Thankfully, Starlia decided to play peacekeeper before I got jumped by a boy band of overpowered elemental prodigies. "We should go now," she announced, checking the time. "We have to choose our masters today."

  "Right," I agreed, letting out a massive breath of relief.

  The mob finally shuffled out of the medical room, leaving me alone with my thoughts, my dragon ghost, and my shiny new loot.

  I stood up, my joints popping after a week of inactivity. I walked over to the table and stared at the golden armor and earrings Drake had left behind. Time to claim my inheritance. I bit my thumb, squeezing out a drop of blood, and let it fall onto the metal.

  Instantly, the armor glowed with a blinding light, vanishing from the table and seamlessly equipping itself onto my body. I checked myself out. Not bad. I was now officially wearing one of the legendary Sovreigns of the Gods. That made two down, seven to go. Gotta catch 'em all, right?

  But a second later, a massive headache spiked right behind my eyes. A sudden burst of foreign memories flooded my brain like a forced software update. I was suddenly watching the life, the battles, and the history of the legendary warrior, Karn—the son of the Sun God.

  (My inner Earth-CEO logic quickly deduced the situation): Well, obviously. It's the souvenir of Karn. It holds his essence.

  Shaking off the ancient flashbacks, I finally stepped out of the medical wing.

  The afternoon sunlight hit me like a physical punch. I squinted, raising a hand to shield my eyes, which were struggling to adjust to the brightness after a week-long nap in a dimly lit room.

  By the time I stumbled my way back to the Colosseum, the place was already packed. I could feel the sheer density of auras flowing freely through the air, practically suffocating the arena. It was strong. Ridiculously strong.

  It looked like everyone had already chosen their masters. I started weaving my way through the massive crowd, scanning the faces of the students and the imposing, terrifying instructors standing beside them. They all were hovering comfortably around the Dharma Body stage. Solid, but expected. Except for two absolute show-offs flexing Nascent Soul auras.

  And then... there was one guy.

  He was the weakest of the bunch, technically registering at a pathetic Qi Formation stage. He was old, completely hammered, and practically swaying in the breeze. Wait a second... it was the exact same drunkard I’d spotted earlier. My gamer-sense immediately tingled. I activated my Spirit Sense to try and peek at his real stats again, and bam—it felt like staring directly into a supernova. I stumbled back a few steps, my eyes literally burning in my skull.

  Yep. Classic hidden OP master trope. You can't fool me, universe.

  Ignoring the towering Nascent Soul prodigies, I marched straight toward the swaying old man with maximum, unearned confidence. I stopped right in front of him and dropped into a deep, perfectly executed 90-degree bow.

  "O honorable, wise old man," I declared loudly, laying the respect on as thick as humanly possible. "Please accept me as your disciple. I pledge my unwavering loyalty to you. Please, teach me and pass down your profound knowledge."

  The entire Colosseum went dead silent. You could hear a pin drop. The crowd stared at me like I’d just asked a mop bucket to be my sensei. The supposed 'best' of the instructors—a guy sitting pretty at Nascent Soul Stage 2—actually scoffed out loud.

  "What a fool," he muttered, shaking his head with immense pity. He looked down at me from his elevated podium. "Boy, are you absolutely sure about this?"

  "Never been more sure in my life," I affirmed, not breaking my bow.

  The old drunkard paused, swayed, and then looked down at me. For a split second, the drunken haze vanished, and his tone shifted into something deadly serious.

  "I will acknowledge you," he rasped, "only if you can get me the most expensive wine in this city."

  A fetch quest. Of course. I agreed instantly and bolted out of the arena to hunt down this legendary booze. I found it easily enough at a high-end merchant in the capital, but when I saw the price tag, my former-CEO soul violently wept.

  One Supreme Gold Coin.

  Are you kidding me?! I did a quick inventory check inside my spatial bag. I had 5 Royal Gold Coins and 5 Standard Gold Coins. Doing the math—and factoring in the local exchange rate—I was short by exactly 5 royal gold coins(if we keep the 5 standard apart from it. You know I want those pastries.) This was an astronomical amount of cash. I was supposed to use this fund to buy actual, practical gear, and now I had to blow it on vintage grape juice?

  Seriously? I thought, massaging my temples.

  But I couldn't let this chance slip. I had to secure the bag, no matter the cost. Because I knew exactly who this old man was. He wasn't just some random wino. He was the entire reason I didn't get turned into a greasy smear on the Colosseum floor during my fight with Drake.

  (Flashback sequence initiate. Let’s rewind the tapes back to when that battle was only halfway done, right when Drake summoned Mizuki...)

  I was completely hopeless. The sheer, suffocating power of that dragon had me dead to rights. I was backed into a corner, completely out of options.

  And then, suddenly... a voice echoed directly inside my mind.

  (Flashback sequence initiate...)

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  The voice was raspy, echoing right inside my skull while the battle in the Colosseum was going completely off the rails.

  "Do you want to win?" the mysterious voice asked.

  "Uh, yes! Obviously!" I yelled back mentally, completely confused. "But who the hell are you?!"

  "Then I shall grant you my power for this battle," the voice declared smoothly. "But do me a favor. You have to find me after this is over... and give me the most expensive wine in the city."

  Honestly? If someone offered me god-tier power to survive an unwinnable fight in exchange for a nice bottle of vintage booze, I wasn't going to negotiate the terms and conditions. "Deal! I'll do anything to win this!"

  And just like that, an absolutely enormous surge of foreign, overpowering energy had flooded my system, letting me clutch the victory.

  (Flashback end. Welcome back to the Present.)

  So yeah. That swaying old drunkard was my mysterious benefactor. And now the bill was due. And, as my hastily corrected mental math just informed me, I wasn't just short five standard gold coins. I was short five Royal Gold Coins. That is a colossal gap in my budget.

  I cracked my knuckles and stretched my neck. "Alright," I sighed. "Time for a hunt. Time to grind some mobs for cash."

  Yang's spectral head popped over my shoulder again, looking weirdly enthusiastic for an ancient entity. "Woo-hoo! Let's go! Let me tell you, if we need that kind of ridiculous amount of money, we should go kill a Minotaur. Their horns fetch an insanely high price on the market."

  I raised an eyebrow at the floating reptile. "A Minotaur? Sounds straightforward enough. Let's go then."

  (Scene Shift: Sometime later, deep in the hunting grounds)

  "WAH!"

  I was sprinting through the thick brush as fast as my magically-enhanced legs could carry me. Right on my heels, smashing through massive trees like they were literal toothpicks, was an absolute, steroid-injected nightmare of a humanoid bull. A Minotaur. And it was pissed.

  "You said this wouldn't be hard!" I screamed at the dragon spirit currently chilling comfortably inside my soul.

  "When did I ever say that?!" Yang shrieked back, sounding just as panicked as I was. "I just said their horns were valuable! Run for our lives! Wah, he is right behind us!"

  "I hate you! You are the worst guide ever!"

  I risked a desperate glance forward, and my stomach immediately dropped into my shoes. The forest abruptly cleared ahead, revealing a massive, sheer drop.

  "There's a cliff!" I yelled. "A freaking cliff!"

  The Minotaur roared behind me, closing the distance. The ground shook with every step it took. My back was literally against the wall—or rather, the sheer lack of one.

  But then, my gamer-brain instantly went into overdrive. Okay. Wait. I can exploit this.

  "I have an idea," I muttered, grinning like an absolute madman. I didn't slow down. I kept sprinting dead-straight toward the edge of the abyss, channeling my mana into my legs, preparing to activate Shadow Walking just on

  the edge. At the absolute last millisecond, I triggered Shadow Walking, slipping through the void and reappearing completely unharmed directly behind the massive beast.

  The Minotaur realized its mistake entirely too late. It frantically tried to stop its momentum, its hooves tearing up trenches in the dirt, but physics is a harsh mistress.

  "Catch!" I yelled, casually blasting him off the cliff with a point-blank fireball.

  The impact sent the towering monster completely over the precipice, and a very satisfying, ground-shaking thud confirmed it had fallen to its death. With a bit of spectral guidance and help from Yang, I carefully navigated my way down the cliffside until I finally reached the Minotaur's carcass.

  "Now that's what we call a genius," Yang's voice echoed in my head, practically cheering. "Well done, dude."

  "Don't try to look like my friend," I shot back, dusting off my hands. "You are just a selfish dragon who can betray anyone at any point."

  "Oh, come on! I won't betray you," Yang protested, sounding genuinely offended. "You are the most interesting person I've ever merged with."

  Before I could even roll my eyes at that, another ancient, highly annoying voice chimed into the mental group chat.

  "Don't believe him, Ragna," Mizuki drawled, his golden dragon spirit flaring with obvious annoyance.

  "Hey son, don't be so rude," Yang scolded defensively. "Who says that to a father?"

  "You literally tried to kill me once!" Mizuki roared back.

  "Ah, that," Yang said dismissively, waving a spectral claw. "It's nothing, sometimes misunderstanding happens."

  "Will you two shut up!" I bellowed, clutching my head. Having one ancient dragon in my soul was bad enough. Having two of them bickering like a divorced couple was going to give me an aneurysm.

  Thankfully, the distraction of shiny loot pulled me back to reality. The Minotaur's body turned to dust, leaving some very valuable items behind. I eagerly crouched down to check them out.

  First up: its massive horns.

  Second: a vial of glowing liquid called the Emperor Poison Killer.

  And third... a Spirit Stone.

  My eyes widened to the size of saucers. I was absolutely overwhelmed by happiness just seeing that stone sitting there in the dirt. I then examined the potion, my gamer-brain confirming its stats: it could cure literally any poison in the world, even the absolute highest S-rank toxins.

  I happily picked them all up. I didn't waste another second, heading straight to a merchant store where I could sell the horns to make up my deficit. The Minotaur was a certified A-rank monster, so those horns were about to fetch a massive price. It was obvious that I shouldn't have been able to defeat it normally. But Minotaur horns are highly sought after for making and enchanting top-tier weapons.

  I marched straight into the nearest high-end material shop and slammed the massive, pristine horns onto the merchant's counter.

  The shopkeeper's eyes practically popped out of his skull. "How did you get these, boy?" he gasped.

  "By killing a Minotaur," I replied, deadpan.

  The guy looked me up and down, clearly not buying that a twelve-year-old had just soloed an A-Rank beast. "How did you kill it?"

  I sighed. Time is money, and I was on a very tight fetch-quest schedule. "A long story. Just tell me the price you'll pay."

  He inspected the goods, tracing the pristine curves of the ivory. "It's a good-quality one, too, with no cracks," he muttered, thoroughly impressed. "It would be around 10 Royal Gold."

  Ten. Royal. Gold.

  He handed over the heavy pouch of coins, and I snatched it up instantly.

  "Thank you!" I beamed, my inner CEO practically doing backflips of joy.

  "You can always sell things to us," the shopkeeper called out as I turned for the door. "I will pay you the best amount."

  "Okay!" I waved back over my shoulder.

  As I stepped out into the street, my mind immediately ran the ROI calculation. I needed to cover a 5 Royal Gold deficit to buy that absurdly expensive wine, and I had just walked away with double that. I didn't lose anything, I thought smugly. Instead, I earned 10X my investment.

  Then, remembering the sheer terror of being chased off a cliff by an angry bovine bulldozer, I quickly added, Though I'm absolutely not doing that again.

  With my newly acquired capital, I bought the vintage, Supreme Gold-tier wine and sprinted all the way back to the Academy grounds.

  I found the old man exactly where I'd left him—still seated beneath the same tree, surrounded by his empty, cheap drinks.

  I walked right up and dramatically presented the incredibly expensive bottle to him.

  For the first time since I'd met him, the drunkard actually looked completely surprised. He stared at the bottle, then slowly looked up at me.

  "You really want me to be your master so badly that you spent all the money you had and even earned 5 royal gold coins for this?" the old man asked in disbelief.

  "Yes, Master," I said, cementing the title right then and there. "As you said, I've got the drink, and now I'm your disciple."

  The old man slowly reached out and took the bottle from my hands. His drunken demeanor seemed to sharpen for a brief second.

  He looked at me and declared that my training begins from that exact moment.