Chapter 54: Approach

Shane already used up a few of his remaining aqueous scales to soothe the swellings all over his arms but it was only partially helpful if he were to continue ignoring that he had to rest.

Throughout the last two hours, there had been a few elemental scale lizards coming back from their hunt outside the cave only to see him digging out their elemental crystals, which enraged them noticeably.

Well...who would like it if someone demolished their dear home?

Fortunately, not a single one of them was at the elite stage, otherwise, he would have encountered a small problem.

With his current capabilities, Shane wasn't confident in fighting against Elite stage beats inside the cave head-on as their extremely high elemental affinity was a huge threat to him.

As such he would rather avoid them for the time being if it was possible.

One hour passed and it was already deep at night, while the cave was still brightened by the surrounding elemental crystals when he decided to take a look into his spatial ring.

There were still close to [30H] left on his countdown and Shane couldn't help but grin, looking at the content within his spatial ring.

As for the scaled lizard corpses, there were more than 40 within his spatial ring, with slightly more than 10 breezy scaled lizards, around 8 earthy scaled lizards, and 6 aqueous scaled lizards.

The rest were fiery scaled lizards that were the most common scaled lizards inside the elemental crystal cave.

Even though Shane could sell the corpses for a small fortune, he wasn't exactly sure about their true worth as the scales of every elemental lizard seemed to be extremely valuable.

As such he decided to wait for some time until he figured out their effects before selling the corpses.

If he was short on a few gold coins to finish his [Mythic] mission, he would sell the corpses without any hesitation.

However, seeing the content inside his spatial ring, Shane doubted that it was required with a radiant smile blossoming on his face.

Mining for three hours caused his common quality pickaxe to become completely deformed.

Nevertheless, the profit was much higher than his costs and Shane just bought another common quality pickaxe from the system to continue his harvest as soon as he messaged an Elus merchant.

Before that, he would have to make up a rough price list for the different elemental crystals in order to be prepared to start discussing the price for everything.

Right now, Shane only had five different crystals in his spatial ring, one of them were normal mana crystals with the majority being at the [Trash] quality while some crystals were even at the [Common] quality.

As for the other crystals, all of them were basic elemental crystals with wind, fire, water, and earth transmuted mana compressed into them.

Their quality was the same as the mana crystals with most of them being [trash] and a shallow amount of transmuted mana inside and some [common] quality elemental crystals with a much denser quantity of transmuted mana swirling within them.

Making up his mind, Shane decided that he wouldn't sell the mana crystals if it was not mandatory because he might need these crystals for himself and Umbra.

They were worse than mana stones due to their lower mana quality and quantity, but Umbra could still absorb them all day around and increase his evolution rate without wasting his own resources.

The elemental crystals, however, were a different case.

With them being basic elemental crystals in addition to having [trash] and [common] quality, Shane could roughly estimate their price, by adding around 10%-20% from the prices humans sold them inside the Primordial shop.

If Shane's information weren't wrong, the Elus race never had something to do with mankind which could be said to be his fortune as the Elus race would have already bought every elemental crystal from humans' shops, informing them about the high demand.

This would in return increase the popularity of dimensions with vast mountains like the Radiant Mountain ring dimension.

Shane wouldn't be alone within the cave anymore and most likely even chased away by stronger cultivators as everyone would want everything for themselves.

Looking at the prices, Shane pondered for a moment before he decided to follow a rough price list he wrote down on the system's notes.

Once he was done, Shane entered the neutral PrimWeb forum.

Filtering out all races except the Elus race, Shane could easily find a few higher authorities of their race.

But before he wrote any of them a message, he also searched for contact details of their race's merchants.

Unfortunately, there weren't many which was however not really important for now.

As such, Shane decided to message all authorities whose contact details he could find within the forum threads.

After thinking for some time, he decided to make it simple and provide a few particular information to receive their curiosity even though he had to exaggerate and lie a little bit.

Otherwise, nobody would care about him as the Corvi race's desperation was most likely a one-time occurrence.

The message he wrote to all authorities and handful of merchants he found was roughly the same

<Hello dear [Title][Name],

It's an honor to be able to write Sir/Lady.

My humble name is Orus.

Through my wide connection which includes a fellow Elus citizen, I received the information that the Elus race is in dire need of all types of elemental crystals.

Coincidentally, I found a huge stock of [Mortal] basic elemental crystals in addition to some stocks of intermediate elemental crystals inside my shop!

If the Elus race is still in need of them, I would be interested in negotiating a fair trading agreement that benefits both of us.

Strengthening the large masses of [Lesser] Elementals is important in order to ensure a secured expansion on the Elus race's side, right?

I sincerely wish to form a firm relationship with the Elus race.

Please consider messaging me back.

Greetings,

Orus>

Shane couldn't do much more than writing a sincere message, even though he exaggerated much more than he initially wanted to.

His `huge` stock of [Mortal] basic elemental crystals were roughly 700 fist-sized crystals with most of them having a fire affinity.

Amongst these 700 fist-sized elemental crystals there were less than 80 with a common quality

However, with his current mining speed, Shane was confident in accumulating 1000 gold coins, because he had still close to 30 hours left.

[29H:38M:15S]

From roughly 700 crystals, Shane could receive a fortune of 100 gold coins and he was mining in a slow manner.

As such, he was able to earn roughly 30 gold coins in one hour with his current speed.

During his last three hours, he also hunted 40+ scaled lizards that would give him an additional injection of funds.

Estimating his hourly profit, Shane came out with roughly 35 gold coins, turning his remaining 29 hours into the exact required amount of time he needed to finish his mission.

And this was only if Shane couldn't increase the price of his elemental crystals compared to the prices human shops put up.

Continuing mining the elemental crystals within the large cave entrance, Shane changed his strategy and decided to accelerate his mining speed to the highest capabilities because mining 29 hours would definitely draw some attention on him, which he wanted to avoid when several notifications popped up.

However, Shane ignored them until two more hours passed, in order to play hard to get, without looking desperate for their trading agreement.