Zenith’s Tower

Chapter 14: Not Enough Money

 

“If you happen to come across any more monster gems, bring them back here and I’ll buy them off of you as well.”

Droven tells Ellis as he brought out a piece of paper for him to fill out to receive the money. Ellis read over the paper and found that it was basically just a bill of sale with empty lines for his bank account, so they knew where to deposit the money. Ellis finished signing his name and filling out his bank information. Droven swiped up the paper and looked it over to make sure everything was in order.

“Excellent! I’ll have the money deposited into your bank account immediately.”

Ellis got up from the table as Droven led him to the doors. Droven opened the door for Ellis and reached out to shake Ellis’s hand.

“Pleasure doing business with you. Remember to bring anything else you find to me. You have a wonderful day now, Ellis.”

“You too.”

Ellis replied as he was motioned out the door. Ellis was still in shock and his brain hadn’t fully processed how much money he had just gotten.

What am I going to do with all of this? Wait, first I need to check to make sure I even got it. I need to get a new bank card too since my old one was lost when I went into the Tower along with my phone.

Ellis headed to the elevator to leave as he thought about what he had to do today. He knew that he wanted to pay the hospital bills and rent.

Well, maybe I should wait to go to the hospital until tomorrow, just so I don’t look suspicious.

He thought to himself as he went into the elevator.

He made his way down to the first floor and as he was walking out the door to leave, the clerk waved to him and thanked him for coming in. Ellis waved back awkwardly and left. The bank was just around the corner, so Ellis made his way there quickly and went inside. Find authorized novels in Webnovelfaster updates, better experiencePlease click www.webnovel.com www.webnovel.com for visiting.

“How can I help you?”

A tired-looking, fat middle-aged woman said without even looking up at Ellis.

“I need to get a new bank card.”

Ellis looked around the bank as he fidgeted with his hands.

“Name.”

The lady sluggishly asked.

“Ellis Ryne.”

He said a little bit annoyed with her rudeness.

This lady needs a nap. She’s one eye bag away from being a monster herself.

“It’ll be a $10 fee to replace your lost card. Did you want me to charge your account?”

The lady said as she continued clacking away on her keyboard.

“Yes, please.”

Ellis got nervous as the lady huffed and continued typing. If that money hadn’t been deposited yet, then he had absolutely no money in his account. He didn’t want to experience that embarrassment of her refusing to give him a bank card because he didn’t have $10.

The lady got up from her chair and walked away into the back. Ellis stood there awkwardly for a few minutes until she returned holding a card.

“Thank you.”

Ellis breath out in relief as the lady dropped the card into his hands. She huffed as a reply and nodded her head. Ellis turned to leave and saw the atm by the door. He didn’t want to interact with that lady anymore, so he decided to go to the atm to check his balance and deposit the $500 in cash that he had gotten for the jewelry. He inserted his card into the machine and typed in his pin. Nervousness overcame Ellis as he hit the balance button. $51,000. Ellis breathed in sharply. He had never seen so many zeros in his bank account before. Ellis then deposited the $500 cash he had and pulled out his card, holding it tightly to his chest like it a brick of gold before stuffing it deep into his pocket.

Ellis left the bank and started walking around aimlessly.

This is so much money! I could get Solara and me a new place to live in the upscale part of the city and get a car, so we don’t have to walk everywhere! No, I shouldn’t do that. If I got a new place to live, it would cost too much to pay for everything and a car isn’t necessary right now with half the city destroyed. I need to be smart about this. There’s no guarantee that I’ll be able to make more unless I find more monsters.

Ellis wanted to make sure the money would last and that it was put to good use.

First, I’ll go to the landlord and pay for everything that’s overdue and the next six months of rent, just in case something happens to me. Solara won’t have the burden of paying for everything herself for a while. I’ll go to the hospital tomorrow and pay the other $5,000. Even though I’m paying the $10,000 so they don’t pull the plug on her, she still has hundreds of thousands of dollars in medicals bills from spending the past seven months in there. I’ll have to put away a few thousand to make sure we never get so far overdue that they threaten to pull the plug again. With everything left, I’ll give all but $4,000 to Solara for her tuition because even though she’s slipped a bit in school, I know she can still make it into university.

The more he thought about everything, the more he realized that $50,000 wasn’t going to be enough to fix Solara and his life. As he was walking around Ellis saw a cell phone store across the street and headed over to it because he still didn’t have a phone. As he opened the door, he saw ads for the new Guava phone 11 for $1000. He goes inside and sees smartphones of all different kinds. The phone Ellis had before wasn’t even a touchscreen phone. The only things he could do on it were call and text, but it did him well for as long as he had it. He heard that these new phones were always breaking, so he had no intention of getting one. Ellis looked around the shop for a few minutes before a clerk walked up to greet him

“What kind of phone are you looking for today, sir?”

The man asked in a business-like tone.

“I just need a flip phone.”

The man chuckled to himself when he heard Ellis’s response, then retained his composure.

“We don’t carry any flip phones, sir. Can I interest you in the new latest and greatest, Guava phone 11?”

The salesman started rambling on and on about the various features of the phone. Ellis tuned out until he heard the word monster come out of the salesman’s mouth.

“Wait, what about monsters?”

“Oh, you can download an app from the Guava app store that has a special feature that alerts you when monsters are spotted near the city so that you can steer clear of the area or evacuate. Our other phones don’t have the Guava app store so you can only get it on this phone. It’s well worth the buy during these troubling times. We have payment plan options available to make it easier for you to be able to pay.”

The clerk said, sucking Ellis in.

If I can track monsters, I might be able to kill them and sell more stuff to Droven.

“I’ll take it.”

“Great! I’ll go get the payment plan options for you to look at and then we-”

The man began to say before Ellis interrupted.

“No need, I’ll just buy it upfront.”

The salesman’s eyes widened in surprise before he regained his senses and responded back to Ellis.

“Oh, alrighty then let’s get to it!”

The man rushed over to the counter, feeling a bit embarrassed for judging Ellis off his appearance.

Ellis swiped his card and the man half expected it to be declined. It wasn’t. The man handed Ellis his new phone along with the box and other various items that came along with it such as a charger and headphones. Ellis smiled and left the store as he put his new phone into his backpack. He then started jogging to his next destination, the landlord’s office. He talked to the landlord and thanked him for not kicking Solara out while he was gone. He then paid the overdue rent as well as the next six months of rent, totaling to $4,000. Ellis left the office and headed back home, eager to figure out his new phone.

He went up the stairs, closed and locked the door, and then plopped down on his sister’s bed. It took him some time to figure out how to work the phone, but he eventually managed to get the gist of it. Ellis went to the app store on his phone and searched up the monster locater app that the guy at the phone store had told him about. He downloaded the app and opened it. As he looked around the app, he figured out how the app worked. The main screen of the app was a map with little monster faced pins that were peppered around where people had seen a monster recently. As he was inspecting the app, a little monster face notification popped up at the destroyed edge of the city. The monster was pretty close. Ellis clicked the pin and it popped up with more information on the monster sighting. The post described the monster to be around the size of a car with large boney spikes covering its entire body like a porcupine.

Ellis looked at the time on his phone. It was 10 pm.

Solara didn’t get home until one in the morning last night. So, I probably have enough time to at least go check out this monster before she gets home. Plus, I want to try out my halberd.

Ellis went to change and remembered the protective clothes he got from the Tower.

These could provide me with at least a little bit of protection without having to go full out.

Ellis slipped on the protective clothes then put on a dark hoodie and jeans over the top of them. He then grabbed his halberd and went to leave the apartment before he remembered something Belial had said. His stat points. Ellis opened his TowerCard and checked it out his stats.

Name: Ellis Ryne

Level: 26

Age: 17

Race: Human

HP:670/670

AP:1156/1156

VIT:68 END:45

AGI:66 STR:67

DEX:51 INT:66

WIS:18 RES:19

DEF:24 LUC:21

His stats looked fine; they were relatively evenly allocated.

Maybe he meant that I should have focused on just a couple of stats rather than spread them out evenly? If I focused them all into a couple of stats I would be twice as strong in those stats. Is that what he meant?

Ellis thought to himself.

After putting away his TowerCard, Ellis peered out of his front door, making sure no one was around so he wouldn’t be seen running around at night with a halberd. The halberd had a slight warm glow to it which made it a little more noticeable at night, so he used the backstreets to make his way to where the monster had been seen. Luckily, all the construction crews had been evacuated due to the monster sighting which made sneaking around a lot easier.

When Ellis made it to the ruined part of the city, he checked his phone quickly to see where the monster had been seen last and began searching for it. It didn’t take very long. The monster was shambling around shaking the ground with every step and picking through rotten corpses. Ellis hid behind a broken wall and inspected the monster. Ellis couldn’t see it super well in the dark from far away, but he could tell that calling it around the size of a car was an understatement, it looked to be the size of a truck.

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