Chapter 21: Opportunity

'Double experience points?' Eric was confused as he read the quest rewards and checked his inventory.

In his inventory, there was a golden orb titled 'Double Experience Points Booster (24 hrs)'.

[Name: Double Experience Points Booster

Description: Upon activation, whatever experience points the user gets from scamming will be doubled.

Duration: 24 hours]

Eric smiled as he looked at the item. It was good that he could activate it whenever he wanted, so he decided to come up with a pretty big scam idea before activating it.

'I will think of something in the morning and once I know who to scam, I will activate this booster.' Eric thought as he closed his inventory and opened his profile and communication skills menu.

[Profile

Personal Information

Name: Eric Tyler

Age: 11

Date of Birth: 27 October

Cultivation

Soul: Spirit Apprentice Realm 2nd Layer

Body: Flesh Refining Realm 1st Layer

Mind: Trainee Mentalist Realm 1st Layer

Aptitude

Soul: Radiant Gold

Body: Crimson

Mind: Light Azure]

[Communication Skills

Persuasion: 5

Intimidation: 4

Charm: 2]

His cultivation levels had updated, so did his communication skills. Eric was pleased and opened his quest log to see what the next part of this quest was.

[New Quest: Discover the Secret of the Paths of Cultivation! (3)

Task: Figure out if it truly is impossible to cultivate the three paths of cultivation at the same time or not. This is a chain quest and has multiple parts. You have started walking the path of a Triune Cultivator. You may think you are alone, but are you really? The task for this part is to discover another Triune Cultivator.

Time Limit: None

Completion Reward: ???, Progression of the quest

Failure Penalty: None]

Reading the quest details, Eric was initially shocked. After completing the previous two parts of the quest back to back in a few days; he assumed the next part to also be something equally easy.

'Well… the objective of this quest is to figure out one of the most well kept secrets of this world. It was foolish of me to assume that it would be easy…' Eric realized as he came to a decision, 'This isn't something I can accomplish right now. The quest has no time limit so I don't need to make this my primary goal. Tomorrow onwards, I should start scamming and increasing my level once again!'

As he decided this, Eric rid his mind of these thoughts and fell into a nice, comfortable sleep.

***

The next day, Eric decided to increase the intensity of his physical training in the morning. Since he had broken through to the Flesh Refining Realm, his physical ability and his body's limits had increased by quite a bit.

Nonetheless, since this was the first day where he changed his exercise routine, he was a bit drained and was eating more food than usual to fill his body with energy. Jane's cooking was both nutritious and delicious; the two traits everyone desired from food.

While eating his breakfast, Eric's mother told him some interesting news she had for him.

"Eric, today we will have lunch at Darren's place. They have invited us over for lunch at their place as a celebration for Liam and Lily's aptitudes being tested! Isn't that amazing; all three of you are extremely talented!" Jane excitedly mentioned while Eric was busy stuffing himself with food.

'Oh, I wonder how high their aptitudes exactly are…' Eric thought in his mind as he nodded his head in agreement at his mother.

Eric was pleased that his best friends had pretty high aptitudes, but he was pretty sure that he was better than them even in that field.

Thinking about what his mother had told him, Eric suddenly came up with an idea: an idea for a scam!

Once he was back in his room, Eric ran through his plan in his head.

'After reaching Darren's place, I will approach him first and ask him about Liam and Lily's aptitudes and I will be skeptical of how good they actually were. Darren is very proud of his children; and he will assure me and possibly even brag about how both his children were in fact very highly talented.

This will be my chance! Once he takes the bait, I will bet with Darren, saying that my aptitude would be above or at least equal to that of Liam and Lily; that too in all three paths. Knowing Darren's personality, he will definitely accept this bet.'

Due to his breakthrough in the cultivation of the mind, Eric was able to formulate such plans in way less time than a normal person. It was an even more impressive feat for him, because he was only 11 years old.

'The only problem that could occur in this scenario would be if dad started bragging about my talent in front of Darren before I am finished making the deal. If he knows that I have already tested my aptitudes and that my aptitudes are considered those of a peerless genius, he won't bet with me.

I'm almost certain that mom and dad would go and congratulate and talk with Liam and Lily; the reason why this celebration is happening in the first place, before talking to Darren.

If I am able to approach Darren before dad, there will be pretty much no obstacles in this plan of mine.'

Eric knew that his plan wasn't perfect and could be ruined if his dad told Darren about his talent, but he had also formulated a counter for that.

Since Darren was one of the sons of the Merchant Guild's leader, he was also the owner of Greenwell City's Treasure Pagoda.

Eric already knew what he was going to ask for once he won the bet.

Now that he had a plan, Eric was pretty sure that he would be able to conduct a successful scam at the celebratory lunch. He was almost certain that this would count as a scam. When he fought Liam without telling him that he was already a cultivator, not to mention a cultivator of a higher stage than him; the system counted it as a scam.

According to the system, any deal where he had an unfair advantage over the other party which he used to trick them; was considered a scam. Since Darren didn't know that Eric had already tested his aptitudes and that his talent was unrivalled, this would also be considered as a scam by the Scam System.

Internally smiling at his simple yet effective plan, Eric looked out the window of his room to check the time.

The sun was shining brightly in the sky, but it wasn't quite at its peak height yet.

'It's around 11:30. I still have some hours to cultivate before we go to Liam and Lily's place.' Eric said to himself as he got back to cultivating.

He decided to activate the experience points booster right before he left for Darren's house; so till then, Eric sat in a meditative position and got to cultivating.

This was time for cultivating his soul and Eric didn't like to waste time when he could be increasing his strength by cultivating.