Chapter 103: Chapter 103: Harvest
*Ding. Host has killed one yellow-grade spiritual beast. Would Host like to start a mission for 1500 GP or receive the 100 GP for 1 kill immediately?*
'Well, how nice of you to ask…maybe it's because it senses that killing yellow-grade creatures is not a common occurrence for me' Kain thought.
'I will collect them now.' He didn't foresee being able to complete 10 kills soon anyways, and he may need the GP before he could complete the mission.
With that notification, Kain could confirm that the Pterix was dead. Thankfully, it appears as though one of wasps landed the finishing blow.
After receiving the notification, he had Eve return to Queen's body. The life energy that immediately flooded her removed any lingering weakness.
"Is it dead?" Finn asked hesitantly. It seems as though he had also learned the hard way at some point that spiritual beasts may fake death to deal a final blow.
"Yes it's dead. Don't worry, my contract has a way to sense the life force of spiritual creatures." Kain made up an explanation to put everyone at ease.
Everyone couldn't help but immediate sag in relief and begin tending to their wounds. Thankfully, nobody was seriously injured from direct hits, but the debris had definitely caused many cuts and bruises to the group.
Aurelia thankfully was able to heal such simple wounds quickly with a burst of a light-attribute skill.
While everyone was recomposing themselves, perhaps as an occupational habit, Kain couldn't help dragging his exhausted body to begin breaking down the Pterix bodies into parts. Especially since he knew that even the parts of orange-grade spiritual creatures had given him 7 figures before, much less the parts from a yellow-grade spiritual creature.
He took special care to extract the spiritual power orb that remained after death only in creatures yellow-grade and above. He learned during his first few Planner courses that this was a key evolutionary material.
After breaking down the parts of the yellow-grade Pterix leader and its 10 underlings, the parts were placed into all of their spiritual rings, leaving most of them with not much space remaining.
"I know we're all tired, but we need to examine the mountains for any other Pterix. The mission is to make sure we get rid of ALL of them." Aiden said.
Everyone nodded tiredly in agreement and began to head up the mountain.
All along the way they didn't see any more Pterix, but they couldn't help but admire the incredible views. Looking down they could faintly see 4 villages in each cardinal direction.
One village surrounded by spiritual plants—Moonvale. One sitting on the edge of a tranquil lake, which was sparkling under the midday sun—Moonspring Village. One was harder to see than the other three, surrounded perpetually by mist—Mistmoon Village. And one was surrounded completely by lush trees, with even the homes appearing to be integrated with the forestry—Greenmoon Village.
"So beautiful…" Leonara whispered. And everyone else also agreed.
Near the peak of the mountain they spotted a giant nest resting on the edge of a cliff. It was composed of from a variety of branches and spiritual plants, and inside laid 3 large eggs that reached up to Kain's knee.
Each egg was a deep azure colour, with intricate patterns resembling lightning bolts and storm clouds etched into its surface.
Among the other two that were still, one egg would occasionally pulse with a faint, electric glow, a sign that it will soon emerge.
"What do we do with these?" Bridge questioned.
"Well, we can't leave them here. Once they hatch they will continue to be a nuisance for the villagers. We need to take them back to the college, we can then exchange the eggs for credits from the school and split them." Kain replied.
"Actually…I may want to bind one." Aiden said, "I haven't found a suitable second contract yet and it meets the conditions of my affinity. Also, I could do a lot worse than a contract of gold-quality. It also has a lightning-attribute along with the wind-attribute, and since I have a wind attribute affinity its dual attributes will give my lineup some diversity. I won't be unfair to you all.
Once we find out much credit we can get for each egg, I'll pay you guys that same amount to split"
Everyone nodded. There was no problem with that plan.
Excitedly, Aiden took the initiative to carry the egg close to hatching, while Bridge and Kain carried the other two down the mountain before loading them on the Night Mares they had stashed further from the base of the mountain to avoid them dying in the aftermath of the battle.
Then they headed back to the village. Thanks to their removal of the infestation, there were still some spiritual plants that could be harvested for the college workers, although their quality and quantity was lower than usual.
Therefore, Kain and the others did not need to worry about their transportation back to the college.
The trip back to the college was uneventful aside from the one Pterix egg hatching. Since they'd all already agreed to leave the egg to Aiden, he immediately just signed a contract with it, while once again reaffirming to the others that he'd pay them back at campus.
Similarly, due to his Evolutionary Planner major, Kain also mentioned wanting to keep the yellow-grade spiritual power orb. The others didn't seem to know the purpose of the orb, even the well-informed Aiden and Addison, and allowed Kain to keep it after getting it appraised and exchanging some credits with each of them.
Unable to resist the allure of credits that can be used to increase their strength, after quickly turning over a signed statement from the village chief to confirm their completion of the first mission and confirming their completion of the second mission, they went to an exchange hall to sell all of the parts.
Each of the orange-grade bodies gave around 100 credits, and the yellow-grade body provided approximately 500 credits, even after Kain removed the valuable spiritual power orb, which was worth around 100 credits alone.
'It seems that the bodies obtained from hunting missions are much more valuable than the mission itself,' Kain thought. Noting to take more such hunting missions in the future.
Each of the two eggs was also worth 600 credits due to their being future high-potential contracts for Dark Moon students, they were even more valuable than the full-grown body of their parent.
It was more expensive than expected, and Aiden was forced to remove some objects for exchange from his space ring in order to make up for the gap in credits.
However, despite having all of his newly obtained credits being sent to Kain and the others, Aiden did not regret his new contract. After all, exchanging for a young Pterix from the school would probably cost more than 600 credits later on.
After Kain also paid the others for the spiritual orb he took, Kain was left with around 450 credits from the exchanged materials and the completion of the mission. However, to have a better understanding of the value of over 400 credits, he'd need to look at what was available for exchange from the college.