This Warrior Was Quite Strong

"1,000 gold coins?!"

Hanks cried out, stepped forward, and reached for An Kai's forehead.

After feeling it a few times, Hanks muttered, "No fever, though?"

Smack!

An Kai slapped Hanks's hand away and looked at him seriously, issuing a challenge. "You don't dare?"

"Kid! Do you have any idea what 1,000 gold coins means?!"

"That's fucking enough to buy a thousand Widow Wangs!"

Hanks gave An Kai a scornful look. He still didn't believe him and thought An Kai was trying to trick him...

"Hanks! You son of a bitch! You think I'm only worth one gold coin?!"

Before An Kai could speak, Widow Wang's furious curses rang out from inside...

Hanks ducked his head and was about to retreat into the room...

"I'm serious!" An Kai grabbed Hanks's arm, his gaze firm.

"Really?" Hanks asked suspiciously, though he already mostly believed him.

"Really!" An Kai nodded hard, determination in his eyes...

Hanks fell silent for a moment, then dropped his joking expression. "Wait here a moment!"

With that, Hanks hurried back into the room.

A minute later.

Hanks appeared beside An Kai. "Come on. Let's talk somewhere else!"

He walked ahead of An Kai, trembling several times with every step.

"That wasn't easy!" An Kai sighed and followed Hanks toward the city gates...

Before long, the two left Chaos City, one behind the other.

They happened to pass Reed's stall.

When Reed saw Hanks, he gazed at him eagerly, hoping Hanks might say something miraculous like, "Thanks for your hard work. The sun's too strong today. Take half a day off."

But...

"Fuck! If you don't make a sale today, I'll sell you lot to recoup some of my losses!"

Hanks cursed and continued into the distance without looking back.

He and An Kai walked for about an hour.

They arrived at the place where An Kai had once hunted a [Desert Crocodile].

At the lakeside, Hanks pulled some food and a clean tablecloth out of his clothes as if by magic, then spread the cloth on the shore.

"Come on. Let's eat while we talk."

An Kai's eyes lit up. He'd known it. That old bastard Hanks really did have a Storage Ring!

He had clearly sensed the distinctive fluctuations of a Storage Ring when Hanks took the things out.

No wonder Hanks had recognized the Storage Ring in An Kai's hand at a glance before and warned him not to wear it...

An Kai sat down without ceremony, picked up a piece of meat, and began slowly, "Everyone in the Mountainbreaker Gang except the gang leader and Frank has gone into the Desert."

"They won't be back anytime soon. It'll take at least a week or so before they return."

"They went to look for Lei En, the Mountainbreaker Gang leader Lei Ming's younger brother?" Hanks immediately asked.

An Kai nodded and continued, "With the Mountainbreaker Gang's stockpiles, they should have more than enough resources worth 1,000 gold coins, right?"

"We pull this off, and we split it fifty-fifty!"

Hanks thought for a moment, then suddenly caught on. "Wait, you can handle the Mountainbreaker Gang's leader?!"

"You've reached tier two, kid?!"

Hanks abruptly took out his detector. Seeing the familiar [First Tier-One Level] displayed on it, he looked at An Kai suspiciously...

An Kai shook his head honestly and said as though it were obvious, "Of course you're the one who'll handle Lei Ming."

"Are you kidding? With these old bones of mine, he'd tear me apart!!!"

"Forget it. I shouldn't even have come out here with you!"

Hanks muttered a few more complaints and started getting up to leave...

"Hanks, have you gone senile? You think Lei Ming has no enemies in Chaos City? With him all alone in the city, isn't this the perfect chance for revenge?"

Hanks stopped in his tracks at An Kai's words.

He returned to An Kai's side. "No fifty-fifty split. This time, I want sixty... no, seventy percent!"

To his surprise, An Kai didn't seem to care and simply nodded.

Even if Hanks had demanded eighty percent, he would have agreed. His target had been Will-Bukelin from the very start, and that had never changed.

The Mountainbreaker Gang's money wouldn't be so easy to take. Taking Will-Bukelin's money would be safer...

Of course, if an opportunity arose, An Kai wouldn't let it slip by either!

The two then settled a few more details and enjoyed a brief moment of peace before heading back toward Chaos City, each with his own thoughts...

When they passed Reed's stall, Hanks seemed to have found a solution to his troubles and was in a good mood. "The sun's too strong today. Take the day off."

Leaving behind words that sounded utterly miraculous to Reed and the other three, he and An Kai slowly entered Chaos City.

Reed dug at his ears. He couldn't believe that the day had come when he would hear those words from Hanks!

This change had to be thanks to An Kai!

Before An Kai appeared, Hanks had never acted like this!

"That young mage... he's a good man! I was wrong about him!"

After entering Chaos City, An Kai and Hanks parted ways.

Watching An Kai walk away, Hanks's gaze grew profound. "Looks like this kid really did kill Lei En. That little bastard's getting stronger pretty fast!"

Hanks was an old hand. Putting together An Kai's certainty that the Mountainbreaker Gang would spend a week in the Desert and his earlier questions about Lei En's bounty, he had figured it out.

Hanks was almost certain that Lei En had died at An Kai's hands...

Only a dead man would take at least a week to find when the entire Mountainbreaker Gang had gone out searching...

After returning, An Kai went back to the tavern and continued his Meditation.

He quietly waited for the right moment to arrive.

That very day, several scouts from the Evergreen Gang, one of the city's four major gangs, began staking out the Mountainbreaker Gang's base.

The Evergreen Gang was also the Mountainbreaker Gang's sworn enemy. Years of clashes between them had left countless dead and wounded...

The next day, the number of Evergreen Gang scouts outside the Mountainbreaker Gang's base doubled.

They didn't just watch. They also frequently threw stones into the compound to provoke those inside.

Lei Ming emerged from the base with a spear and killed five Evergreen Gang scouts before peace returned to the Mountainbreaker Gang.

But that very action reassured the Evergreen Gang, confirming that the Mountainbreaker Gang's base was short of men!

Late that night.

Chaos City fell quiet.

But outside the Mountainbreaker Gang's base, it was another story!

A force of nearly a hundred people waited there in silence.

At their head stood the Evergreen Gang's leader, a Tier-Two Archer holding a bow.

Beside him stood an Earth Mage at the Eighth Tier-One Level!

"Attack!"

The Evergreen Gang's leader suddenly barked the order!

The Earth Mage rapidly chanted an incantation, earth-element magical energy gathering in his staff!

Five seconds later, he thrust his staff toward the Mountainbreaker Gang's base. "Earth Spike!"

Bang! Bang!!

Three earth spikes, each more than two meters long and over a meter wide, erupted from the ground in succession, smashing the Mountainbreaker Gang's main gate to pieces!

Immediately afterward, the force of nearly a hundred people charged into the Mountainbreaker Gang's base!

Outside the southwestern corner of the Mountainbreaker Gang's base.

Dressed entirely in black, An Kai heard the commotion. Two enormous fireballs, each nearly two meters in diameter, suddenly appeared in his hands!

"They've finally made their move!"

Bang! Bang!

The two fireballs smashed into the wall before him!

The wall collapsed on impact!

As dust billowed into the air, An Kai rushed into the rubble and found the half-dead Will-Bukelin buried beneath it.

He grabbed him by the neck. "Don't resist. I'm from Buklin Capital!"

Sure enough, Will-Bukelin stopped resisting when he heard those words.

An Kai swept aside the rubble pinning Will-Bukelin down with one hand, hauled him up, and ran outside...

This warrior Father sent really is quite strong!

Will-Bukelin marveled inwardly, then drifted into unconsciousness...