It is a good thing to have a strong body, but he isn’t sure that he wants it to happen since it will cause the leader of the Death Claw Society to have her greedy eyes on him.
Eventually, he said, "It is better to stick with the Death Claw Society. It is not as if any other society will want him with good intentions. It is just better to stick with the devil that I know rather than toy with more than one devil."
He shook his head and said, "I can’t just refuse to grow stronger because it will attract trouble to me. If I do that, then I will remain a weak prey forever."
Then he thought of something, which made him say, "Speaking of the devil that I am supposed to know, why was Jim following me anyway? It is a pity that I can’t read minds yet."
When he noticed that Jim was following him, he didn’t bother with why Jim was following him. This was because he considered everyone his enemy or his prey. So he wasn’t surprised that someone was stalking him as if he were prey.
The main thought on his mind was how to lure Jim out of the city and devour his Core Metac. This goal was too important to him, so he didn’t dare to delay and chat with Jim.
He wanted to kill Jim as soon as possible and get his rank 2 Core Metac quickly, so he didn’t bother with any chit chat, even though it was possible for their discussion to reveal useful news.
But now that he has eaten his fill and doesn’t need Jim to advance anymore, he can spare the time to corner Jim and chat him up. He made sure to put this on his agenda for when he sees Jim in one month’s time.
With his mind made up about increasing the strength of his body, what he needed to deal with now is the gigantic task of replacing all of his Branch Metacs with their rank 2 versions so that he can take full advantage of his advancement to rank 2.
If anything, he should begin trying out rank 3 Branch Metacs to use as his trump cards. So, rank 1 Metacs are definitely outdated for him.
However, as good as this is, the fact is that replacing his Branch Metacs will cost a lot of money. So he said to himself, "It seems it is time to make a lot of money."
Fortunately for him, he didn’t need to rack his brain on how to make money. All he needed was to take out his gambling ledger and check to see what gambling opportunities were available for him to use.
He also filled in the 11 entries from the future. Because his mind was more powerful than it was when he was an ordinary mortal, he can remember everything well, including the dates, location, and time.
After he filled in the future gambling opportunities, he hid the book. Then he left for the market.
Making money was easy for him. In fact, if he wanted to, he could bankrupt a gambling house. Unfortunately, he mustn’t do something like that, or the Rein Family will come to deal with him in the dead of the night.
He is at rank 2, so he is no longer afraid of Simon, Slav’s immediate older brother. But even if he manages to defeat or even kill Simon, it won’t be the end of his troubles.
In fact, his troubles will only increase if he kills one of the Rein brothers. So, unless he can handle their rank 4 father, he should try to avoid trouble from them as much as possible.
Another handicap that he had to deal with was the fact that he couldn’t upgrade all of the Branch Metacs of the three pathways for fear of drawing too much attention to himself.
It is certain that he is being watched and his every expense scrutinized. So for now, he can only upgrade the Branch Metacs of the Forging Pathway.
Even upgrading this single pathway while knowing that doing so in the initiation program means that his enemies will know all the Branch Metacs he is using in this pathway, is an uncomfortable feeling for him.
His options to avoid being easily countered by enemies are to either wait one more month until he reaches the city to upgrade his Metacs or buy a bunch of useless Metacs together with the ones he needs so that he can mask the Metacs that he truly uses.
He wasn’t willing to wait to upgrade his Metacs and begin working on Overloading them, so he chose the second option, which is to buy a bunch of useless Metacs together with the Metacs that he needs.
However, no matter how cautious he was, he couldn’t hide the fact that he had advanced to rank 2. If those watching him didn’t know that he had advanced when he bought rank 2 Branch Metacs, they surely knew when he bought rank 2 Cloudy Dates Metacs.
The Cloudy Dates Metacs are used to increase cultivation. The fact that he bought them could only mean that he had advanced to rank 2 or had a rank 2 friend that he was helping out. They would rather believe the former, no matter how unlikely it was.
The rank 2 ones cost 5,000 energy stones each. He bought three of them to raise the cultivation of one energy chamber from an energy density of 5 to 6, 7, and finally to 8.
He is only planning to raise the cultivation of one energy chamber in order to lie low and not attract unwanted scrutiny and attention from the Rein Family. But this didn’t do him much good. The Rein Family still noticed what he was doing.
After he bought the rank 2 Branch Metacs and the rank 2 Cloudy Dates that he needed, he stopped at a familiar place for one last thing. This place was right in front of a mechanical construct that had a large cylindrical barrel as a torsor and possessed four mechanical limbs.