Material acquisition can be a long process. Jack Carter can wait; he still has plenty of time. Even waiting two or three months wouldn’t be a problem—by then, everyone’s level will be higher, and materials will naturally be easier to acquire.

During this period, Jack Carter decided to do something meaningful, such as grinding reputation in Nasaion Town and leveling up a bit in the process. For Jack Carter, who now has the Supreme Second Ring as his goal, leveling up is no longer his top priority.

According to the normal walkthrough, after receiving Osama’s quest to craft 500 agate window ornaments, players can reach level 23–25. At that point, they can go crush the level 5–10 newbie dungeon outside town, the Twilight Forest. It’s full of crazed animals—mad rabbits, mad dogs, mad hedgehogs, and so on. The boss is just a level 10 elite earth wolf. Any paladin above level 20 can easily solo it. Due to the huge level gap, there’s no more experience, but you can collect all kinds of animal pelts, especially the boss’s pelt. Turning these pelts in to the town guard officer grants a large amount of town reputation (provided you’ve first obtained the Nasaion Town Medal of Honor). Grind for three days straight and you’ll reach Exalted. After that, go back to trainer Oqili to unlock the third wave of rocket-leveling.

In any case, this reputation grind is something that has to be done sooner or later. Although Jack Carter can’t crush dungeons right now, he can accumulate reputation by doing quests.

There are hundreds of NPCs in the town, with countless quests, and new random quests are generated every day. But they’re mostly just errands—delivering letters, running around, and so on, with limited experience and reputation rewards. There are also a few chain questlines, whose depth and complexity rival or even surpass the Osama questline. However, there’s a golden rule in the professional power-leveling world: never trigger two chain questlines at the same time!

This is a hard-learned lesson. For example, if your favorability with an NPC in one questline increases, it might cause your favorability with an NPC in another questline to drop. Situations like this happen far too often.

With Jack Carter’s by-the-book personality, he certainly wouldn’t dare cross the line, so he simply keeps his distance from chain quest NPCs. By the way, for over a week now, Jack Carter has been running around doing quests in formal wear, making him quite the sight. Among the players in Nasaion Town, he’s become something of a celebrity, even earning the nickname “Suit Guy”! Many people, out of curiosity, have tried to get close to Jack Carter, but as a professional power-leveler, he’s destined to be alone. Anything unrelated to business is just a burden, and Jack Carter habitually rejects it all.

In the blink of an eye, a week passed.

Jack Carter checked his mailbox every day, and as expected, the acquisitions were slow. Well, after all, these are mid-tier materials—not something players at the current level can easily handle. Still, he’d just craft as many as he could with whatever materials he had. Even cutting a random junk gem gave 300 experience, which wasn’t bad.

Aside from the chain quest NPCs he didn’t dare touch, Jack Carter had already cleared out nearly a thousand quests in the town. Relying on these meager bits of experience and reputation, he slowly leveled up to 16 and pushed his reputation to Revered. Fortunately, his coin pouch also gradually swelled to over 30 gold coins—doing quests really is profitable. This is the opposite of grinding monsters for experience, which burns through money.

The reputation ranks are: Hated, Hostile, Detested, Disliked, Unfriendly, Neutral, Friendly, Liked, Revered, Honored, Exalted. When players are born in their own territory, they start at Friendly by default. Reaching Liked already brings quite a few benefits, like cheaper prices and such. As for Exalted, the benefits are too many to list—discover them for yourself.

The efficiency just isn’t there. Doing quests blindly without following the walkthrough really doesn’t yield much experience or reputation. Just look at how much the gap with others has widened. Jack Carter opened the player level leaderboard, and there were quite a few changes.

1. Anonymous Player: Level 34 (Male, class unknown, race unknown)

2. William Clark: Level 32 (Male, Mage, Human)

3. Samuel Wright: Level 31 (Male, Rogue, Undead)

4. Charles Bennett: Level 30 (Male, Warrior, Orc)

5. Evelyn Brooks: Level 30 (Female, Priest, Elf)

6. Edward Harris: Level 30 (Male, Druid, Elf)

A certain Anonymous Player still dominates with an overwhelming lead, while William Clark, the future Archmage, has finally emerged to lead the second group. Meanwhile, someone is struggling because their walkthrough hit a snag. As a transmigrator, how can he bear it?

Ah! No, no! Calm down, stay calm! As a power-leveler, I’m supposed to be indifferent to others, even isolated from the world. Why am I even looking at the leaderboard? This temporary tactical retreat doesn’t shake my grand strategy at all. When it’s time to rise, I’ll rise—level is not a problem!

With this thought, Jack Carter felt much better. At that moment, Jack Carter realized he was passing by the Paladin Training Hall.

Come to think of it, he was already level 16 and hadn’t visited his class’s Paladin trainer even once to learn new skills. How embarrassing! Since he was passing by, he might as well go in and learn all the skills first.