The man helped Kieran bandage his wounds, and he presented himself to him once finished.
"My name is Darvell. Sorry again for attacking you."
Kieran looked him in the eyes. He got up slowly before answering him.
"Kieran."
He looked at the two other people behind Darvell, a woman and a man. Both were equipped with light armor, they were in their twenties, just like Darvell.
"Here are my companions, Catherine and Landen."
The two gave Kieran a slight greeting.
"Sorry for attacking you. Most cultivators with a transformation type ability like you use the aurora collar to let others know they're human," Catherine said.
A surprised look appeared on Kieran's face.
"The aurora collar has a function for that?"
It was the team's turn to be surprised.
"Your teacher at the cultivator academy didn't teach you that when you awakened?"
Darvell didn't understand how someone with a transformation type ability couldn't be aware of such a simple function of the aurora collar.
"It hasn't been long since I participated in the awakening ceremony. I didn't know that the aurora collar had functions for those who can change shape."
After recovering from his shock, Darvell explains to Kieran how to use the function of the aurora collar, a translucent blue hologram in the shape of a winged shield appeared above his head.
"With this feature, anyone who wears an aurora collar will be able to see it and deduce that you are a human even if you change shape."
"Thanks a lot for your help."
"It's nothing. It's the least we can do after attacking you. If I can offer you any advice, you should find a team you trust to hunt with. Rifts are dangerous. It’s not just the crystal beasts that we have to be careful about, and there’s not much we can do when we travel alone inside a rift. If you’re interested, our team would be happy to have someone with an ability like yours."
"I'll think about it."
Kieran headed for the two corpses of the crystal beasts, dismantling anything of great value that could be contained within his spatial gem. As he dismantled the two corpses, he paid attention to the three behind him. He stood ready to use his abilities at the slightest suspicious movement they made.
His spatial gem was already half full before he found those two crystal beasts, and now all he could harvest from them besides their core crystal was the fox horn and claws and the claws of the smoke beast.
He looked at their bodies before letting out a sigh.
'I really need to buy a new spatial gem as soon as I can.'
Seeing Kieran starting to leave, the group approached him.
"Is there a problem?" asked Kieran.
"Are you going to leave their bodies here?"
"I don't have enough space in my spatial gem to take their bodies."
Darvell glanced in the direction of the bodies before looking at Kieran again.
"Do you mind if we take them? We go back to the refuge. We can split the earnings of the two bodies in exchange for transporting them. How about that?"
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Kieran didn't think for a moment before accepting. If he left, the team could pick them up. Offering to share the earnings with him was a show of goodwill towards him.
He returned with them to the refuge. There was no point hunting another crystal beast if his spatial gem was full.
On the way back to the refuge, he got to know the team a bit.
They met six months ago when they decided to team up together. Their team was composed of a vanguard, Darvell, with a strength reinforcement ability as well as two rear-guards, Catherine, who had an aquamancy ability that allowed her to control the ambient water, and Landen had a vision enchantment ability that allowed him to track beasts from far away, add with his prowess with a bow this ability became really useful in his hands.
It was a team that was doing well inside the rift, but they lacked another vanguard to help Darvell against strong crystal beasts. They took the opportunity to offer Kieran again to join them on their team.
Kieran hesitated, they seemed to be trustworthy people, and they knew the areas around the refuge well after having hunted for six months in those areas.
"How do you share what you gain from your hunts?"
Darvell smiles at that question.
“Our team splits all winnings equally. Some crystal beasts may be easier to defeat with certain abilities than others."
Kieran thought about what he had just heard. It was true that if they found a crystal beast against which his abilities were useless, sharing the gains by contribution would yield him nothing, in addition to the time wasted chasing the crystal beast.
He still hesitated to join them when Catherine looked at him.
"Our team is not an official team. There is no contract to sign to join us, you can try hunting with us for a few days before deciding if you join us or not."
"Okay, I would like to give it a try then."
"Great, with you on our team, I wouldn't have to do all the work at the front anymore," Darvel said with a big smile.
The four finally arrived at the refuge. They moved to a materials exchange store.
Upon entering the exchange shop, Kieran's eyes gleamed. He could see bones of crystal beasts, magic plants, crystals core of different quality, and even elemental stones.
'Just the elemental stones in this store should be worth almost hundreds of thousands of nova credit...'
After selling everything they had brought back from their hunt, Darvell approached Kieran before making several gestures in the air in front of him as if typing on a keyboard. A screen appeared in front of Kieran, telling him that 200 nova credits had been transferred to his account.
"Here's your share. What's left of the crystal horn fox and the smoke beast sold for 350 nova."
Kieran nodded, Darvell had transferred 200 nova to him, which was more than half the price for both bodies.
"Thanks."
'With what I harvested from the body of the three crystal beasts, plus these 200 nova, I received a total of 420 nova for a day of hunting, and it is without selling the crystal's cores that I gathered from them.'
Kieran stares at the three in front of him.
'They gave me more than half without even trying to negotiate with me.'
"Here's a good day over, we're going to have a drink. Do you want to come with us?"
"No thank you, I still have things to do."
"Okay see you tomorrow then Kieran."
"See you tomorrow."
The four separated. Kieran searched for several minutes through the refuge before finding an inn to rent a room for the next 15 days.
The room was basic, not very big, with just a single bed as furniture. Not paying attention, he sat on the bed, crossing his legs.
A fingernail-sized crystal core appeared in his hand.
"Xunarian's core crystal is the smallest of the three I got today. I wonder how much crystal essence I could gain after absorbing all of them."
He closed his eyes, and using the Aegis Alliance meditation technique, he drew the crystal essence of the crystal core into his body, circulating it throughout his body, nourishing each of his limbs before absorbing it into his two crystal seeds, a blue path slowly formed inside him behind each passage of the crystal essence.
He remained in this state for 3 hours, slowly opening his eyes, a blue glow passing through them for a moment before disappearing.
With a feeling of warmth still running through his body, Kieran inspected his two crystal seeds, both seeds had begun to sprout and grow slightly.
[ Kieran Arvost]
[Crystal Seed Status (1):
Name: Wolf Transformation
Refinement Rate: 2.16/100]
[Crystal Seed Status (2):
Name: Giant Transformation
Refinement Rate: 2.12/100]
[Crystal Essence: 4.28]
"Absorbing a single crystal core gives me a little over 2 Crystal Essence. The other two crystals core are larger in size so they should give me more crystal essence."
He pulled another crystal core from his aurora collar. He was about to absorb it when he stopped.
"Now that I have more crystal essence in my spiritual world, can I move it more easily?"
He closed his eyes again, but this time he didn't pull the crystal essence from the crystal core into his body. Instead, he tried to pull his crystal essence out of his spiritual world.
Just like inside the forest, the crystal essence slowly moved through his body. Several minutes had passed before a blue light emanated from his hand.
"The crystal essence in my body now moves faster than before, but the speed at which I can move it is still insufficient to use it freely in combat."
He tried several times to get the crystal essence inside his body to move faster. Still, without any major change, eventually, he resumed his cultivation, absorbing the crystal cores he had left.