Liam stood staring at the missions screen for a good few minutes with a constipated expression. His face twitched every other second as he scanned the quests which were essentially nothing but daylight robbery.
The quests were literally to submit one treasure or the other. That too, not ordinary treasures. They were rare and valuable items, treasures that many clans would be killed over even. This part was understandable. A famous place like the Eternal Sword Palace demanded only the best. Except they were asking it for basically free i.e. a meager amount of contribution points.
What could possibly motivate someone to trade an extremely valuable item for a few paltry contribution points?
"It's because the contribution points have very unique benefits." One of the men manning the counters gruffly explained to Liam. The man was probably used to the look of disbelief that was on Liam's face.
Another system screen opened in front of Liam. Not surprisingly it was to a list of things that could be traded for with the contribution points and right at the top of the list was actually something interesting.
[An one hour private tutoring session by an Eternal Sword Palace Master disciple]
Liam's eyes then shifted to the next item which was also equally valuable.
[Assistance in completing a task by an Eternal Sword Palace senior disciple]
Considering the level of opponents he had faced in the trials so far, Liam could guess the strength of someone who was actually a legitimate disciple. Though this route was not what he initially planned, it did seem like a valid option that he could still use.
The only problem was that… these treasures sure did not fall from the sky!
Well actually for him they did. There were definitely a lot of herbs in the list and he could potentially grow them with the stone tablet but he still had to pay the price of mana. At least he needed to find a world that he could plunder mana from without any care.
There was also another issue. Liam considered it again but he eventually gave it up. Just like the first beastkin he faced, he suspected the others might also have means to find out his background, especially the fact that he was from a newly integrated world.
If a person like him suddenly shows up with numerous precious herbs then people were bound to get suspicious. It was simply too risky. He would pretty much be carrying a target sign on his back. If he ended up attracting the attention of some old monsters in the Eternal Sworld Palace then things would become even more complicated.
If a person like him suddenly shows up with numerous precious herbs then people were bound to get suspicious. It was simply too risky. He would pretty much be carrying a target sign on his back. If he ended up attracting the attention of some old monsters in the Eternal Sworld Palace then things would become even more complicated.
Liam sighed and continued going through the lists. Considering the reputation of the place this cannot be the only way. Surely there should be another way to gain contribution points?
"Bingo!" Liam's lips curved upward as he finally saw a bunch of objectives that were not straight up 'submit the item' type. Well they kind of were but at least for these items there was also a location given. He could simply go to this location and extract the item.
Naturally, these locations were not tourist spots. The Eternal Sword Palace did not have any intentions of scamming anyone. The risks associated with each location were well documented in the description.
Some of them were worlds in the process of decaying. Some were worlds infested with void creatures and some were worlds riddled with spatial tears. These kinds of worlds required a significant time commitment by at least a Dao Lord or a Dao Master and these kinds of beings were peak existences that governed this entire sector, forming the backbone of numerous worlds. Unless it was personally required why would they bother with spending time on these sorts of endeavors, taking undue risk. Instead, the Eternal Sword Palace used the desperation of the few, making them take the risks instead.
Liam shrugged and went through the list anyways. There was risk in everything. If one was afraid to take risks then they couldn't even step out of their house. Besides, he had a good chunk of luck on his side. There was no harm in trying one of the quests.
While the bad news was the risk involved, the good news was that each of these quests gave a good deal of contribution points so he could potentially hit the top reward with just five of these quests.
Unfortunately there was no herb associated quest at the moment. Otherwise, he could have used the stone tablet instead and simply lied that he had acquired the herb in the hard mode.
Liam perused the list of locations for a few good minutes before finally settling on the seventh one. This one involved a trip to an unstable world that contained voidlings. He walked out of the main building and went back to the system store in the city.
The main reason for Liam to select this location was because there was a teleportation portal to the particular world from the system store and he did not have to make any additional preparations like looking into renting a spaceship which was what everyone typically used to jump to these unstable worlds.
There were all sorts of provisions in the space ships including an emergency escape teleportation circle that would allow the person to teleport from the world to the spaceship, provided the ship was still tethered to the vicinity of the world.
However there was also the task of finding a crew for the spaceship or personally learning everything which was quite tedious. Liam shelved this thought for a later time as he only had a week at the moment to make something of his access to the Eternal Sword Palace. Submitting the first quest would extend his stay and in turn would give him more time.
Now all he had to do was somehow get this first quest rolling.
Liam took the teleportation portal and within moments found himself standing on a frozen hellscape. There was white and simply white all around him, embalming him in a suffocating choking chill.