Despite his eagerness to contact Lisa, Lohan didn’t let that disrupt his daily routine, since it was his constant, repetitive training that had brought his physical condition in the real world up to its current level.
He drank a Grade A nutritional supplement, absorbed as much of it as he could, and performed the routine exercises he did every day.
With his improved control over his body, these exercises, which he had previously only been able to do a few repetitions of, now reached a limit at least 10 times greater.
Sure, that doesn’t mean Lohan was literally 10 times stronger, but with training time, not only did his strength increase, but so did his endurance and the technique to perform the exercise correctly.
And an increase in endurance and exercise technique improved the gains he received from those exercises on the next training day.
With Efficient Digestion, Lohan absorbed all nutrients in the richest and most refined form possible, greatly accelerating the body’s process of utilizing those nutrients, thereby accelerating his growth rate several times over.
Satisfied with the day’s workout, Lohan took a luxurious bath under the dirty water flowing from the showerheads, which, despite these conditions, was still a luxury the old Lohan couldn’t afford, and with his body refreshed and clean, he lay down on the bed and logged into Elysium.
Upon "opening his eyes", considering he had no eyes in this world, Lohan found himself in the center of Thalendor, in a dark alley between two shops, where he had gone to disconnect from the game the previous day without drawing much attention.
Looking around and not seeing Lisa, Lohan wasn’t surprised. She was a girl from the Upper Zone; the time it took her to get home from college, considering she was actually Isabella Vance, would be much shorter than the time it took him to get there by bus.
Knowing her, it was quite possible she was hunting monsters on her own right now.
Opening his friends list, Lohan saw she was online and sent her a message.
[Halon: Hey Lisa, how are you?]
After a few seconds, realizing her reply would likely take a while, Lohan looked at the Astral Chest and noticed that the tendons from the rabbits they’d hunted yesterday were gone, and in their place were 42 silver coins.
Smiling, Lohan calculated the value of those coins and was pleased to see that he could sell half of them to Lisa for $2,100.
With that money, he could not only pay the $912 in loan interest, but he could even pay down some of the principal.
’Although paying more than just the interest to the bank right now might not be a good choice, if I use only 912 copper coins to pay that interest, I’d still have 11 silver coins and 88 copper coins left to spend on whatever I wanted here in the game to speed up my progress, allowing me to earn even more money in the near future and get the snowball rolling.’
Even if he spent those remaining $1,188 to pay down the debt, that expense would only reduce the amount of interest he paid monthly from $912 to $877... spending over a thousand credits to reduce the monthly interest by $35 was a terrible investment.
Sure, if he were only going to earn that amount of money every month forever, it would be well worth it to pay down that debt little by little, but considering that if he invested that money in items for himself, increasing his coin-earning efficiency in Elysium, the extra earnings he’d receive next month would be much greater than the $35 savings.
So Lohan decided to sell only 10 silver coins for $1,000 to Lisa and keep the other 12 silver coins to buy something useful in Thalendor.
With the $92 he still had in his bank account in the other world, after paying the $912 in bank interest, he would have $180 to buy supplies for the rest of the month.
Having grown accustomed to the terrible taste of the nutritional solutions, Lohan no longer saw any need to buy natural, more expensive foods, preferring the efficiency and low price of these solutions.
With nothing particularly important to do now, since Lisa was in the middle of a hunt, Lohan decided to wander through Thalendor toward the Great Horizon Bazaar, hoping to find some Mana Stones that might come in handy.
While Lohan wandered through the city waiting for Lisa’s reply, the fox in question was standing atop a rock, surrounded by a dozen corpses of Level 4 to 5 Goblins, which, despite being stronger than the Goblins she hunted when she was a low-level player, were much weaker than the Level 10 monsters she hunted with Halon.
These solo hunting sessions she undertook were mainly spent warming up for future combat and keeping her own fighting style sharp.
Even though fighting with Halon’s help was much safer and more ruthless, Lisa didn’t want to get used to fighting only with him and end up becoming dependent on her friend.
Especially now that Halon likely knew her real-world identity, Lisa was completely unsure of how to face him in Elysium.
Ever since he sent the message letting her know he was online, Lisa had been standing there staring at that message, her mind working at full speed, formulating replies, deleting them, and formulating new ones.
’Gosh, how can I respond? Do I pretend nothing happened? Pretend I don’t know anything? Do I admit that I’m the Isabella Vance he knows? Pretend I’m NOT Isabella Vance?! Gosh, what do I do?!’ Lisa reread Halon’s message for the twentieth time, still unsure how to respond.
[Lisa: Hey Halon, I’m doing just as well as always... nothing out of the ordinary—how about you?]
Reading the message she had written, Lisa let out a cry of agony and quickly deleted it, not daring to send such an awkward message to Halon.
’Ugh, why is it so hard to just send a normal message?!’