Weapon seller in the world of magic

Another minute later, Lan Ju returned to the party and informed Mark, "The snake was willing to form a contract with you on the condition that it won't be taken away from this island. It told me that it was born here and appeared to be quite attached to this island."

Mark never planned to carry it away too. He agreed to the terms, "Alright. Let's go and meet it."

After a while;

"So, let me get this straight. You stay here as the guardian and I will grant you the freedom to roam around. The mountain will be your home and I won't touch it either. However, the entire forest will be reduced to the ashes and you have to accept the terms," said Mark as he looked directly in the eye of the 500-meter-long serpent beast.

The rest of the contract is quite easy. All it needs is Mark's blood to be consumed by the beast and vice versa. It was an equal contract and the terms were set beforehand.

Hence, the process went quite smoothly, although Mark didn't receive any notification as the system was offline at the moment.

After the contract was completed, the giant serpent named Yong returned to the mountain and curled itself around its peak.

Meanwhile, Mark took out 50 robots from the storage card, lining them up straight.

The others wondered if these robots will clean up the island. However, Mark had no plans to do that yet.

He spread a large sheet with the drawing of a house and its parts.

"Go and cut down the trees." He ordered the robots to get down to the work.

About four hours later, two wooden houses were built in the middle of nowhere, one for Mark and Song Yue, and another for Lan Ju and Song Yun.

After that, a large kennel was also built for Baltrow.

"How long we are going to live here?" asked Song Yue. She was staring at the house in awe.

Meanwhile, at the Imperial City;

Inside of the guild Ace, Lin Xue, and Allen were standing in front of the guild master, who had the scrolls in his hands with quests.

He was nervously explaining each quest to Lin Xue while observing Allen from time to time.

"No, it is too far" "No, the quest is too easy" "Are we boar hunters or what?" "Finding the kidnapper of a minor noble family's heir? Do you think my status is that lowly?"

Lin Xue was rejecting every kind of quest available, giving the reasons one after another as she wanted a perfect quest for Allen's first quest as an adventurer. Allen calmly watched it from the side without giving his opinion until the guild master spoke of a certain quest with serial killings.

"Lady Lin, how about this." The guild master explained to them the mysterious serial killings of the people belonging to Xiangrao village during the past year.

Just as Lin Xue was about to reject it by telling him that they aren't detectives, Allen accepts the quest right away, "Sister Lin, I think we should accept this quest. Most of the victims appeared to be children."

Seeing that Allen wanted to pick this quest, she decided to go with the quest but the bodyguard behind her didn't feel like he was comfortable with it.

He voiced his opinion right away before Lin Xue's mind changed. Pointing at the symbol drawn at bottom of the scroll, he warned her, "Young miss, look carefully at the insignia. I think you should think twice before accepting it."

According to the investigation results, all of the dead bodies appeared to have a drawing on one of their cheeks. It is the symbol of a winged lion with two horns protruding from its forehead.

One who has knowledge of the demon worlds, Ars Goetia, would realize that it belongs to Vapula, one of the 72 demon lords.

It means that the organization behind the assassinations either was using these victims as sacrifices to Vapula or the founding members might have just randomly chosen them as their organization's insignia.

If it is the latter, it is alright, but if it is the former, then, those occultists might pose danger to Lin Xue, or so her bodyguard thought.

Lin Xue stared at the quest for a few seconds and nodded as she looked at the guild master, "Okay, we will accept this quest."

"But, young miss…" The guard tried to warn her but she retorted with her statement, "If it is that dangerous, then, this quest might have gone to one of the top guilds."

"I guess…" The bodyguard had no choice but to obey her as she had logic backing her statement.

On the dawn of the next day, they were seen leaving on the horses provided by the guild. Because of the location of the village, they had to ride horses instead of traveling in a carriage.

Obviously, Lin Xue's bodyguard secretly followed them from behind.

After about six hours of travel, they reached the forest of Shunan, named after one of the emperors.

Right from the entrance of the forest, it was quite thick with a single narrow path leading to the village that the horses had to slowly walk.

Looking around the bushes and the trees, Lin Xue spoke, "Allen, don't you think that it is really weird that a village was built in the middle of a forest like here? Not to mention, they aren't simple villagers either. They were retired soldiers, for god's sake. Why do they have to choose such a location?"

Allen scanned the place and commented in response, "It is probably because of the red sandalwood."

"Eh?" Lin Xue suddenly pulled the reins back and stopped the horse. She looked at him in surprise, "red sandalwood? It wasn't mentioned in the quest details. How did you know?"

Allen pointed to a nearby tree that has a red bark but wasn't giving off any aroma like normal sandalwood trees. "Wow." She exclaimed, contrary to her cold and calm personality.

Her reaction made Allen ask, "I'm sorry but does red sandalwood has uses other than for medicinal purposes or furniture?"

He came to an earlier conclusion because of its uses and nothing more. It was only after Lin Xue reminded him of its price he realized why she reacted that way.

The red sandalwood in this world was known to only grow in the Bloodhill forest at the tier-5 zone, which is dangerous for anyone below the 4-circle realm Spirit Warriors.

And due to its extreme rarity, wealthy families like to prefer it as the raw material for furniture. Hence, the price of red sandalwood per 1kg goes as high as 500 gold coins. It is indeed too expensive.

Lin Xue decided to report this matter to the Imperial Palace after returning as such treasure belongs to the empire. Maybe, this will let her gain the favor of the emperor and use it to forever get rid of the third prince from her back. She doesn't like Shang Wei and it was extremely uncomfortable for her to keep rejecting him every time he shamelessly tries to woo her.