Sword God in a World of Magic

The mission board was absolutely filled with missions. The other mission boards couldn't compare at all to this one, which made sense.

Warrior's Paradise was a gigantic city fully focused on economy. People from all over the world came here to get rare materials from rare beasts, and the reason why Warrior's Paradise could get these rare materials was its very location.

It was in the middle of three differently ranked wildernesses.

Of course, the most important was the Canyon. The Canyon housed many beasts in the Third Realm, and those were the desirable ones for the city and the people visiting it.

However, to keep such a high-ranked wilderness healthy, there had to be lower-ranked wildernesses in its vicinity. A beast in the Third Realm couldn't just have its children in such a highly ranked wilderness.

After all, how will the beasts learn to fend for themselves and become more powerful? This wasn't Earth where it was natural for a beast to reach the power of its parents.

No, the offspring of a beast in the Third Realm would barely reach the Initial Second Realm before it counted as fully grown. At that point, it needed to become more powerful by hunting powerful beasts.

Because of that, basically all offspring of the truly powerful beasts were sent to an area filled with beasts in the First Realm. The offspring still had a definite advantage in the First Realm since it came from such a powerful bloodline, but that would change in the Second Realm.

That was why these lower-ranked wildernesses acted as a training ground for the offspring of powerful beasts. The offspring would learn to fight in these areas, and they would have to truly prove themselves in areas housing beasts in the Second Realm.

And only when they managed to get through all the other beasts could they go to the Canyon.

So, even though the Canyon was the most important wilderness around Warrior's Paradise, it couldn't exist without the Wasteland and the Wild Forest. Without these two, new beasts in the Third Realm would become extremely rare, and Warrior's Paradise would inevitably eradicate the powerful beasts.

However, the Wild Forest and the Wasteland still needed a lot of maintenance.

First of all, the beast population had to be kept in place, or the beasts would start spilling over into the other wildernesses or even attack the Farm Line.

Second, there were several beast kinds that specifically hunted talented young beasts, and those were bad for Warrior's Paradise for obvious reasons. No talented offspring, no new Third Realm beasts.

And since there were three wildernesses around Warrior's Paradise, the missions regarding beasts were insanely numerous.

'Capture a newborn Spear Stork,' Shang read in his mind when he saw one particular mission.

This mission had caught his eye due to the familiar name.

'Spear Stork. That was the kind of bird that was killed by the ballista when I first arrived here. Teacher Loran said that it was in the Third Realm, the Commander Stage,' Shang remembered.

'Capture it? Why? The mission has been submitted by the Mana Austerum based on the mission slip. Well, I guess something like a Spear Stork has an Affinity for Wind. Maybe the Mana Austerum wants to study it?'

'Also, what's that reward? Four training slips? Is that for the special training, or what's that for? I should ask later.'

Shang looked over the other missions as well.

Nearly all the missions were about killing certain beasts, but there were also a couple of missions that wanted materials. For these missions, it didn't matter how one obtained these materials.

Of course, the reason why these missions even existed was that they were either cheaper to get from the academy or they were simply not available. Therefore, accepting the mission, buying them, and submitting them would be a net loss. If that worked, the submitter of the mission would have done that themselves.

'Lots of special beasts I have never heard of,' Shang thought. 'I don't even know what a Doomeye Lizard is. Also, what the hell is a Grimface?'

After looking at the missions for a while, Shang noticed an issue.

He had no idea what kind of beasts the missions wanted. Sure, he had the name, but he needed a description of their features, at least.

It was important to know which beasts could be hunted and which couldn't. Sure, around 90% of beasts were free to be killed by everyone, but the 10% that were forbidden from being hunted were important.

If the city noticed that someone had hunted a beast on the blacklist, the hunter would need to give up the corpse and pay a hefty fine. This meant that the hunter had literally risked their life to pay a hefty fine.

'Well, seems like I should stay with the base missions for now,' Shang thought as he looked to a smaller board to the side.

Base missions were different from normal missions. Normal missions were individual missions that had been submitted by a client. Base missions, on the other hand, were directly given by the academy itself.

Those missions also had descriptions of the targets on them.

Shang looked at the base mission at the top.

'Eradicate all Pest Cats. Makes sense,' Shang thought. 'Wait! 21 Contribution Points? I'm pretty sure that someone like teacher Mervin wouldn't steal a single Contribution Point from a student. So, does that mean that the reward has increased in the last couple of days?'

Shang looked over the mission and noticed that he didn't need to register for that mission. Usually, someone needed to register for a mission if they wanted to accept it. The registering process would then lock the mission to that person, which stopped two people from going out to do the same mission.

But for these base missions, registering wasn't necessary.

Why?

Because there was no limit to the number of targets. No matter how many corpses one brought, the academy would reward each and every one of them.

Speaking of corpses, Shang noticed that he didn't actually need to bring over the entire corpse for the reward. He only needed to bring two Pest Cat ears as proof.

Something interesting Shang noticed was that the eradication of the Pest Cats wasn't the only base mission, and it also wasn't the only one without a target limit.

There were three more.

'Swamp Millipede?' Shang thought as he looked at the next mission.

The first thing that caught Shang's eye was the reward.

'50 Contribution Points!' Shang thought with interest.

Then, he looked at the description.

'A purplish-black millipede with a Poison Affinity. It transforms its nest and surroundings into a poisonous swamp, severely damaging the plants and ruining the forest. They can be found in the northeastern Wild Forest,' Shang read in his mind.

'Poison Affinity?' Shang thought with furrowed brows, but a bit later, he realized something.

'The Empress Cobra Zone is to the northeast, and teacher Mervin said that the Empress Cobra has a Poison Affinity. I guess this is an invasive species.'

Shang continued reading.

'Huh, they are at the same level as Pest Cats generally, which is the Middle Soldier Stage, but they have elemental abilities, which makes them more dangerous. That's also why they are worth more.'

'I should keep an eye out for them.'

Then, Shang looked at the next mission.

'Life Scarab? That doesn't really sound dangerous,' Shang thought while reading the mission.

'Interesting. They find a tree and bind with it. Then, they absorb the light in the surroundings and infuse the tree with lots of Mana. The tree wildly mutates, which usually results in it destroying the other plants around it and becoming quite powerful. After the mutation, the tree is subservient to the light scarab.'

'One of the major reasons why they are a huge problem is that they don't kill to feed. They basically kill everything that comes close to them, no matter what it is. However, without the Life Scarab, the tree will quickly die.'

'200 Contribution Points as a reward since the tree usually exhibits power in the Late Soldier Stage. They can be found in the northwestern forest.'

'As it stands right now, I should go to the northwestern forest. There are simply more rewards there. However, I should look at the last mission first.'

Shang looked at the last mission, and his eyes widened.

'Vanishing Snake.'

'2,000 Contribution Points!'