Chapter 55: 300k
At the end of the day, students were only students, and they could only be considered soccer enthusiasts at most.
Hiro's only compromise was to develop a game plan where each student would be squeezed dry in the efforts of setting the stage for him.
Thus, as expected, a weird scene played out on the live broadcast.
The Group B soccer team from the provincial capital's Inter-High would follow only two tactics, aptly described as contraction and expansion.
When the ball was with the opposition, two rings of players, a circle of three followed by a circle of five would close the net on the ball's position.
Once the ball was retrieved, they would leave the field to three players, namely Hiro, Vanti, and Kenshin while the rest of the players tried their best to intercept the opposition.
As long as Hiro made it into the penalty box, doesn't matter from which position, all it takes is one shot and the ball would curve beautifully into the net from an inconceivable angle.
Hiro and Vanti helped Kenshin score some goals too, but for the most part, Hiro flipped the game into a one-sided display of professional soccer skills.
Once the final whistle for the second half resounded, the entire stadium and rows upon rows of locals looked at the scoreboard blankly.
Some were cursing, some closed their eyes and shame, and some were crying hoarsely while throwing their garbage at the resting benches of the local soccer team.
By now, almost everyone knew that the match was being broadcasted live, and they felt humiliated.
03:11!
The scoreboard was 03:11 in favor of the away team!
Hiro alone scored eight goals while he left a hat trick for Kenshin!
About five goals were wasted because he wasted his time either dribbling or fooling around, toying with the other players' feelings.
Today was a complete and utter disaster, and no amount of previous bounding or spending money on mutual activity could bury such hatred under the rug in such a short amount of time.
Thus, the coach wisely withdrew from the post-game celebration dinner and hurried stowed the students in the bus, driving back to the provincial capital without a word of goodbye.
He was scared that if they lingered for an hour more, some students would be sent to the hospital bed, not a booked hotel.
…
Inter-High's school bus.
Everyone was quiet, and even if they weren't keeping silent, they were discussing in hushed whispers.
Despite the great, blood-boiling victory, no one expressed it through celebratory applause, laughter, or dancing.
The reason was simple, Hiro was sleeping.
Well, everyone thought that Hiro had drafted and exhausted himself to the point where the moment he settled on his seat, he fell asleep.
His head even tilted to the side little by little until he leaned comfortably on Teacher Aiya's shoulder, but she didn't act repulsed nor pushed him away.
Rather, she too closed her eyes.
The last two weeks were a much-needed mental distraction for her, especially when she received news from the school about a potential promotion.
She didn't know what happened exactly, but she attributed it to Hiro pulling some strings in the background.
As for Hiro, he was immersed in the world of Transcendent Daoist. Although he was committed to not using the system for two weeks, he wasn't about to waste 14 weeks of cultivation time.
That's 440,000,000 worth of CB at the very least. True, Hiro wasn't planning to advance from the peak of the Origin Soul realm to the next major realm anytime soon, and for two reasons.
First, the majority of the known pocket dimension can't withstand the power of his Arcana Lord character, and he wasn't about to make a similar mistake with his Daoist character.
Second, he still felt like his foundation was too lacking, and while he would lose his accumulated CB when leaving from one sect to learn the techniques of a different sect, he could always invest the CB somewhere else.
For example, the cultivation of the physical body.
Body refinement had always been a thing in the wuxia lore, and this game was no exception.
After paying sufficient contribution points to the sect, Hiro received the necessary scrolls to train in body refinement.
Afterward, he dumped all his CB into the body refinement realms. Some major tribulations were failure, and wasting a considerable amount of his CBA, but Hiro didn't mind.
Soon, his body cultivation reached the fifth realm, catching up to his spirit qi cultivation base.
He was one step away on both ends from reaching the Tier-4 standards of his current world.
The benefit is obvious, he could fuse the laws of immortal cultivation into his Unfathomable dimension, as the games exchanged through vouchers would end when Hiro's characters reached a certain level of strength.
As for the disadvantages, they were also obvious because Hiro couldn't risk synchronizing with a character above the Tier-5 Rank-S standards.
As far as Hiro was concerned, as long as it didn't involve the New World, only a select few could truly threaten his life at the moment.
Once he settled on a new game and leveled up his character to Tier-5 standards, then he would gladly take that step and complete the current game.
Sadly, this game's format was useless for VR gaming, else he would have made use of the game's source code.
Before Hiro left the sect to join one of the top sects with harsher requirements, he returned to the system space and scrolled through the notifications for the past two weeks.
As he was scrolling through, one notification caught his eye.
[Notice: Triggered love at first sight! Jessica has fallen in love with you.]
…
Well, this explains a lot… However, thinking about how Jessica was a service girl in a five-star hotel, Hiro felt a little off.
She's not going to quit her job and devote herself to a one-side love now, is she?
Hiro didn't think too much about it.
The system remained somewhat silent throughout the two weeks, save for the occasional +5 achievement points when some of the local students added him on iMessage.
Then, toward the last few hours, the expected explosion of achievement points happened.
Hiro looked at the dense pack of +5 notifications with a wide grin. Judging by his total number of achievement points, a very small percentage of the gamers who watched the live stream went out of their way to follow his public account.
Regardless, this was by far the greatest harvest of achievement points up to date.
Hiro opened his friend's list and pulled over the Mr. Popular chain mission tag.
He focused on the friend count and the attached rewards. At first, it was just an increase in charm and charisma, and it kept rising till the chance of triggering love at first sight stopped at 10%.
Then, practical rewards started pouring in.
[Notice: You've achieved a milestone of 100,000 friends, completing the "Mr. Popular" chain mission.
[Reward 1: You've acquired the skill {Telepathy} and can use it on all living creatures.
Reward 2: 30 gems.]
…
[Notice: You've achieved a milestone of 200,000 friends, completing the "Mr. Popular" chain mission.
[Reward 1: You've upgraded the {Simulation Space} and it can now be used as an independent cultivation space.
[Reward 2: 1x Magic Dragon Summoning Token.]
…
[Notice: You've achieved a milestone of 300,000 friends, completing the "Mr. Popular" chain mission.
[Reward 1: 1x Level 2 Mass Enlightenment Scroll.
[Reward 2: 80% Discount Voucher.]
…
[Notice: You've reached the limit of gaining friends through this platform, please think of another way to establish connections.]
…
Hiro was stunned.
Doing the math, it seemed like this wasn't a loophole by the system, but it was bait instead.
300,000 followers from his social media public account were allocated to his friends list, and the limit was capped.
Hiro began to sweat since he had no idea how to gather more friends. After thinking about it, his eyes shone.
Maybe I should start a guild in a VR game and have people add me as friends there? It should work, right? System?
[Notice: Your virtual persona can indeed make friends, but the limit is capped at 300,000 friends just as well.]
Hiro expected this, but he didn't care.
If the key lie in which identity he used to make friends, he could easily rotate professions in real life.
He can make 300k friends as a gamer, 300k friends as a teacher, 300k friends as a doctor, 300k friends as a policeman…
The list can be endless.
This is why Hiro felt like it was a trap.
The system was forcing his hand again!
However, he wasn't against the idea, as it was also a challenge.
Looking at his list of rewards, what Hiro liked the most was the upgrade to the {Simulation Space}
It became a possibility for him to use it as a cultivation room in real life!
Although it was just a single room that only he could enter, it was technically a private pocket dimension with a time dilation feature.
Best of all, it was something for his real body, not the synchronization characters!