MMORPG: The Elementalist

The instant he read that system notification, Qin Ruo was struck dumb. This… this tiny little cupful here—what was this stuff made of? Holy crap! How could this be so much more powerful than a Grade 4 attribute-boosting potion crafted by a Chemist?

A bottle of Grade 10 Advanced Vitality Potion could only raise your Maximum HP by 50, at best. This Great Tree Sap was far beyond anything he had ever heard of! Qin Ruo was beginning to suspect that Mikel, rather than being an Aeromancer, was actually some kind of Master Chemist!

This Great Tree Sap was at the very least a Grade 3 potion!

Seeing Qin Ruo’s stunned expression after taking the drink, Mikel burst out laughing, and then asked, “How is it? This wine is my own handmade specialty—I trust the taste agrees with you?”

Qin Ruo nodded fervently.

Watching his HP shoot up to a new total of 1,950—the feeling was… indescribable! He felt like he could hop back down to the Great Tree Forest and go another round with Dark Dragon!

What did it mean to have 1,950 HP? Even a proper Beastblood Berserker might not have much more HP than this. With his dual defenses active, he would be on par with a Boss!

Goodness gracious!

And what if a character from some other class were to use this Great Tree Sap? For a Swordmaster or a Berserker, an increase of a hundred points meant 1,500 and 1,800 Maximum HP respectively. Just imagine, with a Beastblood Berserker’s doubled HP, the total could even go past four thousand!

Qin Ruo sucked in a ragged breath, trying his best to conceal his excitement as he asked, “Do you have any more?”

“Of course!” Mikel’s eyebrows rose, and he took on the cunning smile of a shrewd businessman. “I haven’t had guests in so many years, I don’t even know how much Great Tree Sap I have stored away now. However, only the first cup is free—if you want more, you’ll have to trade for it.”

“Trade?” Qin Ruo gave a start, and peeked into his backpack for a moment. His brows rose up into a bunch on his forehead. What a tragedy! All he had in his pack were either potions or scrolls—nothing else—and he only had a pitiful amount of gold on him, just over ten thousand.

“Forget the gold, I don’t need it. You’ve got some nice attribute-boosters on you, but the rest is trash, and Darkfrost Potions are no use to me anyway… I’m afraid you’ve got nothing of value to me.” Looking Qin Ruo up and down, Mikel spoke with lips curled, as though he could see right through him.

Suddenly, something seemed to catch Mikel’s eye. “Oh! That’s a pretty nice necklace you’ve got there. I take back what I said. A Frostsoul Necklace—that’s something, yes! 5% Affinity necklaces are rare, worth a bit of money. I could offer you two hundred Redemption Points for that.”

Being appraised with such cold eyes, and then being informed that everything he had amounted to little more than garbage, Qin Ruo felt his sense of self-worth draining away to nothing. As for the Frostsoul Necklace, of course he would not be stupid enough to actually trade it away for some one-time-use consumable items.

As though he could read Qin Ruo’s thoughts, Mikel shrugged and poured himself another cup of Great Tree Sap, beneath Qin Ruo’s deeply envious gaze.

“Of course. You’re an Aquamancer—there’s no way you’d let go of a Frostsoul Necklace. Alright, if you really want more of my Great Tree Sap, or any of the other things I’m offering, then maybe you could go fetch a few things for me.”

As he spoke, he drank deeply of that wonderful wine, and Qin Ruo’s jealousy turned him as green as the liquid itself.

“What sort of things?”

“Some very valuable things from around the Graveyard of the Gods, such as some Soulblood from a mature Bloodthirsty Tree. One drop of Soulblood is needed to produce each flask of Great Tree Sap, and is worth a hundred Redemption Points. So, you could exchange Soulblood for Redemption Points, which you could then use to buy any items you desire from me.”

“Soulblood? How do I get that? By cutting down Bloodthirsty Trees?” Qin Ruo took in a breath of cold air.

Mikel watched him wordlessly for a moment. “Bloodthirsty Trees can’t be cut down. I certainly couldn’t do it. Even if you had God-tier abilities, it would still be impossible for you to kill a Bloodthirsty Tree—unless you had the ability to instantly cut down this entire Great Tree Forest!”

Qin Ruo had been stunned into silence. Mikel continued to explain, “Only when a Bloodthirsty Tree has received enough nutrition, that’s when it will release its victims, and one drop of Soulblood will form upon its bark. Once that happens, it will no longer attack any creatures nearby, so you can go right up and pluck that drop of Soulblood for yourself. It’ll be dark red and crystalline, easy to recognize.”

Qin Ruo nodded, and his eyes couldn’t help turning back towards the direction he came from, quietly hoping that Bloodthirsty Tree was still there, along with a drop of Soulblood on it.

Mikel still had some advice to give on this matter. “Once you’ve plucked off that drop of Soulblood, you’d better watch out! Once you remove its Soulblood, a Bloodthirsty Tree will start attacking again! The moment you get that Soulblood, get away immediately. If you get killed, it may be difficult for you to find your way back here again.”

“Eh?” Qin Ruo was confused by this. “Why’s that?”

“I suppose this is your first time in the Graveyard of the Gods?” Mikel asked.

With another pang of indignation, Qin Ruo nodded in reply.

“No wonder you don’t know, then. Your starting point in the Graveyard of the Gods is always randomly located. The next time you enter, odds are you won’t be anywhere near the Great Tree Forest. You might find yourself in the Death Desert instead, maybe the Bloodfiend Domain, or even the Shadow Plains.

“I’ve lived in this place for a century now, and I’ve only seen the merest glimpse of it. Who can say for sure? That’s why you absolutely have to be careful, otherwise it won’t matter how much Soulblood you’ve found, since I’m the only one who trades for it.”

“Mm.” Qin Ruo finally understood that this Great Tree Forest was but one small corner of the Graveyard of the Gods. All this while he’d thought the Great Tree Forest was basically the entire first level of the place.

“By the way, here in the Graveyard of the Gods, how many Lost Merchants like you are there?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know the answer to that.”

Mikel spent a moment deep in thought, as though searching through distant memories, before shaking his head and saying, “Even the ones located nearest to me, I haven’t had any contact with them in a long time. As far as I know, however, it seems there are a few in each region, and no two will be the same.”

“Oh. So do you all offer the same things for sale?”

“Of course not. Each one has different wares to offer. Take my handmade Great Tree Sap, for instance—you can’t get it anywhere else. Even the others dwelling upon the Emerald Plain, sulk as they will, they still have to trade for it from me, the same as everyone else. As for the other special items I have, take a look…”

There was a flash of light, and then a Trade Menu appeared in front of Qin Ruo. Besides a little bottle containing the green liquid called Great Tree Sap, there were a hundred other things: equipment, potions, scrolls, Pet Eggs, Skill Books… but the items that stood out the most were a shimmering rainbow-hued Legendary-tier dagger, and a hexagonal piece of yellow-ochre crystal—Divinity!

He’d never thought there would be anything like this!

Once he’d noticed the Divinity crystal, and seen the attributes of that Legendary-tier item, his eyes were watering with disbelief!

It seemed Mikel was a spectacular collector as well. He even had Divinity in stock, and available for trade!

But the price! Qin Ruo had trouble comprehending it.

A Legendary-tier helm granting the skills of Dark Puppet Summoning and Darkmist had a price tag of fifty thousand Redemption Points. Using his Frostsoul Necklace as an example, he would have to trade in two hundred and fifty of those to get that helm ¹ . If they were talking about Soulblood instead—each drop worth a hundred Redemption Points—he’d need no less than five hundred of those to trade for it.

The price for Divinity was even more fearsome: a hundred thousand Redemption Points. After a moment’s calculation, Qin Ruo was on the verge of tears. Now he truly understood that in this world there was nothing more painful than seeing an amazing item you really wanted, and then realizing that you could not afford it. Alas!

Great Tree Sap was not exactly cheap, either: each bottle cost fifty Redemption Points.

At first, Qin Ruo thought he would at least look through the rest of Mikel’s wares, but then a thought occurred to him that made him break out in cold sweat.

Oh no! That Grade 6 Sacred Potion he had used only had a duration of thirty-six minutes, and he had already spent almost ten minutes here. If he did not hurry up, even if he planned to feed the Bloodthirsty Trees with his own blood, he wouldn’t be able to collect any substantial amount of Soulblood!

‘Damn it!’

Turning away from that incredible array of items, Qin Ruo hurriedly asked Mikel if there was anything else worth gathering from a Bloodthirsty Tree, so he could just get it all at once.

However, Mikel had nothing more to tell him.

The next moment, as a startled and confused Mikel watched him go, Qin Ruo hopped to his feet and sprinted back in the direction he had come from! As he ran, he prayed fervently in his heart.

‘Bloodthirsty Tree! You’d better not go anywhere!’