The battle was soon over and the remaining Green Wolves were eliminated by the hunters.
"Thank you for your timely arrival. My name is Max." Max extended his hand towards Mark while looking at him gratefully. If not for Mark, he wouldn't have ended well against those two Green Wolves.
"I'm Wolf. You're welcome." Mark grabbed his hand and shook it. Unlike himself who struggled to achieve his first kill, Max managed to defeat his target in just three moves.
"Are you guys alright?" Kevin checked on the newbies to see if one of them was injured and to his surprise, they only had some superficial wounds. Mark and Max were the only ones who weren't injured.
Seeing this, Kevin gave them a thumbs up. "Good job!"
His words made Mark smile. The feeling of being acknowledged made him happy.
"You guys did better than the last batch of newbies I teamed up with." Kevin chuckled.
Mark smiled and shook his head. "Kevin, what are they doing?" He asked when he saw the hunters taking out the red gems embedded in the wolves' foreheads.
"You don't know what those gems are?" Kevin stared at him in surprise.
Mark shook his head.
Kevin was speechless by his response. "Just what kind of backwater town did you come from, kid? Anyway, the red gems they are taking out are called Blood Crystals. They contain traces of Qi in them so they can be used to speed up cultivation. However, they still need to be processed to remove all the impurities that are harmful to us cultivators. I heard that there are other uses for the Blood Crystals, but I have no clue about them."
"They can increase cultivation speed?" Mark was surprised to hear this.
"That's right. To be precise, those Blood Crystals can increase your absorption rate." Kevin explained.
Mark finally realized how those people in the rankings managed to cultivate faster than most players. It turns out that they were using items that supplemented their cultivation speed.
"Come here. I'll teach you how to take out the Blood Crystals without ruining them." Kevin grabbed Mark by the shoulders and brought him to the nearest corpse of a Green Wolf.
"Watch me closely." Kevin took out a small knife from his pocket. "You have to be careful when dealing with Blood Crystals. Although they can still be used if they are broken, their value would be less than half of their original price. This is because the Qi inside the crystal would decrease significantly once they are broken." Kevin showed him how to cut the Blood Crystal from the wolf's skull.
Mark carefully observed how Kevin extracted the Blood Crystal. He was like a student, patiently listening to his teacher's instructions.
"What do you think? Do you want to try it yourself?" Kevin asked him with a smile.
Mark nodded. "I'll give it a try."
Kevin grinned upon hearing his response. "Alright. You may use my knife." He then grabbed another corpse and threw it in front of Mark. "Go ahead."
Mark squatted in front of the wolf carcass. He then slowly and carefully moved the knife towards the Blood Crystal. He was clumsy at first, but he soon managed to get the hang of it.
"Not bad, kid. You're quite skilled with the knife." Kevin wasn't stingy with his praise.
Mark smiled at him before he turned his gaze at the Blood Crystal he had taken out.
It felt warm in his hand.
He could subtly feel the Qi inside the small crystal.
"Don't even think about absorbing the Qi in there. It will only result in a backlash and damage your meridians." Kevin warned him when he saw Mark staring deeply at the Blood Crystal.
Mark looked away from the crystal and nodded his head. "What should I do with this?" He asked.
"You killed the wolf so it's yours. It's worth a lot of money so you can sell it if you want. You can also ask an alchemist to purify it for you." Kevin smiled and patted his shoulder.
"How much is this crystal worth?" Mark didn't have a lot of money so he could only sell it. As for hiring an alchemist to purify the crystal, he didn't know if he could afford it.
"Hmm. Let me think…" Kevin thought for a moment before he said. "One crystal should be around 100 Orbes. If you include the corpse of the Green Wolf, that would be 450 Orbes."
Mark was surprised when he heard this. "That much?"
"You think it's too expensive? That is a mystical beast and only cultivators like us can kill them!" Kevin stared at him as if he was an idiot. "Not everyone can become cultivators. In the village, only 10% of the population has the talent to cultivate and only half of them managed to break through from their mortal shackles and reach Body Strengthening First Level."
Mark was stunned. He never thought that cultivators were actually so rare. That means the players have the advantage since all of them could cultivate and they were even provided with an ordinary cultivation technique. "Thank you for your teachings."
"Don't mention it." Kevin waved his hand before walking away to deal with his spoils.
Mark kept the Blood Crystal and the corpse of the Green Wolf inside his storage bag. He then grabbed a bottle of water that was given to him by a kind hunter and drank in large gulps.
None of the hunters died during the battle, but some of them were injured. Luckily, their injuries weren't fatal so they could still join the hunt.
"Let's take an hour of rest here." Jason declared when he saw the wounded hunters.
"Yes, sir!"
While Mark was resting, a prompt suddenly appeared in front of him.
[Player Forum is now open!]
'What is this?' Mark thought as he opened the player forum panel which was right under the leaderboards panel.
He noticed that there were already some posts in the forum.
"Hello! Is there anyone here who is teleported in Celova? I'd like to form a team. You can DM (direct message) me if you're interested."
"Hey guys! I just found out that some medicines can increase our cultivation, but they are very expensive. You can check them out in Alchemy stores. I hope this helps!"
"I'd like to buy the game currency using real money. 100 dollars for 1000 Orbes. DM for sure traders only!"
Mark read several important information, but there were also posts with questionable content. "100 dollars for 1000 Orbes? This guy is actually willing to pay that much for the game currency?"
As a service crew, he earns about 2000 dollars a month or 70 dollars per day, and 100 dollars if his part-time jobs were included.
Mark couldn't believe his eyes. "I wish I was as rich as this guy…" He muttered.
"There's also someone teleported to the country of Celova, but I don't think it's a good idea to expose my location." Mark mumbled to himself.
He read a few more posts, but he soon lost interest after seeing that most of them were common knowledge. He closed the forum and rested under the shade of a tree.