Money Done Cheap

New pov:

I'm surprised how much this bodyguard actually cared for his "master". Normally, I wouldn't believe him about such an item, but I at least wanted him to feel like he protected his master before his death.

I examine the token. It was shaped like a star, and it was mostly plain. I decided to test it first.

"I wish Yang lost all her memories about this event.", I said out loud. I felt a sudden removal of qi right next to me.

It looks like it absorbed most of the qi from the sword. The sword still had a lot of qi, but it was nowhere near the same level I felt before. If it wasn't for the immense amount of qi the sword had before, I wouldn't have gone through the trouble of getting it.

The most important thing is that it worked. What ordinary Item would actually manage to suck such a large amount of qi? I decided to test a theory.

I put the black gem right next to it and said, "I wish for D4C:Love Train!". It worked, but not quite as I hoped. It was sucking qi, but no matter what, the black gem always gave it the same constant flow of qi.

It looked like I would have to wait for it to gain enough qi. Maybe I could speed it up by giving it items easier to absorb? I put the token near the corpses of my "comrades" after I gathered all of their corpses. It worked like a charm.

After the token finished absorbing the qi left from them and the dragon, I moved all of their corpses into a different dimension. I took Yang and escaped the cave. I left her near the base of a tree. I had no obligation to protect her.

I realized that I could just hide out in D4C for the remainder of this week. As I was about to go in between some trees, someone came into my view. It was another teenager, with short dark hair. He had a dark cloak, twin swords on his back, and he was glittered with black jewelry.

It seems like he was able to subconsciously cycle his qi based on its movement in his body. I had to be careful of this one.

"You! Stop right where you are. Respect your dark overlord!", he said while posing.

"I'm sorry, but what could you want with someone like me?", I answered.

"Are you a part of the Fungus faction?", he said with a serious face.

"What's this 'Fungus faction'?", I questioned.

"That's exactly what someone from the Fungus faction would say!", he said, ready to fight.

I didn't respond. This is getting too weird for me. I instead decided to bide my time, and stayed in between the trees.

He rushed at me, ready to kill me. He clearly underestimated me when he didn't actively circulate his qi. This gave me enough reaction room to instantly teleport him to another dimension. I left him to his inevitable demise when he would encounter himself.

I started to hide in D4C, only leaving for food and water. Eventually, the week ended, and the contest was finally over. The remaining people were teleported back to where we all started.

The announcer stated that we could enter another contest where we could go into the academy. I decided to go straight into the city instead. I wanted to have a standing in the city, before I try anything that could bring me attention.

To do this I needed money. Power in a sophisticated society always started with money. Now the question is, how do I make this money?

Well first, I need to make money actively, before I start gaining it passively. The best way to do this is by hunting demons. I could instantly kill any of those demons, while gaining 2 core.

I bought some blankets and an "inventory ring" for two gold coins. It appears that this inventory ring has a jewel on top that can store items. The cultivators seemed to have learned how to shape qi, to their own uses.

If they shape the qi around their hand into a spear, would that hand work like a shield? This begs the question. If they could already manipulate the space something holds, could they control gravity?

Even if someone knew how to control it, none of them knew how to do the infinite spin Gyro and Johnny did. This does however prove that even if I gain love train, there's always a chance someone could bypass it.

For now I have to think about my current goal. I asked around for where I could find a public library. Ignoring some of the weird stare, I finally reached it. I found a book about demons, and I read through most of it.

Now I could find my perfect target. There was a specific demon who resembled bulls. Of course they had other terrifying features to make them be called demons. The most important thing was that they traveled in packs, were generally unafraid of predators and people, and they get startled easily.

All I had to do was avoid the male bulls, and I would be fine. They had bigger horns and more tails. They were more aggressive, and they might fight me the second they see me.

I started searching for them in their favorite area, the plains. They loved the grass and free space it had. They were all grouped up and eating grass. I placed a few blankets from my ring near them. I entered a parallel universe and came upon the same scene, but instead it was a rocky area.

I got the rest of my blankets out of the inventory ring, and threw them onto as many demons as I could. When I came back to the base dimension it was littered with the crying pains of demons. I quickly took the cores from the demons who were already dead, and finished the ones who were still dying. I used the blankets to get rid of the bodies.

I had a total of 34 cores. I remembered that the chief's son gave me 4 gold coins, so I should sell these cores for even more since the demand is probably higher here.

I searched the city for a place where I could sell the cores. I eventually decided to sell it to a company that specializes in dealing with core. I managed to sell them for 85 gold coins! This was definitely more than enough for what I wanted to do.

The first thing I'm going to do is invest in some businesses. This could be difficult considering the people of this world may have never heard of such a thing. I decided to only target businesses with a lot of customers, and not enough resources. Even in such a big city, I could only find seven places that fit the requirements in five days.

I would offer each of them 5 gold coins for 10% of their earnings each week for three months. On average each of them made about 1-2 gold coins. This means that it would only take at most five weeks until I made profit, and I still had 50 gold coins left.

My plan is to keep gaining cores once a week. Then I'll be able to offer this to other businesses. Eventually I'll be able to completely buy out businesses. If it was this simple, why haven't other people tried this?

In essence, this city is mostly about cultivation. My method only works because I'm able to make so much money killing demons in mass. If you were already rich, why would you want to be richer when you could buy cores to cultivate? This simple one minded goal is what ruined them.

While I can respect their wishes for immortality, they expect to gain it with simple cores and teachings. They need to plan and sacrifice anything for their goal.

Now that I finished up my plan to make money, I decided how I will get Love Train faster. I needed to steal the treasures locked up in the city for the token to use.

Fortunately, none of the buildings had these barriers that stopped me from entering the city. I didn't have enough information to know why though.

I decided to finally devise my first step into gaining a subordinate. I needed someone to go inside the academy and feed me information. What better place than the slums? I would help someone get out of poverty, while gaining information.

With that thought, I left to search for my potential subordinate. I walked down south, where the slums were located. I searched for a potential target in D4C, to be efficient. I needed someone ambitious, but not arrogant.

As I continued my search I finally found someone good enough. I decided to appear behind them...