1 Week Later

In a small underground lair, a small girl who looked to be no older than 8-years-old was fighting off a hoard of worms with her scythe. This girl had silvery hair that was black as night at the roots, a black mask covering her face, and was wearing an oversized black robe.

This girl was, of course, Mira who is currently in the midst of completing her last mission. However, this mission wasn’t as simple as she thought it would. None of them were.

She had five missions to complete and all five of them have been a huge pain in the ass. For her first mission, she needed to kill a Low-Rank 6 Chimera. This, in and of itself, wasn’t too hard for Mira. Her strength has already leapt past beasts of this rank so it probably wouldn’t take her more than a few moves to kill it.

What she didn’t expect was a bunch of Desert Eagle Beasts to bombard her in the process. These Desert Eagles were only Rank 5, but they flew so fast under the sun and always attacked her in large flocks that she could barely hit the damn things!

To make things worse, once she killed one, it was like they became enraged and not only attacked her with more ferocity, but called their friends to help them out!

She spent more time dealing with those **ing birds than she did completing the mission!

For her second mission, she had to kill a Low-Rank 6 Sand Lizard, but she didn’t expect the damn lizard to be able to turn the ground underneath it into quicksand. It wasn’t even using an ability to pull this off! Its steps just turned the cracked ground beneath it into quicksand.

Fighting, killing, and looting should have only taken a few hours at most, but as soon as she killed it, a swarm of locusts swept by and tried to steal her prey.

She spent the better part of that day fending off locusts…

These kinds of experiences kept happening with every mission and Mira was starting to get sick of it.

She understood that there was an influx of beasts, insects, and resources because of the chasms and the dense amount of Qi, but she didn’t think it would be this annoying and problematic.

For every mission, she spent more time getting to the destination and fighting off the local wildlife than she spent doing the actual mission.

Luckily, she got to kill a lot of creatures to help cope with her annoyance or else she would definitely be in a bad mood when returning back to the city to turn in her missions.

How ironic… All the extra killing is making her agitated, but it’s the extra killing that’s keeping her from needlessly lashing out…

Right now, she is currently fighting a bunch of worms in a small underground tunnel, but much to Mira’s dismay, she’s already killed her last mission target. For her last mission, she needed to kill a Low-Rank 6 Cavern Centipede, which as one might expect, lives underground.

It didn’t take her long to find it because it started its burrows on the surface and Cavern Centipedes are big so it was kind of hard to miss.

However, for some reason, now a bunch of Rank 5 Tremor Worms are flooding these burrows to attack her.

Fortunately, they were just brainless beasts that Mira could kill with her eyes closed. Of course, she would never do something so foolish. How can she miss picking up all this fresh loot?!

Mira knew that these Tremor Worms probably weren’t worth much, but there was an ongoing mission for them back at the Mercenary Association. It wasn’t worth many Contribution Points, 200 Points for 50 Rank 5 Tremor Worm corpses, but at least it was something.

The same goes for the Desert Eagles that she killed. A similar mission was posted for their corpses as well.

Around 30 minutes later, Mira finally made it out of the burrow after killing all of the Tremor Worms.

She wasted no time resting and immediately started making her way back to Quake City.

It only took her a few hours of running to reach the entrance of Quake City. She ignored the stares of the people around her and kept walking until she reached the Mercenary Association building.

When she opened the doors, everyone in the room quieted down as their instincts screamed danger. Everyone, again, had their weapons drawn, ready to attack her at a moment’s notice. Even the people who saw her last week were no different.

Mira ignored these people and walked up to Robin, who had a stiff expression on her face.

Mira didn’t even bother talking to her and instead took out 5 beast corpses.

“I’ve completed my missions.” Mira said in her naturally cold voice that didn’t sound cute even though she was in an 8-year-old’s body.

“Sorry? Ah! Yes! You’ve completed your missions. Just let me verify everything and I’ll get you your Contribution Points.” Robin replied, flustered.

Mira nodded and waited for her to finish checking them.

Ten minutes later, Robin stored the five beast corpses and notified Mira that she had finished.

“I’ve confirmed that you have completed your missions and loaded the Contribution Points onto your badge. If you’d like to purchase something, walk over to that counter over there. Just put your badge into the slot and choose whatever you want to buy. It may take a few seconds to a few minutes for your item to appear, so just wait patiently.” Robin spoke with a forced smile.

Mira checked her Bronze Badge to make sure she received her Contribution Points. When she saw ‘Contribution Points: 5,000’ she nodded slightly and walked over to the counter Robin pointed at.

When she made her way over to the counter, she was a bit confused as she’s never seen anything like this. She had no idea what this counter was for since she didn’t see anything amazing or anything at all except for the slot that her badge is supposed to go in.

Curious, Mira put her badge in the slot and suddenly Mira felt like she was transported to a different space. It didn’t feel like she was teleported yet at the same time it did.

Mira’s brows furrowed and she took out her scythe in preparation for an attack, but after 30 seconds of nothing happening Mira’s frown deepened and her confusion grew.

However, out of the corner of her eye, she spotted a massive list of items that looked identical to the Jade Slip she received a week ago.

‘I guess this is what Robin meant. Well, seeing nothing else around here I might as well give it a try. If that little girl really dared to lie to me then I might have to give her a few customer complaints. Hehe~’

Mira snickered a bit before walking over to the giant list of items and choosing the books she wanted to buy.

4,000 Contribution Points were immediately deducted from her badge and a few seconds later a light flashed in front of her. After the light dimmed, there sat the books she just bought.

‘Amazing! How did they do it? Do they have a large vault somewhere and have Spatial Channels tied to all of the Mercenary Association Branches? Or is it something else? If they can do something like this, what else can they do? Also, how strong is the Mercenary Association to be able to pull off something like this?’

Mira felt like the Mercenary Association was even more mysterious than she originally thought. She originally thought that maybe it was on par with the Big Sects on the Central Continent, but now she was starting to think differently.

Mira kept coming up with theories and speculations, but eventually she just shook her head, grabbed her books, and left his place. She had better things to do other than thinking about the various powers and organizations of the world.

When Mira appeared back in the Mercenary Association building, she didn’t say a word to anyone else and just grabbed her badge and left.

‘I need a place to stay for the next few days so I can study these books. Ah! Now that I think about it, I can just go to a nearby chasm and make my own cultivation cave.’

With that decided, Mira made her way to the nearest Chasm. It wasn’t very far away as there are dozens of them all around the city so it didn’t take much time for Mira to get there.

However, when she looked down into the chasm, she instantly became annoyed.

‘There are no spots to make a cultivation cave! Fine! Fuck it! I’ll just go take someone else’s!’

Mira chose a random cave, jumped down into the Chasm, and walked into the cave.

Obviously, the guy cultivating inside the cave felt her presence and immediately stopped what he was doing. He was about to get up and attack whoever it was that entered, but before he could do or say anything, his head was separated from his body.

Mira had no patience in dealing with such low-lives and didn’t care about his background or feelings.

She probably could’ve gotten the guy to leave without a fight, but it’s simply too much work to have to talk it out with someone when she can just kill them.

‘That’s the whole reason I wanted to come here. No rules. No regulations. No authority. I can do whatever I want here and nobody will try to stop me! Hehe~’

Mira chuckled inwardly while looting the guy’s body. She looked through his Spatial Ring, but was disappointed by how poor that guy was.

She didn’t think too much about it though, and proceeded with phase 2 of her plan. Turning this place into an ice cave!

Mira began releasing her Ice Dao to coat the entire cave in ice and then she blocked off the entrance.

Now that she had a place to stay and was all alone, she finally took out the books she just purchased.

Mortal Realm Herbology (Part 1 of 2)

Mortal Realm Metallurgy (Part 1 of 2)

Mortal Realm Unique Treasures (Part 1 of 2)

Mortal Realm Unique Treasures (Part 2 of 2)

Surprisingly, most of Mira’s contribution points actually went towards the Mortal Realm Unique Treasures (Part 2 of 2) book. 3,000 Contribution points to be exact.

She paid 500 for Mortal Realm Unique Treasures (Part 1 of 2) and 250 each for the remaining two. She wasn’t too surprised by this though.

Herbology and Metallurgy books are rather common even amongst small clans and even some big villages. Everyone uses metal and plants at some point in their lives, even those who don’t go down the path of cultivation. Unique treasures, on the other hand, are a completely different story. Unique treasures can help boost one’s own strength, comprehension, and even talent by a large margin. They are also incredibly rare so having two whole books on them was astounding to Mira.

Without wasting any more time, Mira opened the first book and began reading.