The Starflower.
A mythical herb said to be capable of healing all and any wounds. Even if a person is on the brink of death from an external injury, just one petal of a Starflower would be enough to cure them. Because a Starflower had thirty-six petals in total, that ant if you obtained one, you would essentially have thirty-six lives.
Of course, this wasn't entirely fool-proof. The Starflower could only heal physical wounds. It was ineffective against Curses, mind control, and things like that. There was, however, a different flower that was essentially the Starflower except for ntal wounds - and it was called the Moonflower. But that was a story for another day.
In any case, according to Old Man Leng, Starflowers could be found on the sides of cliffs. That ant you either had to use Flight Magic to get them, or do it the harder way, which was climb down the cliff perpendicularly and get the herb from there. Thankfully, I had all 21 Elents, aning Flight was a thod I could use.
But that was just the first part of the issue.
According to Old Man Leng, there weren't any cliffs inside The Fortress. That's ant the only way to obtain a Starflower was to get it from soone else, or rely on the Hunters' Guild Shanghai Branch's portals to send us to a quest area with a cliff nearby. Of the two options, the forr seed more reliable. That being said, it wouldn't be a good idea to steal sothing right after we just stole the Basilisk Dust, so we had to buy it off soone - if it was even sold in the first place.
Even if it was, the price wouldn't be cheap. Although we all had quite a bit of money now from doing Hunters' Guild quests, we were still far from 'rich'.
Speaking of, all the girls and I, throughout the past week, have completed enough Hunters' Guild quests to reach the Bronze Hunter rank. That ant we could tackle on harder challenges now, with correspondingly bigger rewards. Still, we had about 400 more Bounty Points to go before we could achieve the next rank, which was Silver.
In any case, it had been a long day, so all of us returned to the hotel to rest.
*****
The next day, in the morning (around 6 PM in reality), we decided to look in the Hunters' Guild in search of a quest that could bring us to a location with cliffs nearby. We even tried asking a receptionist, since we weren't that knowledgeable about geography, but even she could not help us. I an, it made sense. How diligent of a receptionist would you have to be to morize the appearances of all the quest locations everyday?
...Actually, Lan Xiao Su seems like the kind to do that, but whatever. She already quit anyway.
In any case, we ended up just doing so quests at random until noon (12 AM in reality).
After lunch, we headed for the Library of Infinite Beginnings to tackle another floor. When we arrived on the 4th floor, however, we saw sothing unexpected.
"Hm? Four-Eyes...Cherry...Ling Ling?" Feng Mian was the first to react. I decided to ignore the fact that she didn't even bother saying Shi Yan's na even though he was also there.
"Ah, it's you guys!" Ling Ling hurriedly stood up and gave Feng Mian a big hug.
"A-Ah, hey," Feng Mian caught her awkwardly. "What happened? I thought you guys went up to the fifth floor already."
Cherry was the one to respond, sighing. "Well...this may be surprising, but turns out, the Gatekeeper of that floor was harder than we all expected. All of us were defeated, and were forced to run away through the door we ca in from."
I narrowed my eyes. "All of you? It would make sense if the first person was defeated, but...shouldn't they warn the rest of you after escaping?"
"See...Shi Yan was stupid, is what it was," Four-Eyes muttered, sending his friend a glare of utter disdain. "This floor was unlike the previous ones. It allowed us to go in as a group, maximum of four people. Of course, you can also choose to do it with less, but Shi Yan's headass declared that since we were a group of four anyway, we might as well do it together."
"Oi! Who you calling a-" but then he turned to see Xiang Peng, and imdiately fell quiet again.
Ah...how thoroughly you have broke his heart and ntal will, Xiang Peng. I don't know whether to be happy or frustrated that I have such a...manipulative ally.
"Anyway, yeah...that's the story," Ling Ling concluded, pulling way from Feng Mian at last. "If you guys are planning on doing the test as well, please be careful."
"Aren't you guys going to try again?" I asked. "Just one loss is nothing. Now that you're prepared..."
Cherry sighed. "We would, but Four-Eyes and Shi Yan currently refuse to fight alongside each other. I swear, boys are such stubborn creatures."
"Hehe, Big Brother Xuan Kai is like that too~" Qing Yue added, clutching onto my arm. She seed to be fine now, despite being sowhat weird yesterday.
Rembering this, I brought it up. "Oh yeah, Qing Yue, you seed kinda off yesterday. More quiet than usual...but you're fine now. What's up with that?"
"Eh? Ah..." she suddenly averted her gaze, blushing slightly.
Then, the girls around collectively sighed, even Cherry and Ling Ling.
"Xuan Kai, you're such a dimwit," Yu An Yan said, knocking on the head.
"H-Huh? Wha-"
"Last week was that ti of the month for Qing Yue," Feng Mian said cryptically.
I frowned. "That ti? What ti?" The other boys, Four-Eyes and Shi Yan, seed equally as clueless as .
Cherry facepald. "I swear...boys are not just stubborn, but also such...stupid creatures."
Thank you very much, ma'am, you just collectively insulted about half the population of the world with one sentence. A little more than half, in fact. If I rember correctly, there was a book on the second floor of this place that I read - it said sowhere that the sex ratio of Xenith was around 101 males to 100 females.
"Uh...sorry, I still don't quite understand-"
"Just stop asking, Xuan Kai~" Xiang Peng quickly interrupted. "Big sister here will teach you all about it tonight...just the two of us...heehee..."
Saying this, she leaned in to my ear and whispered seductively. I pushed her away. "No thanks."
I was eager to know, but not so eager to know that I would throw away my first ti for it. I wasn't ready for that yet. Especially not with Xiang Peng. God knows if she's done it with other n before, with that flirtarious deanor of hers.
"Nya, Xuwan Kwai, do you weally nyot nyow about perio-"
"Amane, no!" Lan Xiao Su quickly cried and covered the poor catgirl's mouth. Unfortunate. I could've gotten so information there.
"Master, I know what they are speaking of-"
"No you don't..." Obsidia moved, covering i Gui's mouth in the blink of an eye. Once again, unfortunate. That being said, I could always reach out to i Gui telepathically. I didn't really care all that much about this right now though.
"Anyway, let's see if we can beat this...difficult Gatekeeper you guys speak of," I said at last. "They allow groups of up to four people, correct?"
The four who had already tried it out nodded together.
"I see...but going solo is also an option, right?"
"Er...yeah? But I don't see why you would do that," Cherry said. "Not only is doing it as a group easier, with higher chances of success, it also saves ti, since you don't have to go individually."
I smiled from beneath my mask. "Well. I have my reasons."
Then, turning around, I began heading up the staircase. i Gui followed, and soon, the other girls did as well after saying goodbye to our companions.
"Hey, Xuan Kai, you can't be seriously thinking of going in alone, are you?" Yu An Yan asked, frowning in disapproval.
I shrugged as we headed up the stairs. "So what if I am?"
She sighed. "I know you're stronger than those four by a whole lot, and even if all of them tried to attack you together, they would still lose terribly, but...is this really the right choice?"
I patted her head gently, to her surprise. She yelped a little, but didn't move away.
"Listen. I know my limits. I'm just testing this out to see if it gives so extra benefit for doing it alone," I explained. A lie, of course. That wasn't the real reason at all. "Besides, I can always just run if things go south. Those guys managed to escape - I think I can too."
"Well, they managed to escape with four people, but...actually, I'm not even going to argue," Feng Mian said, sighing. "You just do what you want to do. We'll wait here for your return."
"Actually..." I turned to i Gui, and our eyes t. She instantly knew what I was hinting at.
"Yep, I'll take i Gui along," I said.
"Understood, Master."
"Wait, what-?!" Feng Mian imdiately blurted out.
"Didn't you just say I should do what I want to do?" I chuckled.
"That...ugh, fine. You tricked again..." she pouted, crossing her arms.
We arrived at the door soon after. This door was bigger than the ones on the previous floors, and had four scanners beside it instead of just one. i Gui and I each scanned our library cards, and after ten seconds of waiting from the system-side to see if anyone else would scan their card, the door opened up on its own, revealing a purple portal behind.
"Well then," I turned to i Gui. "Shall we go?"
She nodded. "Understood, Master."
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