Anton and his family went inside the inn and in the common area some people were looking at them curiously but most of them with appreciation in their eyes for spending a lot of coins on the villagers.
When they returned to their rooms Anders and Anna must have been exhausted since they retired immediately. Anton decided to spend a couple of hours practicing his mana manipulation of some of his spells outside the Rogue Encampment. He focused mainly on the spell Blizzard since practicing the mana of higher-level spells would also train his mind to see the details of how a particular manipulation of mana can somehow change the construct of the spell if the nature of the spell were not different from its basic principles. A good example was gathering the energy of Blizzard and compressing it in his hands instead of allowing it to gather above the aimed location and then changing the nature of the spell to turn into a high volume of water. This could let him summon a huge volume of water to fill up a tank in no time at all and with more practice, instead of summoning a deadly blizzard, he could summon mana rain in an area. That could be very helpful to farmers.
Anton was quite sure that changing the nature and construct of fire and lightning spells would be more challenging mainly because both spells from those spell trees were more dangerous than ice and water. After a while, he noticed that he spent more than an hour practicing so he decided to rest.
The next day when Anton woke up his father was already gone. He was sure that Anders was already conducting his business in the village so he went downstairs to have breakfast. When he arrived in the common room, he ordered breakfast from the server and asked about the whereabouts of his father and sister. The server told him his family was in the village’s main hall to purchase things from the villagers.
He decided to check on them before going to his room to play the game after breakfast. When Anton arrived in the village hall, he saw that his father was talking to a man and when he approached them Anders introduced the man as a carpenter who would help them in constructing the bucket slash toilet. The carpenter was also the man who would assist them in procuring the bathtub.
Anton’s father then told him that he already spread the word about hiring a couple of guards on the way to the holy city of Tiande. That was the reason why he saw a gathering of fit young men outside the hall but almost all of them looked like farmers who ran away from home. Anna was sitting at a table talking to a woman who was showing her a bunch of old clothes. He took his leave after he asked his father’s permission and went back to their room in the inn so he could go back to playing the game. Right now, he was level twenty-six. He hoped to reach level thirty soon to get the level thirty spells.
When Anton got back to their room he maximized his Diablo II game and entered it virtually. It would have been easier to level up if he could control the difficulty of the game but alas there was no console that he could use to type in the cheat code that would increase the difficulty of the game corresponding to the number of players which he would type in therefore increasing the experience gained.
When he was using the famous streaming site, he was able to summon a virtual keyboard that he could use to type in the videos that he would like to view and the same thing with other movie or anime sites but inside the game, he wasn’t able to summon the keyboard. His leveling speed was fine because the most important part was for him to practice the spells that he received to make sure that he was able to manipulate the mana of all the spells that he learned.
Once Anton hit thirty which was soon, he would have received all the spells then he would only focus on leveling up and hunting for equipment. In the game, he was able to complete the search for the quest items in Lower Kurast and Kurast Bazaar and this brought him to level twenty-seven. Honestly, he was over-leveled in the location he was in the game.
After he leveled up, Anton went outside the Rogue Encampment to practice his spell manipulation on every spell that he could and he did it for a couple of hours. When he exited the game it was time for lunch and his father and Anna were probably still busy since they didn’t come to invite him so he went downstair to have lunch by himself.
In the common room, Anton ordered food from the inn’s waiter and asked the man if he had seen his father and sister. The waiter told him that his family was still in the hall conducting their business. He thanked the man and waited for his food to be served.
Anton finished his food when his father and sister arrived.
“Hey! You didn’t wait for us,” Anna said.
“I didn’t know what time you’d arrive.”
“We’ve bought a lot of things today so you have to go tonight in the carriage to put some of them in your space. We will continue buying things this afternoon. The bathtub and the bucket toilet will be ready by tonight so we will leave tomorrow morning.” Anders said to Anton.
Anton nodded and told his father that he would join them this afternoon since he was tired of meditating. Anders just nodded and called the inn’s waiter to order food.
“Did you interview potential guards for us Father?”
“I found a couple. The man is a veteran mercenary. He is forty-eight years old but still very strong and the other one is his son who is twenty-four. He is well trained and already had some experience but they have a condition. They wanted to move to the city as well with his wife and daughter. The man got a hold of the information that the Undead Coalition was conquering their neighboring cities. The man is knowledgeable and I’m keen on hiring them and with his family with him, he and his son would be loyal at least until we reached the city. They also did not want to stay in Tiande since everyone knows very well that the holy city will probably fight a war with the Undead Coalition and no one wants to join that.”
Anders paused when their food arrived and he and Anna started eating. Anton waited for them since they looked like they would not be able to concentrate on anything else until their stomach was full.