Before he realized it, night had already fallen.
Even Blaine hadn't noticed how quickly the day had passed. Apparently, upgrading five hundred billion's worth of items took time—an entire day, in fact.
He still had more skills and equipment waiting to be enhanced, and the process wasn't short.
Of course, if Blaine really wanted to rush things, he could have finished today's work by noon. But since he had nothing urgent to do at home, he decided to take it slow and be thorough.
Speed was good, but it missed the point—the fun was in the process.
Taking his time also allowed him to understand each skill more deeply, mastering them faster instead of just swallowing everything whole without comprehension.
Since it was already late, Blaine decided to reward himself with supper. After all, he'd just achieved the rank of A-Class Hunter—a small celebration was in order.
In the next moment, Blaine vanished from his villa.
At six in the evening, Queens was quiet.
Silver-white moonlight draped gently over the city. The dark blue sky shimmered faintly with scattered silver stars. Gone was the daytime bustle—the chatter of tourists, the laughter spilling from malls, the rush of pedestrians. Only the occasional chirping of crickets broke the silence, filling the air with an almost eerie stillness.
Perhaps it was the quiet after chaos. Most households had shut their doors and windows early, leaving the entire borough sealed in a tranquil hush. Only a few nightclubs, bars, and specialty shops still pulsed with life, their dim lights and muffled noise seeming oddly out of place in such calm surroundings.
On this kind of night—hundreds of miles away in Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States—
A young man appeared in front of a towering five-star hotel, seemingly out of nowhere.
He was sharply dressed in a well-fitted casual suit that accentuated his clean, striking features and lively energy.
As the streetlights beside the hotel flickered faintly, the boy approached the entrance.
It was Blaine. To celebrate his promotion to A-Class Hunter, he had switched out his standard Hunter's uniform for a formal suit—modeled after one he'd seen in a shop window earlier.
If he had to imagine what a proper suit looked like from scratch, he probably couldn't have done it. For someone who spent over five hundred billion in a single day, admitting that felt a bit embarrassing even to him.
The hotel was the same one he'd stayed at near the White House—the very place he and Gali had visited before. For a celebratory dinner, only authentic Western cuisine would do justice to his new status.
"Waiter."
"Do you need anything, sir?"
"The presidential suite. The best one you've got. And bring me a bottle of Bordeaux red—authentic French—and a tomahawk steak."
If he was going to reward himself, it had to be the finest.
Blaine wanted to eat well and unwind completely.
By the end of the meal, the bill came to thirty thousand dollars—over two hundred thousand in dollars. When he saw the total, Blaine winced.
He could spend ten billion on a skill without blinking, but a two-hundred-thousand-dollar meal? That stung. Bread and jam might not have the same class as steak and wine, but this was definitely extravagant.
Apparently, fine dining in America truly was the most expensive indulgence.
Later, Blaine lay on a massage table as a beautiful technician worked on his shoulders. After just a few presses, he completely forgot his earlier guilt. For someone with billions to his name, a few tens of thousands were hardly worth worrying about.
He was now in the spa attached to the Michelin five-star hotel—same place, same service, same sense of blissful comfort.
After the massage, both his fatigue and the guilt of spending hundreds of billions in upgrades were gone. Relaxed and content, Blaine thought to himself that people in his line of work really did need to make time to unwind.
The next morning, he stretched lazily, his joints cracking in satisfaction.
Maybe it was the deep relaxation from the massage, or maybe the benefits of his Diamond Body and 450 physical stat—but either way, he felt completely refreshed.
It promised to be another easygoing day, though Blaine did have a plan—one he'd made last night during the massage.
An awkward incident had happened then: Blaine had closed his eyes to relax, and when he opened them again, the technician had quietly taken off her clothes—clearly an attempt to tempt him.
Fortunately, his reflexes were sharp. Despite being single for more than a decade, he caught on immediately and stopped things before they went too far. Barely.
After washing up, he had some leftover bread for breakfast. When Gali last visited, she had left in such a hurry that the refrigerator had been emptied and never restocked.
In the villa's backyard, the small tree Blaine had once saved still basked in the sunlight, swaying gently in the wind.
Suddenly, a spatial rift appeared before it—a pitch-black crack radiating cosmic energy that slowly corroded the surrounding air. It looked less like a crack and more like a miniature black hole leading to the unknown.
Naturally, this was Blaine's doing.
The weakened version of the Space Stone Ring had been sitting unused since he bought it. Today, he decided to finally take it for a test run—and go for a little walk in space.
He put on his Hunter's suit, pulled up the hood, and, without a moment's hesitation, jumped straight into the rift.
"Damn, I went really far this time. Awesome."
Activating his enhanced vision, Blaine looked around and realized the scenery seemed familiar. Not far ahead, he could still see his own footprints on the desolate planet he'd visited before.
It made sense. The last time he ventured into space, it had been with Gali—and this was only his second trip.
According to the system, the weakened Space Stone Ring opened random spatial rifts, ranging anywhere from one hundred million to one billion light-years away.
But there was more to it than that.
Each portal opened using the ring required coordinates, and it came with a fifteen-minute cooldown before it could be used again.
Now, Blaine was determined to figure out exactly how this thing worked.
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