"You don't know Rop?" Ning asked. 'Shit! Did that change too?' he thought. He quickly checked in with the system and realized that the currency had changed by now as well.
This time, it was something called Sils and Gols. 'That definitely doesn't sound like silver or gold at all,' Ning thought sarcastically.
"Sorry, I meant, what is the price of the ticket? For the 2 hour ride," Ning asked.
"It's 3 coins," Reever said.
"Uhh… 3 sils?" Ning asked.
"Of course, don't you have the money?" Reever asked as he looked at him with a scrutinizing look.
"No, I do. Why would I not?" Ning asked and silently had the system make some sils and gols for himself. He acted like he was reaching into his pocket and brought out 3 sils.
'Oh, they are already on paper money huh?' Ning thought in surprise as he saw the paper notes floating inside his inventory. 'I wonder why they haven't still used Aether ores as a form of currency like spirit stones. It must still be very hard to find,' he thought.
The train conductor came by and took their money before handing them a ticket. Ning looked at the small ticket with words printed on it and was surprised how far along Vilmore had come.
'I wonder if they have telephones and radios already. When did cars come on earth again? Those should be made here already right?' he thought.
He watched the view outside as the train took a long curve towards the right and moved up north.
"Man, I hate this place," Reever complained as he opened the uppermost button of his shirt and used a paper fan to wave air to himself. From the looks of it, he was also feeling very hot.
"And yet you still come here," Ning said with a chuckle.
"Well, we have to do what we can for money, don't we?" he asked.
"That's fair. By the way, I wanted to ask you something. I saw you buying those items from those people for a few coins. For example, you bought that one man's pots for 1 coin each, but even the train ticket costs 3 coins. Are you ripping them off?" Ning asked.
"WHAT?" Reever exclaimed. "How preposterous? Of course, I don't rip them off at all," he said.
"Oh, but from what I saw, you sold bags of grains for almost 10 coins each. Is that not ripping them off? " Ning asked.
"O-Of course not. I negotiate prior to every sale. I only pay what my customers are happy with," Reever said.
"Do you not profit on those items at all?" Ning asked.
"Um, I mean, of course, I do. What sort of business would I be running if I made no profit," Reever said.
"How high are your profit margins from these trips?" Ning asked.
Reever got a little defensive and looked at Ning angrily.
"Hey! I was just asking," Ning said. "I don't mind if you rip them off. As long as they aren't negatively impacted by it. Just having you go there every time must already be a huge help to them."
Reever looked at him with a concerned face and asked, "are you not lying?"
"No, of course not. I saw those happy faces in the village. Not a single one of them seemed to be struggling at all. However, I don't know if that would have been the case if you didn't go to sell goods to them," Ning said encouragingly.
"Yes, that's right. While I may not pay them what it's worth, they are happy with what they get," Reever said.
"Right, if they don't complain, you are fine," Ning said. Ning sighed in relief after seeing Reever lose his anger.
'Phew, I would have lost myself a guide around this place if I kept it up any longer," Ning thought.
The train ride went along and little by little, Ning could feel the air in the train getting cooler. "If only we could open the window without letting the sand in," he said softly.
"That would be so much better than just constantly waving these fans to me," Reever said as he continued waving the paper fans.
"Can't you just get the fans to wave you by themselves? As an enchanter, you should be able to do at least that much right?" Ning asked.
"No," Reever said meekly. "I don't have enough Aether in me to keep it going for long. What I had, I mostly used it during the storytelling back in the village."
"But you were so accurate with the figures of the sand. It felt like I was actually looking at real people moving around a lot of the time," Ning said. "You have a lot of talent."
"Sigh, what good is talent without any potential brother Ning. No matter how much I try, I can never get myself to get better than an Aether Student. Sigh, I have given up on becoming better at using Aether. Now I just want to become a merchant, and earn as much money as I can," Reever said.
"'Talent without potential' huh? I can understand a bit of what you mean. I am in fact the exact opposite, brother Reever. I have potential, but no talent at all. So despite having Aether, I can't really use it as well," Ning said.
"Oh," Reever said with a bit of surprise. "If you don't have talent, but you have potential, then you have nothing to worry about, Brother Ning. Just go practice a bunch, and very soon you should be able to use it as well as the others do."
"I suppose that's true," Ning said. "I really haven't given the practice aspect very much focus in all these years."
"What are you, brother Ning? An Invoker, or an Enchanter?" Reever asked curiously.
"I am an invoker, a very bad one though," Ning said.
"A bad Invoker is still better than a dud, I guess.. That way, you won't get into trouble when you go out of the Xandria Empire," Reever said.
