The Gathering Mission
There were many kinds of missions. Some were bounties to thrash someone or kill them, others were escorts or assistants, and still others were requests to find lost items or animals.
Among them, what caught Han Yuhyeon's eye was a gathering mission. In this xianxia world, medicinal herbs served as materials for the alchemy that cultivators prized so highly, and they could also act as potions that replenished spiritual energy on their own.
That was why the demand for herbs always outstripped the supply, and gathering missions were posted at every bounty office no matter the region.
"This one."
Without hesitation, Han Yuhyeon tore the notice from the wall and handed it to the bounty office attendant. The man looked at the contents and startled.
"This one's a bit dangerous, don't you think?"
"Not my problem."
"It is my problem. You're our bounty office's biggest cash cow right now."
The attendant narrowed his snake-slit eyes.
"Neungha-gok isn't Baekun-pa territory. That means the fiend beasts and dangerous animals there haven't been cleaned out."
"I know."
"And what about Green Eye Herb? It doesn't even have a fixed colony—it's a herb that's hard as hell to gather."
"I said I know."
Han Yuhyeon scowled. The attendant flinched. Seeing his threat land, Yuhyeon felt a private spark of satisfaction.
"Kid, try not to make that face if you can help it. You're seriously disgusting-looking. Nearly gave me a heart attack. How does a person even get that ugly?"
"……."
"I'm not picking a fight—I'm genuinely impressed. To be ugly on this level. With a face like yours, the fiend beasts might just assume you're one of them and walk on by. You might actually be fine."
That sounds even more like he's picking a fight. But Han Yuhyeon didn't have time to bicker with some bounty office clerk. Right now was money-making time.
"Joking aside, think it over one more time. I'm not saying this for fun. Honestly, as someone who's run a bounty office for ten years, this mission's unit price doesn't add up. Harvesting Green Eye Herb in a place crawling with fiend beasts and wild animals for fifty spirit stones apiece? Way too cheap."
"Oh."
Han Yuhyeon looked at the attendant with fresh eyes.
"With a face that looks like it'd spit lies the second it opens its mouth, you sure know how to tell the truth."
"Oh, come on. You think I have a hobby of driving people I have no grudge against into a death trap?"
"You don't?"
Given the average personality of the xianxia world, it had seemed entirely possible. Discovering that the bounty office guy was surprisingly reasonable left Han Yuhyeon feeling as if his own common sense were collapsing instead.
"Anyway, I mean it. Honestly, when Baekun-pa first dropped this commission on us, I couldn't believe it either. It was so obviously a scheme to fleece some idiot who doesn't know how the world works."
Afraid a cultivator might overhear, the attendant leaned in and whispered against Yuhyeon's ear.
Yuhyeon already knew. Green Eye Herb was an expensive medicinal herb that sold for at least two hundred spirit stones on the open market. With no fixed colonies, the supply was always short.
Harvesting a herb of that value not somewhere safe but in a dangerous place—for fifty spirit stones? That was a valuation so shameless it had clearly murdered not only conscience but conscience's mother as well.
Even so, the reason Han Yuhyeon was going was crystal clear. There was a hidden piece in Neungha-gok.
"I just… feel like getting some fresh air."
Naturally he wasn't going to say the real reason, so he cobbled together an absurd excuse. The attendant stared at him as if he were an idiot, then shook his head.
"Fine. I tried to stop you. Don't come crying to me after you die."
"Just make sure you polish those spirit stones properly. If you hand me cracked ones like last time, I'm taking a dump right in front of the bounty office gate."
"I told you that was a mistake."
"Bullshit."
Given the average personality of the xianxia world, it had absolutely been deliberate. But in this damned world, the one who got screwed was always the one at fault.
Han Yuhyeon immediately slung an old net bag over his shoulder and set out for Neungha-gok. The valley lay not on Myeong-wang-bong, the mountain that held Baekun-pa's main peak, but on the neighboring peak of Inyung-bong.
Just as the attendant had said, Inyung-bong was not under Baekun-pa management, so fiend beasts and wild animals thrived. With so few people coming and going, proper paths were rare.
"Huff… huff…"
Han Yuhyeon's ruined face flushed red. After climbing nonstop for two full hours, he was out of breath. Even after reaching Qi Condensation 1-star, his base physical stats were still pitifully low. He figured he would need to pick up a body-refining technique later and train his flesh as well.
"Air's nice, though."
There was not a single human presence nearby. Exactly as the attendant had said, this place lay outside Baekun-pa territory. That meant not only no people, but nature untouched by human hands.
When the grand mountain ridges and mist unique to the xianxia world spread out before him, Han Yuhyeon forgot the mission for a moment and simply took in the view.
"Haaah."
He rested a little while gazing at the terrain, then caught his breath. Even while walking through Neungha-gok—said to be thick with fiend beasts—Yuhyeon moved without hesitation.
It was certain that a hidden piece lay inside this mission, but that did not mean the mission itself was safe. The fiend beasts and animals truly hadn't been cleared out. In the game, if your Luck was too low and you still took this mission, dying horribly was the usual result.
Even so, Han Yuhyeon had something to rely on. Right now he was an ugly corpse with nothing but Luck. The reason he had boldly come alone into the supposedly dangerous Neungha-gok was precisely because he trusted that Luck stat. In the game, once Luck broke a hundred you at least didn't die to random encounters. At two hundred eighty, there was nothing more to say.
"Grrrr."
"……?"
The thought had barely finished when a low, rough sound scraped against Han Yuhyeon's ear.
That low grinding noise. The kind you only heard from a predator. Sure enough, a blue tiger soon emerged from the dense forest.
An Azure Tiger. Ordinary tigers were never blue. That meant it was no normal beast. Either a fiend beast that meant to harm people, or a spirit beast that could benefit them—one or the other.
"Hmm?"
Yuhyeon tilted his head. Originally, to obtain the hidden piece on this mission you were supposed to meet a spirit beast and follow it. The catch was that the spirit beast was supposed to be a white deer with an injured leg, not a blue tiger.
Well, maybe the spirit beast changed?
Even so, Han Yuhyeon had not the slightest doubt that the Azure Tiger in front of him was a spirit beast rather than a fiend beast.
A Luck of two hundred eighty wasn't just for show. Charm only worked on humans, and getting into fights was unavoidable, but fiend-beast encounters truly belonged to the domain of the Luck stat.
"Who's a good kitty? Hand."
I've got 280 Luck—there's no way I meet a fiend beast the second I walk in. Holding that thought, Yuhyeon squatted down, smiled, and held out his hand.
"ROOOAAAR!"
The blue tiger lunged. The pressure was overwhelming. In that instant Yuhyeon saw the Azure Tiger's fierce eyes, the thick saliva dripping from its jaws, and its gleaming fangs. He knew by instinct. That thing meant to kill him.
"Fuck!"
The moment he realized it, Han Yuhyeon threw himself sideways with everything he had.
BOOM!
The Azure Tiger's forepaw smashed into the spot where he had been standing. The stone ground caved in at once.
"Is this seriously a fucking god-tier game?"
At least stick to the settings. If you max Luck at 280, you should at least not be unlucky. Or maybe the Luck was fine and his skill just couldn't keep up.
To be precise, the way Luck affected encounters was simply that it made rare things easier to meet.
Even if you ran into a fiend beast, as long as your skill was enough you could still walk away with its hide or inner core.
"You son of a bitch. Fine, even better. You can be my combat-power measuring stick."
In that case there was no choice. Han Yuhyeon rolled one shoulder and turned. If he had met this thing as a mortal he would have died screaming on the spot, but at least he was now Qi Condensation 1-star.
He still had no offensive techniques, but simply being able to sense and handle spiritual energy already made him far stronger than any ordinary person.
Yuhyeon recited the Great Void Primordial Chaos Scripture. Spiritual energy spread from his dantian through his body, and his senses sharpened. He prepared to meet the Azure Tiger's next charge.
"Grrrr."
Yet for some reason the Azure Tiger came no closer. It merely watched him warily.
Yuhyeon took a few experimental steps backward. The tiger only rolled its eyes, still on guard.
Of course Yuhyeon himself had no desire to fight an Azure Tiger. He might be a cultivator now, but he was still only Qi Condensation 1-star.
"Scared, are we? Chickened out?"
He put on a deliberately cocky tone. In truth he was the one who had chickened out. At those words the Azure Tiger loosed a roar that seemed to shake the whole of Inyung-bong.
"AAARRRROOO!"
"Holy shit!"
Had it understood him and was now proving it wasn't scared? Yuhyeon backed up again. The tiger still stayed put. Maybe the moment he turned his back it would pounce.
Not knowing what else to do, he simply stared at the Azure Tiger. The tiger kept staring right back.
A stretch of time passed that was both tense and, paradoxically, boring.
"Either run or fight—pick one, you ugly bastard."
"……?"
For a moment Han Yuhyeon blanked. The words had come from a mouth he couldn't identify. Had some cultivator been watching this whole scene nearby? He looked up, down, left, and right, but no one was in sight.
"What are you looking around for, you ugly bastard? Never seen a talking spirit beast before?"
He had half expected it. Yuhyeon's dumbfounded face turned back to the Azure Tiger. Amazingly, the speaker really was the tiger. Granted, in the world of Yeonhwa Seonrok it wasn't that rare for animals to talk, but it still felt deeply unnatural.
"You're really the one talking?"
"You've never even spoken with a spirit beast? Must be a pretty low-grade cultivator. Looking at that face, I can tell you've never once undergone bone-washing and marrow-cleansing."
"The way you talk, you sound more like a fiend beast than a spirit beast."
"Hmph. Think whatever you like. Anyway—are we fighting or not?"
"If I say I won't fight, will you let me go?"
"I am a spirit beast. I do not harm people for no reason."
Yuhyeon stared at it, incredulous.
"So that forepaw you swung earlier was just trying to knead me like dough?"
"That was because I assumed a cultivator would attack first, of course. If I'd known you were this pathetic I would have just let you pass."
"……."
So even this beast knew cultivators were the worst. Living as a spirit beast in this world was probably no easy feat. Spirit beasts were essentially living spiritual pills; any cultivator who saw one would drool and strike first. The overreaction was almost understandable.
"I've got business here, though. I need to gather some herbs."
"No. Get lost."
The Azure Tiger's tone was absolute. For some reason, in this world both cultivators and spirit beasts seemed to share the same shitty personalities.
But Han Yuhyeon had played Yeonhwa Seonrok dozens of times. Something about this Azure Tiger was off. Spirit beasts fundamentally did not harm people and sought to be of help; that was how they accumulated spiritual nature. If this tiger truly were a spirit beast as it claimed, it had no reason to be this prickly.
"……Wait. You."
Yuhyeon narrowed his eyes. In his judgment there was only one reason a spirit beast would act this way.
"Are you a female?"
The Azure Tiger blinked, then bared its vicious fangs.
"I have no hobby of mating with humans."
"What the fuck kind of answer is that?!"
Yuhyeon yelled. From that reply, though, it seemed she was indeed female. In that case there was truly only one answer left.
"You've got cubs around here, don't you?"
The Azure Tiger's eyes flew wide in shock. Han Yuhyeon grinned. Looks like he'd hit the bullseye.
If that was the truth, then meeting this Azure Tiger was incredible luck. Maybe even better than the hidden piece waiting here.