"Lisa, you can come out," Zack announced while standing beside Neji.
The old monk sighed at his current place while waiting for the girl to come out. He couldn't blame Lisa for betraying him and the party.
In fact, she had never been a part of the party and only obeyed his orders. The monk wanted to find Lisa and slap her but he knew that it won't do anything.
It was just a game in the end.
Lisa on the other hand was debating what she should do. That's when a mischievous idea struck her mind as she landed on the ground.
"I have no idea how you know my name but since the guild leader is captured, I guess I will talk to you." She removed the formations covering herself and made herself visible to the group.
Neji glared at the girl for a few seconds as she struck out her tongue at him. He felt irritated by her actions and instead looked at Zack's face.
The latter was thinking about his next move and decided that he should make Neji submit to him early on.
"From now on, you will be a member of my guild, and everything you had previously will no longer be yours." After thinking, Zack declared what he wanted from Neji.
The old monk could only sigh and nod as he suddenly felt his contract connection with Lisa vanishing.
Zack looked at the notification with narrowed eyes as he quickly checked the terms of the contract.
[ You'll have to protect Lisa and in exchange, she'll follow any command you'll give. Lisa can decline to follow some commands which are inappropriate. ]
Zack sighed as he looked at the bottom of the contract screen and selected the 'cancel contract' option.
The small link he had felt between himself and Lisa snapped. The latter's eyes widened but she soon masked her expression.
Her curiosity only grew because of Zack's actions. At the very least, she was free now.
"My name is Lisa and I am Trickster. Nice to meet you." The girl gave a slight bow before lifting her head to stare at Emma.
'I wonder what's her relationship with the previous number one player.' Lisa was continuously thinking of a way to make sure that Zack took her as a subordinate.
And in the end, there was only a single thing that she could do.
"My name is Zack and as you know, I used to be the previous number one player." The black-haired boy introduced himself which made both Lisa and Neji raise their eyebrows.
""Wasn't your name Lin Fan?"" Both Neji and Lisa asked the same thing simultaneously.
"I used to have that name, but now, I changed my appearance and name. Speaking of that, how did you even know I was the number one player?" Zack narrowed his eyes at Lisa who just shrugged.
"I mean, you have a purple crown-like symbol on your head. Even a newbie will know who you are." Lisa then pointed towards Zack's head as the latter stared up.
He didn't see anything and instead asked Emma whether she saw anything.
Like him, Emma also didn't see anything above his head which made the duo consider whether Lisa and Neji were lying.
Lisa also sensed that something was wrong and quickly thought of a way to turn the situation in her favor.
"Plus, WolfHeart has pink hair and always wears armor. Furthermore, Chastiefol confirmed your identity."
"Guess that's true." Zack sighed before he started to think of a way to get Lids to join him.
If only he knew that the girl herself wanted to join him, he wouldn't have thought so much about it.
"Zack, can I ask you for something? I'll give one thing in return too." Lisa suddenly interrupted his thoughts as Zack raised an eyebrow and asked her to continue.
"Can I join your guild?"
The black-haired boy was left dumbfounded by the sudden request but he maintained a calm expression.
"I'll let you join on one condition, you'll have to swear completed loyalty to me and WolfHeart and we will accept you."
Lisa had already accepted such things and was ready to agree to the terms.
"The the thing that I'll give you in return is," A mischievous and teasing smile appeared on her face. "A strip dance!"
Zack: "..."
Emma: "..."
"You still use those tactics." Only Neji wasn't shocked by Lisa's words since she had offered him the same thing.
The old monk however had a feeling that he would regret taking the offer. He had instead formed a contract with Lisa using the second form of Buddha's embrace.
Now looking at Zack, Neji wondered whether he would fall in Lisa's trap or not.
"Sure but remember, I'll cash it when I want." Like a wolf about to eat its prey, Zack looked at Lisa with a grin.
The latter had seen many lustful and she could tell that Zack was not staring at her with lust.
"Then if that's settled, I surrender." As soon as the words escaped Lisa's mouth, system notifications appeared in front of the duo.
[ Obtained skill book: Monk's fist (cannot be learned) ]
[ Obtained 10000 exp. ]
[ Obtained 1000 glory. ]
[ Obtained… ]
Both Zack and Emma managed to reach level 12 by just winning a simple guild war. But to the duo, this was like a heavenly feeling to climb higher again.
So after distributing all the stat points that he had received, Zack looked at the total glory the guild had. The number was currently sitting at 3000 and it would take 7000 more glory to reach the point when a dungeon would be unlocked.
"So you disbanding the guild now?" Zack asked while looking at Neji who nodded in reply. Zack then sent out the invite to both Neji and Lisa. "Neji, what is your age in real life?"
"Fifty-seven," The monk replied without skipping a beat. "Any particular reason for asking?"
"Dude, if you expect people to believe you, I have no idea in which dream you are living in." Zack then looked at Lisa and Emma who were both giving him confused looks.
"What do you mean lying? Why can't he be a real old person playing the game?" Emma asked in a confused tone as Zack facepalmed.
"If he truly was an old person, there are no chances that he will choose to look old in a game where you can literally look like any person you want." To someone, it might look as though Zack was just acting weird but the boy knew the truth behind the game.
There had been a survey for old people and all of them had replied that they wanted to feel and look young inside the game again. This meant that those who were roaming around looking like old people were actually young.
Zack would have kept his mouth quiet about asking such things from Neji but he had remembered a very important memory from his last life.
One of the players that he wanted to recruit, Ken, had a history of playing as old monks who sometimes acted perverted. This had continued through all the role-playing games Ken had played.
Now looking at Neji, Zack couldn't help but connect the dots which only made him think that Neji was actually Ken in real life.
"Why can't an old man just enjoy being a fighting monk?" Neji shot back however, he had not realized that he had fallen into a trap.
"Because every old person would want to be a young man or a young monk in your case. So this means that in reality, you are most likely in your early twenties."
Even though knowing one's real age didn't matter much, Neji looked as though Zack had just kicked his dog.
He immediately logged out of the game as his avatar vanished from the place. The black-haired boy then turned to look at Lisa with raised eyebrows.
"He went back to our guild which is not that far from our place. By the way, are you some kind of hacker tracking his location or something? How did you even know about that?" Lisa suddenly felt conscious of the fact that Zack might be able to see her real-life self too.
She wanted to keep her real-life self as far away from her in-game self as she could. Because the moment people knew who she was in real life, she was gone for.
But little did Lisa know that Zack already knew everything about her past however, he decided to not tell her about that.
"It's just what I deduced by reading the forums. If you have as much free time as me, you can do that too." Zack replied with a shrug as he started checking his inventory.
Lisa gave Emma a sidelong glance as the latter just shrugged and gave her the "You will get used to it" look.
"So what are we going to do now?" Lisa asked as the black-haired boy smiled and remembered the dungeon he had visited long ago.
"We are going to hunt some bats and you are going to play a crucial role in that."
***
On the opposite side of North America, a black-haired young man in his early twenties took a pair of black VR glasses off his face.
"Now how the fck did he know that." The man looked around the place with a frightened look as though he expected Zack to be watching.
But he soon shook the thought away before deciding to head away to work.
The man was soon going to discover that Zack knew many things about him and had been on the lookout for him for some time.
This 𝓬ontent is taken from fre𝒆webnove(l).𝐜𝐨𝗺