Chapter 1178 — The Path of the Adventurer

Half an hour later, Lora had arrived with a group of adventurers at the pre-departure staging area. Looking at the supplies handed to her and the temporary teammates around her who were chatting and laughing as they made their preparations, the young huntress was still somewhat dazed—she had only meant to check whether there were any routine tasks to clear out scattered elemental creatures near the camp today. How had she, in the blink of an eye, been assigned to the more dangerous "advance team"?

Beside her, the old mage Mojin looked thoroughly delighted. The old man, whose vigor outshone that of the youngsters, stuffed the frost-resistance potion handed to him into his clothes while saying to the adventurers nearby, "Honestly, this stuff they gave me is useless—a bit of cold air doesn't bother me. It's you young folk with weaker constitutions who need to take your protection seriously; the polar temperatures are no joke. If anyone runs short of resistance potions on the road, come to me for more..."

The adventurer he addressed stared at him blankly—this old gentleman who looked at least old enough to be his grandfather. Several times he was on the verge of speaking, and finally swallowed his words again. The realm of the extraordinary was, after all, different from that of ordinary people. This white-haired elder was in truth a mage wielding mysterious powers, and with the blessing of powerful spells, an old man was not necessarily frailer than so-called "young adults." A silent nod on his part might actually come across as more polite...

Then Mojin's attention turned to Lora, who had not spoken a word. A smile spread across the old man's face. "Lora, you don't look very spirited—that's hardly the state befitting a warrior about to set out on a mission."

"I was actually planning to join the clearing task in the eastern district of the camp," Lora said, startled out of her distracted state. She gave an awkward smile and continued helplessly, "I had no intention of signing up for the advance team... You just dragged me over here and signed me up without a word..."

"I did consult you about it... did I misremember?" Mojin blinked and tapped his forehead, puzzled, but he quickly cast aside these trifling details. "Ah, I can't recall—it seems I owe you an apology, Miss Lora. Do you want to withdraw? We haven't set out yet..."

"No," Lora sighed helplessly. For some reason, facing this old gentleman with his somewhat eccentric manner always stirred a certain sense of déjà vu in her—as though she were dealing with her own aged, muddled yet warm-hearted grandfather. And since her grandfather's passing, she had not felt anything like it for many years, which made her always relax in Mojin's presence and be swept along by this old man of formidable drive. "It's still around the camp, after all."

"Emperor Gaoyang Cecil put it well—fortune favors the bold. This isn't a place for comfort, miss," a one-handed swordsman nearby laughed heartily. "Looks like you haven't often joined 'advance team' operations? Trust me, the returns from this kind of mission are far more satisfying than 'tidying up' around the camp. Near the exploration boundary, there are more active elemental creatures everywhere and rich concentrations of mana. Their strength isn't actually much greater than the monsters around the camp, but the highly purified elemental cores and the crystals that occasionally emerge from mana wellsprings are worth far more than low-grade elemental mixtures..."

"And if you're lucky, you can even pick up treasures left over from the old Thalrond era—those fine things that survived the war intact, lying in the mud and permafrost," another female swordswoman said in a merrier tone. "Things like that would fetch a piece of real estate anywhere on the Loren Continent, and here they're buried in the ground alongside burnt stones... Tsk, I can't even imagine what lavish lives these dragons led before the war..."

"Feels like every one of them lived like a king..." "No doubt about it. Last time I heard a dragon say that back then every household had a butler, called something like... Omega Intelligent Assistant? A butler in every home—can you even imagine a life like that?" "I can't, and I can't picture it—anyway, it's all gone now..." "What a shame."

Adventurers' conversations always heat up easily, especially when the topic touches on wealth. This hastily assembled "unit" was soon discussing things with great enthusiasm; people who had come from every corner of the world not long ago, with utterly different backgrounds, now chatted eagerly like old friends of many years, exchanging views, and amid their talk a thick friendship seemed already to have been brewing—a friendship that would occasionally improve their odds of survival a little in the coming joint operations, ensuring that when one of them fell, there would be one more arm to pull them up. But more often than not, the greatest significance of this "friendship" was simply to foster high morale and dispel tension and fear.

Friendship would begin with boastful talk from all corners before departure and end with the final roll call after returning to camp—though if everyone's luck held, and they lived through several such "cycles" together, true battlefield camaraderie would take root, be cemented over a few rounds of food and drink, and endure until they all died.

This was the way of life familiar to adventurers—and to mercenaries who lived by the blade.

But not all adventurers lived this way; among them there were no shortage of more "solitary" oddities, and Lora could be counted as one of them.

The young huntress did not much care for this forced mingling and small talk. She simply stood alone in silence, sorting her equipment:

Three vials of frost-resistance potion from the camp's logistics group—an alchemical product once so expensive, now issued free to every adventurer to ward off Thalrond's bitter cold; a personal protection magitech terminal, a fine piece rented for a small deposit, whose chief function as a product of modern industry was to generate a single-person breeze shield. Besides helping fend off the wind, it could also keep its user alive in toxic environments.

That second function was especially important: on this dangerous wasteland, toxic environments were constant companions to adventurers. Along the edges of the safe zones were leaking factory pipes, polluted elemental rifts, and sources of poisonous gas everywhere. Even extraordinary individuals of formidable constitution could, with a single careless step, die from these environmental hazards.

To operate safely in today's Thalrond wasteland, one had to guarantee round-the-clock protection. In the old days, most extraordinary individuals of ordinary strength could never have achieved that with their own mana alone, but today's tireless machines could do it—all they required was an ample supply of mana and careful, meticulous inspection and maintenance. Lora dared not be negligent in this matter, for she knew that the last careless unfortunate had already died in a factory ruin near the camp, becoming a victim of toxic fumes before he could dig up a single gold coin from this "adventurers' paradise." His name was still hung high in the most prominent place in the adventurers' hall; by this time next year, the grass on his grave would likely be tall...

"Enough chatting—check your gear, check your gear."

A shield warrior who looked more mature and steady noticed Lora's silent activity and at once called out to remind his somewhat overly casual temporary comrades. The adventurers finally quieted down a little and began skillfully checking the things meant to keep them alive.