…
Once the reporting and questioning were finished, Wang Yue stood up to leave, but the girl in the beret called out to her. Her bright eyes blinked as she said, “Please wait, there’s one more thing.”
Wang Yue sat back down.
The second matter was regarding the Wishing Coin.
The young woman suddenly stood up and bowed deeply to her, her waist bent at a ninety-degree angle. Her hair fell from her ears onto the table, and from Wang Yue’s perspective, she could see a small whorl in the girl’s hair.
“On behalf of the Explorers’ Guild, I thank you for your immense contribution.”
“It’s nothing.” Wang Yue felt a bit awkward; she wasn’t accustomed to the flattering ways of the adult world.
The girl straightened her back and sat down again, ignoring the stray hairs on her cheeks. Her voice trembled slightly, filled with emotion.
“You discovered and saved six hundred and forty-one lives. Had you not lent a hand, they would have been locked away in the dark underground, suffering torture and abuse, becoming playthings and breeding machines for monsters… The reason they can start new lives and reunite with their families is because you, by your own strength, changed the flow of fate…”
Perhaps because they were around the same age, Kiri had felt a strong sense of empathy from the moment she first heard about the plight of those young women.
Naturally, she saw the little witch Wang Yue—who had rescued over six hundred people—as a hero. Moreover, she was excessively beautiful. Kiri was practically a worshiper now.
Having heard that most Witches were driven by Greed, she had even dressed up specifically for this meeting, but to her disappointment, the young black-haired girl showed no interest in her.
Wang Yue shifted her gaze elsewhere and remained silent.
“The Guild has decided to award you eighty million Merits as compensation,” the girl said, bowing again, though this time with a smaller gesture.
“How many million?” Wang Yue was stunned.
“Eighty million.”
“Is human life that valuable?”
Killing a Lesser Lord of the Silver Moon Phantasm had only yielded five hundred thousand Merits, and that was shared with Medeili.
“In the eyes of different people and different organizations, the value of a human life varies.”
Wang Yue nodded slowly.
According to market rates, eighty million Merits was the threshold for exchanging for a Special Grade Relic. However, she was not a ranked Explorer, so she didn’t have the qualification to exchange for one; at most, she could trade for Transcendent Materials.
It seemed that just as Transcendent Materials couldn’t be bought with ordinary currency, Special Grade Relics were items that money—or Merits—could rarely buy. The owners of such incredible, logic-defying tools would never part with them.
Below Special Grade Relics, however, there were High-Grade Relics and Relic Artifacts available for exchange, such as Combat Regalias.
While it was a pity she couldn’t get a Special Grade Relic, Wang Yue knew very well that eighty million Merits was an enormous sum. A single Combat Regalia was worth only ten million; she could afford eight of them.
If she had found it too troublesome to save those people, or if she had taken a dark path and turned those ‘cups’ into Life-fibers or actually used them as sex slaves, she likely wouldn’t have received eighty million Merits—or more importantly, the goodwill of the Explorers’ Guild.
Looking at it this way, the “Gingerbread Man” was also a kind of faith—a way to distinguish between “us” and “them.”
Wang Yue gave a faint smile and left the station.
She arrived at a house in the Quicksand Lowlands. Pushing the door open, she set the bubble backpack on the sofa. Immediately, a childish voice rang out from the room, shouting “Ed! Ed!” as a figure came running out, the sound of pitter-patter echoing as small, bare feet hit the floor.
Upon seeing Wang Yue, Helen’s little face instantly fell. She asked in a low voice, “Why is it you?”
“This is the house I rented,” Wang Yue muttered. She reached out and picked up a mug from the table to take a drink.
“That’s my cup!”
“I bought it for you.”
“You—!”
The little girl scrunched up her face but found herself completely powerless against the hateful black-haired girl. Her food, clothes, and shelter were all provided by Wang Yue.
But in her heart of hearts, she disliked her. She saw this person as the obstacle between her and Mr. Ed.
She keenly sensed that Ed-Bear’s fate was somehow held in this person’s hands. This absolute control made her feel afraid and uneasy.
Now, her “Mister” was gone, and she had been brought to this strange place to be “imprisoned.” The shadow of the black-haired girl was behind the entire affair.
She didn’t know what this cold-blooded she-devil had done to Mr. Ed. Whenever she asked, the answer was always “a mission.” Was it… the Master’s mission?
Mister was her Mister. The thought of him being controlled by another girl pierced her heart like a knife, leaving her feeling sorrowful and helpless.
Helen’s small body trembled slightly as she shouted recklessly, “Give Ed back to me!”
