Not long after I had finished the discussion with Long, Grace and the trio came to inform me of the gains from the raid, it seemed like they sold the orb for 2 gold while the reward for the mission was 55 silvers, in the end after persuading them not to give me all the gold and that it was their effort, they still gave me 1G and they just took 50S each, before leaving hurriedly.

Since I decided to sleep for the rest of the day and relax, I added the rest of the points to my Perception bringing it up to 4.6, I lied in the sleeping bag as I was experiencing a distorted sense of perception which was the side effect of adding point to Perception under 'Immediate Synchro', I closed my eyes as I let my conscious dive into the land of dreams….

`~~`~~`

11PM….

I woke up as it was time to commence the second phase of my plan, while the first phase was gaining info and repaying my favor, the second phase was more like the heart of my plan which was my actual target.

I had Long take my place and even show the same hideous scar as still unhealed to make it more convincing if someone came to check on it, while I sneaked stealthy out of the camp without making much noise…..

I took out the map that we received and the map that contained all targets that we saw in the meeting appeared in my mind before overlapping at the map, I currently held.

I had already spent some time studying the complete map while the rest of the team was preparing for the raid, and I had finally chosen a place to be my base that I'd stay for while commencing the second phase, it was a mountainous area that contained potential caves, being at the true center of that map when attached to my target caves…..

I sped through the way, moving at my maximum speed as I would still need to travel to my target gate. I also needed to take some time to make one of the caves habitable for me so there was no need to slack around.

`~~`~~`

By the next morning at 10AM I already reach the rocky mountain area, searching through the caves, I found a decent one but there was actually an evolved desert cat inside which looked more like a lion, but I was still able to easily scare it away, as it was easier for it to find a better cave, while it would be some sort of a chore instead if I were to search for another one.

Spending 2 hours to renovate the place a little bit, and spending 2 more hours to practice which helped me reach a total of 2.9 in the element stat, almost at 3 points which would normally be the bottleneck of the initial layer, however, as I was already expecting that my bottleneck won't be at 3 points it wasn't necessarily that exciting.

After finishing my practice, I remembered that I had an item that still needed further inspection, as the system seemed to be reacting to it, it was obviously the corrupted elemental crystal.

I took one out and inspected it once again using 'Eye of knowledge', expectedly showing the same result as the last time, the system message started out once again as well….

[ A corrupted elemental crystal has been acquired, do you wish to purify it? ]

Thump!

"Purify?!"

What did it mean to purify something? It obviously meant to remove the corruption energy in the crystal! This was something that might seem as easy as purifying the orb but that was completely wrong!

The orb in itself is supposedly just a spatial tool that holds blood essence, quite similar to an essence orb in one field, the only reason it needed purification was just that it was tainted due to its connection with the corruption energy contained in the gate that the orb created, mainly under the effect of the dark clouds.

On the other hand, according to the description of the corrupted elemental crystal, it was a crystal grown by corruption energy while intaking random elements, one had to know that a crystal mine would only collect one element, creating uni-elemental crystals, and it actually needed to be a special area abundant in a certain element for it start forming crystals.

So the corrupted crystal should be filled with corruption to its roots, and theortically, even purification tools can only turn it into a normal crystal which holds no element at all….

Yet the system was capable of purifying it? Was it going to truly turn into normal crystals or does it truly have the ability to do more than that.

"Yes, Purify."

For a single second, I felt as if my mental energy was controlled by something, as a visible thread grew from my palm and attached itself to the crystal…..

After 1 whole minute, the pitch dark crystal, turned as white as normal crystals which got me quite a bit disappointed ,although I had no actual expectations. In the end, I still inspected with the 'Eye of knowledge' just to make sure what was the result.

However, the result wasn't as expected…. At all….

"!!!!!"