Chapter 52: Noire City

Time moved on, and one week later, Hiro found himself on the soccer team's school bus in the open parking lot.

"Shit dude, isn't this your Class Advisor and Homeroom Teacher? Wasn't she on an emergency leave of absence?" Hiro's thoughts were brought back to the present when Vanti elbowed his side.

Hiro lifted his hea off the bus's window and looked down the aisle. Then, a hint of surprised glimmer in his eyes.

I almost forgot about her… Wait, don't tell me she didn't come back to school all this time?

For a while now, Hiro was doing his schoolwork from home since he no longer had any missions related to school.

He didn't know whether she came back to school or not, but based on Vanti's expression and words, she only came back today.

As he was thinking, Teacher Aiya walked toward them and said to Vanti, "Vacate this seat for me, student."

"Oh," Vanti was stunned for a moment, late to react. Teacher Aiya had to repeat herself once again before he finally snapped out of it and hurried to stand up.

"Sure, sure," Vanti uttered in a fluster. "I was warming up this seat for you anyway, teacher…"

Hiro shook his head. "Dumbass…"

Vanti scurried away.

Teacher Aiya pressed down on her pencil skirt and sat down, her motion naturally drawing Hiro's gaze to her black leggings and thick thighs.

He blinked his eyes before turning his gaze away. Luckily, she didn't notice it.

"Is everything okay?" Hiro asked, stretching lazily. Honestly, he didn't care—but it was polite to ask.

"It was over when I gave up my shares of our assets to him, now I'm living with my parents," Teacher Aiya responded.

She added after a while, "I might have to quit school as well, the guy behind my ex isn't pleased and it might impact my school life."

Hiro raised an eyebrow. He wondered if she took advantage of the away game so she could find the time to relax.

Hiro turned his head around the bus and to his astonishment, many students were using the S-gear VR helmets.

The new operating system was installed in the helmets, allowing them to play the Seeker's Legend without a hitch.

Thinking about it, the fusion rate was moving up the last week, already reaching up to 68% even without Hiro's direct involvement.

It would make sense if this all happened due to the game's popularity exploding.

However, Hiro quickly returned his attention to the matter at hand and asked, "You don't want to quit teaching, do you?"

Seeing her brows furrowed, Hiro sighed.

Then, he pulled out his phone and texted Rosaline, asking if she had enough time to have a call.

After that time when he called Bella and she was still in class, Hiro decided to check whether or not he could call someone before doing it.

When he received the green light from Rosaline, he called.

"What are you doing?" Teacher Aiya asked in a hushed voice.

She didn't have to do that, though.

The students in their immediate vicinity were occupied with playing VR games, and no one was paying particular attention to them.

Hiro gestured for her to keep quiet for a moment before he answered the call.

Then, he briefly explained the situation to Rosaline, putting great emphasis on how many of the teachers are being oppressed through blackmail materials while others have sold themselves out.

Although Rosaline was just a student and the school was a state-owned institution, her Rosch family still had a say in the political circle.

At the very least, outsiders would have to tip-toe their way around her influence if they wanted to scheme in the dark. Sёarᴄh the NôᴠelFirё.net website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

But that's all there was to it—schemes in the dark; once Rosaline started actively paying attention to the situation, the entire game would change.

A few minutes later, Hiro ended the call with Rosaline and said, "It should be a done deal now, you don't have to worry about it."

On the other end, Rosaline put her phone down on the desk in the student council room and sighed.

"It took him so long to finally ask for my help, and here I thought such a day would never come…" Rosaline shook her head, smiled, and picked up the phone again to make some inquiries of her own.

It seems like she needed to spend the spring break cleaning up the maggots in her school lest they ruin her future arrangements.

…

Teacher Aiya didn't know what to say.

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She had no clue who Hiro called or what was about to happen after the call, but she had a feeling that the school was about to change somehow.

Not knowing what to say, she fell silent. As for Hiro, he closed his eyes, giving off the feeling that he had gone to sleep.

Seeing this, Teacher Aiya didn't say anything else and closed her eyes to rest. At the very least, she knew that she could relax her tense nerves when she was next to Hiro.

She didn't know why, but her intuition said so.

…

Millions of colors stacked and then stretched infinitely, later exploding in a familiar pattern before Hiro's consciousness arrived at the system space.

For the past week, Hiro spent over a month and a half doing missions in the simulation space—increasing his proficiency in the various spells, learning martial arts, and getting along with various female elders and faction leaders in the sect.

He was already at the peak of the Soul Origin realm, and he only needed to go through the tribulation to ascend to Tier-5 standards.

However, Hiro didn't dare to take that step.

If both his ace characters became a burden rather than a trump card, what was he supposed to do?

With that in mind, Hiro focused on the lottery box instead. With 90 gems, he was tempted to run the ten-item lottery ticket at least once.

Without hesitation, Hiro spent the 30 gems and watched as a multicolored box dropped from the lottery screen.

The box spun crazily, beams of light shooting out, and then it exploded.

Notifications poured down, and most of them were consolation prizes of additional achievement points.

In total, Hiro earned back 3,000 achievement points, rounding his points up to 8,000.

Among the rewards, five pulls were of substantial value—five mystery boxes hovered in the system space.

[Notice: You've obtained 1x Level 1 Mass Enlightnemt scroll.]

[Notice: You've obtained 5x Cosmetic Key.]

[Notice: You've obtained an 80% Discount Voucher.]

[Notice: You've acquired 100% of Stargaze Comfort shares.]

…

Information poured into Hiro's mind.

Mass Enlightment Scroll—bestows level 1 intelligence to creatures in a certain range, determined by the number of achievement points invested for each 1m diameter at a rate of 1:1.

Discount Voucher—one-time use indiscriminate discount on all items in the system shop.

As for Stargaze Comfort, it was a chain of five-star hotels, hot springs, and spa entertainment centers in the region.

It's a private company that didn't get listed yet so no one knows about its financial situation.

However, its estimated value is around 3 billion dollars—domestic currency.

…

Hiro's attention went to the Mass Enlightenment scroll. The level 1 enlightenment cost 1 achievement point to begin with, so the only upside to this item was the area of effect benefit.

It could save Hiro a lot of time if he ever decided to awaken the intelligence of all living creatures within a certain range, but whether that was good or bad, Hiro didn't know yet.

The second best option was the discount voucher.

Hiro could use it to buy something he once deemed to be too expensive. For example, he could use it to cut down the price of a summoning ritual token from 10,000 achievement points to 2,000.

Another use would be to purchase games, especially since games are sold in the system shop for gems.

An 80% discount on gem spending is very tempting.

Another option was to buy a weapon, an awakening potion, a powerful spell manual, or anything practical for his current self.

Honestly, Hiro had too many options, but he only had one discount voucher.

If only this was a wholesale voucher for everything on my purchase cart, things would have been much simpler…

Hiro shook his head and decided to keep the voucher away for now, since he couldn't decide on what to buy.

After sorting out his rewards, Hiro entered the simulation space and continued to solidfy his character's foundation.

Luckily, he discovered the weaknesses early on and still had the time to amend for those mistakes. Otherwise, he would have turned into a paper tiger—someone with nothing more than a high cultivation base but nothing else to show.

…

Time passed, and six hours later, the school bus finally entered its destination, Noire City.

For this friendly competition, the Noire Education Committee went all out as the hosts.

From reception, food, lodging, entertainment, and tour around the city's attractions.

The brochure featured everything to be expected on this two weeks long vacation in Noire.

The match was set three days before the spring break's last day, allowing the students from both schools to mingle and get along.

The higher ups had a simple thought in mind for setting things up this way.

Hopefully, the two teams would get along well so that the loser wouldn't have any bad taste in their mouths afterwards.

Hopefully.