Cleaning himself after training was not an easy task. Emilio had to spend almost an hour in the shower and throw away his destroyed clothes. After all of that he finally looked normal again and in no way as someone who had just spent half a morning making serious wounds to himself.

  When he finally came out of the bathroom, he was completely refreshed and found Amelia in the living room talking on the phone with her mother.

  “Uncle Emi is out of the shower,” She notified her as soon as she saw the man. “Mom wants to talk with you,” She added while handing the phone to Emilio.

  “Hi Nic, how are you?”

  “So you are a masochist now.” Nicole concluded over the phone. The girl had snitched on him and his sister was not happy about what he had been doing with her daughter in the house.

  “Don’t get mad over nothing. I was just trying to use my daggers,” Emilio explained

  “For what? To feed the whole block with your body?” She mocked him.

  “No… It is the first time I used daggers! Give me a break! Also, I killed two birds with one stone and trained my Skills at the same time when I had to heal.”

  “Whatever you say,” The woman dismissed him. “Just be careful. I kind of understand you can’t really get hurt now, but it should still hurt, shouldn’t it? At the same time, do you even know the limit of your Skill?”

  “I think the limit of the Skill is my Vitality, but I also have another Skill that helps me to recover it, so I should be fine. At least physically, but you are right about the pain. It still hurts like hell. I do hope I can correct that part sometime, maybe I can get another Skill stop the pain. Something like that has to exist, right?” Emilio didn’t really know if it was possible, but he could wish for something, didn’t he?

  “You have another Skill? How many Stats did you increase in your Trial?” His sister was stumped. Just how talented could her brother really be.

  “Talking about Trials. Please tell me you didn’t enter one.”

  “I did, Ami convinced me. Is there something wrong with the Trials?”

  When Emilio heard his sister, he lost all hope about seeing her in the short term. He was sad about it, but at least they could talk just as they do when she has to travel.

  “There is nothing wrong with the Trial per se, and ami did right in saying you shouldn’t lose the chance. The issue is that you can’t freely change Monoliths after you enter one. If you do, then you will lose one week of Trials.” Emilio explained.

  Nicole was surprised by the news, but she dismissed the problem. “Well, if I lose it, I lose it. What’s the big problem with it? We lived all our lives without the Trials and we are fine.”

  Emilio sighed, as he knew that she was not right with her reasoning. They were fine up until the integration, but if they could trust in what the shopkeeper said then their peace was going to end soon.

  “You are wrong with that, it is a big deal to lose the Trial,” Emilio explained as he started to address the real issue he needed to talk about with his family. “Apparently, our whole planet is going to have some kind of trial that we have to pass and the System is preparing us for that.

  “Given that we were provided weapons and a way to strengthen ourselves, I bet we are going to have to fight some way. With that said, you should do all of the Trials to get more Stats and more Coins. Even just one Trial Coin can purchase a way to fully heal yourself with a pill in the case of an emergency.”

  “What? How do you know all this?” After hearing the explanation, the woman was starting to panic a bit, but she was still not trusting it completely.

  “I talked with the Shopkeeper. I just had to give him a few tips and he started talking like a happy bartender. Completely worth the tips.”

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  Nicole was completely stunned by the news, especially with the knowledge she had up until that point.

  “Are they not robots?” Nicole asked something that Emilio didn’t expect at all.

  “What? Robots? Why would you think that?”

  “Uh, Ami said so…”

  Emilio activated the speaker in the phone and turned into looking at her niece who had distracted herself with the TV.

  “Ami, can you come over here?” He asked the girl.

  “Yes Uncle, Are you finally going to tell us what it is that we have to decide?”

  Emilio nodded, but he started to ask something else instead. “Before that, did you tell your mother that Tuor was a robot?”

  “Tuor? You mentioned him earlier. Who is he?”

  “The Shopkeeper of our Monolith.”

  “The robot? Do they have names?”

  “He is not a robot!! He is a person,” Emilio facepalmed, “Try giving him a little bribe and you can see just how human he is. I got quite a lot of information.”

  At that comment Amelia’s face turned as red as a tomato at the realization of how he treated that man.

  “So… I might have offended one of the people that actually knows what is going on?”

  “Don’t worry. Luckily I got the information. Do you have any leftover Coins, did you buy anything?”

  “I bought the details on shop items and details on Stats. I have 3 coins left.”

  “Well, there you have your apology bribe. Next time, tip him the Coins and apologize.”

  Amelia was baffled by what his uncles asked of her, didn’t they have the information already?

  “Why would I? You can ask for us, can’t you?”

  “Because he can help you choose your rewards so you can spend your Coins effectively. For example, the Realm Information is just not worth it,” Emilio explained.

  “Nic, what did you buy, if you didn’t buy the same things we did, I might not be able to tell you everything.”

  “I know, Ami told me the same thing. I bought the four Stat details, but I had no more coins after that purchase.”

  “Let’s hope that is enough for what I need to talk about. By the way, what did you choose as a weapon?”

  “I chose a gun as well.”

  “You too? Didn’t you pay attention to the notification about it working with Energy. All of us should be having just one point!”

  “Of course I did, that’s why I did the Energy Trial first. After that, I can use it effectively. What I can’t believe is that you chose a melee weapon.”

  “I guess we took different approaches to the same problem. Ami is the only one who just ignored the message.”

  “Hey, it is not my fault,” Amielia complained. “It is a fucking gun, they should be powerfull.”

  “That depends on the Energy,” Emilio remarked. “But either way, you can just take the Energy Trial like Nic. For now, let me tell you what I know about the situation we are in.”

  Emilio spent a good half hour explaining everything he knew to his family. After all, they had to decide their future arrangements. It was obvious that earthlings were not the only intelligent beings in the universe, and the System, or universe itself, decided it was time for Earth to join the rest of the Realm.

  Once integrated, they were able to become more powerful, they were provided weapons and they had some kind of trials to succeed. If they failed they might get invaded by aliens. Those aliens might even include Tuor’s clan, which might not be the worst given that the man seemed reasonable enough.

  Emilio had also managed to find out that there were no things like technology in the rest of the Realm, which meant they had something big in their hands to use as a differential if they really had to face the aliens.

  Given the information Emilio had gathered. They decided they had to prioritize doing the Trials and getting stronger.

  This conclusion had a few implications. First, Nicole will stay in the US for at least one more month, or until she could leave the Monolith area without heavy implications.

  As an add on to the previous decision, Amelia was going to stay with Emilio for as long as she needed. After all, she also couldn’t move from the Monolith.

  Lastly, they had decided the risk of the future unknown trials was too big. As a result they decided they had to focus on training with their weapons and Skills.

  If they really wanted to focus all of their attention at training, there was something else Emilio had to do. His work as a software developer took too much time of the limited amount they had until the end of the ‘Show Promise’ Quest.

  He didn’t know what was going to happen there, but he was almost sure he was going to have to fight in that treasure hunt. If he didn’t, then why did the System gave them an upgradable weapon.

  Given that he had decided that his work was in the way. He had to have a really difficult talk with his manager.

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