“Wow, so many!” Jack exclaimed. He would have to clear stage 80 a hundred and twenty-five times to get that many glory points.

Jack was excited by the gain. He immediately proceeded to the next stage.

The Strength of Hope was the same as his other inherent skills, it is reset once he entered the stage. Jack cleared that stage with no problem. When he came out, he received 162 glory points.

Jack figured this must be another benefit of becoming Praefectrus. Aside from getting bonus glory points when his rank was upgraded, all the glory points received from clearing the stages are now doubled.

He happily continued, clearing one stage after another until he hit stage 85.

At that stage, forty werewolves awaited him. Twenty-six level 80 special elites, twelve level 79 rare elites, and the last two caused his forehead to crease. The last two were level 75 mythical werewolves.

Even without access to his Time Sage and Beast Monarch’s skills, he had no problem dealing with one. But two, that’s another matter. Not to mention these werewolf-type monsters became more troublesome when their number increased.

He again used his high-damaging skills to eradicate the lower-grade enemies before focusing on the higher grades.

With two mythical opponents, he had trouble eliminating all the rare elite werewolves. Their coordination was very good. They used their speed and number to confuse Jack and protect the ones with the lowest HP, allowing them to last as long as possible.

In the end, Jack couldn’t take out either of the two mythical werewolves after his Strength of Hope ran out of its thirty minutes duration. Once that happened, the werewolves counterattacked.

Jack came out of the stage dejected.

“Your Majesty reaches stage 85 and still dares to wear a long face? Does Your Majesty want to get whooped?”𝑛𝒪𝑽𝑬𝑙𝗇𝑒xt.𝕔𝑜𝓂

Jack heard a familiar voice and saw Gruff there.

“Hey!” Jack called. “You call me Your Majesty but you still sound so rude. It is really weird. Just call me as usual. Don’t need to add my title.”

“As you wish, kid.” Gruff was happy to oblige.

“If I knew you are in the building, I would have asked for you. I almost run out of challenge points,” Jack said.

“Kid, do you think I’m your personal teller?” Gruff huffed. “I came here because I heard an outworlder had just beaten stage 80. This is a first. I figured it must be you.”

“Of course, it is me. But seriously, I do need the challenge points. You said you have a lot of unused challenge points, right? Better give them to me rather than leave them to rot.”

“Rot your ass,” Gruff said. “I do have a lot to spare but don’t expect me to give them to you for free. Do you want to trade them with your glory points?”

“Dude, I need the challenge points to get the glory points. If I trade them to you, what’s the point of getting them in the first place? How about I pay you gold coins for the challenge points?”

“Mm…,” Gruff touched his chin.

Seeing that the old warrior didn’t outright reject him, Jack seized the chance. “It’s a good deal, ain’t it? You are not using them anyway. It’s better to trade them with coins to buy stuff for yourself. Like for example, a better armor, maybe.”

“Kid, are you making fun of my armor? Damn it! I can’t deny yours is much better than mine. I can’t believe it was a bit over one year ago when I saw you being so happy about getting my spare armor. We natives truly can’t keep up with your kind,” Gruff sighed.

“Come on, don’t be so melancholic. So, what do you say? I will trade you 1 gold coin for 100 challenge points,” Jack said.

“Kid, aren’t you taking advantage of me too much? I was thinking more in the line of 1 gold coin for 1 challenge point.”

“The hell, man! That means I have to pay 84 gold coins just to enter this stage 84 once. Are you kidding me? Be reasonable, man!”

“I’m being reasonable. All right, considering we are such good friends. I will sell you 1 gold coin for 2 challenge points.”

“Don’t make me punch you, man. Wait a minute! You still owe me a punch from that time you tricked me with your brother’s quest! My last punch didn’t count because it’s my hand that was hurt.”

“What are you talking–” *WHAM!*

This time, Gruff reeled from Jack’s punch. He didn’t suffer damage because Jack didn’t use mana manipulation. He felt the pain, though.

“The hell, kid?! What’s that for…?”

“I’ve told you. It’s payback for when you tricked me with your brother’s quest.”

“I gave you lots of stuff including challenge points! Weren’t we already square on that?”

“Hm… When you put it like that…”

*WHAM!*

It was Jack who was now reeling from Gruff’s punch. The other challengers looked at the two. Were they fighting? Even the nearby guards were confused. Should they come and interfere? But the two were now back to talking like friends. The guards decided to just stay and watch for now.

“Now, we are square,” Gruff uttered. He then massaged his cheek. “Damn, kid. Your punch hurt me. No wonder you beat stage 84. You are much stronger than me now.”

“I can help you become stronger. Just be my royal agent, you can level up fast like we, outworlders,” Jack offered.

“Tempting, but no. I don’t like getting called to a battle at someone’s whim. Certainly not by you,” Gruff rejected.

Jack didn’t push the issue. He was just joking. Gruff would have to let go of his high station in the League of Champions if he became Jack’s royal agent.

“So, 1 gold coin for 90 challenge points?”

“I don’t have time to play with you. 1 gold coin for 20 challenge points. Take it or leave it,” Gruff said.

“Ok, deal!” Jack said. “How many can you spare?”

“How many can you afford?” Gruff asked back.

“Do you have 5,000 challenge points?” Jack asked again.

“I have way more than that,” Gruff answered.

“5,000 then,” Jack said, fishing out 250 gold coins from his inventory. He could afford more, but it would take some time to use up these 5,000 challenge points. So, he kept his remaining gold coins in case he needed them.

Gruff went ahead with the transaction. He transferred the challenge points into Jack’s League of Champions Badge.

After finishing, he asked Jack, “You sure you don’t want to become this faction’s executive? You can get quite a benefit now that you are a Praefectrus.”

“No, thanks,” Jack declined.

Gruff shrugged. “Okay, I will leave you to it.”

“Thanks,” Jack said. “I will enter this stage four more times before calling it a day.”

“Four? Oh, right. Just so you know, another advantage of being a Praefectrus is you can now challenge a beaten stage ten times in a day.”

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