Cronix slowly opened his eyes, and they gleamed with an excited light. Behind him were his four stars, and next to his completed white star, was a small blue orb, it was one-fourth the size of his other stars.
"Magic attribute crystals are amazing! I'm already a quarter done with the fifth star!" Cronix said with a smile,
but the smile quickly vanished, "How hard is the flawless Caster stage going to be?"
The Flawless Caster stages were still part of the Caster stages, but they were the true groundwork for the Core Creation stage.
Once all the stars were equal in power with one another, they would be able to integrate and form a star core.
When the first two stars integrate, that's when one enters the Core Creation stage.
The transition from Flawless Caster stages to the Core Creation stage were what differentiated the normal, rich people from the hard working and talented.
He continued to think about this for a while before pushing it to the back of his mind. Cronix stood up from his position on his blankets and walked out of his room while stretching his body.
The crow was picking at a random piece of wood, not caring much about Cronix's presence.
"In order to complete the fifth star I'm going to need to absorb a lot of crystals, except my absorption speed is too slow, it took me nearly two years to complete my third and fourth star."
Cronix seemed like he was talking to nobody, but he was actually talking to the crow who looked like it wasn't paying any attention, but Cronix didn't mind.
"The fifth star is harder to complete than all the other stars combined, but once I'm done, we're leaving Alktarsha, I should have enough crystals by then."
The crow's movement paused for a bit, but it quickly resumed picking at the wood. Cronix sighed and left the crow alone.
The fastest way to complete the fifth star and enter the flawless Caster stage was with resources that could increase his magic, and a large amount of magic crystals would work best.
But even with the energy sensing array it would still be inefficient, however Cronix already had a plan for this. He took all his formations and went to the mine.
He didn't come with the intent of mining but instead when he entered, he didn't go to the third level, but to the fourth. When he got there he went to the northern tunnel and approached a specific miner.
The miner was a middle aged man with light blue eyes and blueish-grey hair, he was also one of the more experienced miners.
Cronix tapped his shoulder, "Mr. Williams, don't you want to be able to mine faster?"
Mr. Williams simply glanced at Cronix, before focusing back on mining. With a tired tone he said, "If you have something to say, please just say it."
Cronix nodded his head, he then suddenly looked around and acted as if he was hiding some great secret, which wasn't hard for him to do.
He looked at Mr. Williams and said with a mysterious voice, "I'll get straight to the point, I have a way for you to find more than twice the amount of crystals you usually do."
If Cronix wasn't a 13 to 14 year old kid, Williams would've thought Cronix was trying to sell him drugs, but because he couldn't be a drug dealer, Williams came to another conclusion.
Mr. Williams' looked at Cronix and sighed.
He has worked in the mine for many years, and has come across a whole bunch of scammers, acting and saying similar things Cronix just said.
And they all were a variety of different ages, the youngest one was only 12 years old, "If you want to fool someone go fool someone else."
Cronix frowned at Mr. Williams words, and he opened his mouth to speak, but Williams looked at him again, and only said one more word, but it was backed up by his Core Creation strength, "Scam!"
Cronix was forced to back away seven steps by Mr. Williams voice alone, when Cronix recovered he grumbled a few things and left.
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The first time Cronix used the energy sensing array it was in the eastern dead vein, that was when he didn't think he was strong enough to protect himself.
But now he was in the five star Caster stage, this was the stage most people were at, in Alktarsha.
Although I'm strong enough now to protect myself, I should still try to keep a low profile, but now we're going to start mining in the area's with abundant crystals.
Cronix didn't leave the fourth level, but went to the western tunnel, using the energy sensing array, and occasionally trying to make a sale.
A few hours later Williams forgot all about Cronix, and collected 52 magic crystals.
He considered this to be a lucky day, he discovered 10 more crystals than he usually did.
Mr. Williams and the administrator nodded at each other as he turned in the crystals, and had his findings recorded.
He was just about to leave when he heard the administrator mumble, "What the heck."
Mr. Williams turned around to see Cronix and in his hands were more than triple the magic crystals he collected.
Williams' eyes bulged. He took pride in his work, for an average miner it would be considered very lucky if they found 30 magic crystals, but his average was 40, and today he was able to bring in more than 50!
Yet the boy in front of him brought in more than triple and he started mining after him.
Cronix noticed Mr. Williams' gaze, but thinking back to their earlier interaction, Cronix didn't bother Williams, he just turned in his crystals and left.
Williams gave Cronix a weird look and also left.
Cronix walked home while frowning, he wasn't able to sell any formations, and whenever he tried, everyone would brush him off, and force him to back off.
He went through the entire day in his head, trying to think of the reason why they treated him that way.
Was it something I gave off, or the way I presented myself? I guess the cloak does look suspicious. There was also what Mr. Williams said, 'Go fool someone else,' what did he mean by fool?
Cronix stopped in his tracks, "Fool, as in trick! They thought I was messing with them, like some type of scammer!"
This realization plummeted Cronix's mood, "At least scammers are able to trick people."
On his walk home, Cronix began a whole rant about scammers in his head.
"And scammers are able to get people to buy their lesser products, like how am I supposed to do that!?"
After those words a realization dawned on him, and his originally downcast face completely disappeared.
"Or maybe I can do that, I can purposely lower the quality of the formations, that could save up on mental energy as well.
"And it's not like anybody would know, they've never tried my formations before."
Cronix switched the direction he was going, instead of going the way home, he was now moving towards the shopping district.
There he bought multiple things, including more pencils and paper, he eventually made his way to the stall where he originally bought the book about formations.
The stall owner didn't recognize Cronix, after all they only met once and that was months ago.
Cronix didn't mind though, he only went back to this stall because he saw an item he wanted, that item was a collar.
The collar was small and silver embroidered with blue fake gems, it didn't look like anything special, but that was exactly what Cronix was looking for.
Cronix accepted the collar and paid the stall owner five crystals, a bit overpriced but acceptable. He took the collar, pencils and paper and went home.
When he got home he went straight to his room, past the crow who didn't have the energy to pay Cronix any attention.
Cronix had a smile plastered onto his face.
This must be what those lousy stall owners feel like when they're about to cheat someone. I can also now focus on quantity instead of quality.
For the next few weeks Cronix drew countless energy sensing arrays, his carefulness when working on them was no longer there.
Without the need of him being overly cautious, his mental energy was able to be used more frequently than before.
Every now and then, he may have made a line a bit too curved or too narrow that the energy would eventually have trouble going through that line, but he didn't care in the slightest.
When he was done his eyes were tired, even if this was easier on his mental energy, it still had him drained, but despite that, he looked at his defective products with pride.
There were only 20 arrays, but that was still more than what he could usually create. Cronix gave these arrays a red mark.
I feel like this could actually be an efficient way to train my mental energy! I can feel myself getting stronger.
Cronix now no longer had to cycle his mental energy to slingshot it out, he could now control it out himself, and the amount of strokes he can do each day went from seven to twelve.
But I think it's now time to work on that...
His pridefulness was replaced with seriousness.
Cronix set the arrays aside and placed the collar he bought in front of him.
He carefully ripped out all the fake gems and started etching formations all over with a pencil, not using mental energy.
These formations weren't just any formation but the energy sealing arrangement.
But instead of like all the other times he made this formation, he had a clear goal with these ones, he was going to make them perfect, perfect to the point of being reusable.
After hours of carefully etching each line, Cronix still didn't dare to activate it; he wanted to go over each line at least three times before activating the formation.
Cronix put the collar away and put all his defective formations inside his magic bag. He used the remaining time in the day to foster his magic.
The next morning Mr. Williams entered the mine at dawn, his usual time. He enjoyed entering the mine at these times, this was when everyone else in Alktarsha was still getting ready, so he was usually alone.
But that wasn't the case this time. Also approaching the mine was a 13 to 14 year old boy, wearing a cloak and a hood, covering most of his features except his icy blue cat like eyes, the look gave off a weird feeling.
The two's eyes met, but neither acknowledged the other's presence. Cronix was still bitter from their earlier encounter, and Mr. Williams had a horrible impression of Cronix.
Cronix simply walked past Mr. Williams and went inside the mine.
Williams snorted, but did nothing in response.