Looking for Homer Simpson, Marsh Exploration!

He only needed to submit the items via the Missions building, since these 2 requests were commissioned to the MCGD. Upon selecting the two missions and the program showing that he was currently taking the mission, he headed out of the Missions building. He didn't bother meeting or talking to anyone in the lobby and continued towards his hotel.

Once again, there were several people trailing him, and Xander, after a few twists and turns, as well as a bit of space magic, he quickly lost them, and he entered the hotel he was staying and went straight to his room, cleaning for a bit, before he teleported to the marshlands.

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"Damn it, we lost him again!" A grim-faced man shouted at the men in front of him. None of them raised their heads, not daring to face their boss's wrath.

"You are all useless! This city is our domain, how could you even lose such a person?" the grim-faced man continued to berate his subordinates.

"B-but boss, we really didn't know what happened! Whenever he turned, we also turned, but by time we turned he was already at a different junction, turning again!" one of the subordinates said, obviously annoyed that they couldn't even complete a simple trailing mission.

"Y-yeah boss, what Johnson said is right! It was like no matter how fast we walked we just couldn't reach him, and he was moving in the crowd like nothing was hindering him!" Another subordinate shouted, in support of his comrade Johnson.

"Hmph! Excuses! Have you lot at least discovered where he was staying? We checked with the hotels under our influence and no one registered with the name of Homer Simpson." the boss of the group asked, obviously still angry at his subordinates' incompetence.

This time, no one responded, indicating their answer to his question. The leader's face turned ugly, and became quite frightened inside. After all, it was a powerful magician that wanted to learn of their target's location.

He, their boss, had received such a fright when the man just appeared inside the base while he was eating his lunch, demanding him to trail the target, Homer Simpson. He was given a day to do it, and if he wasn't able to do it, the mysterious magician bluntly told him that there would be no need for the organization to exist any longer.

He only has until tomorrow noon to find the person, according to the magician, before he faded from his view, further scaring the man to over think the situation. He was dominated by the magic pressure when he first appeared in front of him, after all. Suddenly disappearing… different magic models and spells that could have possibly done such a thing appeared in his mind, and all of which were considered to be at the domain of mythical magicians and above.

"Go! Continue searching! Utilize our connections to find out where this person is staying! Ask people in the city if they had seen him, so make sure you have the photo of Homer Simpson!" The boss roared at his subordinates, causing them to frantically leave the office and head out into different parts of the city, asking passerby and owners where Xander was staying.

Pity, for they didn't realize that Xander applied 2 layers of disguise- the first one being his identity as Homer Simpson, and another face whenever he came back to the vicinity of his hotel.

That face was used to register in the hotel, as the hotels did not require further background check as long as they paid 1.5x the actual amount of the booking on the spot, which Xander did.

However, in less than an hour of dispersing, news of the largest underground gang of Verdant City looking for Homer Simpson had reached every resident's ears, as well as mercenaries entering and leaving the city.

They were all curious to why this underground gang would dare touch this man, given that he was part of MCGD and even had an Obsidian adventurer card. It showed the importance of the man to the organization, as well as his background.

Later on that day, they even utilized a registered magic artifact, one known for its ocular abilities below Mythic, paying an exorbitant price. However, the artifact returned as invalid, indicating that the person they were searching for was not in the scope of the magic artifact, which was the entirety of Verdant City.

They were dumbfounded as the leader realized that they just spent an exorbitant amount to understand that the guest they were looking for had left the city. The artifact had another aspect, which was magical tracing, but even that came out negatively.

The results showed that he was only in the MCGD building the entire time, before disappearing at the front entrance of the building, which didn't make sense to the members and even to the leader as there were several eyewitnesses that saw him leaving.

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The Marshlands, Delta province, Eta

A figure immediately materialized within the thick foliage of leaves and branches, appearing relaxed. The figure was wearing shorts and a simple t-shirt as if he was a tourist. As he was heading deeper into the marshlands, magic beasts of different sizes attempted to attack him, and mosquitoes and several amphibious leeches attempted to come close to his body, hiding their bodies underground.

But before they even managed to reach several feet away from the figure, they all stilled, before disintegrating. Nothing was left, even magic cores. When the figure saw this, he made a clucking sound, obviously proud of his defense but disappointed that the magic cores were destroyed as well.

This was figure was Xander. After he fixed his belongings in the hotel and took a bath, he changed his clothes to something casual and teleported to the forest. Immediately, [Absolute Defense] activated on its own, without any form of warning, which meant that the environment is a threat to Xander's body.

Xander was a bit perplexed. Could it be some sort of poison in the air? No wonder the number of mercenaries that have taken the mission even if it was posted for more than 2 months was quite low, not even surpassing 10 people.

Using his space elements, he analyzed the air; there were traces of poison, and it was slow-acting one. Once one was exposed to it for a long time it would be too late to do anything.

To protect themselves, they would need at least a High-grade antidote taken in every hour or at least a setup that can filter the air completely of poison elements. Sadly, such a setup was either in the hands of large clans or military divisions, not accessible for the common citizen.

Poison element, what a novelty. This element was under the Wood series element of the 5-element series, so Xander didn't have anything to worry about. Rather, he was quite fascinated with this element.

What was cool about the poison element is that it can evolve on its own, changing its concentration and effect depending on its interactions with other poison elements and other elements.

An element that contains traits of an element under the Life-Death series: Transformation, allowing it to survive and exist as long as it wants to.

The good thing is that technology evolved with magic, making it possible to create filtration products that can remove certain elements or decrease them to a very, very low amount. What's another interesting tidbit about these elements is the methods they are formed. It separated into two: natural and artificial methods.

Natural means that a combination of certain elements at certain ratios formed poison elements in the area. Another is when physical matter at certain levels concentrate, slowly producing poison elements, having certain characteristics from the physical matter they come from.

The sewage system of cities in Eta, for example, undergoes multiple filtration and cleaning processes, done by machines imbued with specific runic writings for certain elements. But even then, the area before the filtration system is quite deadly to beings that do not have immunity to poison or do not have poison as a primary element.

Thus, no one really lives in sewage systems, except for certain magic beast species that were borne out of these wastes, as well as young poison sprites, around 1000-20,000 years old, depending on the age of the cities. After all, the sewage system being used worldwide has been the norm for the past 30,000 years.

Even during the war 20,000 years ago, the sewage systems were relatively left alone as well as undamaged from the bombardments of weapons and spells. This was because they had experience with the poison element from historical events. Almost all countries have agreed to never utilize magic that can easily disturb the stability of poison elements in targeted cities, even in past and modern warfare.

They say that in Emerita City in the country of Nema holds the oldest known poison sprite within their sewage systems, as the city was the first ever to create a mature sewage waste system for the inner and outer city areas.

Xander thought for a moment before thinking of the possibility that there was a natural poison sprite in this marshlands, given the nature of the poison elements in the air. From his spatial perspective, the concentration of poison elements was gradually increasing towards the marshland, which was his destination.

He further analyzed the situation from the reports, both from the mercenary forums and that of government documents, and postulated it might be one that is hibernating in the depths of the marshlands, which stopped the government from changing the terrain and establishing a town or into small farmland. He cross-checked with the government's database on beings of interest within their country and a total of 25 poison sprites were listed.

No government in the world dare take action against these sprites or of any kind that might be discovered because there was a superpower behind the sprites: The Heavenly Tree sprite. One could say he was their godfather.

Towering over the planet of Eteria, anyplace from around the world would you be able to see its towering trunk and branches reaching to the starry skies above. After all, they actually believed that the sprite was more than 1,000,000 years old, more than the age that was spread to the masses, as well as their defense against alien invaders that may chance upon their planet.

Although there were Divine class magicians in Eteria, most if not all were in cultivation seclusion in unique, hidden areas, due to the concentration of magic in most parts of the planet not being enough for continuous or long-term seclusion and meditation.