old 'friend'

Logging out and taking off his VR goggles, James took a look outside the window and noticed that he had logged off just in time, it seemed that the plane would be landing in country S in less than 5 minutes. After getting off the plane James didn't waste any time and directly took a cab towards the dragon-phoenix pavilion main office, a grand building in the middle of town, fitting for a gaming conglomerate that was on the verge of becoming a super guild and had existed for over a hundred years. Walking into the building James looked at the giant clock hanging against one of the marble walls and saw that his appointment was in only a couple of minutes, so he made his way toward the receptionist's desk.

"James?"

When hearing his name James turned around to see a girl that he vaguely remembered from somewhere.

"Mia?"

He said with an uncertain look in his eyes, he remembered this girl from high school, which in this timeline only ended about 2 years ago, but for him the last time he ever thought about her was 17 years ago.

"O come on James, we spent 4 years in the same class, and you can't even remember my name after 2 years of being apart. It is funny I ran into you here though; a lot of our classmates have wondered where you have been for the last 2 years, a couple of them said that you would be attending the same college as them, but you just never showed. I hope everything is going well."

She said the last part with a saddened expression in her eyes, almost as if she felt pity for James, but she talked in such a self-inflating tone for the rest of the conversation that it just felled off. James guessed that that tone was because she had somehow managed to get a relatively high position in the dragon-phoenix pavilion, which certainly was a good position to be in at her age. He also guessed that the last tone had to do with his parents, he fell off the map soon after they died after all.

"I'm doing well, thanks for asking. I just decided to put all my effort into God's domain after I heard of its release date, that is the reason I didn't go to college. How have you been Mia, do you work here now or is there another reason you're here."

James honestly couldn't care less about his former classmates, the only reason they ever contacted him in his previous life was after he managed to become a big shot in God's domain, they don't deserve his time, but he found it rather interesting to see what happened to them in the early stages of God's domain, he had a couple of minutes to kill anyway.

"O, that must be why you're here, trying to get into the dragon-phoenix pavilion hu, and yes, I do work here, but not in an office or something, just like you I also decided to aim for God's domain instead of college and dropped out a year ago after being scouted by the dragon-phoenix pavilion. I was so good in fact that I am in their special genius training program, I even managed to reach the Refinement realm in under a year, yea I know I know, so if you need a recommendation, I got you."

James could only chuckle a little after hearing how prideful she was of her achievements, they may be relatively good now that we where still playing in the small leagues, but ones she encounters the bigger world she will be nothing more than an average talent.

"That's good to hear, which Kingdom or Empire are you in, and have you made a lot of progress?"

The questions before this where mainly just to fuel his curiosity, but this one had some kind of reason. He was about to get into a partnership with this guild after all, having some knowledge about there upper tier members couldn't hurt.

"I'm in the black dragon Empire, you want me to carry you?"

She said with a smug look on her face.

"Don't be too jealous but I'm currently level 14, super high right, but that's only normal when you consider the caliber of players that are in my team, you know my team captain is a void realm expert, and he is only 27, isn't that amazing, he could become a Domain Realm expert by the age of 35 if he is lucky, that would make him one of the biggest geniuses of the planet."

Her tone seemed to be getting fuller of pride the more she talked, especially when talking about this team leader, at that moment, speaking of the devil, a man came walking up behind her, tapping on her shoulder, scaring her a little.

"You bragging about my achievements like they are your own again Mia, you should brag about your own some more, getting into the Refinement realm within a year isn't something I could even do, and who is this guy?"

His happy go lucky tone changed the second he mentioned James.

"O, an old classmate of mine, he is here to try and get into the pavilion."

The team leader just looked James up and down for a second and scoffed.

"Good luck then, you are gonna need it."

James was kind of surprised at the way this guy treated him, he was clearly in the void realm and James wasn't trying to hide his aura or anything, for Mia, he found it only natural that she couldn't sense his Realm but for a guy who was in the void realm he should be able to at least notice that James was in the Domain realm, but arrogance can be blinding.

"Thank you, but I'm not planning on doing that, I have been invited."

The Team leader just scoffed at James's remarks, obviously thinking this was a lie to not embarrass himself, but before he could call James out for this a hoarse voice calmly addressed James from behind them.

"Boy, what are you doing here, it's not very polite to keep people waiting when you've been invited"

James turned around to a familiar face, the old man that had helped him in breaking through to the Beyond Domain Realm, at that moment it clicked, that's what he remembered him from, the Black dragon, one of the 2 beyond domain realm experts from the pavilion, he hadn't recognized him before thanks to the fact that he almost never showed his face but seeing him here made all the dots connect.

"Wasn't expecting you to be here old man, I haven't thanked you for your help last time, it would have taken me a lot more time to figure out how to breakthrough to the next realm if it wasn't for your help."

Now walking away James and Black dragon left Mia and her team leader standing baffled, the Team leaders face bright red. He was just boasting about himself, yet these 2 nobodies just ignored him like that, most of the surrounding players where also quite shocked when seeing the actions of James and the old man. Unlike James Black Dragon had completely sealed his aura making it look like he was just an old man, so nobody, even the couple flowing water realm players could understand how they dared to offend a void realm expert in his own guild's headquarters.

"A rowdy bunch aren't they, if anyone offended you just tell me, as a soon to be partner I won't let that go too easily. Do you know that girl by the way, if she is an acquaintance of yours, we can give her some benefits."

James just smirked at the old man's suggestion.

"Don't bother trying to win me over by helping her, the only reason I even gave her the time of day was because I thought I had some time left before our meeting, and isn't the reason that crowd is so rowdy more to do with you than me. I'm not hiding anything while you are hiding everything despite being in your own building."

The old man just let out a deep laugh after hearing James's remark.

"Yes, well you know, I want to be able to walk in my own building in peace, so I don't have a choice. On the fact of you not hiding anything, I should teach those kids some lessons about arrogance, not being able to recognize a Beyond Domain Realm expert just because you have a little too much pride, what a disgrace."

After saying that the 2 of them had already arrived in front of a luxury-looking door with 2 armed guards in front of it, the second they saw Black Dragon they stepped aside and let the both of them in.

The room they entered was a medium sized conference room, at the head of the table was a middle aged looking man that was clearly trying to size James up, at his left was the all too familiar girl who James had done his previous business deal with, phoenix. On his right, a young man around the same age as phoenix was sitting, James recognized this man as Dragon, the second vice guild leader of the Dragon-Phoenix pavilion, clearly looking spiteful at James and phoenix. Black dragon took a seat next to phoenix, opposite of him was sitting another old man next to Dragon, this man was non other then the other Beyond domain realm expert of the dragon-phoenix pavilion, Golden Dragon, who was looking at James with a kind smile.

James honestly couldn't believe his eyes, he knew that phoenix and the guild leader would be attending this meeting, they surely must have noticed that he had reached the beyond domain realm after all, but for both Black and Golden Dragon to be attending too, he could've never expected that, most people of the Pavilion themselves didn't even know how these 2 old monsters looked, much less seen them in the same room.

Looking at all the people staring at him James took the only open seat at the whole table, directly opposite of the guild master.

"Thank you for joining us, mister Matthew's, I think you are aware of why we wanted to have this meeting."

The guild leader said while still trying to size him up.

"I'm assuming you want to form a partnership of some sorts, but what exactly you want from me I don't know."

"Straight to the point, that's how I like it. We indeed want to form a partnership with you, and there are a couple of things we want from you. As you could imagen we have done some resurge on you before formally inviting you, James, a normal college dropout suddenly participates in a gods domain association tournament, and turns out to be a Domain Realm expert by the age of 18, the strongest gamer in the world, and he just turned up out of nowhere. After the release of the game Gods Domain you also seem to have extreme amounts of information about it, even more then the contacts we have in the Green Gods company. Of course, as future partners we don't want to pester you too much about your secrets but what we do want are 3 things. First, we want the training technique you used to get all your students to the Void realm in under 3 years. We understand that this is a big ask but we are willing to settle for a training technique for the refinement realm only. The second thing we want is information about god's domain, not any specific information about items or opportunities, as we know that that isn't possible even for you to have, but general info. The final thing we are looking for is equipment, from the looks of your transaction with phoenix you have a way of acquiring a decent amount of top-tier equipment, we would like to have exclusive rights to them. As for what you want in return, just name your price, money, or S-grade nurture fluids, nothing is off the table."