First Mission

I continued on to the Treasure Hall, going straight to the counter. The elder in charge looked at me. "Oh, you selling?"

"Yes elder." I took out the core.

"Hoh…not bad, not too bad. 5 Contribution Points, or 200,000 gold."

"200,000?"

"It's 10% of what we expect to sell it for. Really, unless your family has a lot of debt or something we expect disciples to take the contribution points. After all, we mostly don't even use gold coins in the sect."

"I happily will take the contribution points, elder."

"Hand me your badge."

When he handed it back, the number next to "Contribution Points" now displayed 5. "I guess you won't be buying anything, so you can go now."

"Right. As you say." I gave a small bow, and left.

5 points. Well, it was a start. As I soon discovered in the Mission Hall, plenty of missions were worth fewer points.

There was quite a crowd inside, but I quickly worked out how the place worked. The missions were organized by the minimum requested cultivation level, posted all around the wall. To accept a mission, you just took the mission posting off of the wall and took it to the counter in the center of the room.

What I was after was a mission that would entail a decent amount of time away while giving me enough contribution points for my time. It didn't take me long to find what ought to be an excellent niche: escort missions. Basically, bodyguarding families, or groups, or a handful of requests were from merchants, against magical beasts on the road. As someone was kind enough to explain, they paid out 1 Contribution Point forr each day the journey was expected to take, and the gold pay scaled with the minimum cultivation base accepted.

Most importantly, though they mostly did get taken up sooner or later, no one was eager to accept them. So, I plucked one from the section that required 7th Earth Realm or higher for a 10-day journey between cities. And yes, I took a moment to recognize the irony of a former gamer finding an escort mission desirable.

It was a minor point of curiosity that the Library apparently accepted disciples from as low as the 4th Earth Realm, when cultivators couldn't even use techniques, except for cultivation techniques, until the 6th Realm. Of course, there were open examinations with lower standards that merely weren't held as often as the invitational ones, and there were of course various families and subordinate groups in the Library's territory that formed its support network.

"Okay, you're all set." One of quite a few disciples running the Mission Hall handed the request back to me after stamping it with the sect's official seal. "This is your first mission, right? Show this at the Reception Gate Hall and they'll teleport you to Zaluc City. From there, go to the appropriate gate station, and the guards there will inform the requester of your arrival. Good luck."

The appropriate gate station would be the one that one would leave from to travel to the destination city, Corin City. Therefore, before starting the mission proper, I needed mapping information about the region. Fortunately, there were places in any city in the territory where such information was freely available, especially to a Disciple of the Library. A simple request got me an entire book full of maps, both of the overall territory of the Library and of its various regions. For now, I copied the data for the zoomed-out territory and the Dewos region which contained Zaluc and Corin Cities. Corin was to the southeast from Zaluc, so I went to the southern gate station to await the people to escort.

Half an hour later, a trio approached me—a man and who I could only assume was their wife and son. The man spoke first. "I give greeting, honored Disciple. This one's name is Zin Long, my family and I will be in your care. Thank you so much for agreeing to my request. Do you require anything for the journey?"

"I will need to sleep on the third and eighth days of the journey, though of course I expect you to disturb me if you believe for any reason that magical beasts are near us. Also I will need all information about the route that you can provide."

He looked as though he was expecting me to go on, but when I didn't, he said, "of course. The route is on paper an easy one, part of a well traveled road that runs from the southwest coast northeast until the capital city. It is routinely kept mostly clear of magical beasts. There is one exception however, at the halfway point of our journey."

"The halfway point...the area called Darkhorn Grassland?"

"That is correct. It is home to a great many Dark Horned Bison. We must cross their territory for roughly twenty miles, and it is the most dangerous part of the journey. They always roam in herds, and the best thing to do is to cross when no bison are anywhere near the road, as quickly as possible."

"And that is why you requested a Disciple of the 7th Earth Realm," I finished, "because the best way to tell if such groups are near or far is with Aura Sense."

"Yes, exactly. By your leave, honored Disciple, we shall prepare the carriage."

"By all means."

The first three days passed uneventfully. I alternated between training my Aura Sense, trying to expand it past the distance I could sense just from my cultivation base, and cultivating, since actively focusing the sense and expanding it had more of an effect on my reserves than just using it. At night, I kept watch while the trio slept. On the second night, Zin Long tried to talk to me after they'd had an evening meal, but he gave up soon enough.

I wasn't too worried about bandits. Any sects that didn't come down hard on the slightest whiff of such things in their territory wouldn't stand much of a chance of making the top 20. Any such rouge cultivator groups that were able to survive in the territory of a sect as strong as the Library was smart enough to leave small fry families that didn't have a great deal of money like this alone and go after only worthwhile targets. Of course, I knew that wasn't the same as there being no chance of something happening, but on the 4th day, when my Divine Sense detected something notable, I expected a magical beast of some kind. I told the driver to halt the horses.

"What is it?" said Zin Long.

"Trouble ahead. A strong beast, I'm not sure how strong, near the road about 7 miles down. I'll handle it."

"And you're certain there are no other cultivators or beasts nearby?"

"Yes."

"All right, we'll leave it to you."