Owen Frazer was sitting in his study room, reviewing all the business deals he had done in the past month. Used mana crystals were normally cheap and were sold in batches of ten for one bronze coin. But if bought in bulk, it came cheaper as the sellers would be able to get rid of the cheap stuff that took up a lot of space. Frazer had bought the mana crystals in bulk from three different places. He got bought a hundred crystals for eight bronze coins. It was a whole twenty percent discount. It might not look much but Victor used up about a hundred mana crystals in a day and always demanded for more so Frazer had saved up about sixty bronze coins. A single bronze coin could buy a sack of rice which weighed about ten kilograms. Frazer was paid five bronze coins a month for tutoring Victor. Compared to five coins , the profit for doing things for Victor was immense even for him. Well, It wasn't hard to fool a kid. He didn't tell Victor about the discounts to keep the profits. As he was doing the calculations, something hard hit him on the shoulder .
When he saw what it was, he became alert. The thing that hit him was a stone tied inside a red colored cloth. He slowly went to the bedroom and opened the window. Soon afterwards a person entered the room. He had a horizontal scar on his forehead, a bulky muscular body and scary looking eyes.
"Here are the goods Frazer. If you promise to buy only from our shop we will give you an additional ten percent discount. What do you think about that?"
"Sure. How many have you brought with you?"
"Fifty packs. As always one pack contains ten mana crystals."
"I get a total of thirty percent discount right?"
"Yes."
"Alright. Give me all of them." Frazer hands out thirty five bronze coins.
{100 mana crystals = 7 bronze coins
1 pack= 10 mana crystals
10 packs= 100 mana crystals
10 packs = 7 bronze coins
50 packs = 35 bronze coins}
The seller left after the transaction. Frazer took the bag which was full of mana crystals to his study room. He was excited as he knew that from today onwards his profits will increase. He entered his study room and saw a kid sitting on his table and as he recognized the kid, he was almost frightened to death.
"Hello Frazer. Care to explain?" Victor said as he showed Frazer the calculations that Frazer had done before the seller came in.
"...…. Can you forgive me? I was greedy. I promise I won't do it again. I'll give you back all the money okay?"
"Hmm okay. I'll forget it if u compensate me."
"What do you want as a compensation? I don't have any savings other than the money that is rightfully yours."
Frazer handed over 25 bronze coins.
"The crystals. All of them."
Frazer gave that to Victor too.
"Here. Take this money and get me another fifty packs. 5 coins will be for the service you have done until now. Don't disappoint me again Frazer." Victor gave him 40 bronze coins. He knew nothing was done for free. If he didn't give Frazer money for the job, Frazer would try to cheat him again.
Frazer took the coins without a word. He felt happy and guilty.
"Alright. Now that it's settled. Can you tell me who this guy is?" Victor pulled a guy from under the table. He looked like he was in his teens and had a furious look on his face.
"He must be a goon from the shady market area. The bulk purchase that I made might have reached the ears of the boss of that area so he probably sent this guy to rob me at night or possible to kill."
"Ah ….. It's that simple? Hey bro. You hungry? We got some good food. Let's talk about why you sneaked inside okay?"
"UNTIE ME RIGHT NOW."
"One more word and I'll make sure you are dead." Victor looked at the guy coldly.
The guy nodded as he was scared shitless when Victor placed his leg right above his eggs, ready to crush them if he spoke another word.
"Alright let's eat. Tell me why you sneaked inside."Victor said as he smiled.
"I was tasked to steal the money that the old guy had and if I was met with resistance, I was supposed to kill him."
"Okay. Forget the food. Take me to your boss' place."
"No. He will kill us. Please, I don't want to d-" *bang*
Victor punched him right on the face. "Bullseye. You gonna take us to your boss or not?"
"Plea-"*Bang*
"You gonna take us there?"
"He is too st-"*Bang* *Bang* *Bang*
"I only want the word yes coming from your mouth."
"Yes… I'll…. do it."
"Great. Let's go."
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Three shadows stood in front of a broken down motel.
Two owners of the shadows looked at the third one and the third one nodded.
"Nice." Victor whispered as he stabbed the boy right in the neck, kicked his knees from behind, covered his mouth, pulled the knife out and stabbed it again in the heart. All of this was done in exactly 2 seconds.
Frazer stood there stunned at Victor's Brutal act. Afterall nobody would expect a nine year old child to kill in such an efficient way. Victor didn't say anything as he took the guy's clothes and let them absorb the blood. He then wrote " Try that again and I'll come for your head next" .
"Let's go." He said, bringing Frazer out of his dreamland. Frazer just followed without saying a word. He was relieved that he didn't go against Victor and happy that he was forgiven for trying to scam Victor.
Victor didn't kill that guy to intimidate the boss. The main reason was to intimidate Frazer. Satisfying greed with money wasn't enough as greed was endless it grows and keeps growing. Victor's plan was to feed Frazer's greed with enough money to sustain it and fear to limit its growth. As for the guy who died? He was at the wrong place at the wrong time.
Victor washed his hands and went back to his mansion, to his bedroom. He sat on his bed for a while and then took out the bag that contained the 50 packs ( 500 crystals ) and smiled.
"Hehehe five hundred crystals. Hopefully I'll be able to get the result in this batch's tests." He now had 85 bronze coins left. Koby had given him a hundred bronze coins and Victor had to give Frazer fifteen bronze coins from his own stash. He didn't care about the money as his tests were near completion.
He had to start small. By inserting only a tiny bit of mana inside the crystal at constant intervals made the success rate a lot higher. But the problem was in the first step. He didn't know how much mana he had to insert into the crystal. Due to this, the success rate was about 40 percent. This process was slow but effective. Atleast it had a chance of success, unlike before.
He started filling the crystals with mana in constant intervals. If the crystal didn't break into pieces he needed to spend approximately 10 minutes on one crystal. In an hour he could make 4 or 5 successful mana crystals of low grade. He worked on the crystals for ten hours a day and slept for 10 hours as his body was still young, he needed more rest time. The other four hours went to doing usual things like eating, bathing , etc. After four days he was done with all the 500 crystals. The success rate was lower than what he calculated and expected. He only succeeded 180 times and in those 180 crystals, 80 were crystals that didn't fall into any category. The amount of mana they contained was about the half of the low grade crystals so he couldn't sell them to avoid suspicion.He could increase the success rate by decreasing the amount of mana added in each interval but that took a lot of time and it wasn't efficient.
He put all the semi low grade crystals into the space bag and put the low grade crystals in a big gunny sack and hid it under his bed. After making sure no one would find it unless they lifted the whole bed, he went to sleep.
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[ 12 hours later]
"Let's go shopping tomorrow. We can buy a lot of toys and dresses for you." Victor said to Aurora seriously. This was just a cover as he wanted to sell the mana crystals and he didn't want to do it through Frazer as it was easy to track back to him and Frazer would have his own doubts about the crystals.
"Alright. But you should buy me a lot of sweets or I won't come."
"Yeah, sure. We'll buy tons of sweets"
"Yaay, I'll go tell mommy about the shopping."
"Yeah sure." He smiled and went back to his room. Aurora and her family were staying in Victor's mansion currently and would go back after three days. So, taking Aurora out to play and shop for a bit was a perfect way to show that he wanted to spend some time with her.