Essence Stalker and Fitter Cleric shared a look of uncertainty. Why were these three women rushing over to them with such expression on their faces, especially the one in the lead?
Everyone knew about the three supreme beauties of the Boundless game, Hikari, Zaine and Roma. Even the biggest hermit in the real world knew about them thanks to their resounding popularity.
To see them come here charging over like this… could it be that Draco was behind them? When Fitter and Essence turned around to check their theory, there was no one else coming out of the portal.
As such, it was clear that they were somehow the targets of this approach. Thinking like this, Fitter Cleric instantly sighed with regret and moved away to distance himself from Essence Stalker.
Essence Stalker stared at his friend quizzically, and Fitter only smiled. "Brother Essence… no, fellow guild applicant Essence, I have brought you along all this way, but I cannot stick with you any longer as you seem to have provoked a calamity."
Essence Stalker was shaking, but he still didn't understand what was going on. Seeing his friend's- *cough* this unrelated person's confusion, Fitter Cleric thought that he might as well do him one last favor to commemorate their previous closeness.
"You are the modern Diarmuid, Essence. You are a walking calamity that attracts the women of others with your handsomeness and impressive aura. This has landed you in many types of trouble over the past few years, and I've always managed to bail you out."
Essence Stalker nodded. He was aware of the effect he had on women, though he did not do so consciously, yet there was nothing he could do about it. It was thanks to his best friend here who seemed to be able to command all the world's luck who had saved him over and over again.
Fitter smiled wryly at this point. "However, there is a saying 'every day is for the thief, one day is for the owner'. Today, you have attracted the three women of Draco, and this is a matter I cannot… no, I dare not save you from."
Fitter then wore a heroic expression. "Still, do not worry. I will make sure to collect your corpse as intact as possible and host the biggest funeral in your honor. It is the least I can do."
F.u.c.k!
Essence Stalker was left speechless by his buddy's train of thought. How could he abandon him at such a crucial point in his life? If Fitter was right, then this was certainly the biggest calamity he would ever face! Worst of all, what exactly did he do? He hadn't gone out to meet their eye, but they had proactively come to him?!
Just as Essence wanted to run back into the portal behind him, Hikari landed before him with a wide grin and Zaine as well as Roma landed on either side of him with their eyes flashing dangerously.
Essence Stalker's heart sunk and the crowd of onlookers who had been going about their daily business gave a wide berth. Many had looks of interest and schadenfreude.
Daring to provoke the three supreme beauties on their home ground, this fellow had to be in a rush to bathe in the yellow springs. Not to mention that his handsome face annoyed many less fortunate fellows in the crowd.
Hikari circled Essence Stalker slowly, then closed her eyes and seemed to be sensing something. When she was done, a glint flashed in her eyes as she nodded to Zaine and Roma, who smiled with excitement.
"You, follow us!" Zaine commanded imperiously.
"Fellow sisters, there's no need to be so forward." At this time, Fitter Cleric stopped pretending to have nothing to do with his totally not abandoned friend. A tiny voice in his head was telling him it would be okay to act on his behalf.
Roma glanced at him askance and noticed that he had the emblem of a core member of Umbra, so her expression softened. "We are not going to harm or indulge him, but simply wish to investigate something about him."
Zaine nodded. "If we wanted to harm him, we wouldn't need to come in person."
Fitter Cleric sighed with relief. He knew they were right, if they wanted anyone dead, they wouldn't need to lift a finger. As the Supreme Beauties of the Morningstar Clan, they could easily command the members of Umbra to do their bidding.
What's more, going by the way Umbra usually did things, the bounty slapped on the head of any offenders would be so generous that even someone like Fitter Cleric would feel tempted to regretfully plunge a knife into his buddy's heart if that were to occur, so if they said it was fine, then it was fine. After his panic subsided, Fitter thought of something and his eyes lit up.
"Could it be that he's…?" Fitter asked cautiously.
Hikari and Roma nodded while Zaine merely smiled. Seeing their response, Fitter jumped into action. He slapped the stunned Essence Stalker on the back of his head and began to drag him away.
"What are you doing standing here? Hurry up and let's follow them! I knew it! The moment I heard about it; I knew it!" Fitter shouted with excitement as he dragged his friend along, the laughter of Zaine, Roma, and Hikari following his enthusiastic 'encouragement'.
Essence Stalker was dragged along pitifully, his face locked in the expression of utter bewilderment. In his mind, there was only one question repeating itself over and over again.
'What the f.u.c.k is even going on…?'
............
Draco and Eva simultaneously exited their pods. They had already planned to come out at this time when Draco first left for the Refinement God's Treasury Quest.
Once they exited, the two embraced and spent a lot of time like this. After getting a suitable appetizer in terms of each other's presence, they split apart and went to bathe.
They didn't need to and the nanites kept their bodies free of dirt anyway, but it was just a nice habit to keep. After playing around in their executive jacuzzi, the duo exited and began to dress up.
Eva wore a green short-sleeved t-shirt with a black leather jacket as well as slim-fitting black leather trousers that showed off her upturned bum and slender, shapely legs.
On her feet were black high heels with sharp spikes. It looked quite normal, but Eva could manifest a stiletto from those very same spikes if she needed to kill a fool.
As for Draco, he simply wore a Hawaiian style shirt with the buttons left open, displaying the nice contours of his chest and abs. On his neck was a polished rosary that ironically lay right over his reverse scale, like the centerpiece of it.
Anyone who knew of his heritage would smack their lips and spit on Draco with disdain. Being the very incarnation of Lucifer yet wearing the symbol of Christ on your chest, right over your heart… dying 10,000 times was not enough to wash him clean of this sin.
He wore Hawaiian shorts to go with his shirt, and both of them were a light blue color like the sky on a clear day. For shoes, Draco went with his tried and true black slides.
Compared to Eva who looked like a badass biker gang chick, Draco looked like some prodigal young master on a resort, looking for babes to capture and drugs to inhale.
The contrast was quite jarring, but it also added to their style. Draco neatly brushed Eva's hair and dusted her face a bit, before making sure her eyebrows were aligned and cared for.
Since Eva didn't need lipstick as her lips were naturally a blood-red color, Draco skipped over that. After doing this, the duo decided to leave their room.
It had been more than a week since they had joined Supernatural, so it was time to explore what this group could offer them, as well as to scout out their new enemies from Superhuman.
Their previous goal had been to take over the dark side of society within this city, then move onto the state, then to the country, the continent, and finally, the world!
However, with a worldwide organization like Supernatural as their backing, they could afford to become a little more high-profile in the real world. Conquering the dark side was fun, but being in the light would also be quite refreshing.
As such, Draco and Eva had a plan to embrace the world. They wouldn't host a press conference or anything just yet, but there was no longer a need to hide.
However, the first thing they needed to do was to check their funds. Eva had informed the core members to log out, at least those who resided in the castle like Akainu, Sanji, Jada, and Jade.
As such, Draco and Eva met them in the parlor. Jade was seated before a computer, typing away while Akainu lazily smoked a cigar. Sanji was also checking the information network for updates while Jada simply sat upside down on her couch with a bored expression.
Once Draco entered, her eyes lit up, but they dimmed again when she saw the magnificent beauty of Eva. It was simply something that no real female could compete with easily, especially with the aura of a Celestial Maiden around her.
Draco sat down opposite Akainu and Sanji with Eva to his left and the twins to his right. He first nodded to Akainu. "Give me an update on our finances."
Akainu released a puff from his cigar and pulled a handkerchief from his suit pocket to wipe his lips. "Your current personal income is $34,320,890. The group account has $289,034,167."
Everyone in the room froze. They all raised their heads to stare at Akainu, who took another deep puff. But one could also see his hands shaking, as he hadn't expected things to have grown this much over just a period of one month.
Draco took in a deep breath and asked Akainu solemnly: "Explain how this happened since the last time we checked."
Akainu nodded. "The last time we checked, the group account had just reached 70 million and your personal account was just below 4 million."
"We used 25 million dollars to bring all 3,000 members of Umbra from their home countries to the Central Country and back to their own places. The cheapest expenditure ended up being their plane tickets, the hardest and costliest part was getting them visas without alerting any information company or the government. For that part, we had to spend extremely heavily."
Draco sighed. This was all his fault, and was why he wanted to come into the light. If he created a company and hired internationally, it wouldn't cost nearly as much as that to get just 3,000 people from their places to this country. He might even be able to get them a workers residency, which was far more efficient.
If he had his own planes and sh.i.p.s, it wouldn't be so hard to move things about in such a manner. Well, now that he was out, many things would change, but he needed to finish listening to Akainu's brief.
"So ideally, we should have been left with about 45 or so million. My personal projections stated that we should reach 120 million at this point in time while your personal account should reach 10 million."
Akainu smacked his lips and spoke dryly. "These projections had not accounted for the growth of Boundless World's playerbase. There has been a great influx of new players. With them starting out at Rank 0 and us who came first to attain Rank 2, they wish to close that gap, so many are willing to spend a bit on buying currency at the Intermediary Trade Center, as well as items and equipment."
Akainu took a deep pull of his cigar. "As you may know, the world is currently aware of Boundless due to the great upheaval as well as the ongoing hearing. As such, people have become aware of its benefits, especially the military of various countries, and certainly also hidden organizations like Superhuman and Supernatural, as well as AAA companies and governments."
Draco and Eva nodded. This was around the same point in time that this had occurred in the previous timeline too, so there was no surprise there. While it was a few days early, it was within a good margin of error.
After all, the butterfly effect had already kicked into motion due to their own actions, and they were now too lazy to pretend like anything different should happen.