Lightning Is the Only Way

A lot of people on the streets looked at the Gravitas with a glimmer in their eyes. Some of them saw the Certificates and realized how good that shop was. A perfect evaluation for World Weapon Forging? Lower prices than anywhere else? This was too good to be true!

This was a common mistake that a lot of new traders committed when they opened their shops for the first time. When someone highly talented in a profession opened a shop for the first time, claiming that they could do these incredible things for this cheap, everyone would think that this was a scam. Because of that, no one would visit these shops until the shop owner got one desperate customer, who would then advertise the shop.

Gravis had heard of the stories of some supremely talented forgers who had committed that mistake. For the first days, and maybe even weeks, they wouldn't even get one customer.

And that was where the Certificate of Honesty came into play.

The Certificate of Honesty was a symbol of trust. As long as a shop had this Certificate, a lot more customers would trust the claims. Not getting this Certificate when one was very talented was just plain stupid.

After some seconds, the first customers already appeared. However, most of them just looked around the shop. Gravis had created a ton of weapons, thousands, in fact. He had created these weapons as testing tools for their customers. Everyone had a different Battle-Style, which meant an uncountable number of slight variations of the traditional weapons.

Because of that, Gravis had created a ton of weapons for every major Realm and displayed them. If someone wanted to commission a weapon, they could try out some that the shop already had to make a better decision.

These weapons hung on the walls. In fact, the walls were absolutely packed with these kinds of weapons. Luckily, the ground floor of the Gravitas was equipped with a Formation Array that compressed space. This meant that the ground floor was actually an entire kilometer wide and long.

By now, over twenty customers had already walked around the shop, looking at all the different displays. Yersi remained politely at her table, just waiting for the customers to make their decision.

Suddenly, Yersi got a voice transmission, and she looked at a young, innocent-looking girl. After receiving the voice transmission, Yersi walked over to the young girl, who quickly retreated in fear. She was only a Nascent Nourishing Cultivator.

"Miss," Yersi said with politeness. "Please leave the premises," she said.

The customers saw that, and their eyes widened. The shop just opened, but the shop was already throwing a customer out? On top of that, this was definitely not a troublemaker. This was just an innocent girl!

"E-Excuse me?" the young girl asked with fear. "H-Have I d-done something wrong?"

"No," Yersi said politely, "but we don't serve your kind here."

"M-My kind!?" she asked in shock. "But I have never stolen or done anything wrong! Are you angry just because you are a beast, and I am a human!?" she shouted, her fear seemingly vanishing.

The other customers looked with interest at what was going on. Some of them wanted to help the girl, but they wouldn't get involved, at least not as long as Yersi stayed polite.

"Miss, you are cultivating a Harvest Technique," Yersi said. "This is something that our owner and us employees of the Gravitas don't appreciate. Please leave the premises. We won't serve you."

The customers looked with shock at the young miss. This innocent small girl was cultivating a Harvest Technique!? A lot of the customers shook their heads in disappointment, but they weren't disappointed with the girl. They were disappointed with themselves.

One should remember that every person in this city was a Cultivator who had their fair share of battles. These were not mortals. Because of that, these people were disappointed that they had not been able to notice that this cute, innocent girl was someone that cultivated a Harvest Technique.

After looking at the young girl more closely, some of the customers saw the signs. Slightly redder hands, a nearly unnoticeable absence of compassion in her eyes, and blood-red soles were very clear signs of someone cultivating a Harvest Technique.

What was a Harvest Technique?

A Harvest Technique was a technique that increased one's Realm by reaping weaker lives. Cultivators that cultivated these techniques would never fight anyone on their level and would just remain on their "farm" forever.

Heaven forbade the mindless slaughter of weaker lives, and everyone knew that. Because of that, the Harvest Cultivators needed to create the lives they would harvest on their own. This meant having children, supporting them until they reached a certain power, and then killing and consuming them.

Like this, they would only take the lives that they brought into the world themselves. On top of that, they truly loved their children with all their heart. Because of that, when killing them, their Will-Aura would also become more powerful due to the pain.

This was a workaround to evade Heaven's rules. Heaven wouldn't punish someone if they accidentally killed someone. Heaven only punished beings that consciously decided to kill weaker beings.

Harvest Techniques were not generally liked, but they were also not illegal. After all, a ton of humans couldn't even imagine killing their own children.

This was also why Gravis didn't want to serve these people. He loved his children, and every human that decided to raise their children just to consume them was a monster in his eyes.

The entire atmosphere of the shop changed as the customers' feelings transformed from pity to disdain. No one would help this girl now, even if she were violently torn apart by the frightening Yersi.

The innocent-looking girl looked around in fear, completely forgetting that she had acted very angrily just now. The other customers only snorted and turned away from her. Seeing that her play didn't work, her terrified face transformed into a sneer. "You want me to leave? Make me!"

BANG!

Yersi immediately exploded forward with her entire speed and backhanded the girl. The girl got shot away, directly at the door, which opened on its own. The girl crashed onto the street and tumbled several times until she hit another building.

She spit out some blood, but these injuries were nothing serious for a Nascent Nourishing Realm Cultivator. She only had some broken bones.

"Why didn't you do anything!?" She shouted with absolute rage at her shadow.

"She was too fast," a dark and whispery voice said as her shadow opened its white eyes.

"Too fast!?" the young girl asked with shock. "You are an entire level above her!"

"It was still too fast," the shadow slowly said. "I would advise you to hide your tracks more. You know how other Cultivators perceive us. You can take your revenge later when you are more powerful. For now, you need to lie low."

"Argh!" the young girl said with rage as she stood up with pain. "Sometimes, I regret summoning you."

"And sometimes, I regret being summoned by you," the shadow answered.

With that said, the girl left without making a fuss. This was not the first time she had been treated this way. She was used to being spit on and being sneered at by everyone around her. In her world, she was alone, together with her shadow.

Such a picture would make one feel sympathy for the girl, but as soon as someone remembered that this had been her own decision and that she regularly killed her own children, this sympathy would quickly vanish.

Meanwhile, inside the shop, Yersi cleaned her hands and went back to her counter.

"Good job," Orthar transmitted to her.

"Thanks!" she transmitted back with a smile.

It had been Orthar that had informed Yersi of the customer's status and her Cultivation Technique. Orthar didn't care what someone cultivated, but he knew how Yersi and Gravis felt about the topic of family. Because of that, he had informed them.

Some customers threw a friendly smile at Yersi, who quickly returned it with a slight bow. A lot of customers preferred shops that had some integrity. Cultivators that cultivated Harvest Techniques still had money, which was why a lot of shops still served them. Finding a shop that threw someone like this out felt great to them.

"Hello, I would like to purchase this sword," a customer at the Initial Unity Realm said as he put one of the swords from the walls onto the counter.

"Welcome to the Gravitas," Yersi said with a smile. "Do you wish for this specific sword, or do you want a custom-made sword based on this sword?"

"This one is already perfect. How much for it?" he asked.

"Five Immortal Stones," Yersi said.

Five Immortal Stones could not even be considered as change for Gravis, but it was a ton of money for someone that just reached the Unity Realm. One had to remember that Gravis would have needed to work 50 years as a Research Adept to earn that money, and that job already paid very well.

The customer sighed. This was most of his money. "Can you make it cheaper?" he asked.

"When you become an Early Unity Rank Cultivator, and you need a weapon, you can sell us this one back for 80% of its price," Yersi said.

"80%?" the customer asked in shock as the others listened in too.

"Yes, 80%," Yersi confirmed with a smile. "You can buy this one for five, use it until you advance, sell it for four, buy the next one for ten, sell it for eight, and so on. It's a heavy initial investment, but every subsequent weapon you purchase will become cheaper."

"Sure, I'll take it!" he said with an excited smile as he handed over the money.

This was an ingenious strategy that Orthar came up with, but explaining the full effect of this strategy would take too long and would be boring.

One only had to know that this was very beneficial for the shop and for the customers.