Chapter 29: Nightshade flower field, the Goldmine

Walking towards the first bunch of Nightshade flowers, Shane exerted his mana gathering technique to see small dark mana particles swirling around.

Seeing that, he noticed that he could find the Nightshade flowers more easily like that and Shane wanted to exert the mana gathering technique more often.

However, in the end, he noticed that he was forced to focus too much on the mana gathering technique, causing him to lose some of his concentration on the overall situation.

As such, he would only exert it sometimes in order to look where exactly Nightshade flowers were.

Compared to five days ago, Shane's body wasn't even tensed up while walking around the outskirts, plucking the Nightshade flowers.

3rd-Wild stage shadow-snakes that shot out of the mud were either severed by Shane's dagger or pricked by Umbra's shadow needles and the two of them didn't even waste time after killing them.

The only thing that Shane did with the corpses, was storing them in his store and setting the price for 25 bronze coins which was slightly higher than what he would receive from the system.

Nevertheless, Shane did that to increase the sales in his shop in order to reach the required amount of gold coins that was needed to unlock the upgrade section, faster.

The Shadow-snakes were almost immediately purchased, as the organs of them could be used for medicine, while one could manufacturer an armor with the scales, even though it would only be a [Mortal (Common)] one at most.

Some poor households without any adventurers that hunted beasts to gain funds still purchased it for a few silver coins in order to give their children at least some kind of protection on their path of cultivation.

The scales could also be used to brew potions but they were trash quality and not that rare, as such Shane's price for 25 bronze coins was definitely fine, considering that these Shadow-snakes were even smaller than Umbra with a size of 30 centimeters at most.

Shadow-snakes were also called mini-snakes by some humans but that didn't make them less lethal.

Umbra was not even a 3rd rank wild beast but already larger than them due to his quality.

One could say he was also stronger due to the slight enhancement in affinity Umbra received thanks to Shane's innate skill.

Walking around the valley's outskirts, Shane wanted to clear it before entering the more dangerous bottom of the valley to prevent any shadow snakes from attacking his back while he focused on the main Nightshade flower field.

His first set of potions was already used up when Shane was not even halfway through the outskirts and his finances had already reached 13 silver coins due to the large number of shadow snakes he killed.

But that was not his main purpose and Shane's clothes were completes soaked through from the rain and mud, turning him into a beggar-like figure, which he didn't care about.

Increasing his income was much more important and after two hours, Shane had already plucked 200 Nightshade flowers which he didn't expect.

Did his speed increase so much or was he just extremely slow five days ago?

Shane didn't know, but before he did anything else, he requested the system to send the first batch of Nightshade flowers to the Corvi race.

This package would have to be accepted by the Corvi assistant he made the contract with.

If the package wouldn't be accepted within a period of 3 hours, it would be sent back, causing a backslash to Shane's plan.

But he was confident that the Corvi merchants ordered the system to accept the packages in exchange for the prices from the list which they previously agreed on.

Before the Corvi race accepted the package, the Nightshade flowers would still be in his spatial ring, which was the most important reason for him to purchase a second, larger spatial ring.

Estimating the time until his package would be accepted to be around one hour, Shane would have more than enough space in his spatial ring to horde more Nightshade flowers and he continued his trip through the outskirts of the lower part of the valley.

Receiving a notification around one hour later, Shane ignored it for the time being, because he couldn't be distracted, for the time being, as he was fighting a Shadow-python at the 5th rank of the Wild stage with Umbra's help.

The python's velocity wasn't much faster than Shane's but on the sloppy ground, it was definitely more difficult to evade a one-meter-long python's attack which was enveloped in shadow mana to add on.

Umbra distracted the Shadow-python by attacking it with shadow-needles aiming at its eyes and Shane bent down, almost touching the ground before he pushed himself towards his opponent, slashing out with his tempered shiolite dagger, severing the shadow-python's head.

One could say, Umbra was Shane's hidden weapon because one could barely notice the small snake coiled around Shane's neck.

Attacking with shadow needles in the darkness was also evil and even though the Shadow-snakes and -pythons had an exceptional sight in the darkness, it was still slightly difficult to notice paper-thin needles if the focus was set on a 1.8m tall human.

However what made him wonder more, was that Umbra was the only Shadow-snake he ever saw manifesting long-range attacks from all kinds of wild staged beasts, he faced until now.

Maybe this was because of Umbra's higher quality or the desire to help Shane out, even if it was weak... But there was no definite answer, even after questioning Umbra.

Nevertheless, it was still an advantage Shane and Umbra would use in order to defeat the Shadow-pythons and it was fortunately not that difficult.

Shane wasn't sure about peak-Wild shadow-pythons or even Shadow-pythons at the Elite stage, but he would only meet them in the center of the main Nightshade field and there were still more than enough Nightshade flowers to collect for him until he would meet opponents at this rank.

If everything went downwards, Shane could still use prismarine-luminous crystals while overclocking them to escape, even though this meant Shane had to forget about the main Nightshade field.

Surviving was more important and another two hours passed which was indicated by the countdown of his second set of potions running out.

In the last three hours, Shane had hunted more than 50x shadow snakes, 5x mid-wild shadow pythons and collected slightly more than 300 Nightshade flowers.

The second batch of Nightshade flowers was already sent to the Corvi race, but Shane still disregarded looking at the notification, showing the number of gold coins he received, and in addition to that, Shane also decided to ignore his finances, as everyone could be seen there.

Inside his shop, the corpses were hot selling products, that vanished faster than he could refill them, and even the shadow-python corpses he set at a price of 1 silver coin were immediately purchased.

Solely from the sales inside his shop, Shane would have a small fund of 30 silver coins but comparing it with the estimated price for the Nightshade flowers, it was considered a drop in the ocean.