Chapter 269 : Chapter 269
Chapter 269. A Real Eye-Opener
When Fulan and Nora arrived in front of those low buildings, Fulan saw a stone monument standing before them.
“Emerald Market,” Fulan read aloud.
Nora, standing beside her, explained,
“That’s the name of this market. It’s one of the largest low-tier markets in the entire Spirit Realm.”
“Oh, right. I still need to get you a guide item.”
As if suddenly remembering something, Nora walked behind the stone monument to the stall nearest it, took out some shattered Spirit Crystal fragments, and exchanged them for a purple sphere.
She returned, handed the sphere to Fulan, and said,
“This is the Spirit Realm Guide Item for Emerald Market. As long as the market is open, if you recite that incantation I gave you and have Spirit Crystal on you, you’ll be able to enter the market.”
“And if you ever run out of Spirit Crystal in the future, you can come to me for a little entrance fee. Just remember to always leave yourself enough Spirit Crystal for admission. Otherwise, it’ll be rather troublesome if you try to find Spirit Crystal in the Material Realm.”
“We’re both First-Tier Professionals. We’re not like those who haven’t yet reached a formal Tier and can freely travel to all kinds of Spirit Realm zones.”
“The Spirit Realm isn’t very welcoming to people like us who don’t have Spirit Realm professions. It almost never lets us go anywhere other than the market zones.”
That was why Nora had specifically reminded Fulan to save enough for the price of admission.
Otherwise, they would not be able to enter special zones like apprentices could to earn Spirit Crystal.
They could only obtain Spirit Crystal from Spirit Realm professionals or through exchanges in the market, and under such circumstances, it was inevitable that the other side would take a cut.
There was nothing to be done about that. This was the Spirit Realm, after all—a place connected to the entire continent.
Fulan nodded to show that she understood.
Nora then turned and led Fulan into the crowd. As they walked, she said,
“Here, you don’t have to worry about people stealing your things. Everything has to go through a special ritual before a transaction can be completed between two parties.”
“But when that trade ritual is being conducted, you still need to watch carefully. They might use little tricks so that you don’t actually get what you wanted.”
“Oh, and you can ignore those Spirit Realm professionals. Even though they’re blessed by the Spirit Realm here, so your attacks are ineffective against them, even if they beat you to death, nothing will happen to you in the Material Realm.”
“As long as you wait ten minutes, you can go back up to the Spirit Realm again. When you do, you’ll appear at a different entry point.”
“Then can Spirit Realm professionals ignore other people’s defenses as well?” Fulan suddenly asked.
“That’s right.”
At that moment, Nora glanced at a nearby stall. It was covered in red and purple vines, and there were also several jars of thick, dark liquid on display.
“Our luck is awful. We didn’t arrive in the monster materials district. This is the herbs and potions district.”
“In Emerald Market, each district is only allowed to sell specific categories of goods. Only the central district can ignore item categories, but only high-grade goods can be sold there.”
As she spoke, Nora glanced at the signboards on the buildings. There were some abbreviations that Fulan could not understand, but she could still see a wolf-head symbol on one of them, which indicated that the direction should be the purpose of their trip—the district that sold monster materials.
Nora led Fulan onward for three minutes, and only then did Fulan realize from the change in the buildings that they had entered another district. They had arrived in the monster materials district.
The things in Fulan’s field of vision shifted from all sorts of strange herbs to large amounts of monster materials hanging from the stalls.
Truth be told, monster materials looked much better than those herbs.
Fulan possessed Extraordinary-grade knowledge of Pharmacology, so in her eyes, those herbs held almost no mystery. She already knew what all of them were, so they seemed somewhat dull to her.
But once they reached the monster district, she encountered a huge number of things she had never seen before, and that immediately piqued her interest.
There was another reason as well: her Demon Hunter profession.
It was almost as if that profession was calling to her, urging her to deal with the living fox-type magical beast nearby.
That was the intuition she felt toward certain rare magical beasts. The medals in her mind seemed to be telling her that “dealing with these rare magical beasts” would bring enormous benefits.
Fulan shook her head and ignored that faint thought in her mind, instead firmly staying at Nora’s side.
From here on, she tried not to look at the living monsters anymore. It was too frightening. She was afraid that the next moment, she would not be able to stop herself from rushing over and cutting them down.
The market allowed people to bring monsters into the Spirit Realm, but they had to be properly restrained when brought up. Otherwise, the market would immediately expel them.
Under such circumstances, those monsters naturally enjoyed the same treatment. Killing them here was completely useless. They would still be alive and kicking in the Material Realm.
So even if Fulan stepped forward and killed these monsters, it would be pointless. Only if those monsters underwent a special transformation and became Spirit Realm creatures would she be able to obtain medals from them.
As for rare magical beasts, that was another category that had appeared on her medal wall after she killed the Deep-Sea Golden Dragon hatchling.
Fulan could sense that the Deep-Sea Golden Dragon medal brought her no attribute increase whatsoever, but medals from these rare magical beasts had a different use.
Beneath that Deep-Sea Golden Dragon medal, the following words were written:
【Hunt those rare magical beasts and raise your Tier. The next increase will come after five more medals.】
So the purpose of these rare magical beasts was to raise one’s Tier. No wonder she had previously felt that they were of little use.
But even after learning this, Fulan still had no clue how to go about hunting those rare magical beasts. She was currently in the Northern Frontier, a place famous for its scarcity of life. Where would she even find so many rare magical beasts?
Even if she took a liking to those rare magical beasts being sold in the Spirit Realm market, she could do nothing about it.
Right now, she was so poor that she did not even have enough for the admission fee to the next market. Where would she get the Spirit Crystal needed to buy those beasts?
All she could do was look at the overwhelming assortment of monster materials spread across the stalls, helplessly patting her pockets again and again, only to find that she could no longer scrape together even a single fragment of Spirit Crystal.
“We’re here. This is the place where commissions are posted. If there are any monster materials you want, you can place a commission here.”
Fulan looked up. Before her stood a snow-white building that was clearly taller than the surrounding ones. Even from the outside, it looked different from the nearby buildings.
And when Fulan lifted her gaze to the plaque above the building, her pupils could not help but contract.
“Adventurers’ Guild?!”
Fulan could hardly believe her eyes. How could she still run into the Adventurers’ Guild even in the Spirit Realm?
Seeming to sense her confusion, Nora explained from the side,
“It is the Adventurers’ Guild. Isn’t the Adventurers’ Guild the largest organization on the continent for handling monster materials? Why would they pass up a market like the Spirit Realm?”
After thinking it over for a moment, Fulan gradually understood. It was perfectly normal to see the Adventurers’ Guild in the Spirit Realm. Not seeing it would have been the strange thing.
As a region that could be entered from all over the continent, the Spirit Realm must have a flow of people and a level of demand far beyond that of the great cities on the continent. It would have been strange if they had not established a branch here.
Besides, a large portion of the adventurers in the Adventurers’ Guild had in fact advanced through the Spirit Realm.
Those adventurers who advanced through the Spirit Realm had no reason not to sell monster materials there as well.
So seeing the Adventurers’ Guild’s emblem in a Spirit Realm market was entirely normal.
Fulan looked toward the Adventurers’ Guild plaque. Beneath it was the guild entrance, and she could see that almost every three seconds, someone passed through those doors.
From that alone, it was easy to imagine that the Adventurers’ Guild in the Spirit Realm must have extremely good business.
But Fulan had no intention whatsoever of going inside, because she did not have even the slightest bit of Spirit Crystal on her.
She had left the small bag of Spirit Crystal she got from her first trip to the Spirit Realm back at her house. She had not brought it with her at all.
And even if she had brought it, Fulan did not think that tiny amount of Spirit Crystal would accomplish much.
She had just seen with her own eyes someone at a stall use a large chunk of Spirit Crystal to buy a monster material that would probably cost about five gold coins in the Material Realm.
Judging by that exchange rate, her Spirit Crystal fragments were likely worth less than a single gold coin in the Material Realm.
“I need to earn some Spirit Crystal first.” Fulan sighed, then said to Nora,
“Thank you for bringing me here. I need to go find a place to sell a few things.”
Nora nodded at that and replied,
“All right. Goodbye, then. I hope you find what you’re looking for soon.”
After parting with Nora, Fulan walked in the direction marked on the signboard with a longsword and armor symbol. She felt that making a weapon would probably be a much faster way to earn Spirit Crystal.
Of course, she could return to the Material Realm right now, go to the Northern Society and buy some rare materials, then make a longsword that everyone on the continent would know how to use. That would certainly let her exchange it for some Spirit Crystal.
But Fulan still wanted to see what weapons in the Spirit Realm actually looked like. She wanted to do some market research first.
Among those who bought weapons in the Spirit Realm, Spirit Realm professionals were more common.
Many Material Realm professionals held a vague feeling that equipment forged in the Material Realm was much better than equipment bought in the Spirit Realm.
But in truth, there was no difference between the two. Although the Spirit Realm had its own methods of producing weapons, Fulan could tell at a glance that most of the weapons being sold here had actually been brought up from the Material Realm after undergoing special processing.
From the techniques and materials involved, Fulan could see that these weapons were in fact forged in the Material Realm.
As for the Spirit Realm’s exclusive weapons, those were rather special. It was Fulan’s first time in another world seeing weapons whose appearance rivaled those ridiculous weapons from trashy online games.
Just as Fulan was marveling at these Spirit Realm weapons, a voice called out to her from behind.
“Emissary?” That voice carried uncertainty, confusion, and a trace of expectation.
Fulan turned around and saw someone she recognized—Una, the person she had crossed paths with during the Spirit Realm advancement trial.