Preparing for the Hunt!

Looking inside the parcel, Jason began to smile.

There were a few long ropes, some yellow-colored potion, a syringe with some green liquid inside, a

miniature cage with a red button on it, a few dozen arrows, an ungraded bow, and a weird-looking quiver.

Taking out the bow he tried to pull the string to test its strength.

It was difficult, but Jason would be able to pull the string back a few times in a row.

The bow wasn't made by a craftsman master, rather it was most likely manufactured by an apprentice, but it was still fine as long as it did its job.

When he purchased the bow, it was certified as an ungraded bow that was able to penetrate three-star wild beast defenses. Its price was 8,000 credits which was fine because he could resell the bow later.

This was more than enough for his current plan.

Looking at the other materials like the ungraded ropes, enlarging miniature cage, and the yellow ungraded paralysis potion followed by the green syringe, Jason thought that he was extremely smart.

While the potions were expensive, the most expensive was the enlarging miniature cage with a price equal to the bow he had bought.

The arrows in the parcel were of basic quality and nothing special so Jason stored them away immediately.

After inspecting the other items for some time, he stored them away and decided to go to the archery centrum in the city by booking a shuttle.

Paying 10 out of his remaining 12 Credits, he entered his shooting range where he could practice and hone his archery skills for 2 hours.

It was early in the morning and nobody trained one's archery skill at 2 am which was also the cause for the cheap renting price.

He retrieved his bow and arrows and moved his hands over the bow trying to assess its strength and functionality.

The target was 20 meters away and it shouldn't be a problem for him to hit it.

Or so he thought…

It took him more than four shots to hit the target for the first time even if it were the outer circles. But after that, he began to get a feel of the distance and the strength he needed to apply to pull back.

After every five to ten shots, Jason had to stop for a moment to regain some stamina as it was harder to pull the string back each time.

2 hours flew by as he continued to practice. It was a notification that told him that his allotted time was over and that he had to leave the shooting range.

It was 4:30 am and he was about to leave for the plains wild zone when he noticed that he couldn't even afford a shuttle right now.

Thinking about a solution, he recalled that he still possessed the beast corpses and decided to go to the merchant shops, because they were only a short walk away from the archery centrum.

After walking for 30 minutes, Jason came across a big, luxurious-looking skyscraper with a golden koi as a sign.

It was the 'Golden Koi' Shop which mainly purchased beast carcasses to sell certain parts to butchers, artisans, restaurants, craftsmen, and so on.

The large automatic front doors opened up for him as he entered the building through and walked in a huge hall made of marble and other exquisite materials.

The hall was at least ten meters high and a few hundred square meters in size. Four big pillars were located in four corners of a square with an elevator that stood in the middle.

Between each pillar was a reception and a large, weird-looking machine with a big holographic screen in front of it.

Two options could be seen on the holographic screen, one labeled `Sell` and another one with the label `Purchase`

Standing in front of the machine uncertainly, Jason roughly figured out what to do as he had never operated the machine before.

When he clicked on the sell option, a drop-down menu with a few options appeared. It contained the different ranks of beasts, ranging from wild beast to evolved beast.

Every day, a few thousand beasts carcasses would be sold at the golden koi shop. Thus, the owners had invented the weird-looking machine for the hunter without investing much time into aesthetics or comfort of the end-user.

Operated by an AI, the price for common beast carcasses was integrated into the data. In the case of rare beasts at the evolved stage, it could be more expensive than the registered price set by the company.

Jason clicked on the 'wild beasts' tab and a message appeared on the 'beast dealer', a fancy nickname he gave to the machine.

It had a different name, but Jason didn't like its name -High technology BetraMa(Beast trading Machine) V.3.7.

He inserted the beast carcasses in small batches of five into the big mouth of the machine, and they landed on a small table where they were scanned by the AI.

The Holographic screen calculated the credits for each beast and it took around 10 minutes until Jason had inserted every beast carcass.

Because it was only 5 am the entire hall was empty and devoid of any workers as the usual working hours began at 7 am. Thus, Jason had enough time so he didn't feel pressured by the crowd of humans that was normally inside this main hall.

Jason was still relatively uncomfortable around huge crowds of people but he became better with small groups due to Greg and Malia.

He grew comfortable with them over time. Greg was also the one who told Jason that he could visit some shops before the regular opening hours to sell his carcasses.

Glancing through the list of beasts he noticed that there were more beasts carcasses than he thought.

153x ★★ Wild beasts corpse→ 3 Credits/carcass

67x ★★★ Wild beasts corpse→ 7 Credits/carcass

24x ★★★★ Wild beasts corpse→ 14 Credits/carcass

4x ★★★★★ Wild beasts corpse→ 21 Credits/carcass

1x ★★★★★ (Wind)Elemental mutated black horned bull corpse→ 100 Credits

Jason inserted his arm with the quantum bracelet inside the opening port and a message appeared on the holographic again.

[Transaction of 1448 Credits can be done immediately.

Execute transaction? `Yes/No`]

Jason was astonished about the price and clicked 'yes' and immediately received a notification on his bracelet that the transaction was done.

He would have never imagined that he could hunt so many beasts but after giving it a thought, he realised that he had hunted inside the plains wild zone for over three weeks around 12 hours a day.

Feeling happy about his loot, he took a look at his spatial storage and checked the number of Beast cores he was left with.

There were no two and three-star cores, only a few four-star cores were left behind while even the five-star cores were used up.

Pondering if he should purchase Beast cores, Jason decided to wait until the evening to check if his plan would work or not.

Calling a shuttle with his new fortune, Jason quickly left for the wild zone and saw himself standing in front of the plains wild zone less than an hour later.

Gazing at his messenger, he hoped that Greg or Malia messaged him about their parents' return but there was nothing.

He hoped that their parents would come back soon as he had to partly rely on them to execute his plan without exposing his secret, but it didn't matter at the moment.

Entering the plains wild zone with the first sunlight filled him with excitement.

With a bow in one hand and the quiver that hung on his shoulder, he secured the dagger at his belt after sheathing it in an ugly-looking scabbard. Then, Jason strolled around the wild zone searching for potential kills.

The quiver was filled with his arrows and each of them were coated with the paralysis potion.

This paralyzing potion wasn't strong, but effective against weak wild beasts and Jason bought it exactly for this reason.

Hours passed and Jason hasn´t hunted a single beast until he spotted something in the afternoon.

A broad smile emerged on his face as he muttered to himself,

"Found you"