Chapter 316: Feather Gill

"Ding..."

The crisp collision bell sound mixed with the sluggish sound of the hinge when the wooden door closed, echoing on the street.

Through the gap of the gradually closing shop door behind him, one could vaguely see the enthusiastic smile on the face of the grocery store owner "Kukunuer," which was unique to the Gnome race—"both old and young."

Xia Nan stood at the door and could clearly find that the backpack that had been stuffed full before was now a little deflated.

The crystals from the Goblin nest and some other fragmented small objects had all been cashed out.

It was about the same as expected, plus the coins he collected in the nest, it was a total of 36 gold, 5 silver, and 7 copper.

As a grocery store with a good reputation in the town, Kukunuer offered him a good price.

Seeing that the other party's quotation was within an acceptable range, and there were too many things that needed to be handled on his body, Xia Nan didn't bargain much and completed the transaction quickly.

"Next... I still have to go to Green Grass Crucible to see if I can handle the loot materials of the Spined Devil and the Corrosive Monster."

It was noon, and the summer sun was wantonly pouring its terrifying heat onto the earth.

Even without wearing armor, and wearing his dark shirt that was severely damaged after the battle in a hurry, it was much cooler than usual.

But after walking just a few steps on the street, sweat had already emerged on his forehead.

The flow of people on the street didn't change much, still filled with all kinds of strange-looking adventurers as usual.

The free-spirited mentality brought about by the huge pressure of the profession made these adventurers who licked blood with knives not care about the eyes of the outside world at all, especially in this place of safe rest between missions.

At least Xia Nan had seen it all the way; there were quite a few who were shirtless or bare-shouldered, and even more who only wore a piece of armor without any lining inside, and he didn't know what it was for.

"Perhaps they want to show off their status as adventurers?"

"Or is it the influence of mental illness, and they don't have a sense of security without wearing armor?"

Xia Nan guessed in his heart.

Moving toward the herbal shop, he looked at the adventurers coming and going on the road ahead, and his thinking gradually diverged.

Now, his professional level was lv2.

And the combat techniques that still had room for improvement on his body were 【Gravity Etching】, 【Gravity Control】, and 【Ember Afterimage】.

Just from the perspective of quantity, it seemed that it was enough for him to raise 【Meteor Blade Hunting】 to lv5 and reach the bottleneck of part-time/job transfer.

But Xia Nan himself knew clearly.

Wanting to rely on these three combat techniques to reach lv5... was almost an impossible task.

Let's not talk about 【Gravity Etching】; just taking 【Gravity Control】 as an example, he had obtained this combat technique for a few hundred days, right? How much proficiency had he improved in total?

15 points.

And it was still the 15 points of lv1, which should have been the fastest to improve.

This was even when he insisted on training every day, and even when drinking a bowl of soup, he wished he could use gravity to help stir it.

If he really pinned his hope of leveling up on this combat technique, then with his human lifespan, he was afraid that he wouldn't see the day of promotion to lv5 in his lifetime.

【Ember Afterimage】 progress was slightly faster, but it was also limited, much slower than 【Tooth Hunting】 and the like.

With this as a premise, if he wanted to continue to improve more efficiently, Xia Nan definitely had to find other types of combat techniques to learn and train.

And the problem was right here.

Which ones should he find?

The path for learning combat techniques was clear; just go to the second floor of the association and exchange with points. If there were no suitable ones, he could even search and review other regional adventurer associations.

But the promotion/job transfer system of the profession itself was a relatively rigorous process that required careful planning.

For those professionals from big families with deep backgrounds, when to learn which combat technique first, which direction to develop for future job transfer, and even when they hadn't even entered the threshold of the first combat technique, professional personnel had already formulated detailed and meticulous plans for them.

Returning to Xia Nan, the unpopular profession of 【Meteor Blade Hunting】, which was so offbeat that one might not find a second person in the whole world who could obtain it, had no reference path for the rising route and job transfer direction.

When he first climbed to the second floor of the association, he had tried to find combat technique types related to "gravity," but the results were not satisfactory.

But if he were asked to learn those common, widely applicable, and faster-improving combat techniques, but with significantly weaker strength, Xia Nan was unwilling to sacrifice his future upper limit.

So he was awkwardly stuck here.

【Ember Afterimage】 might look completely incompatible with 【Meteor Blade Hunting】...

But its strength was high!

This kind of state-type ability that could be called a second stage, let alone Xia Nan, even if any "Transcendental" or even "Legendary" level powerhouse had the opportunity to learn and master it, hesitating for more than half a second would be a disrespect to the hard work they had paid along the way.

It was impossible not to learn!

But in this way, the so-called professional planning became a castle in the air.

Scattered, different types of combat techniques without any connection, no matter how high their own strength was, if they couldn't form a system and find the direction of promotion and job transfer among the billions of professions in this world, it would just be a castle in the air, without the possibility of rising.

Fortunately, Xia Nan possessed the golden finger of the attribute panel. Referring to the experience of lv1 promotion, perhaps it could provide him with some help if he really had the opportunity to collect five lv5 combat techniques in the future.

And if it fell to the worst situation, and the few combat techniques on his body failed to build a system, he still had tolerance.

In the lv6—lv10 stage, he could just find another five-level profession with a clear rising route.

Without the experience of predecessors for reference, every step had to be explored slowly by himself.

He could only take one step at a time.

Fortunately, at least the strength was high enough; even if the professional level was low on the surface and the improvement speed was slow, the growth of actual combat ability was not slow.

So actually, there was no need to be too pessimistic.

Considering the direction of the future road in his heart, before he knew it, he had already arrived at the herbal shop named "Green Grass Crucible," which looked like a tree bush in the Mist Forest.

"Ding, ding."

The door bell rang crisply.

The moment he pushed open the door, an exceptionally refreshing fragrance rushed toward him.

It was like mint, but colder, pouring into his nasal cavity and flowing down along his throat pipe, and even the unbearable heat of the scorching sun from outside the house seemed to have diminished a bit at this moment.

Looking past the brown-brown counter that divided the shop into two and the shelves on both sides, he looked toward the very back of the room.

A plump woman with curly hair was concentrating on holding a long-handled ladle, stirring at a constant speed in the crucible in front of her.

The cool breath in the air was emanating from the translucent, light blue viscous liquid inside the crucible.

"Wait a moment, it will be ready soon!"

Hearing the bell, looking up and seeing it was Xia Nan, Ms. Edwinna greeted him with some apology. ===== CHAPTER 317 =====