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"Thank you all, really, thank you so much." A young man covered in blood bowed and thanked the people around him.
On the scorched battlefield, a girl dressed in white priest robes was profusely sweating as she cast emergency Healing Spells on the injured lying on the ground. Although her recovery ability was clearly not as good as Father Jasper from Bluefinch Chapel, it was still evident that the bleeding from the wounds had stopped—though the speed of healing was not very noticeable.
Some Adventurers also took out wound medicine and clean bandages to help bandage the injured. Caelan looked around. There were a total of forty-seven people. Thirteen were injured, and three of them were severely injured, but it seemed none of them were in life-threatening danger.
At this moment, the flames on the surrounding burning trees had naturally extinguished. There were too many fire-wielding creatures in this world, and trees had evolved a certain degree of fire resistance, making forest fires extremely rare. Quite miraculous.
"Oh? The owner of Game City?"
"Hi, Quinn. How are you?" Caelan waved and greeted her.
"You're an Illusionist. Why aren't you staying in the city making games, but instead out adventuring?" Quinn of House Stormcall asked, puzzled.
Due to frequently visiting Caelan's Game City to play games, Quinn and Caelan were quite familiar with each other. She had a good impression of this person who could create such unique illusion games. It was just that sometimes the enemies he designed were too disgusting. Before, it was Shredder. Now it was Akuma. Akuma was truly too strong—no one had been able to defeat him on Nightmare Difficulty before she set off. She herself barely had a chance against Akuma on Expert Difficulty, let alone Nightmare.
"Being cooped up at home for too long, I naturally want to come out and get some fresh air. I didn't expect to be adventuring in the same place. What a coincidence," Caelan said casually, then suddenly remembered something and asked, "By the way, what's the name of your Adventurer Group?"
Quinn's expression froze, and she stammered for a long time without making a sound—seemingly unwilling to say. Although Caelan was curious, he didn't press further.
"We are the Pink Squirrel Adventure Group," a female voice chimed in cheerfully.
Caelan turned his head and saw that it was also from Crimson Academy—a girl named Lillian of House Galewind. She often came to Game City with Quinn to play games, and they had a very good relationship. She was from Class Zero, so her strength must not be bad.
A rare blush appeared on Quinn's fair face, and she glared fiercely at Lillian, blaming her for being talkative.
"Oh? The battle is already over? No one was injured, right?"
At this moment, another team of over ten Adventurers rushed out of the mountain forest. It seemed they had also seen the distress signal and came to help.
The person who had sent the distress signal earlier quickly stepped forward to thank them. "Thank you for your help. The Demonic Beast horde has been driven away by everyone. Several people were injured, but fortunately, there's a Light-element Priest, and the injured are currently being treated by her."
"Oh, oh." The newly arrived Adventure team leader nodded. Seeing several people still lying on the ground waiting for treatment, he quickly called out behind him: "Yucai, Yuzhai, go and help! When you're out and about, your own people should help each other."
"Got it. We were just choosing medicine." Two girls in black priest robes emerged from the crowd. They looked very similar, around twenty-three or twenty-four years old, with delicate features and graceful looks—but they both appeared cold and had no pleasant expressions on their faces.
"Wow, this Adventure team of over a dozen people actually has two Shadow Priests. That's a bit extravagant," an Adventurer nearby whispered, his tone not without envy.
The two Shadow Priest girls each found an injured person, applied medicine, and then cast Shadow-element Healing Spells to treat their wounds. However, Caelan noticed that neither of the girls even glanced at the Light-element Priest, which seemed deliberate.
Although Light and Shadow weren't mortal enemies in this world, their relationship didn't seem that harmonious either.
While they were busy treating the injured, the leaders of the participating teams were also discussing the division of spoils. Although Caelan's team and Quinn's team had formidable combat power, they arrived relatively late. The Adventure Group that sent the distress signal consciously withdrew from the spoils distribution, and the newly arrived team that didn't participate in the battle didn't intend to force a share—planning to leave after the two Shadow Priests finished treating the injured.
Since no one died, the atmosphere was very relaxed and lively. It didn't take long to distribute the spoils. Caelan's Adventure Group received the corpse of a Gale Wolf with its magic core removed. But considering that none of the five members in the team had cooking skills, and the Gale Wolf's corpse took up a lot of space, after discussion, they added money and traded it for a magic core.
Magic cores were widely used. They could be inlaid into magic staffs, cold weapons, or armor, or ground into powder for alchemy, medicine making, and engraved runestones. They were in high demand and sold very well.
After the distribution, it was already noon, and a large group of people started chatting amongst themselves.
"According to my judgment, those missing people were most likely trapped in a cave by some powerful Demonic Beast."
"Powerful Demonic Beast? How powerful could it be? After so many years, all the famous powerful Demonic Beasts have already been killed by the strong cultivators in this country!"
"Demonic Beasts are endless."
"I think it's possible that only the child of the Cloudweave Family survived, and everyone else died."
"Why bother so much? We're not intentionally looking for them. If we encounter them, we'll just earn a few hundred gold crowns. If not, then so be it."
"Brother Taoyuan, did you take on a personal mission coming here this time? Weren't you always in the Land of Chaos? This place is too unchallenging for you."
"Hey, don't even mention it. Several city-states near Baduo City where I was staying have erupted into chaos for some unknown reason. If I stay any longer, I might be forcibly conscripted into battle, and I don't want to die."
On one side, taking advantage of the break, Cassius and Victor each pulled out a runestone, entered Street Fighter, opened a room, and started dueling. Nicole, seeing this, also took out a runestone with Priscilla and started playing Squirrel War.
This instantly attracted everyone's attention. Quinn, seeing this, immediately walked over with Lillian and asked in surprise, "What's going on now? Why don't you need a table to play games?"
Victor was very willing to answer questions from pretty girls. "A gift Caelan gave us before we set off. He said that since the console is inconvenient to carry, with this, we can play games anytime, anywhere, and it has all the functions of the console."
Quinn leaned in to look. This runestone was about the same width as a size-6 runestone, but longer. The blacked-out area in the middle, occupying most of the space, was naturally the screen. On the left, six buttons lit up—corresponding to up, down, left, right, start, and pause. On the right, there were also six buttons, displaying 123456 in Imperial numbers, which should correspond to the six buttons for three punches and three kicks. Quinn then looked at the two girls next to her and noticed that their right-hand buttons only displayed 12, which seemed to correspond to the attack and jump from the previous game.
As an experienced game enthusiast, Quinn naturally understood such a setup at a glance.
This is too convenient, Quinn exclaimed in her heart. As an out-and-out gaming-addicted girl, not playing games for several days in a row made her very uncomfortable and a little miserable, but there was nothing she could do. Although she had finally managed to get money to buy an Elite Edition console, she couldn't possibly carry it everywhere she went adventuring. Her friend Lillian was a rich woman and had a Storage Ring, but its space was less than one cubic meter. That was used to store food, water, and some important supplies. Of course, she couldn't waste precious space on playing games.
Moreover, even if she brought the console, it wasn't suitable for every place. She couldn't just carry another table, could she? Therefore, whenever her gaming addiction flared up these past few days, Quinn's sleep quality had suffered significantly.
Thinking of this, Quinn hesitated for a moment, then finally walked up to Caelan and asked, "Caelan, can you sell me one of these runestones you gave them?"