The Approaching Darkness

Night falls faster than I have estimated, and before the long night finally descends upon the silent city, I broke into another bank and headed straight to the vault with my brand-new avatar. Unlike the last one, this bank has no survivors, and that just makes things easier.

Makes the smash and grab a lot faster too.

While it is unlikely for me to break through to level 10 Merchant with just scavenging and looting, any amounts helps in the long run. And I can always use the money even if the bill itself holds no value to the System.

It is debatable if money has any value within the Zone, but it is still considered as money in the outside world, as the economy has not gone to shit yet. It will be by the time the third wave hits, and I should do something about that.

The collapsing of the global economy is the first step towards certain doom, and while I cannot prevent its collapse, as that is inevitable due to Earth being freely accessible by all sort of entities, I will try to hold the collapse off for as long as possible.

Or at least until Eden is finally colonized, setting off the Great Migration.

Anyway, after stealing everything from the vaults and smashing through all the safe lockers to loot its content, I head back out of the building and onto the roof. On the way there, I pick up whatever bodies that are still usable to me.

Most of corpses lying about looks like it has been eaten, however. And judging from the bite marks, it is likely Sprite Hounds. Actually, I can hear them howling in the distant. Quite a lot of them too, and I feel like hunting them for their XP.

They are originally dogs, so they don't have the same intelligent as people. That also means it is quite hard to do business with them. Not impossible, as I have done business with Slimes before, and those things doesn't even have a brain.

But I refrain from running off and slaughtering the lots of them, as the long night will descend soon. It is incredible dangerous to wander around in the dark even for me, for there are things that cannot be bargained with.

And it is those things that have done most of the killings. The city would have been littered with plenty of corpses, otherwise. It is just so easy to get lost in the dark. So very easy.

Once I check how much time until the Caravan reaches its destination, I leap off the building and head straight to the next bank for more smashing and grabbing. It would be great if I can control more than one avatar, but I cannot divide my consciousness yet.

And it takes too long to reach the Spiritual Realm with my original body. I also do not want to start my cultivation yet, as I want to do it correctly. This is the same with reaching higher tier of magic. It is not as simple as forming more rings about my Magic Core.

I need a lot of resources to reach higher Magical and Spiritual Power. Resources that I have no access to at the moment, not to mention Earth is a terrible place to train and cultivate. That is one reason to why I want access to Transmigrator or Reincarnation Quest as soon as possible.

Several presences catch my attention, and I increase my speed, forcing them to give chase.