"Heya." Aaron greeted with a smile as he pulled open the door of Nancy’s awesome lowrider.
"Long time no see, did you not miss me or what?" Nancy grumbled reluctantly as she extended one arm towards Aaron.
He chuckled, giving her a brief hug, "Sorry I was in training with Claire."
"Training?" While talking, Nancy swiftly fired up the engine and drove out of the parking lot, heading in her villa’s direction.
"Yep. Fighting. I want to level up."
Hearing those words, Nancy looked at Aaron in shock.
"Wait wait wait, what?! Why?! Money? Do you need money?"
Aaron shook his head with a laugh, "No, I need levels."
"Levels? There are safer ways to farm those. Head to a controlled training centre! That’s better than labyrinths at least. Not to mention, labyrinths are shut temporarily. What are you training for?" She shot in quick intervals, looking at him as if he was a suicidal maniac.
Luckily her driving skills were good or they would’ve already been flattened into a tin foil considering how frequently she was looking at him.
But it wasn’t all for naught, as Aaron caught a term that interested him.
"Controlled training centre?" he asked curiously.
"Huh? You don’t know about those?" Nancy seemed genuinely surprised, which worried Aaron.
Was it supposed to be common knowledge? But nothing regarding it came up when he was surfing the net earlier.
Though thinking about it, it was only obvious. There are always some things that cannot be learnt just by surfing on the internet, laying in the bed.
Experience beats knowledge, it was a known fact.
Luckily it didn’t seem as if Nancy minded, as she swiftly went into her explanation mode.
"The controlled training centre is a relatively safe method for weaker people to gain some starting levels." she began, "Slightly expensive, but it’s worth it."
She shifted the gear, relaxing in the seat and putting up two fingers.
She closed the middle one, saying, "First, you can fight one monster at a time, something impossible in higher labyrinth floors."
Aaron already knew about it since Claire had taught him quite deeply about the labyrinths and their workings.
Nancy then closed her index finger, "Second, you can choose what kind and level of the monster you want to fight."
Then she flashed a very bright smile, "Even better, you can fight them without their equipments!"
"Wait what?" Aaron’s eyes widened.
"Heh! Do you know about the boss goblin from floor 1 and 2?" Nancy smirked, "Think about him and tell me how he is dangerous. What is his source of damage?"
Aaron thought back to his own fight against the boss goblin warrior. He was bigger than the rest, much stronger and also agile.
However, what really posed a threat was...
"The mace," he answered.
Nancy’s smirk got wider, "Now imagine you can fight him, without him having a mace. How easy would that be? The best part? There is no reduction in exp since you will be fighting him fair 1v1! Think of it as disarming him prior to the fight, it’s fair... in a way."
"No way such an awesome thing exists..." Aaron’s mouth parted in shock.
Nancy clicked her tongue and shook her head, "You think I’m lying? Want me to take you to one? Paper is the day after tomorrow anyway, one day is ample for studies."
Aaron summoned his status, glancing at his inventory.
[ Inventory: 1/1 (Swordstaff) ]
His weapon was with him, and the coohen’s head was already sold by them in the Laby road.
It went for a whopping 10k sols, but in reality, that was only enough to cover the cost of his swordstaff, not including the core he would need to get etched and grafted.
He gulped down the saliva, inwardly telling his heart to calm down.
Currently level 8 with 1% in exp, he only needed 2 more levels to unlock a new skill.
Looking at her, he opened his mouth to say:
’It’s okay, we can study instead. I don’t want to take advantage of you.’
But instead, the actual words that came out were different:
"Are you sure? It’s okay if we can’t go. It must be expensive."
They both conveyed a similar message, but one was much better for hitting the ’feminine’ ego of Solaris’s women.
And sure enough, Nancy instantly scoffed at Aaron’s words, "I have a membership of one, though I have barely visited it. Let’s just go."
With a swerve of her hands, the steering wheel was turned and her car’s tires screeched against the asphalt road, drifting into a different turn.
Her left hand moved on the gear stick with fluidity, changing gears as easily as breathing.
Aaron was impressed by her driving skills, but he scoffed it off as ’the pleasures of the rich’, which came more out of his inherent jealousy than any actual hate.
With Nancy’s driving, it barely took them 15 minutes as she pulled up the car into an underground parking lot.
The building was white and huge, built over a large area and covered with tall walls.
Through the parking lot, there was an elevator that directly connected to the main hall of the building, so they both took it.
When the elevator opened, Aaron felt as if he was getting blinded by the light.
The tiles were white, walls were white, lights were white, and too freaking intense! With everything being white, the light was reflected like crazy and illuminated the whole hall brightly.
Nancy walked ahead first, pulling out a sexy black pair of sunglasses from her jacket’s pocket before heading out.
Aaron followed a couple seconds later, allowing his eyes to get used to the brightness first.
The entire hall felt silent and calm, with only the sounds of pen clicking and scrapes being heard.
Many rich looking, suited and elegantly dressed people were settled onto the white coloured sofas, some scribbling something onto a paper or some just scrolling their phones or talking, as if waiting for something.
But Nancy didn’t care about any of those, heading towards the counter and fishing out a card from her wallet.
On the other side, a man was stationed who casually took the card and scanned it into his machine.
When the results came up, he fixed his lazy posture, "Good evening, Miss Lopez. Currently all the VIP rooms are occupied, can you please wait on the sofas?"