[ You have cleared a corruption gate. ]

'Hmm?'

I didn't get such a notification the first time, it may have been due to the weird situation I was in, as in entering the gate in an illegitimate way, but it didn't mention any rewards or penalties either so I didn't give it much thought.

"Oh, you are finally out."

We were met by a ranger-like hunter, he was probably here to inform the association in case of failure so that they would dispatch a different team before it was too late, we were already told that normal scouts would distributed throughout the gates as a form of insurance, so we weren't surprised.

"Congratulations, you have cleared your first target! you can tell me if you have something to report and I will deliver it to the higher-ups, if any if you have bad injuries please inform me as well so that appropriate medication would be assigned to your team."

"We do have something to report. We en…."

`~~`~~`

"I see, another similar accident….."

"Eh? Did other teams have similar encounters?"

"Indeed, another team encountered such situation, thankfully it was a high ranked team, who managed to crush the second boss as well, but the notion itself is quite dangerous…"

"Anyway, leave this to me, I will report it to the higher ups as fast as I can so that other teams would receive alerts of such possibilities. As for your supporter's injury, I will give you a healing ticket which can be exchanged for certain types of medicine back in the camp, your team's recovery period would also be increased from 10 days to two weeks. Now then, I will be off, I wish you good luck!"

The ranger hurriedly sped off after leaving us as he seemed quite in a hurry to deliver the info, meanwhile we headed to the coach where the coachman was waiting for us while feeding the horses.

The coachman sped off as well as soon as we boarded, after all, Grace insisted that we must hurry back because of my injury….

`~~`~~`

1 day later, which marked the start of the fifth day since we headed out of the camp, I was dragged by the rest of the team to reach the camp's clinical tent to receive appropriate medicine.

In actuality, my injury was no more than just a simple case of skin deforming, meaning that I wasn't critically injured as we reported, however, it was my own intent to receive the status of a critically injured in the camp.

So, I feigned injury while trying to act tough, a typical act of any 16~17 year old stubborn kid my age, simply making this injury much more convincible.

"Mhmm, alright, you shall receive a stone mending flower, and one tube of potency diluting solution, you have to use the solution immediately after you swallow the flower or else your injury would burst! You will be assigned an individual tent to use for your current recovery period, and don't leave the tent at least before ten days so that the diluted flower's medicinal effect would be fully absorbed. Your basic meals will be delivered to you till then"

After the clinic gave a shallow examination to my injury as we showed him the healing ticket, he gave us a different type of ticket to go and receive the medicine from the storage tent.

'I guess ten days will do…'

Soon enough, I was at my new tent alone, as the trio left recently, after I told them I wanted to be alone for the recovery period, showing an act of feigning a steel-like endurance.

As for the medicine, I immediately swallowed the flower and stored the tube into the ring for now, the flower's medicinal potency wasn't worth the worry to me, as my Constitution was high enough to take on the effect, while my weapon energy would hasten the process of absorbance several notched.

I simply used my weapon energy to circulate most of the effect at my injured skin & thin meat layer just for the convenience of it, after all, this flower wasn't some sort of precious rare herb that had to be saved, it actually had less value to it than the solution which may be helpful later.

It only took half an hour before the medicinal potency was already dissipating, I opened my eyes to observe my injury which have already vanished as the deformed skill layer was already shed away, and a new one grew much faster due to the flower's help.

After calming down and relaxing on the bed for two hours, I felt less exhausted and my mind was somewhat refreshed. So it was time to move on to the next step.

"Hey, Long… it's time to come out."