"Lightning!" the manager shouted in surprise, catching the attention of everyone in the room.
"Lighting?"
"Where?"
"Is it Lighting Crystal? Hey, I want it!"
A horde of people quickly surrounded Ning and the manager, pushing even Emma to the side.
"Hey young man, are you selling that?"
"Let me buy it. How much do you want for it?"
"3000 Fire Essence coins. Please," another man shouted.
Ning's eyes never left the manager who started feeling overwhelmed by the people around her. "What do you say, manager? If you don't want to buy it, I'll leave your shop."
The manager realized that if she refused here, the customers that wanted it would be angry and most likely follow him to the other shop.
"Yes, I'll buy it. Please come with me to the side," she said before turning toward the customers. "My apologies. We can't sell the Essence crystal just yet without properly grading it and fixing up a price fit for something so rare."
The manager turned around and left with Ning to a corner of the shop where she took the lightning crystal and looked at it with closed eyes.
"Wow," she couldn't help but say. "This really is lightning crystal. Just where did you find it?"
"Somewhere," Ning said. "It shouldn't matter where I go it from right?"
"That's true," she said.
"And you can stop that poor girl from trying to learn about me and see if I have a criminal record. You won't find any," Ning said.
The managers eyes narrowed. She wasn't aware how Ning had seen through what the other girl was doing. Surely their secret signal had not been deciphered, had it?"
"I'm sorry, but we have to check it," the manager said.
"Sure, go ahead if you feel like you have to," Ning said. "I'm just trying to stop you from being disappointed as there really isn't anything that you can find there."
"Please let us be the judge of that," the manager said.
Ning shrugged and looked at his daughter who gave him a weird face.
Emma gave him a weird face before looking at the manager who simply waited. "May I ask what you are waiting for?" she asked.
"Our analyzer," the manager said. "He should be here any minute."
A few minutes later, a man walked in with a scruffy beard and a haggard clothes. Anyone that didn't know him thought that he was a homeless man taht didn't know where he was.
However, seeing at the staff of the store weren't doing anything, they didn't say anything.
"What?" the man asked in an annoyed tone. "Today isn't shipment day, is it?"
"No, but we have a new crystal. I need you to check the quality."
"On my off day? Are you mad woman?" the man said.
The manager sighed. "Please just check it," she said.
"I don't want to," the man said. "Man I was having such a nice sleep and then they knock on my door. Do you not know how delicate my senses are. I can sense a—"
The man's words paused before his eyes slowly widened to look at the crystal in front of him.
"Is that…"
"Yes," the woman said. "Now get your ass here already and analyze the quality for me."
The man no longer bickered and quickly came up to her and started looking at the crystal. He touched the crystal and a little and did something to it that Ning didn't understand.
Ning looked at the process and was a little confused. 'What is he doing exactly?' he asked.
<He is using a technique to absorb the pure Essence inside of that crystal. The lesser the pure Essence, the higher the quality of the crystal itself.>
'Can these crystals not have other Essence in them?' Ning asked.
<No. They form through years of coagulation of the same type of Essence and as a result they push away any and all Essence that aren't the same type. Only Pure Essence gets left behind along with it due to the Pure Essence having no attribute at all.>
<If there ever was a another type of Essence in them, it would have to be significant enough to fight off the force that the other Essence creates to reject it.>
<At that moment, it ends up becoming two different Essence Crystals that grow side by side.>
<Those sorts of crystals are extremely rare, to the point that there is currently none of it in the planet Astoria>
"I see," Ning said thoughtfully. He looked around the room at the various Essence crystals that were on display.
"Whats the average purity of the crystals here?" Ning asked.
<They range from 70% to 80% on average. The highest one is an Ice Essence Crystal that is around 87%.>
Ning's eyes widened. "That's quite a lot," he thought. "I wonder what mine is."
The man focused on it for a few seconds more before he looked up with eyes wide as if he had seen a ghost.
"93%" he said softly.
"What?" the woman asked. She didn't believe him and quickly took the crystal from him and looked at it. However, unlike the man, she didn't know how check for quality of a crystal.
She could only turn back to him and ask, "are you serious?"
"Absolutely," the man said. "Do you think I am lying?"
"No, but… 93%? That's very high, isn't it?" the manager asked. "Thats one of the highest quality Essence crystal we have received."
"Yes," the man said. "Now go sell it."
"Oh, we haven't purchased it yet," the woman said and quickly turned around. "Dear guest, would you come with me so we can talk about the price."
"Sure," Ning said and walked with her while taking the crystal from her hand. "Let's go."
Emma walked in with her father as well. The back room was for the staff, but Ning and Emma were allowed in and made to sit.
"Bring us some refreshments," the manager told a girl and then turned toward Ning. "Now, let us talk about the price of crystal and if possible where you acquired it from."
