"Whoah, your ambition is even higher than mine," Max gasped.

Surprisingly, he didn’t laugh at Vlad’s declaration. He was only a bit taken aback.

Vlad looked at him silently for a couple of seconds.

"You are also not half bad yourself," Vlad said, extending his hand. "Wanna be friends?"

"Bro, you took the words right out of my mouth," Max laughed, slapping his hand against Vlad’s.

"Bwahahaha, you two are putting on quite a show," a boy from the freshers’ group laughed out loud. He was the one who had reached the Grimveil forest alongside Max.

His heavy frame was clad in formal attire with neatly styled brown hair above a round face that looked completely out of place at a Treasure Hunting Orientation. "Surpass Master Bram and become a Legendary Knight? You are completely full of yourselves."

"Hahaha, no way these two are actually serious," others from the group also broke into laughter upon hearing the exchange between Vlad and Max.

"One is from the dying Caldren House and the other is a freaking Lumberjack, a commoner," the boy mocked. "Two peas from the same pod."

Max clenched his fists, his knuckles turning white as he lowered his face.

"Who is this guy?" Vlad asked, his brows furrowing.

"I’m L—"

"He is Leo Roosevelt from the Order of Rings," Max introduced him, cutting him off mid-sentence, releasing his tightening fist.

"Is he related to you?" Vlad asked Max, completely ignoring the man in question.

Max shook his head.

"Nobody asked for his opinion, so why is he butting in?"

"No idea. Maybe all that running went to his head," Max answered, shrugging.

"Max Caldren! How dare—"

"Well, can’t blame a guy who is loose in the head," Vlad added with a sigh of pity, cutting him off mid-sentence again.

"I think that is enough introduction," Vlad continued as he moved in front of the mound of books. "All of these books were found by me and belong to me. If you want them, you need to pay a price."

"What do you need in return?" Max asked, understanding the situation.

Vlad folded his arms, his head rising high as he announced, "Whoever finds the uniform belonging to Chloe or Vlad can exchange it for all the books they need."

"So you want us to run around the whole campus looking for your uniforms while you laze around here," Leo said, already offended from the previous exchange.

"Securing your uniform will only earn you five credits while one book earns three credits. You can exchange thirty credits’ worth of books for just five credits’ worth of uniform. If this isn’t a dirt cheap price, I don’t know what is," Vlad answered with a click of his tongue, as if offended by Leo’s remarks.

"Will you really exchange the uniform for the whole syllabus?" someone from the freshers’ group asked.

"Of course! There are two uniforms so only two people can claim this reward. If I were you, I would have already run out and begun the search."

"I will be the one to find the uniform," one of them announced, rushing out.

"No, it will be me," another added.

One by one, everyone began bolting out of the forest.

Leo clicked his tongue in frustration before turning around as well.

"Are you not going to participate?" Vlad asked, turning to Max, who was standing still, his eyes fixed on a rectangular device in his hand.

"I’m already looking for them," Max replied with his tongue out as he pulled his goggles down over his eyes.

Vlad moved closer in curiosity to peek at what he was doing.

In the plate-sized device in Max’s hand, a large green display was embedded in which several small glowing dots were visible.

Below were numerous keys embedded on the device which Max was pressing rapidly, as if entering some information into it.

"What is it?" Vlad asked, confused.

Max didn’t answer. He was too focused on the device to respond. After a few seconds, he pressed the final key and revealed, pointing at the ten glowing dots, "All of these dots on the radar are my babies that I spread across the campus. They are looking for my uniform. I just updated their instructions to alert me if they find the uniform of Vlad Lumberjack and Chloe as well."

"Cool! You have more toys and you can control them without even seeing them," Vlad exclaimed. "Did you make them yourself?"

"Of course," Max replied, his nose rising in pride.

"Woah! You are a genius," Vlad gasped, giving him a thumbs up. His eyes narrowed at the display as a question arose in his mind.

"But how will they find the uniforms? The uniforms must be properly hidden. And what if a uniform is placed somewhere high up?"

"You ask good questions, bro," Max chuckled as he explained, "The uniforms of the Academy are woven with special fibres that provide a high level of defence. These special fibres radiate a mana frequency that I uploaded into my bots. Once they reach the marked area on the map, they will detect the uniforms using mana detection. As for your other question, my bots can also fly for a small height."

With a wide smirk on his face, he added, "They have already sniffed out thirty uniforms, with one of them belonging to Chloe."

Vlad immediately wrapped his arm around Max’s shoulder and whispered with a demonic smile, "Buddy, wanna join my plan to become the richest first years in the Academy?"

Max gave him a sideways glance and answered with a snicker, "I like the sound of that. Count me in."

Both of them began snickering as Vlad revealed his complete plan to Max.

---

Five minutes later, Chloe returned to the forest, her clothes clinging to her skin, completely damp with sweat.

In her hand she carried a small metallic card. The moment she reached the tree where Vlad and Max were sitting, she dropped to the ground, breathing heavily.

"W-water..." she murmured.

Vlad took out a bottle of water from the small backpack he was carrying and moved closer to Chloe.

Moving one hand behind her head to slightly lift her, he pressed the bottle’s neck to Chloe’s lips with the other.

"Thank you for your hard work," Vlad said in a warm tone. 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

Chloe quickly chugged down the whole bottle and fell asleep on Vlad’s thigh, too exhausted to answer him.