Miss Witch, even if we're poor, we can't sell ourselves!

The forest after the rain had an indescribable smell, like rotting leaves mixed with newly grown mushrooms. The air was sticky, like burying your face in milk.

Mi Ye trudged along the muddy path, her sneakers caked with a thick layer of mud, sinking deeper with every step.

She recalled the first time she went into the mountains for training with Bie Chenye. She was panting like a puppy after walking for less than ten minutes, and Bie Chenye even pulled her out of a mud pit by the back of her collar.

Now she can walk while simultaneously sensing the magical fluctuations around her.

After walking for about twenty minutes, she stopped next to a dead tree that had been struck by lightning.

This is the boundary of the outer safe zone designated by Bie Chenye; further ahead lies the area where intermediate-level monsters roam.

Miya placed her palms on the tree trunk and closed her eyes.

The way flesh-and-blood magic is perceived is completely different from traditional magic.

Traditional magic uses mental energy to detect magical fluctuations, much like looking at magical particles floating in the air.

Flesh and blood magic involves touching with life force, like putting your finger into water to feel the changes in the water flow, and you can clearly feel the heartbeat of all the living beings around you.

At three o'clock, twenty meters away, there was something lying on the ground, its heartbeat so slow it was almost blending into the sound of the wind. It was probably some kind of reptilian monster that was good at camouflage.

At the nine o'clock position, behind the bushes, with a rapidly beating heart, it shouldn't be very large; it's probably a rodent.

Directly ahead, two life signs were approaching her. They had a fast heart rate, were of medium size, and had short strides, as if they walked on four legs. They were probably the most common Nightblade Jackals in the back mountains.

Bie Chenye's class notes mentioned that this kind of monster is not strong when fighting alone, but it has a keen sense of smell and likes to act in pairs. After spotting prey, it will summon its companions with a short howl, which is quite troublesome.

Miya opened her eyes and smiled.

She raised her right hand, flipped her wrist, and two tentacles slid out from her sleeve, trembling slightly in the air.

Now the shape of each tentacle tip can be slightly adjusted according to her will; when closed, it is a normal pointed tip, and when opened, it looks like a small hand with five fingers spread apart.

Two tentacles hovered beside her, slightly bent.

The two Nightblade Jackals finally emerged from behind the bushes.

Raindrops clung to its grayish-brown fur, its erect ears twitched incessantly, and its four dark yellow eyes locked onto Miya.

The jackal on the left took a step forward, letting out a low growl as it assessed the threat level of its prey.

The short man in front of me, less than 1.5 meters tall, standing motionless with no weapon in his hand, looked like the kind of prey that was easiest to catch.

With a kick of its hind legs, its entire body transformed into a gray shadow as it pounced forward.

Mi Ye did not hide.

She pointed her right hand toward the jackal on her left, and the first tentacle shot out from her side, faster than the jackal's pounce. The moment it leaped into the air, the dark red petals at the end of the tentacle suddenly opened, like a flipped palm, and slammed solidly into the jackal's side.

The jackal's body stiffened abruptly in mid-air, its limbs drooping limply as if all its strength had been drained, and its once fierce, dark yellow eyes instantly lost focus.

[Crippling] It directly dragged it from full health to the brink of death.

At the same time, the jackal on the right had already taken the opportunity to circle around behind Miya.

Thinking it had found a weakness, it opened its mouth full of sharp teeth and bit down on Miya's calf.

But the second tentacle was faster.

The tentacle drew an arc in mid-air, whipped around from the side, and struck the jackal's hind leg with a crack.

Just like the first tentacle, the jackal's hind legs twisted and deformed the moment the tentacle withdrew, causing it to lose its balance and fall onto the muddy ground with a mournful howl.

Miya turned around, looked down at the two jackals twitching on the ground, then raised her left hand and gently pointed her fingertips towards the two jackals.

At the ends of the two tentacles, a black sphere appeared simultaneously, initially only the size of a fingernail, like a drop of ink seeping from the surface of the tentacles.

Then the black sphere rapidly expanded and grew larger, its edges churning and surging irregularly, and layers of dark red runes appeared on its surface, flickering as if it were breathing.

[Devour]

The first black ball silently detached from the tentacle and floated gently down onto the jackal on the left.

The moment the ball touched the jackal's fur, it exploded as if ignited, turning into a surging black mist that engulfed the entire jackal.

The jackal's body convulsed violently in the black mist before being completely swallowed up from the inside out, leaving not a single hair behind.

After engulfing the jackal, the black mist quickly contracted, reforming into a semi-transparent sphere the size of a cherry, which flew back into Miya's body.

A warm, life-giving energy spread through my veins and throughout my body, a feeling as warm as drinking a perfectly warm sip of milk.

Constitution +3

[Agility +5]

[Vital Energy +17]

Miya looked down at her hands, then clenched her fists and loosened them. Her joints were as flexible as ever, and there wasn't even a scratch on her skin.

With a touch of the tentacle, [Contempt] instantly drags the enemy into a low-health and weakened state, then the black sphere of [Devour] swallows it whole, without even needing to dispose of the corpse, and the whole process takes only a few seconds.

Mi Ye recalled the first time she went into the back mountain with Bie Chenye. A low-level vine snake chased her up the trunk of an 800-year-old oak tree. At that time, she was afraid to come down while clinging to the branch. Bie Chenye poked her several times with a lotus leaf umbrella before she let go.

...And yet she was still worried.

Miya muttered something to herself, then looked up and gazed towards the deeper part of the back mountain.

She decided to clean up the area before Bie Shenye returned, as a surprise for her teacher.

For the next hour or so, she started from the dead tree marker and slowly made her way outward in a spiral pattern.

She cleared out almost all the low-level monsters she could encounter on the outskirts, including Nightblade Jackals, Thorn Rats, Poison Sac Toads, and Iron-Shelled Snails.

Her fighting style was so simple that she herself was a little embarrassed.

If the tentacle reaches out and touches the enemy, the "Contempt" debuff is triggered, instantly crippling the enemy.

Then the black ball floated over and swallowed it whole.

Occasionally, a few monsters with higher health can withstand the first hit, but the second tentacle will immediately follow, with the interval between the two touches being so short that there is almost no reaction time.

The iron-shelled snail is a little more troublesome; its shell is too thick, and it's not easy to touch the flesh with your tentacles when you slap it directly.

Miya thought for a moment, then let the tentacles go around to the bottom of the snail's shell, find the gap where its soft body was exposed, and gently touched it with the dark red petals at the end. The snail's body twitched violently inside the shell, and then the black ball floated in and swallowed it clean, leaving only an empty snail shell in place.

She bent down, picked up the snail shell, and examined it. There were several light blue lines on the shell, which shimmered faintly in the evening light.

Bie Chenye wrote in his notes that the shell of the iron snail can be used in medicine, mainly to make low-grade defensive ointments. Although it is not worth much money, it is lucky.

She turned the shell over, wiped it clean on the muddy ground, and stuffed it into her waist bag.

As she walked, Miya kept an eye on the plants along the roadside.

Bie Chenye also taught her some basic herbal identification, such as that the herb with three parallel veins on its leaves is a hemostatic herb, which can be crushed and applied to wounds to speed up healing.

The plant with small black spots on its stem is dark moss, which is poisonous. However, after being dried and ground into powder, it can be used as a nerve paralysis agent. If the dosage is controlled, it is a very good sedative ingredient.

She found several clumps of hemostatic herbs near the roots of some old trees, picked some with thick leaves, wrapped them in old newspapers she carried with her, and stuffed them into the inner compartment of her backpack.

Later, we found a few small mushrooms with dark purple caps in a crevice of rocks. The caps were only the size of a fingernail and the color was inconspicuous, but the juice that oozed from the broken stem was a bright yellow.

Mi Ye squatted on the ground and examined the mushrooms for a while. She remembered that Bie Chenye had said that there was a kind of fungus called Golden Tear Mushroom in Bellavita. It was characterized by its dark purple cap and bright yellow juice. Eating it could temporarily increase the maximum life force by 5% in a short period of time. Although it was not as valuable as a permanent increase, chewing a few before a battle might save her life.

She pried open another mushroom cap and examined it closely. Inside, there was a ring of pale gold patterns, exactly the same as the diagram in her notes.

So Miye picked all the mushrooms in the patch, wrapped them carefully in a clean handkerchief, and tried her best not to break the caps, since whole golden tear mushrooms have the best medicinal effect.

The back mountain might just be a park for Bie Chenye to stroll around, but for Mi Ye it was practically a free pharmacy.

By the time she had swept around more than half of the spiral route, her backpack was already stuffed with all sorts of things.

Five or six snail shells, two packets of hemostatic herbs, a packet of golden tear mushrooms, and seven or eight kinds of wild plants that she picked casually but didn't have time to confirm their medicinal properties.

She plans to go back and draw a simple guide, recording the medicinal properties and side effects of each plant, so that she will know which ones are valuable and which ones can be fed to the tentacles as snacks next time she comes.

It was still light when she set off from the dead tree, but by the time she stood in the middle layer of the forest, the twilight had already begun to peek through the gaps in the tree canopy overhead.

The orange light slanted in, bathing the entire back hill in a warm hue, and the air transformed from the dampness of the rain into the crispness of the evening.

Miya found a clean rock to sit on, and withdrew the tentacles. The two dark red tentacles slowly shrank near her wrists, eventually shrinking into two thin red lines that clung to her skin, giving off a somewhat erotic feeling.

So she rolled down her windbreaker sleeves to cover the red line, and then silently tallied up her day's achievements.

Constitution +13

[Agility +11]

[Vital Energy +87]

She was able to clear out the entire outer newbie zone in less than an hour, a transformation that left her somewhat dazed.

Was I really that amazing?

Miya muttered something under her breath, then took out the packet of Golden Tear Mushrooms from her waist pouch, picked out the most intact one, and stuffed it into her mouth.

The moment she bit into the mushroom cap, the juice exploded in her mouth, like lemon juice mixed with mint. It was so sour that her whole face scrunched up; it was really hard to eat.

She repackaged the remaining golden tear mushrooms, stood up and stretched, thinking that when she got back she would organize today's test data into a table, add a column for optimization, and show it to Teacher Chenye when she returned the day after tomorrow.

Bie Chenye would first pretend to be calm and nod, then turn around and secretly admire the cherry tomatoes on the windowsill for a long time.

She couldn't help but laugh just thinking about that scene.

However, before she could take a step back, a sharp whooshing sound suddenly came from deep within the back mountain.

Miya looked up in the direction from which the sound came. The treetops in that direction were rustling, and a bird flew out of the treetops in fright. The sound of its wings flapping was particularly clear in the quiet back mountain. Immediately afterwards, an extremely strong magical energy surged from that direction.

Miya stood still, but the two red lines on her wrist lit up at the same time, with a dark red light faintly flowing under her sleeve.

She could feel the tentacles stirring beneath her skin, like two hunting dogs that had caught the scent of blood.

Miya squinted at that direction, hoisted her backpack onto her shoulder, and strode towards the source of the magical energy fluctuations.