```
"They’ve been wanting to retire for more than a day or two, and the life of a Hunter-Demon is indeed very dangerous. Once they retire, I’ll just move to another city. Staying in one place doesn’t increase the possibility of encountering extraordinary occurrences."
"That’s not bad either. You’ve learned all of John’s skills thoroughly. Even if you leave the team, you can still handle various situations." Raymond still agreed with Zheng Yichen’s idea, "As a Hunter-Demon, there’s no room for development in this city for now."
Black Darkness creatures aren’t all brainless, ghouls and walking corpses also need time to accumulate. The city will become very stable within the next ten years, and the threats to the merchant caravans will mostly not be from Black Darkness creatures but from internal harm among human beings.
Zheng Yichen returned to his place, where Forest Witch Eileena was using his computer to record some information. After getting a temporary home, Zheng Yichen transformed it considerably, providing her with an environment to conduct research on Magic Potions.
Although it couldn’t be done frequently, a slow pace was still possible. For example, with some material requirements, Zheng Yichen would collect them while on commissioned tasks.
With his support, Eileena indeed developed some new Magic Potions, or rather, special poisons.
Using vampire teeth to create a bleeding poison, by applying this poison directly to the weapons, when fighting enemies one could easily inflict a bleeding DEBUFF on them. There were also eyes collected from vampires; these could be made into a Magic Potion that altered one’s vision.
It granted the user a temporary vampire thermal vision, but this concoction was not perfect. After use, it could affect the user’s eyesight and was prone to causing symptoms of eye infections. These side effects were discovered through experiments on small animals, including rabbits and lambs.
Once the tests were complete, they served as an additional meal.
Incidentally, Zheng Yichen had never used it himself. He dared not use anything with side effects. The bleeding Magic Potion was intended to act as a poison, to add BUFFs to weapons. Since it was used on weapons, not on himself, Zheng Yichen felt no pressure using it.
Now, Eileena was still trying to improve the Magic Potion, but the conditions here were really poor. She expressed interest in the concept of chemistry as described by Zheng Yichen, including things like test tubes. She believed that with such things, she could produce higher-quality Magic Potions when crafting them.
The combination of technology and magic... Zheng Yichen didn’t see any conflict between the two. Two different systems might not entirely replace one another, but complementing each other was feasible.
For example, some material processing methods could be more precisely and efficiently handled using technology.
Like now, many steps had to be done slowly by hand, some things needed time to settle, grinding into powder required hand grinding, not to mention the separation of some substances, and the controlled heating when simmering medicinal solutions, and so on.
Just having a precise temperature-controlled induction cooker would eliminate many of these troubles.
However, Zheng Yichen only had a computer and a phone, and the computer was a portable laptop. The availability of other devices made no difference to him.
"We might have to leave here after a while," Zheng Yichen said to Katrina.
The young girl looked at Zheng Yichen with confusion. She had become quite accustomed to living here. Every day, apart from studying witch knowledge, she spent her time interacting with Zheng Yichen. When Zheng Yichen went out on missions, she just waited for him to return.
She had immense faith in Zheng Yichen’s strength. Although he was not an extraordinary creature, his constitution was now even more formidable than those beings... she had thoroughly experienced that in every way.
Katrina had no doubts that the current Zheng Yichen could even arm-wrestle entities like the Headless Knight. Such a Zheng Yichen gave her an enormous sense of security, allowing her to let go of other concerns and, like Eileena, focus intently on studying magic.
"Isn’t life here pretty good?"
```
"Don’t forget our original purpose, which was to look for anomalies, and the extraordinary creatures nearby have almost vanished."
"..." Katrina’s eyes widened slightly, "They’re nearly extinct?"
"It’s probably because the Hunter-Demons in this area have been sweeping through a bit too rigorously lately." Zheng Yichen said this with embarrassment, the team mode was too efficient, and coupled with John and the others wanting to earn enough money to retire, their efficiency was truly remarkable.
Zheng Yichen needed to devour extraordinary creatures to maintain his own health, while John and co. were thinking of working hard for just a few more months before living a carefree retired life, so everyone got really fired up when busy.
Katrina didn’t know what to say. The extraordinary creatures that ordinary people would fear became, in Zheng Yichen’s eyes, pitiable little animals that were almost driven to extinction.
"So when are we leaving?"
"We’ll wait for John and the others to decide to retire, then treat them to a meal."
Katrina had no objection to this; now that Zheng Yichen was here, making such decisions was exactly the norm, and it was perfectly natural to treat retiring comrades to a meal.
The day John and the others decided to retire came much faster than Zheng Yichen had anticipated.
In a graveyard, watching the walking corpses scattered here and there, John swung his stick and smashed the head of one, finding the pay for this kind of job as charitable as it felt. Ordinary people with a bit of courage could handle it.
The only thing to be cautious about was that these creatures could extend their claws from underground to scratch people before revealing themselves, and scratches could become infected with the toxin of the walking corpses, which was hard to cure. Other than that, the exposed walking corpses posed no threat.
John continued to speak after watching Zheng Yichen and the others finish off the remaining walking corpses, "It seems there really are no more Black Darkness creatures, I am ready to retire. I heard Raymond say you’re planning to move to another city?"
"Yes, I’m still young and I want to see and enjoy more things. If I get the chance, I’d also like to challenge the legendary giants."
"How could humans fight giants, you need a heavy crossbow to deal with those creatures..." John paused then added, "But maybe you could give it a try?"
John had personally experienced Zheng Yichen’s growth; from being suppressed to being pinned down and beaten. In just a few months, Zheng Yichen had also grown much stronger, he used to be like an ox, and now he really was an ox.
If he really got the chance to face a giant, he might actually manage to kill it!
"If you do succeed, you would be like those dragon-slaying heroes who have become legends."
Zheng Yichen nodded. That’s how this world was, no, even in this world, following the normal trend of development, after two or three hundred years, entering the era of the internet, if he truly had the chance to kill a giant, he would probably be criticized by a bunch of idle people for persecuting a rare and protected animal.
"All of that is predicated on the chance of encountering a giant."
Zheng Yichen felt that the probability of encountering a giant was about the same as encountering an anomaly, at least anomalies still had quite a few eyewitnesses, giants? There were hardly any witnesses at all.