Progress After A Month

Checking his calendar after waking up, Hiro quickly realized that school starts tomorrow, and Marcus would be returning to the dormitory today.

Not just Marcus, but the other three students would be making it back as well.

Stretching, Hiro opened his phone and clicked on the PARA app. As expected, the front camera scanned his iris for retina confirmation, and then he was escorted to the username page.

There was nothing else; no profile picture, no nickname, no bio, no nothing.

Just a blank space where he needed to insert the desired username.

After thinking for a while, Hiro decided on his username—Babylon.

Hiro quickly confirmed it and entered the app to browse the interface. It was very simple, and there were many threads.

[New Threads], [Popolar Threads], [Currently Trending Threads], [Regional Threads], [Global Threads], and plenty more.

Hiro thought for a while and decided to narrow down his interests to the Western Region since Nexus County was located on the Western Continent.

No, there weren't four continents in this world, only three. However, there were plenty of islands and archipelago clusters on the wide seas and vast oceans, and funnily enough, these consisted of the majority of hard land.

Of course, only if they were put together into one whole, which was impossible at this point. For some reason, Hiro smelled an epic story behind this bizarre geographical situation.

Alas, it was something beyond Hiro's league.

After clearing his mind, Hiro left the dorm room and climbed the stairs to the school entrance where there wasn't anyone around.

It wasn't early in the morning, but it wasn't early enough for traffic to build up so Hiro quickly found an empty taxi and directed him to a motel in the suburbs.

After a 40-minute drive, Hiro gave the driver a 10 nexus dollar tip and booked a room for the evening, not planning to spend the night there.

He only planned on using the privacy of the room to use 10 APs for an hour of meditation under the synchronization effect with his sorcerer character.

After paying for a three-hour stay, Hiro entered the motel room and locked the door before finding himself a comfortable position, seated on a couch.

Then, he closed his eyes and activated the {Synchronization} feature, consuming 10 APs, leaving him with a round number of 1,000 APs.

Yes, Hiro didn't get any extra points this month.

However, his sorcerer character went from Mage, to Sorcerer, and eventually to High Sorcerer.

He advanced from this world's standards of Tier-9 to Tier-7 with his endless grinding! The map was too big, and the teleportation fees were very expensive, forcing Hiro to waste time on side quests just to farm gold and equipment most of the time.

He didn't know whether he was Rank C, B, A, or S. However, that didn't matter too much.

As for his cultivator character, it also advanced from the Golden Core realm to the Nascent Soul realm, which is also considered to be Tier-7.

However, since the cultivation realms had a clear distinction in minor realms, Hiro could be considered an S-rank with his cultivation reaching 9/10.

Immediately, Hiro was immersed in his experiences as a Mage, especially the feeling of growing stronger, and the accompanying thoughts and moments of inspiration.

His acquisition of the Sorcerer's Guide to the Five Elements smoothly merged with his experience in utilizing the five elements of fire, water, earth, wind, and lightning.

Also, the moment he figured out the use of his concentration spell, Hiro immediately utilized it to increase his sense of immersion.

No matter how much meditation was done while under synchronization, the in-game character would never grow stronger. However, Hiro simply wanted to condition his body and nerves to the sensation of perfectly channeled elemental power with the aid of spirituality.

He altered between the cycles of the five elements in his body, while elemental phenomena appeared around Hiro, visually impacting yet harmless to the environment.

This was the beauty of perfect control; the spells would cause damage if he willed it so, and they'd be mere harmless aesthetics if he willed it so.

Hiro quickly lost himself in the sensation, and once the hour passed, he could feel the power dissipating from his body into some mysterious void.

Opening his eyes, Hiro slowly unfurled his palm and concentrated.

Poof!

A ball of crimson flame danced in his palm, quickly twisting into a cyclone of wind, only to be compressed into a droplet of water, then morphing into a dark thundercloud.

The cloud fizzled out into motes of electricity that gravitated toward the ground, and for a brief moment, the floor rumbled beneath Hiro's feet.

He clenched his fist in excitement!

Although the damage was laughable, the degree of control was impeccable!

Nearly 1,300 hours of hard grinding was worth it!

"It's about time," Hiro calmed down and once again opened the PARA app to search for opportunities.

Many threads mentioned a request for help with handsome payments of either cash or other items of value.

Hiro quickly filtered out the threads to view those related to sorcery and spirituality as a reward.

The titles of the threads would mention the danger level and the minimum requirement of strength.

"I'm not planning to get myself a mission right now," Hiro said to himself. "I'll scout the nature of the missions and only take part if it's really worth it."

With his cosmetics set from the system, Hiro wasn't worried about exposing his identity even if he were to operate in his own city, let alone the vast Nexus Nation.

Although he could easily move around the country with the conscience of transportation, Hiro was too lazy for that.

After going through the threads for a while, he found a few possible missions.

The first one was a hidden bodyguard mission. Some prestigious old man was taking his granddaughter on a field trip to the suburban mountains to worship their ancestors.

The danger assessment level was B7.

As in, the minimum requirement of strength was around B-rank, Tier-7.

My cultivator profile is an S-rank, Tier-7 Paranormal, so this one shouldn't be too hard! Hiro thought to himself.

The other three missions were of a similar nature, mainly because Hiro avoided any missions that required him to actively harm or kill others.

Fighting in self-defense was fine, but Hiro wasn't willing to become someone's weapon for no good reason.

As Hiro got up and prepared to leave the room, his phone's ringtone disturbed his thoughts.

Checking the ID of the caller, Hiro picked it up and answered. "Who's this? What's up?"

The caller ID was unknown, so Hiro had no clue who was it or what they needed from him.

"I need help! Quickly, post a mission request on PARA to rescue me from these people! It's a premeditated attack on my father, and I can only use this phone to make one untraceable call before it gets destroyed… The location is…"

Without much time to spare, Hiro quickly jotted down the address. While he was writing down the address, his expression turned a little weird because the location was also in the suburbs, approximately a 15-minute drive from his current location.

Hiro knew this much because he used his analytical skills to memorize the city's map, both infrastructures and underground sewers.

"Why didn't you ask Rosaline for help instead?" Hiro was confused.

"They probably expect me to ask for help from her clan, I can't take the risk… I have to leave now, my time is running out!"

Beep!

The connection was lost. Hiro put down the phone and rubbed his chin, a little hesitant since Bella didn't mention the threat level for this operation.

After thinking about it for a while, Hiro shook his head and decided to head out personally.

No matter what, he refused to believe that a Tier-5 Paranormal was involved in this scheme.

After firming his resolution, Hiro left the motel and chose a blind spot to complete his synchronization. Then, after he equipped his cosmetics, he looked in the direction of the warehouse.

"Hopefully, I wouldn't have to pull an Itachi Uchiha slaughter on this one…" Hiro murmured before circulating his Spirit Qi and taking to the sky.