Fantasy Realm [One Piece] [Harry Potter] [Naruto] - [Progression] [LitRPG]

Chapter 62: Mind Magic from Azeroth! Nāma over PHY

The next few weeks feel like a fever dream for Alex. Because of the contract, he can freely talk with Rishi about anything, confident that Rishi can't harm him or reveal even the tiniest detail that would be harmful to him. They meet up daily, talking and hanging out, sharing their entire lives and their experiences in the fantasy worlds. Like Alex, Rishi is extremely lucky, perhaps because he is one of the rare players with a base LUK stat of 3. He can't increase it further, but considering the average player only has a LUK of 1, he's still at an advantage.

Rishi managed to get an S ranking in his tutorial mission, which took place in the world of The Lord of the Rings. His mission mainly involved defending the Shire from invaders—a low-level prologue to the main story, similar in scope to the epilogue of the Scouring of the Shire where Saruman decides to attack the Shire to enact his revenge. A bit uninspired in Alex's opinion, but then again, his own mission was like that too. Rishi's second mission was a solo one in the World of Warcraft, much like Alex's, where he managed to temporarily learn the Mind Blast skill, allowing him to finish the mission with an A rank and earn the right to learn a rare purple skill.

During his time in Azeroth, Rishi was transformed into a Forsaken, which, according to him, felt almost like creating a new undead priest and starting a brand new journey. The two have a great time exchanging details about these worlds, sharing tips, tricks, and strategies they discovered. For Alex, it's a relief to finally have someone to talk to freely about everything, knowing it will stay private. He is genuinely happy for this opportunity. Rishi, too, seems to enjoy it, trusting his innate skill completely and showing no fear of Alex at all.

A few days later, Rishi invites Alex to join him on a small luxury vacation in Dubai. Alex is completely stunned.

The next few weeks, they travel all over the world. Rishi is the heir to a giant corporation with an annual profit margin of over 1 billion USD. Alex also discovers why Rishi has so much FC—the "whales" Roja was talking about... Rishi is exactly one of them. Even during their global travels, they continue to enter the Fantasy Realm. Alex watches in amazement as Rishi employs multiple workers to broker deals involving real-life money with many players.

Rishi spends hundreds of thousands of dollars daily to earn just a few hundred FC. Alex is flabbergasted. Rishi also turns out to be a tech genius, with investments on such a high level that he's a billionaire in his own right, even without his parents' money. At one point, Rishi casually gifts Alex $10 million as a "friendly gift," completely shattering Alex's concept of money. Within an hour, he goes from being broke to a multimillionaire.

While Alex likes to behave shamelessly, he feels guilty for accepting the 50,000 FC, the $10 million, and even the contract that only restricts Rishi from doing anything harmful to him while still allowing Alex to backstab, ignore, or lie to Rishi as much as he wants.

"Rishi... if you want, you can create another contract. I don't like that we're on uneven ground. If we want to be real teammates, I want to be on equal terms with you," Alex says after returning to his small, sad apartment following their 2 weeks of high-life vacation.

"Don't worry about it. You won't betray me! I can sense these things, remember?" Rishi laughs.

Alex nods, feeling a bit humbled. "You won't regret this, I promise you," he says seriously.

Since Rishi can't betray him, and he somehow knows they'll end up together in the next mission, Alex shares his skills and equipment with Rishi so they can develop a good combat strategy. Rishi also reveals his gear, which is unsurprisingly impressive and expensive. He only has green-quality or higher items, including a few blues—the best that FC can buy. All of his equipment is geared towards magic, with nothing focused on melee or requiring high physical stats like STR, AGI, or PHY.