In the commercial zone of City C, a car stopped inside a parking lot. It was green in color and looked very different, and expensive compared to all the other cars in the parking lot. Two people came out of either side of the car, A young man and a young girl.
'I need to get used to seeing cars drive by themselves.' Adler thought to himself.
"Come uncle. Let's go up" Mikaela said as she brought Adler towards the lift. The lift took them to the second floor, where they got off.
The second floor was a clothing section. Mikaela and Adler went through each of the different stores looking for clothes. Adler felt like he was getting dizzy from all the selections there were.
Mikaela, on the other hand, was not fazed by anything. This was normal for her. She picked every single dress she liked for her uncle to buy.
At the end of the day, the total came up to about $8000. "Isn't this a little too expensive, Mikaela?" He asked her hesitatingly. He used to earn some $300 a day at his best when he was doing solo clears of the dungeon. $8000 to him was more than 2 months of dungeon clearing or a month of dungeon clearing with no breaks.
"Not at all. This is nothing to mom. Besides, even I can make this much in about 10 days by playing games." Mikaela said as she boasted about her income.
Adler was surprised. 'So much? Just by playing games. Must be good to live such a peaceful life. Now, I am going to enjoy the same peaceful life.'
Mikaela paid the store and got out. She had stored all of the purchased clothes in her inventory. Next, they went to find some footwear. After that, they searched for a place to buy some glasses. Just like that they toured the entire second floor and bought a lot of stuff.
Mikaela then took Adler to have some refreshments, after which they went to a store that sold different technologies.
Inside the store, there were no humans, only droid flying around. Occasionally, one would pick up stuff from the shelf and fly away. As Mikaela walked up to the store, a droid came up to the front and started playing a pre-recorded hologram.
"Hello. Welcome to our store. How can I help you?" The person in the hologram spoke. Mikaela didn't bother with the hologram and walked straight into the store. She selected a box and paid for it to the droid and walked out of the store. She then handed the box to Adler.
Adler looked confused. "What's this?" he asked.
"Open it. It's a 'Wricon'." She said.
'A 'Wricon'?' he opened the box not understanding what was inside it. Soon he realized what it was. Inside the box, was a black cylindrical object what looked to be made of both glass and plastic. It was about 2 centimeters in width, a few millimeters in thickness, and around 5 centimeters in diameter. The diameter however seemed like it was adjustable.
It was the same thing he had seen everyone wore on his wrist. This seemed to be what had replaced mobile phones in the future. "It's a Wrist Communication Device. Everyone just calls in wricon for short. Come here, let me help you set it up." Mikaela said as she put the wricon around his wrist. It automatically fit the size and shape of his left wrist and started beeping in low sound. Mikaela took Adler's right hand and put Adler's thumb on the screen.
Soon, a small hologram popped up from the wricon saying 'Welcome'. Mikaela taught him a simple navigation technique to use the wricon and added Her, her mother's, and her brother's contact information into his wricon. Adler was shocked at how surprisingly easy it was to use.
Mikaela then took him to a bigger shop. This was the one where they sold capsules for all the virtual technologies. She immediately bee-lined to where the V-Dives were. Adler followed close behind. These capsules looked no different than what the people in sci-fi movies from his time used to cryo-freeze themselves in. They would use such capsules to freeze themselves so that they could wake up at a later time and not age a day.
Thinking about how his situation was so similar, he couldn't help but laugh. Mikaela purchased the best model and paid the money. This time, there was a real person there waiting to take the money. "Uncle, My inventory isn't big enough for this, so we will have to have them deliver the capsule. I will let Michael know that we are sending something."
"No need." Adler stepped forward. He put his hand on the capsule and suddenly, the capsule disappeared. It had obviously gone into his inventory.
Mikaela was surprised, "I forgot you were a hunter uncle. Also, your inventory can handle such a big capsule? It must be really big. You are showing off, aren't you?"
"Not really." He replied. He wasn't lying though. Keeping such a small machine in his inventory wasn't really showing off. If he had kept the machine without touching it or told her that his inventory had near-infinite weight and amount capacity, however, Now that would be showing off.
They both got out of the store. Adler suddenly thought of something. Mikaela had been paying for everything in the store. While it was fine for today, he couldn't let it be the case regularly, so he had to have some money of his own. So, he asked Mikaela, "hey Mikaela, is there a Bank somewhere around here where I can create a new account."
"Bank? Umm... I think there is one on the first floor. Let's go." She took him to the bank on the first floor.
The bank was not so large, but not too small either. There weren't many people there. People only visited the bank nowadays if they needed to make a new account or solve some complications that might have arisen in their account. Everything else happened digitally. There wasn't even paper money to find anymore. It really was the age of technologies.
Adler lined up in front of the board that said 'New Accounts here'. After a few minutes, his turn came up. "Please scan your retina on the right." A droid spoke from the other side of the glass. He did as it told and scanned his eyes on the piece of black glass.
"Do you wish to create a new account?" it asked. To which Adler replied, "Yes."
"Thank you for coming. Your new account has been created. You can access the account from any form of digital technology. Have a nice day. Next." The droid shouted.
'So easy.' Adler was shocked. This was way easier than when he had to create an account with his hunter card, and even then he had thought that it was easy. He turned to Mikaela and said, "The account has been created. Let's go add some money. I got a few mana stones I can sell."
He started walking out of the bank. "Wait, uncle," Mikaela said from behind. "If you want to sell mana stones, you can only do it from a bank. You can't do it anywhere else. So there is no need to leave." She then pointed to a more secluded section of the bank. He had missed it at first glance because no person was standing in line there. "That is where you sell your mana stones. Though hardly anyone ever sells it anymore. Ever since Guilds and Government took over dungeons, they basically have a monopoly over the mana stones."
Adler didn't think much of what he was told. He didn't need to care as he had as many mana stones as he would ever need right here with him.
He walked up to the counter, where then the droid spoke up, "Do you wish to sell mana stones?". He replied, "Yes." A panel opened up by the side. The droid then spoke, "Please deposit all the mana stones from the panel on the right."
He stepped next to the panel and opened his inventory. Mikaela watched as he started pouring a few dozen C-ranked mana stones. She was expecting him to have at least B-rank stones and got disappointed. As the pouring kept going, she was a little shocked. 'Is he not gonna stop.' She thought to herself. Soon the C-rank stones stopped pouring in, and instead, B-rank started pouring. This too was non-stop. This really shocked Mikaela. She had never thought she would ever see so many stones being brought out by a single person.