"You know your way around here?" Izzy questioned as the two of them started making their way across the red light district. "Rather, how do you know your way around here?"
"I visit it every single day." Noah joked. "I'm solely relying on what I found on the maps app."
"Pray that they are correct then."
Most of the shops there were currently closed due to the morning time. However, a few shops were still open for those who needed morning attention.
"We just have to keep walking straight and take a right turn later on. We will come right in front of the selling place." Noah said as they walked through the streets of the red-light district.
Everything was going well until Noah felt someone walk behind him and place a hand on his shoulder.
The hand didn't make contact with his skin yet it had a strange kind of warmth that would've lured most men away.
"Want to accompany me this morning?" a seductive voice whispered in his ear.
Noah turned around to see a barely clothed woman standing right behind him. She had a seductive smile on her place and was lifting her bosom a bit with the help of her left hand.
"Hmm, maybe if you were twenty years younger, I would've considered it," Noah replied with a quirky smile.
"Huh?" The woman was left surprised as Noah removed her hand from his shoulder, pressing one of her acupoints in the process.
The woman's hand went numb the next second as Noah continued his stroll forward, Izzy moving right beside him.
'So his mother is still here...' Noah amused silently.
"Why did I feel as though that woman was in her fifties?" Izzy finally asked, failing to suppress her curiosity.
"It's because she is in her mid-fifties. The right amount of make-up mixed with the alterations done using light magic can make anyone appear younger." Noah answered nonchalantly.
He had known her age log before she had touched him.
The two of them soon reached the end of the red light district without any more disturbances and turned right to enter the adventurers' district.
Noah could've tried to sell the beast cores in the adventurers guild branch in the city yet that would've arose the question about the mana cores origin.
Children who hadn't passed out of school weren't allowed to hunt beasts and breaking that law had a high fine that even the rich wanted to avoid.
This was done in order to decrease the deaths of careless children. If any of them went to fight a beast despite the law and died in the process, their family would still have to pay the fine.
"I was expecting a shady-looking place yet this looks almost official," Izzy muttered in surprise as her eyes took in the adventurers' district.
The ground was made from concrete while tents were placed around the streets alongside high-class shops.
Noah's eyes fell on a place selling potions at an astronomically cheap prize, making him chuckle. He knew that most of them just included colored water which would make you gag the moment you try to drink the liquid.
"I am ninety-nine percent sure that they will try to scam us." Izzy pointed out as they made their way to a shop dealing with mana cores.
"Make that a hundred percent." Noah declared as the two of them entered the shop.
Noah didn't pay much attention to the layout of the shop and directly went to the counter taking the mana cores for money.
"I want to sell six A-grade cores and two B-grade cores," Noah spoke clearly as he took the eight cores out of his backpack.
He placed them on the counter in front of them and raised an eyebrow at the man sitting behind the counter.
The man immediately snapped to attention as he sat straight and looked at the cores closely.
He took each of them for a few seconds before looking at Noah with emotionless eyes.
"I will pay you two thousand bucks for the two B grade cores while I will pay you five thousand bucks a piece for the A grade ones." The man offered.
"Raise the price of the A-grade cores to eight thousand a piece and I will take them," Noah stated his price while staring right into the man's eyes.
The latter was about to strike Noah's deal down when he felt something creeping up his back. Call it a bad feeling or instinct, the man felt as though if he didn't give Noah the price he was asking for, things would turn ugly.
The man swallowed hard before replying, "We have a deal."
Noah shook the man's hand as something from his body passed inside the man. The latter felt as though he was touching the hand of a death ripper.
It felt cold to touch as the man retracted his hand eagerly. He then rummaged around in a drawer below the counter before pulling out a blue translucent tablet.
The screen was extremely thin and was wedged between two white pieces of metal, making it almost the same size as a normal phone.
The man pressed his thumb on the screen as a calculator appeared on it. He entered the amount of money Noah would get before passing the tablet on to him.
"I'm happy that we could do a good business." The man bowed a bit as Noah pocketed the tablet and turned towards the entrance of the shop.
The normal price for the cores brought by Noah would've been 10k dollars but selling things in the black market had its own cons.
'He should come out right now.' He thought and the moment he had Izzy were about to step out of the gate, a voice stopped them.
"Both of you stop right there!" A rough heavy voice called out yet Noah didn't bother stopping. His right hand grabbed Izzy's hand as the two of them continued to walk away from the shop.
"What are you doing?" Izzy hissed as the voice called out again, a bit of anger leaking out of the words.
"I said stop right there!" the man bellowed.
Noah did stop this time and turned back with a surprised owner.
"You were calling out to me?" he inquired in a surprised tone as a six feet tall burly man walked out of the shop.
He had sleek black hair sticking closely to his scalp and was wearing a maroon suit made out of velvet.
His appearance seemed to scream "I am a rich man and I'm going to act like a spoiled rich brat!"
Noah of course made this assumption as he had met the man in his previous life and knew that he was the owner of the shop, something handed to him by his father.
"Sorry I didn't realize you were calling out to us," Noah fake apologized. "Any reason for stopping us?"
"You are a minor, aren't you. Your name must be Noah and yours must be Isabella. Both of you are about to graduate in two weeks." The man replied with a smirk while ogling Izzy's body.
Noah sighed audibly while debating whether he should snap the man's head and be done with the whole thing.
"I guess we left too much of an impression," he stared directly into the man's eyes. "What do you want from us, Mister Checzoloa?"
"You know me?" Checzoloa sounded surprised yet he soon recovered from it. "Never mind that. You both know that if I reported you, you would be charged heavily and would get a stain on your record?"
"We know that but do you know what happens when someone with an SSS grade lightning affinity decides to hit another human being with the full power of lightning?" Noah inquired.
"I will take that as a threat yet the chances of you knowing a skill related to lightning so soon isn't possible. So let's get back to the original topic. I was saying—"
"How is your mother?" Noah interrupted curiously as Checzoloa paused.
"My mother…" he mumbled.
"I just met her on my way here. She asked me whether I would like to accompany her during the day. Sadly she is getting old and losing her charm." Noah sighed exasperatedly while keeping track of Checzoloa.
Izzy watched him from the sidelines, not quite understanding what he was trying to accomplish.
He could get this over in seconds yet he was deliberately stretching it out. However, while contemplating about Noah's words, the realization struck Izzy.
'Oh Isabella, you are so dumb. If he killed him right here in front of the public eye, his father is going to hunt after us and we might get a criminal record considering there are cameras recording everything here.' Izzy berated herself.
She then watched the change of expression on Checzoloa's face as his face turned bright red.
Noah, having achieved the effect he wanted, continued ahead. "I guess she only wants you to embrace her at night. Maybe your microscopic excuse for a manhood can't function during the day."
Checzoloa's body went completely still as his attention was driven toward Noah's first sentence. Dread crept up his body as he stared at the young teen in front of him with a fearful gaze.
All his plans of tricking the young boy into becoming his slave shattered right at that instance.
Checzoloa prayed silently that no one watching the cameras had heard the conversation between him and Noah.
"I wonder how your father would feel when he hears that his son and the heir to his business has been secretly fucking his whore ex-wife, who is his son's mother. You might be disowned or executed." Noah went silent and let his words sink in.
"I…" Checzoloa began speaking yet his voice trailed off.
"So now, give me that ring gleaming on your right index finger and pray that the news never leaks out," Noah grinned. "Also, I have got a recording of this set on auto post if anything ever goes wrong."
Checzoloa was no stupid character from a novel and took Noah's words seriously. He slid the ring off his finger, tossed it to Noah, and stepped back inside his shop while hoping to never meet Noah again.
'I will spend the whole night with mother and make her console me that my manhood isn't microscopic.' He thought before going to check on the people manning his camera room.
Noah on the other hand eyed the ring in his hand and grinned. He had gotten his hand on quite the jackpot.
He then looked at Izzy's confused face, trying to make sense of what had just happened, and said, "Let's go back. I want to test this ring on those spies."