When Cronix was out of Mr. Williams' view, he took out an energy sensing formation. It wasn't one of the defects but a normal one. He activated it and got to work.
A few hours went by and Williams finished his mining. He collected less than last time but it was still an incredible amount compared to the other miners.
By this time Cronix also finished mining, he went to turn them in, and his and Mr. Williams eyes met for the second time today
Williams immediately frowned. He saw Cronix carrying about the same amount of magic crystals as last time, maybe even more.
He didn't notice it but his hands started to tremble, he has been doing this for twenty years, he knew full well how hard it was to find crystals, and while he had his own way of finding them, he didn't think it was anywhere near easy.
A few weeks ago, I assumed he made all his crystals that time by scams, but this time we started at the same time, and he wouldn't have enough time to go talking to people, or for people to mine these many crystals.
Cronix's words from a few weeks ago reappeared in Williams' mind, but deep down he still didn't believe Cronix would have superior methods to himself, a Core Creation stage magic user.
Williams ended up leaving the mine with his mind a complete mess.
Cronix didn't care much about Williams, he had his own plans at the moment.
He walked around the mines, looking for a very specific type of person, and it didn't take long to find one in the eastern tunnel.
"Hello!" Cronix said to the person in a polite tone.
The person Cronix was talking to was a youth close to his age, maybe older, but what was special about this person was that he was young.
"Hi." The boy replied, not looking away from his mining.
Cronix spoke casually, "You seem to be having trouble there."
"How so?" The young miner asked completely uninterested.
"From what I can see you only have what, 10 magic crystals?"
The miner narrowed his eyes, "What's your point?"
"My point is, you obviously aren't as skilled as the other miners, for example... Mr. WIlliams, he could mine 40 crystals every session, that's more than four times your amount each day. But with my help you can do better."
The miner scoffed, "How the hell can you do that?"
Cronix merely smiled and took out a formation with a red mark. He shoved the formation into the miner's hands.
The young miner frowned "What's this?"
"It's a formation that will shine whenever it's near magic crystals." Cronix answered with a slightly annoyed tone, "Infuse your magic inside to activate it."
The young miner looked at the formation, he honestly didn't believe a single thing Cronix said, but he was willing to try it out.
That was the reason Cronix picked someone young instead of the experienced older generation, the younger generation was always more open minded.
The miner activated the formation, and it flickered to life, "What do I do now?"
Cronix sighed, "Move around, find something!"
Unlike the eastern tunnel in the third level, the fourth level's eastern tunnel was full of crystals, so it didn't take long for the young miner to find the locations of countless crystals.
But the formation only lasted two minute and thirty seconds, which was way less than Cronix initially expected.
Cronix's current average time he could have the energy sensing array if he put in the effort was more than 10 minutes, but since he didn't put in any effort it should've only been five minutes.
But the weirdest thing is that the formation still had a range of five feet!
"Wow, This is useful!" The young miner said with a smile, his words forcefully pulled Cronix out of his thoughts.
"Of course it's useful, now the one you used just now was free, consider it a gift, but if you want more you'll have to pay 10 crystals, and not the ones you mine, I want real 10 magic crystals."
The young miners' smile froze, "Don't you think that's a bit... much?"
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Cronix shook his head, "There were more than fifty magic crystals you found using my array, if you mine them and turn them in, you would be able to afford another array. And besides you find more crystals in the end, this is helping the both of us."
The young miner had to think about it for a while, but in the end he agreed. Cronix helped the miner mine the rest of the crystals and accompanied him in turning them in.
After getting the 25% the young miner gave Cronix 10 crystals and gained another formation. From there they went their separate ways.
Cronix strolled through the forest thinking about his events with the young miner.
My first sale went well, but the process took too long, maybe if...
His thoughts were interrupted by a very strange feeling, he wasn't unfamiliar with this feeling, he felt it almost two years ago when he felt the crow watching him, but thanks to his mental energy this feeling was sharper.
Cronix turned around, "I know you're there, come out!" His surroundings were silent. He scanned his surroundings with his eyes, and saw nothing.
"Was I wrong...?" Cronix took one last look around before he dashed through the trail.
Five minutes after Cronix left, a man walked out from behind a tree with a frown on his face, "He was able to sense me? Impossible!"
The man, or Tornic, shook his head, "Maybe I let my guard down with my mental energy? Yes, that should be it."
Tornic left the scene, still very confused.
...
Cronix slammed his front door, breathing hard, he actually ran from the forest trail to his house.
It seems like the forest trail isn't as safe as I thought it was, why does it feel like things are going to start getting messy?
Cronix leaned against his door, "I just need to get rich and I'm out of here..."
But what if there was someone really out in the forest and they know what I am? I'm going to have to escape all over again!
"Wait! I know there was something in the book!"
Cronix ran towards his room past the sleeping crow, who somehow managed to stay asleep despite Cronix's entrance.
Cronix sat on his desk chair, and grabbed the book of formations out of his magic bag, going through all the formations it taught. It was near the end where he found the formation he was looking for.
"The Teleportation Array, this is great, but isn't the difficulty a bit too much?"
The teleportation array had 50 lines in its base form, and it contained 15 primary lines, just looking at how the lines connected and intercepted made Cronix dizzy.
"Just the primary lines are equal to the amount of lines an energy sensing array has, so this is the distance between a beginner's array and a low level intermediate array."
Before Cronix started he went back to the formation book, this being an intermediate formation the book went into more depth about the inner workings than the beginner formations.
He began grasping all the key points, noting them down on a piece of paper. By the time he was done the sun had set, and the moon was high into the sky.
But even with the more in depth explanations, Cronix wasn't going to figure any of this out in a short amount of time.
Cronix tried going through the energy route with his finger, but this was worse than a maze, he couldn't figure it out.
Fine, we'll do it the long way!
Cronix grabbed a pencil and infused it with his mental energy, he followed one line out of the fifty, and drew it from there.
This one line itself took an hour.
When Cronix was drawing the energy sensing array he was able to complete 12 lines a day, and sometimes the whole formation if he pushed himself, but this one line of the teleportation array felt like seven.
For this formation, Cronix was willing to push himself, and after another hour he drew the second line.
This isn't working...
Cronix laid back on his chair and rested his head on his hands.
Drowsiness was fighting to take over, even if he was a five star Caster, he wasn't strong enough to ignore his sleep completely, but he stubbornly stayed awake.
Cronix looked at the incomplete formation in front of him,
Just these two lines make the teleportation array stronger than the energy sensing array, but two lines is too little.
Cronix grabbed the pencil, and coated with mental energy, he pushed the tip against the paper, but he could no longer keep it straight, his hand no longer obeyed him and it went sideways, completely messing up the formation.
After using all that mental energy Cronix no longer had any energy to support his body that was leaning forward, so it collapsed onto the desk.
Cronix sighed and using his barely remaining consciousness, he gathered the magic elements to provide his body enough energy to stand, but that probably was the biggest mistake he made that day.
His body fell on the formation and surrounding his body with the magical elements, was akin to infusing magic into the formation directly.
The formation instantly exploded, launching Cronix's entire body back, hitting the wall with a bang, startling the sleeping crow.
Fortunately Cronix was knocked out cold before he even hit the ground, so he didn't feel any pain.
And at least his body was getting the rest he needed, but even in his sleep his mind was very chaotic.
In fact, deep inside his mind was a very complicated mess. This mess contained a bunch of red lines swirling together to form a cage, the inside had the look of a spiderweb.
If someone observed very closely inside the red lines they would see them trapping a bunch of white flakes like fragments of varying sizes.
And they would have to look even deeper and have trained eyes to see that part of the red lines were incomplete, forming a flaw.
This flaw wasn't too drastic for the time being as none of the bigger white fragments would be able to escape, but for the smaller ones that was a different story.
That was exactly what was happening, with one of the fragments. It was one of the smaller flakes, that broke off from one of the bigger flakes,
After floating around for a time, it made its way to the opening provided by the incomplete red lines, and escaped its entrapment.
The small fragment was out in the open inside Cronix's mind, and it quickly fused with its surroundings. The fragment formed an image that Cronix would never forget in his lifetime.
The image was of a vague image of a man, Cronix couldn't make out his distinct features, but the aura he gave off was very familiar to him, yet he couldn't place where he met this man.
As time went by and the fragment integrated further with his mind, the image of the man became more and more clear.
At this time he could see two objects forming behind the man's back. They were large and black, Cronix was able to easily recognize them as wings, similar to his own. The sense of familiarity increasingly grew.
Unfortunately, the fragment fully integrated with Cronix's mind and the image didn't become any clearer.
After a day, Cronix's eyes opened, and inside them was a faint hint of sadness, as he recalled the figure that appeared in his mind.