...…

The trio of Shin, Arthur, and Leonard, walked out of the school registrar after settling everything that they needed for the upcoming exams.

"Hey, Arthur! Why are you still carrying your luggage even here in school? You can just leave it in your resort, right?

" said Leonard while stretching his waist left and right.

Meanwhile, Arthur suddenly felt a little dejected when heard that.

"That is because I went straight here the moment I arrived earlier.

"

"I actually want to leave these in our resort but Uncle Nathan dropped me off right in front of the school entrance, so I really have no other choice but to settle the things here first.

"

After that, he looked at the two while asking.

"What about you guys?

"

"My things are still in my master's place. He actually lives quite far from here, but I have no other choice to leave it there since I don't have any other place to stay into,

" replied Leonard almost instantly.

On the other hand, Shin waited for Leonard to finish before giving his answer.

"I left mine at a hotel not far from here. I don't want to leave them at the resort since I know that Big Sister is going to ask me to work in the kitchen there. I rather pay a few bucks at the hotel than exhaust myself working there.

"

Hearing that, Arthur immediately remembered that Shiella was currently studying at the University Circle within the 'inner school' of the Magical Ace Academy. So, he also rejected the idea of staying in their resort almost instantly.

But he also didn't want to stay at the hotel since it was really uncomfortable for him to stay in such a place. Especially that he also had a lot of personal things that he needed to install, just like the personalized Gaming Cabin that he was using to play «Destiny's Fate».

Installing it was actually not a problem but the paper works that were needed for it to be approved were quite troublesome and Arthur was too lazy to deal with such things.

It was the same for the school dorms, so he really wanted to stay in there too. Moreover, dorms also had a lot of restrictions which made the stay there too inconvenient.

Troubled with that problem, Arthur could only shake his head helplessly as he was not sure how to deal with this situation.

But while they were walking out of the school vicinity, Arthur's eye suddenly caught a glimpse of a villa not far from the entrance of the school. And when he saw that, a sudden flash of thought suddenly entered his head which made him quite excited.

"Hey! Do the two of you have personal accounts? I mean, both of you are regularly exchanging some in-game gold into real-world currency, right?

" asked Arthur while looking at the two.

On the other hand, both Shin and Leonard looked back at him as if he was some sort of idiot.

Given Shin's personality, it was natural for him to do such an obvious thing. In fact, he even applied for an open account the moment he entered the game. After all, it was actually one of the main reasons why he agreed to play the game.

It was the same for Leonard, all of his daily expenses and Laura's allowances and tuition fees were taken from the money that he earned from the game, so he naturally had a personal account to deal with it.

Even if there was a limit on how much gold a player could convert into real-world currency, a player could still earn a lot of money just by playing the game.

"Forget about Leonard since he needs that money since he refused to accept such financial help from us. How much money did you earn, Shin?

" asked Arthur with a pair of sparkling eyes.

After all, he knew this guy pretty well. If it was about these kinds of things, then this brother of his would surely not going to disappoint him. And just like what he had expected, Shin really earned big time these last few months.

Shin pursed his lips a little as he used his Advance Watch to check his second bank account.

"There was a 500,000-gold-coin-limit every month, so I didn't earn much from it. But I made sure that I am hitting that limit these last few months.

"

"But there the exchange rate is also plummeting downwards every week, which is quite depressing. Moreover, there are also the taxes that need to be paid alongside the conversion.

"

Shin paused briefly when he reached this point as he already opened the details of his bank account.

Naturally, he was not dumb enough to open the virtual screen that would broadcast how much money he had. Instead, he raised his wrist in front of the two and showed them what was shown on the digital screen of his Advance Watch.

Arthur was already expecting that Shin had earned tons of money from the game, but the number of zeros that he was seeing still stunned him. It was the same for Leonard who was staring at the digital screen with wide-opened eyes; it was his first time seeing such a large sum of money.

It was true that Arthur and Leonard had earned quite a lot of money from playing the game given that they were peak experts of the game. But that was also the very same reason why they couldn't convert their money casually.

Most of their golds were being invested in the upgrade of their weapons. Moreover, they also needed to buy some rare resources to grow their Pets and Elemental Spirits.

At the same time, they also needed to buy some information from the 'information merchants' inside the game since they needed such intel for hunting some special monsters, entering some dungeons, and finding some special resources.

Given all of these, the rate of gold consumption of the two was quite high. And compared to them, Shin was still a newbie since he was still building his in-game foundations – when he finally reached their stage, his resource consumption was also going to skyrocket with just a blink of an eye.

Fortunately, Shin still had his personal 'money-printing machine' called Calderock Town. But even if the flow of money was quite fast for the time being, it was still hard to say whether it was the same in the future. After all, managing a Town or a City was not easy since it was also calling for a lot of money for its improvements.

Regardless, it was still a good thing that Shin was quite good at handling money which was why he currently had tons of it.

After showing them his current balance, Shin closed his Advance Watch and looked at Arthur as he could read what this guy was currently planning.

"You want to buy a villa, right? I already thought about it earlier which is why I am going to meet the real estate agent that I contacted before coming here.

"

"What to tag along? I may move to the villa later,

" he added while starting to walk away.

Hearing that, a huge grin suddenly formed with the lips of Arthur and Leonard as they could already picture out what was going to happen.

So, the two of them immediately chased after Shin while holding their laughter.

********

Later that day, the trio was currently busy settling at the new villa that Shin had brought earlier.

The place was quite big with 2 floors. Aside from the living room, dining room, and the kitchen, there were 3 more extra rooms on the first floor while the second floor had 5 more.

Such a place was too big for the three of them, but Shin already had some plans on how to deal with the extra spaces, so it was no big deal.

Naturally, this kind of villa was quite expensive, especially that it also had a complete set of furniture along with the package. Which meant that the three of them only needed to move their own things in their respective rooms.

But both Shin and Arthur only paid a little over half of its original price because of the 'bargaining skills' of the former. For someone like Shin who was used to dealing with Shiella's slyness, initiating a favorable deal with an 'average' real-estate agent was only a child's play.

Arthur and Leonard were even having a hard time holding their laughter every time Shin cut off the price due to some 'damages' and 'defects' that might give them some 'inconveniences' in the future. He was also pointing out some problems with the villa's interior design.

The real-estate agent thought that this deal was going to be easy the moment he saw how young his 'buyers' were. But when Shin started their deal, the agent almost wanted to cry every time they cut off the price. He couldn't even refute Shin's words since he couldn't find any flaw in it.

And when he saw that the original price was being chopped down bit by bit, the real estate agent even called their main office to ask for some assistance; he even asked for their most skilled agent to deal with this troublesome kid.

But it also didn't take long for their so-called ace to be defeated. And even with the combined forces of the two real estate agents, they still couldn't stop Shin from cutting off the price of the villa.

This issue even escalated to the point where their president needed to step in. But that didn't work either as Shin refused to back down even for a little.

Reaching that point, the present wanted to immediately cancel the deal since they were going to suffer a huge loss if they continued. But before he could even do that, Shin immediately gave Arthur a signal to 'accidentally' reveal his background.

Both of Arthur's family backgrounds were very hard to deal with. The Springfield Family had a very high status in the Military while the Levina Clan was very influential in the business industry.

The moment the president learned about that; he immediately knew that it was already a checkmate for them.

If he refused to 'give these young men a face', then he could already imagine what was going to happen to his business. So, he chose to suffer a 'slight' loss to curry some favor from these three rather than 'ruining' his entire career.

In the end, the villa was sold at Shin and the other with a little over half of its original price. The president decided it himself before they were forced to give the villa to Shin for free.

Though, Shin was put on the 'ban list' of the real-estate agency to make sure that they would never be going to deal with him in the future.

...…