Long-Awaited Card Draw

Chapter 176

That made sense. With a near-eternal lifespan, mysterious abilities, and the power, reputation, and wealth of the entire planet Sakaar…

The Grandmaster was practically Sakaar’s deified local emperor!

Serving a ruler was like living beside a tiger. The Grandmaster might befriend any creature, but that depended entirely on his mood. If someone could improve his mood, they were all good friends. If they worsened it, then sorry…

"If you want to live peacefully on Sakaar, it’s best not to get to know the Grandmaster." Anli emphasized her words, clearly intending them as a warning.

"I have no intention of dealing with the Grandmaster." Kyle shrugged, elegantly poured himself a glass of alien wine, and said slowly, "What interests me is the challenger in the Duel Arena."

"A challenger?" Anli asked in surprise.

"Yes. In that Warm-up Match just now, one of the challengers who advanced to the final four looked rather like a friend of mine." Kyle took a sip of wine and spoke calmly.

"That’ll be difficult." Anli frowned. "Before this, perhaps we could have bribed the guards at the Underground Prison and exchanged them for a slave. But challengers who reach the final four will compete in the Champion’s Match three days from now. Once the Grandmaster has personally seen and confirmed them, no guard would dare release them no matter how much money you offered."

"What if I only wanted to meet them once?" Kyle pressed.

"That won’t be a problem." Anli smiled faintly and said confidently, "I know a prison guard. He can arrange for you to meet the challenger."

"That would be a tremendous help." Kyle smiled. In response, Anli’s pink face blossomed like a flower as she said warmly, "You’re welcome. After all, you’re an important client of mine. If you have any business in the future, be sure to send it my way."

"I do have some business, though I’m not sure whether you’ll be interested." Kyle took a sip of red wine and said.

Anli blinked playfully and joked, "Nothing under a million."

A million? That was really a little low.

Kyle smiled, a faint gleam flickering in his eyes as he said seriously, "What I want to discuss is a business deal worth over ten million."

"Over ten million?!" Anli’s expression turned utterly stunned. The wine she had been drinking went down the wrong way, making her cough violently and drawing strange looks from Bai Bo and Xiao Di.

Taking a deep breath, Anli steadied herself and stared at Kyle as she asked shakily, "Are you sure? You aren’t looking to buy some high-end luxury ship, are you?"

"A ship?" Kyle stroked his chin and calmly accepted the suggestion. "Right, I do need to buy one."

Unless one was an Asgardian with the Bifrost, anyone traveling through the vast cosmos required an Interstellar Ship as a basic means of transportation.

"But the deal worth over ten million I mentioned isn’t for the ship." Kyle shook his head.

"Then what do you want to buy?" Anli said confidently. "Whether it’s through the black market or exchange channels, I have everything covered. I guarantee you’ll be satisfied."

"What I want to buy is a little hard to describe. Later, I’ll have Bai Bo give you a list. You just need to collect and deliver the items according to the requirements on it."

As Kyle spoke, he reached into his leather jacket pocket. Under Anli’s wide-eyed gaze, he pulled out an energy crystal wrapped in metal, glowing with a pale blue-white sheen, placed it on the table between them, and pushed it forward.

"Vibranium." Anli stared fixedly at the energy crystal before her. Forgetting all about maintaining her elegance, she swallowed hard, then suddenly covered her mouth with both hands.

She cautiously looked around. Only after seeing that the aliens dining nearby had not noticed them did she roll her eyes at Kyle and ask in a trembling voice, "That’s ten million! You just carry it around with you like that?"

"Is that a problem? Consider it half the deposit." Kyle smiled. Not only vibranium—he carried many things with him in Card Space.

"Ten million, and you’re just paying it to me in advance without a second thought? Aren’t you afraid I’ll cheat you?" Anli asked suspiciously.

"Cheat me? That doesn’t exist. Or you can try." Kyle’s lips curved upward into a cold, wicked smile.

When it came to being shady, no one could outdo him. Since he had only just arrived on Sakaar, he had already tried his best to be gentler.

"I was only joking." Anli waved her hands somewhat awkwardly, though her heart was still churning like a stormy sea.

For that brief instant just now, she had actually sensed a dangerous aura from the perfect man before her, like that of a ferocious beast from the stars.

Kyle thought for a moment and said, "There are quite a lot of goods I need to buy. You can gather them in several batches. And pick out a ship for me as well. Luxury doesn’t matter; the key is that its performance must be good enough to pass through unstable Space Wormholes and travel long distances across the cosmos."

Anli nodded, then asked somewhat unnaturally, "You want to leave Sakaar?"

"Not for now. But I’m not originally from here, after all. One day, I will leave this place. My family is still waiting for me." At the last sentence, Kyle’s fists clenched unconsciously, and even his heart, always hard as iron, softened.

Earth was the home that truly belonged to him.

"I understand. Before my parents died, they often spoke of their home planet with deep unwillingness. If I get the chance someday, perhaps I’ll risk my life to leave this place and bring their remains back to our home planet."

As Anli spoke, the sorrow on her face faded. She put the vibranium into her bag and said firmly, "Leave it to me."

After finalizing their cooperation, Kyle returned to the hotel, quickly prepared a complicated and lengthy list of items, handed it to Bai Bo to organize, and had it delivered to Anli.

The list prioritized items by price. From common Laser Guns to all sorts of useless high-tech auxiliary devices, he would buy whatever was cheap. The only condition was that they had to be intact and undamaged.

It was like collecting trash, except the trash Kyle collected was high-grade, fully intact interstellar junk.

Neither Bai Bo nor Anli could make sense of the shopping list. They did not understand what use Kyle had for collecting so many cheap, useless items.

Though she did not understand, Anli still upheld the principle that the customer came first. She did not ask too many questions, worked with remarkable efficiency, and by the next day had delivered the first batch of high-grade goods worth a million—junk—to a warehouse in the outer district that she had specially rented for Kyle.

After receiving the inspection notice, Kyle immediately went alone to the warehouse in the outer district.

An underground warehouse in the outer district.

Kyle operated the controls and opened the smart door. The sound-activated lights inside came on, revealing a square, spacious underground room of three hundred square meters.

In the center of the basement, a mountain of items produced by advanced cosmic civilizations had been piled up: Laser Guns with depleted energy, alien watches used for fixed-location communication, and so on.

The items themselves were not low-grade, but because they had lost their practical value on this planet, they had become high-end junk—too tasteless to keep, too wasteful to throw away. Each had been bought back for only three to five thousand.

But to Kyle, this high-end junk was treasure waiting for him to develop!