"Emma, do you want to learn about Conversion too?" Ning asked.
"Conversion? What is that again? The one where you make swords?" she asked.
"Swords, shields, armors, anything," Ning siad. "But yeah, people mostly just make swords."
"I'm fine," Emma said. "I don't plan on learning those. You can have fun with that."
"Alright, you can go around the city then. Enjoy some alone time, see what you want to do," Ning said.
Emma nodded. "I will," she said. "Let's go, Umbra."
Emma, Umbra and the two kids made their away away from the warehouse, leaving Ning behind.
Ning looked at sun outside and realized it was close to 10 in the morning. 'His shop should be open by now,' Ning thought and made his way out of the warehouse as well.
He walked back in the direction of his hotel and quickly made it to the Trobble Conversion shop. He entered the shop and found quite a few types of weapons and artifacts in display.
Swords of bright red, armors of deep azure, spears of dark brown, axes of bright yellow, shields of stark white. All sorts of items seemed available in this shop.
"Not bad," he thought and looked around. "It's quite large on the inside as well. It didn't look like it."
A young woman quickly walked up to him. "Hello, sir. How may we help you today" she asked. "Are you looking for weapons? We have a new batch of supplies right this—"
Ning put up his hands to stop her from continuing. "Your boss called me. Is he in yet?" he asked.
"Our… boss?" the girl looked around, a little confused.
"He's talking about me," Byron quickly walked out from behind after hearing his voice and walked up to Ning. "Haha, please come with me."
The girl moved aside and Ning walked away with Byron, making their way to the back half of the shop that wasn't available for the customers.
"Please don't call me a boss again," Byron quickly said. "I'm not the boss."
Ning frowned. "I thought you were the owner of this place," he said.
"I'm just a manager. The boss is my cousin, but he doesn't work. He just owns the place, passed down from my uncle," he said.
"The mayor?" Ning asked.
Byron nodded. "Anyway, you came later than I thought you would. I thought you wanted me to train you," he said.
"I had a prior appointment," Ning said. "Don't worry though. I'm free now."
"Okay," Byron said before hesitating a little. He wanted to ask about something, but he wasn't sure if it was right for him to begin. In the end, he decided not to.
"So," he said. "Let's go over our agreement again."
"Sure," Ning said. "What are your terms?"
"I will teach you the way to Convert matter into conduits," the man said. "In exchange you must give me a sizable piece of Essence crystal containing very pure lightning Essence."
"Sure," Ning said without thinking much.
The man man frowned a little seeing Ning's such nonchalance. He started worrying if this was a way for him to scam him somehow. Would he be able to do anything if he was scammed?
"Would it be alright if I saw the lightning crystal before I taught? Just to make sure it is of quality," the man said.
"Sure," Ning said, bringing out a white crystal with a bluish hue to it. He tossed it over to Byron who quickly looked at it and started judging it.
He stared for a while before he nodded to himself.
'Amazing,' he said to himself. He was done with the test, but even after that he kept staring. It was just too amazing to not stare at it.
After all, this was even better than the one he had tested the other day. This crystal was 95% pure. He had never seen such a pure crystal ever in his life.
"Where… where did you get this from?" he asked.
"Is it good?" Ning asked. "What's the purity?"
"95%," the man said. "I have never held something so pure. Not even Pure Crystals are this pure. Where did you get this?"
"This…" Ning thought for a bit. "I believe it found it at the peaks of Mount Deathfire in the northern regions of Springwind continent."
The man looked at Ning with a strange look on his face. 'Mount Deathfire? Who names a mountain that way? And Springwind Continent? Is he lying just because he knows I can't verify this?' he wondered.
There was no way for Byron to tell whether the name and words he had heard were real in any way. But he wasn't just going to come out and call Ning a liar. He had more urgency in his own life than that.
A man who would run around with a beast as strong as that Shadow Puma was not someone he wanted to be on the opposite side of.
"So this works for our agreement, correct?" Ning asked.
"Yes, this works," the man said before handing it back to Ning.
However, Ning didn't take it. "Keep it," he said. "If that makes you feel safer. Just teach me what you can."
Byron was a little surprised and nodded. He kept the lighting Essence and moved to an open space.
Ning ignored the many smiths that were working and followed the man to the open space.
Once they arrived there, Byron started speaking.
"I will teach you the basics of Converting now," he said. "Converting, in essence, is very simple. All you have to do is take a natural object that is as close to an Essence as possible, and use that Essence to convert that object into something else."
Ning nodded. "I think I get the gist of it," he said.
The man nodded. "To learn to Convert, you need to have a very precise Essence control. Show me how good your Essence control is," he said.
Ning nodded and then paused. "Essence control?" he asked. "I… can't do that. I'm not in the Essence Manifestation realm."
