Anton went to his room to rest for a bit after his bath then after about an hour he went downstairs to look for his father since he had told Anders that he would be joining him in their business. When he reached the common room, he saw Anders seated behind a table accepting broken items from the villagers while Anna was at a separate table together with Nermina and Lunelle accepting old and worn-out clothing and things from the women of the village.
“Anton you’re here. Sit beside me, I prepared a chair for you.” Anders told him so he sat beside his father.
“At first the villagers wanted to just give us their things as thanks for saving them from the bandits and healing them from their wounds but I told them that we would leave immediately if they didn’t allow us to pay.”
Anton nodded since he understood his father’s reasoning. The villagers would need the coin soon because of what would happen once the Undead Coalition reached this place. He then observed how Anders talked to the villagers and how he priced the items. He could see that a lot of the villagers were asking a lot less than what his father was paying for the items. It was funny in a way, a merchant insisting on paying more instead of paying less but he could understand that the villagers were feeling guilty accepting coins from whom they considered their saviors.
“Father, I think it would be best for me to just go to my room to meditate since your dealings with the villagers here are not normal. I understand their situation since we did save them but I wanted to learn how to talk to people normally not to someone overly concerned about us because we’re their saviors.”
“I understand. Go ahead and go to your room. Lucas and Devon would accompany me here and Nermina and Lunelle will assist your sister there.”
Before he left, Anton summoned a couple of pitchers from his inventory and cast a Frozen Orb spell with controlled mana to fill the pitchers with mana water and gave one to his father and one to Anna’s table. He was blatant about it since the villagers already knew that he was a wizard but it still brought awed gasps from them.
In his room, Anton entered maximized the game but did not enter virtually since his purpose was to grind items and levels from Baal’s unique monsters and their minions in the Normal Difficulty interspaced with grinding runes from the Countess also in the Normal Difficulty.
After a couple of hours of gameplay, to avoid burnout, he surfed the internet for an hour watching videos and animes. He was a bit sad that he couldn’t even leave a comment on the videos that he liked. He could search for videos and animes using his virtual keyboard but he couldn’t find any loophole that would allow him to communicate back to anyone in his old world not that he had anyone whom he would like to communicate with.
That meant that if he wanted to know a specific thing from the internet, Anton would need to do extensive research instead of asking someone from any internet forums. Still, he was very thankful that he could watch movies and animes and he didn’t even need to watch illegal sites since he had an account on famous streaming sites which was more than he had when he was in his old world.
After watching about three episodes of an anime that he was currently following, he went back to gaming using the on-screen option. Since he was just grinding levels and runes he thought that he didn’t need to do it personally. He planned to do it virtually if it were actual gameplay but when grinding he would use the on-screen option since it was much faster since he could utilize Teleport extensively.
Two hours of seemingly endless grinding later Anton reached level forty-eight. He was able to grind a lot of runes and upgraded his belt, boots, and gloves with ones that had slightly better stats. He knew that to truly equip his character with good items, he would need to grind on the Hell difficulty but for now, he was happy since every level up meant his real body became more powerful in the real world.
It was already seven in the evening when Anton stopped playing so he went downstairs to join his family for dinner. When he arrived in the inn’s common room, he saw that his family was still busy buying things from the villagers.
Anders did stop when he saw Anton and told the villagers that their business would continue the next day. The villagers left while Lucas and Devon brought the items that they had already purchased somewhere, probably on their carriage.
Anders joined his table with Anna’s and they all sat on the now huge table. Anton’s father then called the innkeeper and ordered food for everyone.
“Did you manage to purchase a lot of things?” Anton asked his father and Anna.
“Oh yes! Some of the things that we purchased are going to be valuable when you fix them,” Anna answered while pointing at herself, Nermina, and Lunelle.
“So far, it’s about the same as the previous village. We’ll know for sure tomorrow. We’re going to leave the day after.” Anders said.
Lucas and Devon arrived and joined them at the table and soon after the innkeeper and some helpers arrived with their food. Their dinner was also the same as the previous village and when Anton asked, Lucas answered that food in these parts of the country would be the same at least until they reached the Holy City of Tiande.
“How many more villages before we reach Tiande?” Anton asked.
“A couple more villages after this one and each village will take us about five days before we reach them,” Their head guard answered.
“Tiande is so far. I wanted to reach the city already so we could begin selling our things and earn a lot of coins! I want to know how much we’re going to earn,” Anna sighed.
“Anders, Lucas, and I want to talk to you about something,” Nermina said to Anton’s father with a serious look on her face.
“Okay I’ll talk to you in my room later,” Anders said after seeing how serious Lucas’s wife was.
After dinner, everyone went to their rooms to rest since all of them had already taken their baths. Anders did ask Anton to follow him to his room since Nermina’s talk would probably involve the whole family. When they reached their rooms, Anders, Anton, Lucas, and Nermina went to Ander’s room.
Anna wanted to follow but Lunelle pulled her away and asked if she could take a look at her notebook of stories. Anton’s sister pouted but allowed herself to be pulled by Lunelle to her room.