Chapter 132 CHAPTER 132: THE CASE OF DISAPPEARING STONES



DING* the POS machine that was being used to make the transaction sounded out a notification at the same time Davies finished tapping on his phone's screen and looked up with a slight smile. 

[Author' note: POS means Point Of Sales]

Whether such a situation was a coincidence or not, we did not know, what we did know, was that what was written on the screen of the machine were the words, "Transaction failed".

Upon seeing those words, Lee Jung's bright mood disappeared like it was naught but an illusion.

Seeing those words were that much of a dampener and his mood immediately sunk, but before he could think any further, the phone in his pocket vibrated soundlessly, but he noticed the vibration and immediately pulled his phone out of his pocket.

"What the fuck is this shit!?" angry words barged out of his mouth like they were bullets from a machine gun as he stared angrily at the notification that had just been sent to him by the Yorkshire Imperial Bank.

"Acct: 0671057298,

Amt: (Debit) 105 000 000,

Desc: Via Yorkshire Imperial Bank to Diamonds In The Rough,

Available Balance: 754 976,

Date: **/**/****, 5:43 pm."

This wasn't the notification of a failed transaction, but of a successful one, so why was the POS machine telling him some stupid shit like "Transaction Failed", Lee Jung raged internally.

As he raged internally, he failed to notice the rising smirk that just as quickly deflated from Davies's face as he watched him. 

The stone merchant who had quickly finished packaging all the stones inside of the stall for Lee Jung, since he had said he wanted to buy everything, looked back to Lee Jung in a bid to collect the POS machine and to confirm the transaction, though he internally felt a bit bitter that he wouldn't be able to sell his wares at a great profit just because he had been ordered to not sell to Davies.

His mood which was already not very great due to this, worsened even further when he saw the words "Transaction failed", written on the POS, but for courtesy sake since he was acting on the orders of the old president, he asked Lee Jung what was wrong.

"I-I don't know..." Lee Jung could only stutter out as he didn't understand what was going on. 

"T-This piece of junk is saying that the transaction failed, but my account has been debited by the bank... Or at least that's what the notification says..." Lee Jung explained the current circumstances.

"Gimme that..." The merchant said as he snatched the POS machine from his hands and looked at what it was saying, but just like Lee Jung said, it wrote that the transaction had failed, after which he looked at the phone that Lee Jung was holding out for him to look at where he saw the debit alert.

'What sort of situation is this?' the merchant wondered feeling a rising headache.

"What seems to be the issue?" Davies's voice rang out as he reached the stall, asking what was the delay.

"Unlike you people, I don't have all day," 

"Complete the goddamn transaction, let's do this stone gambling thingmajing, and let me be on my way, I got things to do," Davies said in an annoyed tone...

The stone merchant who had been trying to operate the POS to check the transaction receipts to see if he could see what was wrong, but felt his headache grow, as for some weird reason the stupid thing wasn't responding to external stimulus... To be clear, the machine seemed to be having a hanging fit and wasn't responding to his attempts to manipulate it.

Davies shouting out in annoyance at being delayed only infuriated the stone merchant even more and he almost lost his temper to shout at Davies to shut his effing mouth.

Just as he turned to shout at Davies, he was met with the sight of Davies standing right behind him and he jumped in fright at Davies's sudden appearance right behind him.

"Give me that," Davies said as he snatched the POS machine from the stone merchant's hands before he could even react.

He looked and tried to manipulate the machine like he was wholeheartedly trying to find what was wrong, but he inwardly smiled as he was the cause of this whole situation.

He had been trying to test how far fate would go in a bid to help Lee Jung out of this situation, but he had also planned for if that had actually happened.

One of his talents was that he was literally a technological genius, so doing something as easy as hacking a POS machine and making it display the wrong message while also disabling it's sensors and making the POS machine inoperable by anyone for a while, was a walk in the park for someone of his expertise... And that was exactly what he had done...

"Are you sure you were able to finish the transaction and buy the stones...?" Davies asked Lee Jung hesitantly, obviously acting as if he wanted to believe Lee Jung even though the situation was not in Lee Jung's favor at all.

Doing this would make people ignore the possibility that he could have had anything to do with this issue as he was not rushing to any conclusions that there was something shady about the issue.

"... You didn't do something as sneaky as trying to trick us with a fake transaction receipt, right?..." He asked again, still speaking hesitantly.

At first Lee Jung had wanted to ignore Davies as they were obviously not on good terms, but the moment Davies tried to insinuate that he was a lying, cheating, bastard that tried to scam the merchant out of his stones, he immediately reacted violently,

"Of course I didn't do anything of the sort, you bastard!"

"You of all people should know that I have enough money in my account to pay for this many stones!" He shouted at Davies angrily, wondering why so many things were going wrong today.

"Well... Just barely..." Davies said with a scoff, obviously not happy that Lee Jung was shouting in his face when he had been trying to help.

"You!" Lee Jung began with an even louder voice.

"Stop shouting in my ears, idiot!" Davies immediately shouted him down before he had to listen to another earful of shit from Lee Jung's mouth.

"Have you tried to check if the establishment has received the credit alert?" He continued before Lee Jung could retort and begin shouting again.

His words suddenly enlightened all the involved parties as they immediately thought,

'Oh...'

'... That is a good idea.'

Even Lee Jung immediately shut up and looked to the stone merchant to ask him to check and confirm if he had received a transaction alert from the bank.

The merchant was about to shout out that he had been trying to do that on the unresponsive POS machine before Davies snatched it out of his hands, but he weighed his words carefully and decided not to say anything and instead looked at the old president.

The moment he looked expectantly at the old president to check and confirm the transaction as it was the old man that was in control of the account, and he was merely someone who watched the stall and sold the stones on behalf of the establishment.

But his actions immediately gave a brainwave to the crowd who were immediately able to understand why the merchant hadn't sold the stones to Davies in the first place.

It was obvious that it was on orders of the old man as it was obvious to everyone who had been watching that the old man was quite biased towards Lee Jung from the start, so he had probably told the stone merchant not to sell to Davies.

Even Davies muttered, "Is that how it is," with a slightly shocked look on his face as if he finally understood why the merchant hadn't sold the stones to him in the first place, but him acting like this was all for show as he already figured that this was the case.

How else would fate have involved itself in his plan to buy all the stones otherwise. 

It was also while he thought of this that he had realized that if Lee Jung was to buy only these few stones against the amount of stones that he had bought, but would still win the stone gambling competition, then the powerstones to be found in those stones would be pretty valuable... And he wanted them.

In this respect, he and fated protagonists weren't so different from each other, they both liked good things and wanted it for themselves, there was only one difference...

Davies's greed was far greater, he was more open about it, and he was crazy enough to do whatever he had to, to get whatever it was that he desired to own, and that was exactly what he would be doing with these power stones as well, so while Davies and everyone else's eyes were on the old president to check his account statement to see if he had received the credit alert, nobody noticed all the piles of stones slightly glowing for a split second before all disappearing from view.