After cleaning his room and bathing, Alex walked out of his room to eat out today. It had been a month since he had something decent that he did not make himself.
Feeling rich today, he decided to move to the nearby market road. It was just a 5-minute walk from his house.
To be true, in the local colonies, there were a lot of market roads, which were roads where, on both ends, there were a bunch of shops that sold all the things one could imagine.
He moved through the market road, walking on the solid concrete. These local colonies were not inferior to the city. It was just that the buildings here were more disorganized.
There were weird roads that ended with a house at the T-point. Only the big roads, like the market roads, had proper planning, yet the entire market mostly remained jammed with multiple battery rickshaws and motorcycles.
Not caring about all the surrounding noise, Alex walked to the most famous snack shop. After ordering a bunch of stuff, he sat at one table outside the shop. Thanks to a little drizzle last night, there was no glaring sun to ruin his time outside.
After living for a long time in this local region, he learned a few important things about these areas. The one thing that separated these areas from the city was the selective lawlessness around the city.
He came to know that if you were living here for a long time and you knew a few people in the locality, then you were well protected by the law.
No one would make things bad for you. But for others, everything depended on your relationship with the family members of the local policemen and politicians.
Those guys had higher authority than the law in these areas. Most of the time, the police wouldn't even work until it involved someone these people knew about.
Well, he believed it was necessary in this area. Here, every locality had someone who represented the locality in shady deals. These boss men control most troublemakers in their area.
In recent years, much of that has changed. To be true, these local boss men gained respect through their ability to provide ways for their members to earn easy money. But with the Hunt making gambling such a norm, even these guys struggled to keep the troublemakers in check.
Even with all the drawbacks, he found the community here much more closely bonded than those present in the city.
Like his construction coworkers. He did not have a close relationship with most of them except those three. They still invited him to the community festivals that everyone celebrated here.
Alex stopped thinking about the locality. Everything good about this area could hurt him in the game.
In Hunt 5, every player started as an apprentice hunter. He was also an apprentice hunter.
All the apprentice hunters would have to pass three games to reach Level One Hunter.
The first three games were trials, which were easy to pass, but in these games, all the players were normal humans with no extra abilities.
The problem was that he would most likely enter the game with 10–20 other people. The people in this area were so closely related to one another that there was a high chance some of them would know each other in real life.
All of that, along with a bunch of other restrictions these trial rounds have, could make it harder for him, as he did not know anyone here that much.
Alex knew about this limitation, which was why he avoided telling others about his capsule implant. Now, if he didn't get into his first game, it would be a matter of time before many around the city would get hold of the information.
All of that was not much of a big deal, but he knew from the digital scanning that multiple syndicates were working in this mess of a city. These guys were local guilds that worked for these boss men to help them with information about the other players and their abilities.
In today's world, there might be many who do not take their health seriously, but everyone, from kids to old people, cares about the hunt.
Heck, in the past two years, he saw multiple roadshows in the area where many celebrated becoming Level One Hunters.
What was good about this game was that there was no point in taking revenge here. Like, if you lose a game, it would be over for you, but you could still earn by betting on the players that beat you.
Getting to level 1 hunter was a big deal in these areas. As for the ranks after that, he did not know much, as most of the Rank 1s would get recruited to big guilds, and no one knew what happened to them afterward because of the guild's strict control over the information of their players.
The only saving grace in this was the random characterization and random faces in the game. This was the reason he hid his game ID from those guys, as it was the only way someone from outside could track the players in their first game.
He did not want to irk any of these syndicates this fast and make things troublesome for himself.
Alex sighed, thinking about all this stuff. Even with years of preparation, he knew one mistake could ruin everything.
At this moment, his eyes flashed a little. He closed one eye and looked down at the empty table with the other. He saw the green line already overlapping the red line completely.
The green bar started blinking for a few seconds before both red and green lines disappeared from the corner of his eye.
He waited for something to happen, but even after sitting there for minutes, covering his eyes, he found nothing new.
In frustration, he rubbed his eyes. "What's going on now?"
Before he could think more, a bright flash suddenly engulfed him, and a voice sounded in his brain.
Ding!
[Welcome to HUNT 5.]
[Loading the personal data... Player: Alex Lawson, please tell us your hunter's name.]
'Damn, talk about the timing.'