"So, you are saying, we all got ambushed by another boss monster of similar strength to the first one, but as he had an advanced stealth art, he managed to knock us all down, but you withstood the ambush and protected us before slaying the second boss, right?"

Grace looked at me with a calm face, they were currently getting ready to leave the gate...

"In summary, yes, if you weren't taken by surprise, you would have easily done the same. Besides, I received such an injury which will require some time to heal... "

I didn't plan to reveal the true events that happened here for several reasons….

Firstly, the corrupted crystals were very dangerous depending on the hands they fell in, so such presence had to be concealed, taking into account that the association itself may not be clean of corruption, even in the sense of the political type of corruption if one was to refer to the case of Grace's family and the whole city being somewhat oppressed.

Although all the corrupted I have met so far had low intelligence, who knew if there higher ranked corrupted beings, who had the ability to harvest and distribute such endless batteries to their armies outside the gate, it did seem far fetched, but I shuddered just contemplating the thought.

Secondly, the double boss occurrence was already shocking enough, if two such accidents were reported, it would surely arouse suspicions.

And finally, if I were the one to survive and save the day after all these bizarre anomalies, wouldn't the cover that I applied to be as plain as possible be blown off? I might even end in a worse situation than the trio's, becoming a useful pawn that the association can easily manipulate…..

As such, I just made up some sort of believable story with the injury as a small evidence, no one would truly search for more info after receiving the report of the double boss appearance after all.

"I see, we owe you once more, let's get this cave raid done with so that we can get you healed up quickly."

Grace then moved to the Orb, putting her hand on it as she proceeded to transmit a thin layer of light elements over it. The dark active orb slightly dimmed as we all vanished from sight, ending up out of the gate.

This was the other form of gate clearing, and the most popular one, after all, not that much warriors had purification tools to purify the essence that comes out from the orb after its destruction, so this method was considered a waste that would only be used in the case of emergencies.

This method relied on either light or lightning elements to sever the connection of the orb, which would be then brought out, and sold to the association for a hefty price. As for the association, they had true purification tools so they didn't lose out on the benefits, gaining essence and spatial materials. This was a method devised by the association which later became popular as it brought mutual benefits for all parties.

Light and Lightning both had extreme effects on corrupted energy, thus being the only elements capable of such effect, precisely the reason why any elemental practitioner of these elements would be quite a popular party member and could easily join higher ranked parties.

It also didn't mean that not having such a practitioner would result in being forced to use the first method, the association would offer pseudo elemental tools capable of emitting the slightest amount of light elements, just enough to sever the connection, so other than higher ranked parties who either had purification tools or had a practitioner of these two elements, most parties resorted to this method as they would still gain profit after buying the tool and selling the orb forming a huge source of wealth to the association…..

This method was called 'Elemental severing'!