the industry to come together in a merger, forming 'Onedows Opplux'

Being lost in thought, Luke finally felt a presence in the sea, right in front of him.

Without thinking too much, Luke used water magic to form nearly 30 Ice Lances, which were boosted by 12% due to the environment he was in, and waited for the enemy to come within his lie of sight, before launching all the lances towards the head of the creature.

'Huh… Swiss cheese cannot be sold now can it?' Luke thought to himself after he looked at the mutilated corpse.