The Starflower.

A mythical herb said to be capable of healing all and any wounds. Even if a person is on the brink of death from an external injury, just one petal of a Starflower would be enough to cure them. Because a Starflower had thirty-six petals in total, that meant if you obtained one, you would essentially have thirty-six lives.

Of course, this wasn't entirely fool-proof. The Starflower could only heal physical wounds. It was ineffective against Curses, mind control, and things like that. There was, however, a different flower that was essentially the Starflower except for mental wounds - and it was called the Moonflower. But that was a story for another day.

In any case, according to Old Man Leng, Starflowers could be found on the sides of cliffs. That meant you either had to use Flight Magic to get them, or do it the harder way, which was climb down the cliff perpendicularly and get the herb from there. Thankfully, I had all 21 Elements, meaning Flight was a method I could use.

But that was just the first part of the issue.

According to Old Man Leng, there weren't any cliffs inside The Fortress. That's meant the only way to obtain a Starflower was to get it from someone else, or rely on the Hunters' Guild Shanghai Branch's portals to send us to a quest area with a cliff nearby. Of the two options, the former seemed more reliable. That being said, it wouldn't be a good idea to steal something right after we just stole the Basilisk Dust, so we had to buy it off someone - if it was even sold in the first place.

Even if it was, the price wouldn't be cheap. Although we all had quite a bit of money now from doing Hunters' Guild quests, we were still far from 'rich'.

Speaking of, all the girls and I, throughout the past week, have completed enough Hunters' Guild quests to reach the Bronze Hunter rank. That meant we could tackle on harder challenges now, with correspondingly bigger rewards. Still, we had about 400 more Bounty Points to go before we could achieve the next rank, which was Silver.

In any case, it had been a long day, so all of us returned to the hotel to rest.

*****

The next day, in the morning (around 6 PM in reality), we decided to look in the Hunters' Guild in search of a quest that could bring us to a location with cliffs nearby. We even tried asking a receptionist, since we weren't that knowledgeable about geography, but even she could not help us. I mean, it made sense. How diligent of a receptionist would you have to be to memorize the appearances of all the quest locations everyday?

...Actually, Lan Xiao Su seems like the kind to do that, but whatever. She already quit anyway.

In any case, we ended up just doing some quests at random until noon (12 AM in reality).

After lunch, we headed for the Library of Infinite Beginnings to tackle another floor. When we arrived on the 4th floor, however, we saw something unexpected.

"Hm? Four-Eyes...Cherry...Ling Ling?" Feng Mian was the first to react. I decided to ignore the fact that she didn't even bother saying Shi Yan's name even though he was also there.

"Ah, it's you guys!" Ling Ling hurriedly stood up and gave Feng Mian a big hug.

"A-Ah, hey," Feng Mian caught her awkwardly. "What happened? I thought you guys went up to the fifth floor already."

Cherry was the one to respond, sighing. "Well...this may be surprising, but turns out, the Gatekeeper of that floor was harder than we all expected. All of us were defeated, and were forced to run away through the door we came in from."

I narrowed my eyes. "All of you? It would make sense if the first person was defeated, but...shouldn't they warn the rest of you after escaping?"

"See...Shi Yan was stupid, is what it was," Four-Eyes muttered, sending his friend a glare of utter disdain. "This floor was unlike the previous ones. It allowed us to go in as a group, maximum of four people. Of course, you can also choose to do it with less, but Shi Yan's headass declared that since we were a group of four anyway, we might as well do it together."

"Oi! Who you calling a-" but then he turned to see Xiang Peng, and immediately fell quiet again.

Ah...how thoroughly you have broke his heart and mental will, Xiang Peng. I don't know whether to be happy or frustrated that I have such a...manipulative ally.

"Anyway, yeah...that's the story," Ling Ling concluded, pulling way from Feng Mian at last. "If you guys are planning on doing the test as well, please be careful."

"Aren't you guys going to try again?" I asked. "Just one loss is nothing. Now that you're prepared..."

Cherry sighed. "We would, but Four-Eyes and Shi Yan currently refuse to fight alongside each other. I swear, boys are such stubborn creatures."

"Hehe, Big Brother Xuan Kai is like that too~" Qing Yue added, clutching onto my arm. She seemed to be fine now, despite being somewhat weird yesterday.

Remembering this, I brought it up. "Oh yeah, Qing Yue, you seemed kinda off yesterday. More quiet than usual...but you're fine now. What's up with that?"

"Eh? Ah..." she suddenly averted her gaze, blushing slightly.

Then, the girls around me collectively sighed, even Cherry and Ling Ling.

"Xuan Kai, you're such a dimwit," Yu An Yan said, knocking me on the head.

"H-Huh? Wha-"

"Last week was that time of the month for Qing Yue," Feng Mian said cryptically.

I frowned. "That time? What time?" The other boys, Four-Eyes and Shi Yan, seemed equally as clueless as me.

Cherry facepalmed. "I swear...boys are not just stubborn, but also such...stupid creatures."

Thank you very much, ma'am, you just collectively insulted about half the population of the world with one sentence. A little more than half, in fact. If I remember correctly, there was a book on the second floor of this place that I read - it said somewhere that the sex ratio of Xenith was around 101 males to 100 females.

"Uh...sorry, I still don't quite understand-"

"Just stop asking, Xuan Kai~" Xiang Peng quickly interrupted. "Big sister here will teach you all about it tonight...just the two of us...heehee..."

Saying this, she leaned in to my ear and whispered seductively. I pushed her away. "No thanks."

I was eager to know, but not so eager to know that I would throw away my first time for it. I wasn't ready for that yet. Especially not with Xiang Peng. God knows if she's done it with other men before, with that flirtarious demeanor of hers.

"Nya, Xuwan Kwai, do you weally nyot nyow about perio-"

"Amane, no!" Lan Xiao Su quickly cried and covered the poor catgirl's mouth. Unfortunate. I could've gotten some information there.

"Master, I know what they are speaking of-"

"No you don't..." Obsidia moved, covering Mei Gui's mouth in the blink of an eye. Once again, unfortunate. That being said, I could always reach out to Mei Gui telepathically. I didn't really care all that much about this right now though.

"Anyway, let's see if we can beat this...difficult Gatekeeper you guys speak of," I said at last. "They allow groups of up to four people, correct?"

The four who had already tried it out nodded together.

"I see...but going solo is also an option, right?"

"Er...yeah? But I don't see why you would do that," Cherry said. "Not only is doing it as a group easier, with higher chances of success, it also saves time, since you don't have to go individually."

I smiled from beneath my mask. "Well. I have my reasons."

Then, turning around, I began heading up the staircase. Mei Gui followed, and soon, the other girls did as well after saying goodbye to our companions.

"Hey, Xuan Kai, you can't be seriously thinking of going in alone, are you?" Yu An Yan asked, frowning in disapproval.

I shrugged as we headed up the stairs. "So what if I am?"

She sighed. "I know you're stronger than those four by a whole lot, and even if all of them tried to attack you together, they would still lose terribly, but...is this really the right choice?"

I patted her head gently, to her surprise. She yelped a little, but didn't move away.

"Listen. I know my limits. I'm just testing this out to see if it gives me some extra benefit for doing it alone," I explained. A lie, of course. That wasn't the real reason at all. "Besides, I can always just run if things go south. Those guys managed to escape - I think I can too."

"Well, they managed to escape with four people, but...actually, I'm not even going to argue," Feng Mian said, sighing. "You just do what you want to do. We'll wait here for your return."

"Actually..." I turned to Mei Gui, and our eyes met. She instantly knew what I was hinting at.

"Yep, I'll take Mei Gui along," I said.

"Understood, Master."

"Wait, what-?!" Feng Mian immediately blurted out.

"Didn't you just say I should do what I want to do?" I chuckled.

"That...ugh, fine. You tricked me again..." she pouted, crossing her arms.

We arrived at the door soon after. This door was bigger than the ones on the previous floors, and had four scanners beside it instead of just one. Mei Gui and I each scanned our library cards, and after ten seconds of waiting from the system-side to see if anyone else would scan their card, the door opened up on its own, revealing a purple portal behind.

"Well then," I turned to Mei Gui. "Shall we go?"

She nodded. "Understood, Master."