The hunter association was an auxiliary organization of the United Mercenary Association (UMA). The UMA spread out through different galaxies and supported the mercenaries.

They acted as a hub where mercenaries could receive different tasks.

The hunters who could hunt down class 2 spirit beasts could apply to be a class 1 mercenary, of course there were also other conditions to be met.

Sam could have been a class 1 or 2 mercenary easily, but since he was keeping a low profile he didn't apply for it and he also had to go to the bigger cities to apply for it.

Which he was not planning on anytime soon,so he got a level 6 Hunter license instead.

The hunters license were divided into 10 levels and at the 10th level one should be able to hunt a class 1 spirit beast.

There was no level 11 for hunters because one could apply for a level 1 mercenary after that which included all the privileges of being a level 11 hunter with many other perks of being a mercenary.

But the mercenaries were treated as leaning towards the dark side, as mercenaries always worked for profit more than anything else.

At the same time there existed another similar organization on the bright side called The Adventure Guild (TAG) who didn't work for just money but the spirit of exploration and adventure.

They too had an auxiliary organization called the Explorers guild which was focused on taming beasts and discovering new herbs or collecting them.

There was no Explorers guild in the Violet flower village.

The Mercenary Association and the Adventure guild were in conflict with each other most of the time, Both of them had their own strong experts and core fighting forces.

The Mercenaries had Head hunters which was a strong group of assassin's, who took on assassination tasks for money. While the Adventurers had Bounty hunters who took on the task of hunting down criminals.

The funny thing was that many of the assassins in the Head hunters were included in the bounty list of the bounty hunters and vice versa.

Much of the bounty hunters were listed in the assassination list not because the assassins had particular enmity with the bounty hunters, but because the criminals who were caught by the bounty hunters or the family of the those criminals were ready to pay high price to see these bounty hunters go down.

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Sam entered the hunters association, this building was the most high tech building in the village .

Any person that entered the building would be scanned completely and their identity confirmed before entering the association doors.

The floor and walls in the interior had a metallic touch to it as if they were hiding some high powered science fiction weapons.

Sam went to the reception and waved his identity card at the scanner.

He had to wait in the lounge until he would be summoned into one of the task rooms where he could browse through different tasks and all the information provided by the hunter association in the hunter database.

Some of the information was free while he had to pay for others. The Lounge was not just a common area but more like a small market along with a waiting area.

There were all kinds of services provided in the lounge from refreshments to weapons shops.

He entered the task room after receiving notification on his sky watch.

After entering the room, it was completely sealed off to maintain his privacy.

A 3D image of a sexy lady appeared before him, this was an artificial intelligence that helped the hunter in finding the right mission that he would take on.

After browsing through some time he found that there was a mission to hunt down the red striped alligator, this was deemed to be a rank 8 mission which should be taken on by a level 8 hunter.

But it was the ideology of the hunter association that greater the risks greater the profits, so even low leveled hunters were allowed to take missions that were at least 3 ranks higher than their levels .

The mission paid 1000 ken for the living alligator and 700 ken for the dead one.

After taking on the mission he was prompted to another service which would provide him with all the necessities to take down the alligator for a price, but Sam denied the service completely and didn't hang around.

.............

It took him around One hour to reach the swamp and around 15 minutes to catch the alive alligator, but he had to meditate for one more hour.

This was because the least amount of time a level 8 hunter would take to complete this mission was around 2 hours. If he had taken the help of the shackles of Maya the whole thing would have gone down in 15 seconds.

Sam had found that he could meditate more peacefully and enter the deep sleep state faster when he was in a forested area or sitting on the ground.

He understood that the ground helped him in meditation because he was a natural born Earth elemental body, but the forest was different he knew this must have something to do with consuming the green jade.

But as he was meditating his watch started giving out an alarm, the Sky watches were amazing products. It would give specific waves in a slow and elegant manner to someone who is meditating to wake them up from the meditative state peacefully.

Sam was doubtful at first because he had not set any alarm, but when he checked the Sky watch he found that the alarm had gone out because the bug that he placed on Edgar had stopped functioning and was probably destroyed.

Sam thought “that is weird, the punks don't have the ability to detect my micro bug. Unless they have specific equipment or checked keenly with their spiritual sense ... both the cases seem close to impossible considering their personality, either way I will find out once I get back... I hope they didn't end up creating another mess or something”