>>725291178
You are just at the beginning, you need to wander the map and find dungeons (green rocks that costs money to enter) kill the boss there for upgrade material.
The element balls have different purity which affects rank upgrade success rate. The high chance ones you can buy from sect after doing missions or by killing the bosses that spawn in element zones. Otherwise you can make 70-89% qis by farming trash in element zones for 100 shards and then combine the shards at a workshop in town