Edited by: ASaltedFish
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The next day, Ellery, Akimitsu, and Edros said goodbye to the Ito family and went back to the First Fleet's spacecraft. Ellery got a lot of gifts from the Ito family, making him feel he was already a part of the family.
The next week, they stopped by the second planet for resources, but there was not enough time to explore the planet, so Ellery and Aster stayed on the spacecraft.
On the third week, they stopped by one of Edros' mining planets that held a rare deposit of Sylvturine crystals.
This time, Edros and Aster went to explore a small part of the mining planet. Ellery already had his time with Akimitsu, so he wanted Aster to have fun with Edros.
Edros took Aster to the central hub of the mining planet. The central hub was where a lot of the miners, the researchers who analyzed the Sylvturine crystals, and the administration of the planet lived. Some miners lived in small towns and villages outside of the central hub, but all were connected to the central hub by roads.
Edros and Akimitsu were greeted by the administrators, but Aster stayed close to Edros and let them do all the talking.
"Marshal Edros, Adjutant Ito, how can we help you both today?" The lead administrator asked while giving a polite bow.
"We want to see your best Sylvturines and let our friend pick some to take with him."
Finally, the lead administrator looked at Aster and realized that he was the SS-ranked guide who could heal their Marshal!
"I apologize for my rudeness, Lord Aster." He was a bit startled to see someone even more influential than Marshal Caecius. "Let me lead the way."
"It's okay. I heard the Sylvturines have an incredible energy hidden within them; how do you keep it from escaping?"
"Because of the nature of Sylvturines or Sylv crystals, we cannot mine using machinery. We use simple tools to carefully extract the stones holding the Sylvturines. You can tell because it looks like a geode.
"After that, we use a stone carving machine to extract them. This process has to be done carefully because the Sylvturines are fragile. If we damage it, the energy within them disperses into the air, and the crystals turn a light gray."
Aster was intrigued and forgot about Edros and Akimitsu, who were next to him and patiently waiting for them to finish talking.
"Do you know how the neighboring galaxy has been able to extract the energy from the Sylvturines?"
"From what I have heard from the merchants, the only way to extract them is to find someone who has an innate ability to do so. These ability users awaken similarly to Sentinels and Guides, but they awaken as children, so they have more time to train their abilities."
Aster still had a ton of questions, but he wanted to see the Sylv crystals before he continued, so he urged the Lead Administrator to take them to the Sylv crystals.
The high-quality Sylv crystals were stored in the administration building, where they would be inspected by merchants from the Adastreia Galaxy. After that, they would bid amongst each other, and the highest bidder would get the Sylv crystal. This was a common practice in the Adastreia Galaxy, so the people of this mining planet did their best to recreate it.
Next to the administration building, shops sold the lower quality Sylv crystals to merchants who could not afford to go to the auction.
As for why some Adastreia merchants came to Zephyrus, according to the ability users who could extract the energy from the Sylv crystals, the taste of the energy was different from the Sylv crystals in Adastreia. As for what that meant, Aster had no idea.
The lead admin brought Aster, Edros, and Akmitsu to the special elevator in the Administration building and pressed the B4 button.
This elevator was the only one that had access to the floor, B4. The floor only had two rooms, one holding the high-quality Sylv crystals, and the other was the room that had the elevator entrance.
They needed to get past a large metal door before they could see any of the crystals. On either side of the door, there was an S-ranked sentinel guarding it.
The lead administrator walked up to the keypad and bent down to scan his eyes. Then, he tapped on it for a few seconds before the door opened. When Aster got close, he could not see any numbers or letters on the keypad.
"Please, take your time. We have a large number of high-quality Sylv crystals because there is an upcoming auction."
After that, the lead administrator stayed back, only coming over if he had any questions. This gave Edros a chance to talk to Aster about some of the crystals.
"They judge the quality of the crystals by the clarity and the richness of the color." Edros pointed to a Sylv crystal with a similar eye color to Aster's. "And each color signifies a different element. The ability users there each have an element, sometimes more. From what I heard, drinking the energy from the Sylv crystals will help them level up their abilities. That's all I know, to be honest."
It was much more than what Aster knew, but he thought it was interesting.
Aster looked at the one Edros pointed out and thought it would be a nice crystal to take home. "To be able to drink the energy from crystals… They are much different from Sentinels and Guides." For some reason, he was curious and wanted to see if he could munch on the crystals like candy.
[Aster, no! You can't eat the Sylv crystals!]
"Aster… You can't eat them." Edros couldn't believe he had to say this.
Aster looked over at Edros, shocked because he didn't know how he had read his thoughts.
"You have a little bit of drool at the corner of your mouth," Edros whispered into Aster's ear so he didn't embarrass him.
He wiped his mouth and found that Edros was telling the truth. Now he was embarrassed!
"Lord Aster, would you like this Sylv crystal? It matches your eyes. A very beautiful color." The Administrator did his best to flatter him.
"Yes, I would like to buy this one. May I hold it right now?" Aster asked because he wanted to see if he could pour his spiritual energy into the crystal.
"Of course!"
The administrator already had gloves on, so he put in the pin for the Sylv crystal and unlocked the glass container holding it. Then, he carefully handed it over to Aster.
"Please be careful. If you drop it, it will crack, and all the energy will disperse, turning it into a muddy gray color."
Aster felt a little nervous, but he held the crystal with both hands. After pouring a little bit of his spiritual energy into the crystal, he didn't feel anything. When he tilted it, the insides of the crystal did not move like a liquid, so how did this work? Still, it was beautiful.
After observing the golden Sylv crystal for a few more minutes, he finally put it down to look at other crystals. He wanted to find one that had Edros' and Akimitsu's eye colors. If he could find another gold one, he would get it for Ellery.
Edros and Akimitsu patiently followed Aster from crystal to crystal, only talking when Aster had a question.
By the time they looked through all the crystals, Aster found two golden Sylv crystals and a black one. Strangely enough, the three golden crystals looked different from each other, just like how Edros and Aster had different golden eye colors. Edros' eyes were a pure golden color, while Aster and Ellery had golden-brown eyes.
In the end, Aster spent 200 million star coins on the four high-quality Sylv crystals. It was the most expensive purchase he had ever made since coming to this galaxy.
"Thank you for your purchase." The lead administrator bowed his head. "While you are on this planet, if Lord Aster needs anything else, please contact me, and I will be sure to do my best to help."
"Thank you, Sir!"
The next time they visited, Aster wanted to go to the open market. For now, he wanted to go back and rest.
The three of them went back to the spacecraft and brought Aster to his room. Before Edros and Akimitsu could leave, Aster stopped them.
"Um! Please take these with you." Aster grabbed the Sylv crystals that looked the most like their eyes. "Since we are close friends and um…" He was embarrassed to say that he was kind of interested in Edros. "I hope you will like this gift. Thank you for taking care of me and Ellery. Okay, goodbye!"
Aster awkwardly slammed the door in their faces and went to hide in his bed. Then he switched with Ellery because he didn't want to think about what he just did any longer!
Edros and Akimitsu held the Sylv crystals in their hands and looked at each other.
"Aster is like a shy like a little bunny, but also like a penguin who gives their loved ones pretty pebbles." Akimitsu couldn't help but whisper a chuckle so Aster couldn't hear him.
"Yeah… He is really cute." Edros looked at the gold Sylv crystal in his hands and felt that he needed to go home and put this crystal on a pedestal in the center of his treasure room! It was now his favorite piece of his collection, and he would pass it down to his kids too.
The two of them left the hallway to go back to work while Ellery stayed in the room to tease Aster to his heart's content.