Chapter 380: This Was a Quest Item

Chapter 380: This Was a Quest Item

“What? The Sanctuary Church has opened the lockdown for exploring Windwhisper Valley?” The adventurers and mercenaries gathered outside the lockdown zone were quite surprised when they got this news. Not long ago, the Sanctuary Church had set up a double lockdown zone. They were all outside the second zone, and the first lockdown zone had only been open for a very short time.

If you missed it, you couldn’t enter. Also, the opening time each day was limited. If you exceeded that time, the Sanctuary Church wouldn’t do anything, but they wouldn’t reopen the lockdown. That meant if you didn’t go back before the time limit, you couldn’t get out—you had to wait until the next day. The Sanctuary Church had made this very clear. Those who disobeyed might complain, but it was pointless.

Everyone hanging around here knew how dangerous Windwhisper Valley was, so not many were willing to risk staying overnight in the first lockdown zone… spending a night there, and a person might just disappear!

And now, that first lockdown zone had been completely lifted—even allowing others to enter Windwhisper Valley itself? Some people immediately thought that the Sanctuary Church was looking for cannon fodder. After all, if you explored inside and brought back useful information, you could get a bounty or other item rewards from the Sanctuary Church—things of equal value.

But after thinking it over, these people realized that even without the Sanctuary Church’s rewards, once the first lockdown zone was lifted, they would still be tempted to go explore. And the reason for exploring? Again, it was profit. Things related to Witches were highly valuable. Even without the Sanctuary Church’s rewards, if you obtained something special from there—as long as it was related to a Witch—you could sell it to certain people for a high price.

Some might even sell it and then not need to work as mercenaries anymore. They could simply find a town and live as a local rich person for the rest of their lives. For more important items, you could even trade with some empires. At that point, getting a low-level noble title wouldn’t be a problem. With such huge profits, even though they knew the risks, they wouldn’t miss out.

Those who realized this looked at others almost as enemies. Those people were their competitors. More people meant a higher chance of profits being split. What made them even more anxious was that the Sanctuary Church’s people had also entered Windwhisper Valley and were even more decisive than them. Could they tolerate this? Of course not! They had to hurry in!

Aside from the profit, what the Sanctuary Church did left them with nothing to criticize. Those who entered could get a ring amulet. Wearing this thing allowed you to ignore the environmental effects of Windwhisper Valley for a certain period, avoiding mental interference—for free!

It was a very special item and looked quite dazzling in style. But after learning the truth about this thing, not many were interested. It was a time-limited item, made from ordinary metal, not Enchanted Material. After being imbued with some Secret Method, once the time was up, it lost all reuse value. No wonder the Sanctuary Church gave these away for free!

This darn thing was just like a quest item placed in the quest slot in a game. It couldn’t be used as real equipment at all. It was more like a ticket to enter a special dungeon.

“Alright, these amulets are all processed.” Inside a tent, Deya withdrew her power. The people waiting outside the tent immediately came in and carried away the boxes inside… These boxes were filled with those rings, and the specifications of the different boxes varied to fit people with different finger thicknesses and lengths. As for the source of these ring blanks…

Tianwang handled a lot of custom orders. These were custom-ordered from Tianwang’s Online Store. The order was placed not long ago, and they delivered quickly with high efficiency, which wasn’t surprising. These things were just made from ordinary metal, very easy… The only puzzling thing was that these rings showed no traces of Magic. They probably weren’t made using magical means. Also, their appearance—apart from the different sizes, rings of the same specification looked almost identical.

“Saintess, these should be enough for now. You can rest a bit,” said a Sanctuary Church member who was moving the boxes.

Deya nodded, found a place to sit down, and took out the Magic Weapon Summoning Book to browse its contents. Speaking of which, when did she develop this habit? In the past, when she had free time, she would choose to flip through some interesting books. Now, that habit had long been replaced by the Magic Weapon Summoning Book. Carrying books was somewhat troublesome, and she didn’t have a Personal Space.

She only had a Spatial Artifact that was standard for a Saintess. The space wasn’t large, but it was enough. With the Sanctuary Church’s foundation, giving a Saintess a Personal Space wasn’t too difficult. But from the beginning until now, no Saintess had ever had one. The reason was simple… A Saintess’s lifespan was set. Once a Personal Space was created, it couldn’t be reused, let alone taken as a new Space Fragment to make Spatial Artifacts. Given that, it was better to divide a Space Fragment and make some Spatial Artifacts for the Saintess to use.

There used to be many related artifacts, but over time, with some battles and many Saintesses falling, some artifacts were lost and now remained elsewhere. In short, carrying books was less convenient than this on-demand Magic Weapon Summoning Book. Browsing the Forum, flipping through Online Stores, and occasionally finding something she liked to buy were pretty good ways to pass the time.

After truly paying attention to this area, Deya realized she had missed out on too much before. Through those Online Stores, she felt her knowledge was constantly increasing, and her desire to buy things she was curious about had grown. Well, occasionally she felt conflicted—as a Saintess, doing this might not be right.

But as long as she didn’t do it during work hours, it should be fine, right?

As a Saintess, she never lacked money and had plenty of savings. Apart from using some of her savings to help people when she had time, she still had a lot left. Regarding helping people, when the Sanctuary Church trained her, there was related instruction. Helping people was a kind of knowledge—it didn’t mean that if you saw someone poor, you just gave them more money. That would only harm them.

Real help meant solving their current difficulties while also encouraging their motivation. Anyway, the Sanctuary Church’s training for Saintesses wasn’t like training machines. It was very humane, especially in terms of broadening their perspectives. They placed great importance on shaping the Saintesses, giving them enough independent judgment. This was also a statement from the Sanctuary Church: We stand upright; even the training for important figures like Saintesses follows normal procedures.

Unlike those crooked sects that use brainwashing education to tightly control their “Saintesses”!

In short, Deya was very rich—so rich she didn’t know where to spend it all. So many things didn’t tempt her much. But now, with the emergence of various Online Stores, those once-secret tribes, races that didn’t interact with outsiders, had joined in as the Magic Weapon Summoning Book spread.

Even if opening Online Stores didn’t make them voluntarily reveal their living locations, their special products had always been very popular—including with Saintess Deya herself.

Besides that, there were the novels that appeared on the Forum… Well, with the convenience of communication, this kind of content had become too abundant. After all, good posts would be more popular, and advertising brought more income. All you had to do was move your pen… oh no, you didn’t even need to move a pen—just use your mind and expend some Mana. You could even add some illustrations. Bad drawing skills didn’t matter; you could use an improved Image Retention Spell to fill in the gaps.

Drawing skills? With the power of Magic, you didn’t need that!

Although Deya wasn’t keen on reading these things, with so many out there, some would catch her interest. For example, some about love… Hmm… love. Deya rested her chin on her hand and thought. As a Saintess, Dan Marina calling her a “leftover woman” back then wasn’t without reason. Saintesses were very free, but they also had some restrictions.

Love wasn’t really related to them. Not because after doing that, their power would decline or disappear—that would be a ridiculous scenario. It was just losing a certain membrane; how much could that affect them? So there was no effect on their own power. The bigger reason was that love could make a Saintess seem “fragile,” adding a weakness.

They didn’t have a Curse-like drawback like the Witches did, but once there was love, some convictions might waver due to this factor. Even if the conviction was firm enough, with some scheming by certain people, it could become a mental flaw for the Saintess. During the period of fighting against Witches, some Saintesses were tricked to death in large numbers by one Witch for this reason. That Witch wasn’t strong in direct combat; any of the Saintesses she tricked to death could overpower her in a direct fight.

But the actual result was heavy losses on the Saintess side. After that, the Sanctuary Church established related rules. For Saintesses, love wasn’t completely forbidden, but it required a very difficult test. This test wasn’t meant to deliberately mock or embarrass anyone, but the difficulty was even greater. The pass rate was extremely low, and the test was dual—both parties had to take it. It seemed harsh, but with the bloody lesson right there, with such rules in place, those Saintesses back then had no objections.

Now, Deya flipped through the records from those years and wouldn’t say anything more. So many Saintesses had gotten into trouble back then, and now she was the only Saintess active outside. She needed to be even more careful. So maybe she shouldn’t read love stories… But now, thinking about it, she felt a little bit of longing.

She shook her head. Longing was one thing, but that didn’t mean she would be easily “tempted.” In terms of training the will of Saintesses, The Church placed great importance on it. Plus, with that test in place, Deya herself didn’t hold much hope. After all, she found the test itself a headache.