After a brief moment of hesitation, Ryan picked up the second diary and began taking photos for translation.
By lunchtime, he had already translated three diaries and, with his laptop in hand, settled onto the sofa in the living room on the first floor.
Lying back, he became so engrossed in the content that he forgot about lunch altogether. When hunger struck, he simply grabbed some biscuits from the food storage room and continued reading.
The rhythmic patter of rain outside provided a soothing backdrop. It was oddly relaxing, reading Aileen's diaries while listening to the rain.
After finishing the diaries, Ryan started to memorize the files he had gathered on Gavin, Finn, and Liam Roberts, the owner of the first villa at the foot of the mountain. He forced himself to remember every detail—names, amounts of bribes, dates, locations, and the specific illegal activities involved.
Although he hadn't yet decided what to do with this information, he knew it would come in handy someday.
The secrets of these powerful figures could be worth a fortune if used correctly.
Five days flew by in this manner. Ryan spent most of his time memorizing the files, taking breaks to read Aileen's diaries.
By now, he had read through Aileen's 30 diaries, with only the last three remaining.
In the diaries, Aileen had documented nearly everything she could remember, starting from her earliest memories.
After reading through them, Ryan felt like he knew almost every aspect of Aileen's life up to that point—her entire 27 years laid bare.
He now knew more about Aileen than anyone else in the world.
After reading this, beyond feeling sympathy for Aileen, Ryan also felt a deep sense of admiration.
Contrary to what Ryan had imagined, Aileen's admission to Harvard wasn't due to her family's influence, but rather her own merit and hard work.
During her eight years at Harvard, she had studied relentlessly, earning a Ph.D. in finance, a master's degree in criminology and law, and mastering seven languages—Spanish, German, Russian, Arabic, Portuguese, in addition to English and French.
She had even found time to learn mixed martial arts, known as the "decathlon" of combat sports.
This meant that during her eight years of studying at Harvard, Aileen had only slept four hours a day, studying from dawn till dusk, pushing herself to the absolute limit.
Aileen's relentless drive stemmed from a powerful motivation—revenge.
As she wrote in her diary, she harbored deep resentment towards her father, Gavin, and Ian.
Her studies were clearly preparation for this vendetta.
Ryan, having read her diaries, understood her reasons and could judge right from wrong.
He sympathized with Aileen's desire for revenge; Gavin and Ian were truly despicable.
But Ryan also knew that Aileen's chances of success were slim. Both Gavin and Ian were formidable figures, and Aileen's current resources paled in comparison.
For now, Ryan could only sigh at her quest. The world of high-society grudges was far removed from his own concerns.
His priority was to survive in this game world.
As Ryan had anticipated, five more days passed, and both the rain and wind intensified. He gathered his raincoat and umbrella, got into his car, and drove down the mountain.
By now, the rain had turned into a downpour, drumming loudly against the car roof and blurring the windshield as soon as the wipers cleared it.
Ryan drove cautiously on the mountain road, navigating carefully. Using his car's navigation system, he found a lottery outlet 2 kilometers away.
The sight of the flooded streets on the way to lottery outlet weighed heavily on his heart.
After half a month of continuous rain, not only had the city's fires been extinguished, but the drainage system had also failed, causing water to accumulate on the roads.
Ryan didn't know how deep the water was, but he could roughly judge that the water was at least up to his lower leg.
Ryan knew he might need to be prepared in advance and find a higher ground soon; even the mountaintop villa could be at risk of flooding.
But Ryan had more immediate business to attend to.
He parked in front of the lottery outlet, opened the door with his umbrella, and retrieved all the scratch-offs inside.
This was his second plan to make money—by scratching lottery tickets!
Since everything in this world mirrored Fallford, the lottery tickets should be the same.
By scratching all the tickets in the nearby outlets, he could determine which ones had winning tickets. Then, once he returned to the real world, he could simply go to those outlets and buy the winning tickets.
The scratch-offs were packaged together, some in bundles of five hundred, others in bundles of a thousand, with varying top prizes.
Ryan carefully took out all the scratch-offs from the glass cabinet but kept them in their original order.
He did this to avoid forgetting which ticket had been in which position after scratching them.
To help with this, he specifically got a tablet with a stylus, marked the positions on it, and then began to scratch the tickets.
Unfortunately, after scratching all the tickets at this outlet, he only won three thousand dollars.
It wasn't worth remembering, so he moved on to the next lottery outlet.
Ryan wasn't sure how many lottery outlets there were in Fallford, but he knew there were three or four in the urban village where he lived. Some courier station owners even ran a lottery machine on the side.
This density meant that lottery ticket can be bought everywhere in Fallford.
According to the display in Ryan's car navigation, there are dozens of lottery outlets of various sizes within a radius of 3 kilometers.
As a first-tier city, Fallford had a resident population of nearly twenty million, not counting the transient population.
After experiencing the prosperity and extravagance of a first-tier city, many people were easily tempted by the desire for instant wealth without effort. This fueled the popularity of lottery outlets.
Ryan often saw people idly scratching tickets inside, with discarded lottery tickets scattered all over the floor.
After driving less than a few hundred meters, he found the next lottery outlet and immediately went inside to start scratching tickets.
Given the current weather conditions, he didn't have much time left to scratch as many tickets as he could.