Rise Of The Infinite Sovereign-Chapter 378: I’ve Been Duped! ...Actually, I’ve not been duped!

"Mr. Sidal, transfer forty million to Mr. Lordim"

Sidal sent forty million, Ezra sent ten million from his side, making fifty million.

It was an astronomical amount that more than doubled the estimated budget.

Despite this, Lordim was confused.

"The ingredients alone cost forty-five million, yet you sent fifty million? What about the remainder of my commission? Or do you not intend to have me work for free?"

Ezra clapped. "Exactly"

Lordim gave him a strange look before his face morphed into realization.

"This job is going to be counted as the first of the twenty-five free orders we agreed upon" Ezra clarified.

"The fifty million is for the ingredients alone, I’ve added the extra five million for comfort. Surely, with this much, I can assume that at least sixty elixirs are guaranteed?"

Taking a deep breath, Lordim nodded.

He now realized that he had been duped!

When imagining taking twenty-five orders for free, he’d subconsciously lowered expectations for the orders he would receive.

In his mind, for each service, the commission would be less than ten million.

But the commission he was supposed to receive for this first order alone was twenty-five million! That was no way a small amount even for him!

Worse, in his desperation for the astral beast’s heart, he’d failed to make adjustments and thoroughly negotiate a better contract.

But befitting his title as a master craftsman, Lordim quickly threw away such thoughts.

The loss of twenty-five million had hit him harder than expected, causing him to lose his senses for a bit, but now his turbulent emotions had settled.

’Not only twenty, or even fifty million, I was ready to use a third of my wealth to secure the astral beast heart but there were no avenues to even procure one, Yet now I got it so easily...but I’m complaining?’

Lordim quickly adjusted up his thoughts, what he lost was nothing in comparison to the possibilities ahead.

Lordim considered himself to be considerably talented, but after becoming a master artisan, his growth was forced to a halt or as many would term it, he hit a wall.

For artisans, walls were an inevitable occurrence that plagued their journey to higher levels, only those who could scale beyond it could hope to advance.

As such, it was nothing new to Lordim, but as he soon finds out, this wall would be his toughest yet.

For years, he struggled. Unwilling to give up trying, he became more active in accepting tasks, using experience from these hires as his inspiration, Lordim came up with all sorts of ideas for new elixirs and potions.

Few succeeded, most failed.

Every time there was a success, he felt the wall blocking his advancement grow thinner, if only a little.

There was now hope. A small ray of light now shone through the seemingly impervious wall!

Hope rekindled the embers of his passion and he got working on creating a new potion, one that would surely push his abilities to the limit.

It only made sense. To break beyond that impervious wall, he had to achieve something almost unachievable.

Only then would it be worth the effort.

So, he begins his quest to create a potion able to grant the drinker regenerative powers or strengthen the ones already there.

After years of continuous failure, Lordim eliminated all the unneeded components, soon afterwards, the potion recipe was complete and all that remained was to create the potion itself.

As a result, just the research caused the wall to thin even more, revealing a large ray of light.

A barrage of failures later, the potion was finally completed. But even before testing the effects he knew something was wrong.

The wall, which he felt should’ve shattered, or at least softened to feel like jelly. But no, the wall was still hardened.

Eventually Lordim carefully experimented and found a problem with some of the core ingredients.

Taking his time, he refines the formula and remakes the recipe...only to have it fail again.

After thirty tries, Lordim is convinced that the potion components are without fault, but only manages to obtain partial success.

This one made healing rates explosively increase within a set time.

In other words, the effect was temporary.

Still, the wall blocking his advancement had greatly weakened, showing that he was indeed following a correct path.

As such, the only problem was that one of the core components needs a substitute as it cannot carry out the final process of imprinting the effect permanently.

Not too long later, he discovered the things he needed to complete the formula.

The heart of an astral beast.

This made things very difficult as astral beast parts were already very rare to see on the market because of how quickly they sold out and that was even if there happened to be someone dumb enough to sell an astral beast’s heart.

So, he tried all sorts of other means, but he quickly understood that things with astral property were far more expensive than others, and that his level of wealth which he was so proud of was nothing in front of the true giants.

With no hope of obtaining the astral beast heart, Lordim sort other ways to permanently ingrain the ability, but was unsuccessful.

Success was so close yet so far, Lordim was stuck in this paradoxical situation.

In this manner the reason behind his desperation up to this point was made clear.

But out of the blue, Sidal informs him of an order to refine astral elixir, and though he hadn’t exactly trusted such information, he still made the effort to confirm.

But what would you know, it was actually true!

Additionally, along the line, Lordim obtained the astral beast heart he’d been coveting for so many years and very easily too.

As such, carefully pacing his thoughts, Lordim removed the notion of being duped and instead felt gratitude to have acquired such an opportunity.

So, after half a minute in contemplation, Lordim replied with a firm gaze. "Yes. I can guarantee at least sixty elixirs with this much"

"That’s delightful to hear. Then is the deal regarding the astral beast heart all that remains?"

"Yes" Lordim replied.

"Mr. Sidal, please empty out the base for use"

"It’s empty" Sidal replied blandly.

"Better. Mr. Lordim, please follow me"

Arriving at the base, Ezra used to bring out the corpse and subsequently had the machine appendages hold it up.

Ezra then gives the responsibility of cutting cut out the heart to Lordim with the excuse of not being a good cutter, which could therefore damage the heart.

He was, but who knew what could happen? There was no need to take such an unnecessary risk.

But Lordim had no confidence in his cutting skills as well, but neither of the two men wanted to do it.

Here, Sidal intervenes, and makes the machine appendages do it, having the body turned over before four appendages shoot out lasers to slowly cut through the skin as though it was a plate of iron.

After ten minutes, the skin was pulled off, leaving a square that peered directly above the beast’s large heart.

With lasers, the veins connected to the heart were soon cut and a grappling machine appendage pulled it out, making sure to only use minimum strength to avoid complications, before wrapping in a transparent case and then dropping it into Lordims hands.

Looking at the huge heart, Lordim was beyond ecstatic, so much so that he didn’t even know how to react.

He couldn’t be bothered with anything in the world at this moment in time, the satisfaction of successfully acquiring the astral beast heart filled him.

If he went to sleep right now, Lordim felt that it would be heavenly, but he wasn’t going to do that.

The restless energy within him would not allow anything else but alchemy at this time.

Lordim’s turns to Ezra. "Thank you"

"You’re welcome" Ezra replied.

"Since the transactions are done. I will be returning now" he announced. "Silver Star, do you mind giving me your number?"

"Not at all"

The two exchanges number in seconds before Lordim then turned to Sidal.

"Mr. Sidal, it was because of you that I was able to come here today. don’t hesitate to ring me up if you ever need something"

"Certainly" Sidal replied, suppressing a smile.

Like this, he too had made an invaluable connection with a master alchemist. Sidal couldn’t wait to see what kind of benefits it would bring in the future.

Jittery in excitement, Lordim would stay no longer and hastily placed the container into a space storage of his own before redoing his disguise with what was apparently called a disguise ring.

As of now, his apprentice-Virden-had mostly recovered from the earlier injuries and so, the duo quickly leaves, heading back to the master alchemist’s main lab to begin brewing his new potion and mass creating astral elixirs.

As they got on a transport spaceship, Lordim foresaw that it was going to be a busy year, and his smile widened.

’A busy and blissful year’ he thought.

With that done, Ezra finalizes things with Sidal, placing the astral beast in the workshop subspace-which he found out to be a detached small space expansive enough to hold a working space of the blacksmith whose entrance could be hidden from sight.

As such, Ezra was soon done with the final arrangements and could now head back to Orion without worries.

His long awaited trip to the Ocean was finally here.

Wasting no time, Ezra said his goodbyes and used on himself to appear in his universe.

A glance upon his wrist confirmed it once again, the communicator was disabled.

Even the quantum network did not allow communication across universes, and thinking about it, this also meant some of the items he bought from the mall might not function.

In hindsight, the authority of the universal civilization did spread to here as well-meaning contract restrictions were meaningless in this universe!

That gave Ezra a lot of ideas, but they would be implemented at a later date.

Looking at the formation of solar systems and rows of planets, Ezra took note of the core’s hard work.

’Hmm, I can’t just keep calling him core’

On that note, he summons the core.

the core’s voice resounded.

"It seems you’ve been having fun arranging planets all this while, haven’t you?"

"I see. Now, what do you think about a name?"

"Yes" Ezra nodded. "I can’t just keep calling you core now can I?"

"So, what kind of name would you like?"

"Are you male or female?"

"Hmm, then what Viprus?"

Ezra shrugged, "I have no idea"

"Are you done arranging the planets?"

"That’s good. Why don’t you accompany me then?"

"I’m heading beneath the ocean, you could follow since you’re almost done here and maybe learn some things"

Activating , Ezra teleported instantly, arriving above Orion’s ocean the next instance.

’I wonder when I’ll be able to teleport this fast in the outside universe’ Ezra pondered when a voice rang out.

"Alright then, let’s take a-oh wait"

Ezra abruptly paused, taking off his shirt and placing it in his space ring, along with his shoes and the communicator on his wrist.

"Now this is much better"

Shirtless with his hair flailing, Ezra calmed his beating heart and dived, or in a better sense, he burrowed into the ocean at top speed, unceasing in his plunge until he reached a depth where not even the top of the ocean could be seen, plunged in utter darkness.

This would be suicidal for a grandmaster, and a Mythic rank would likely struggle, but he was fine.

Still, Ezra kept swimming unbothered, he’d only slowed down his descent to take a better look at the scenery so as not to miss any creatures.

Having both ice and darkness affinity made it so he could see in the dark just fine.

Not to mention his enhanced lung capacity and bodily functions. He could now inhale other elements apart from oxygen.

Like so, he began his search for the creatures from the myths every Orion had heard at least once while growing up.

His first encounter would be a large weird looking shark that had a head shaped like a drawing board cut in half or an overstretched hammer head with four small eyes at each end.

The shark rushed towards him on sight, coming at him like an arrow before revealing rows of very sharp teeth from what was originally just a blank head.

Ezra had to hand it to him, those teeth were really well concealed.

But that was it.

Ezra caught the shark by the mouth, killing its momentum.

Shocked by the never before seen situation, the shark tried to bite off Ezra’s hand.

Alas, its teeth could only rub against Ezra’s skin like stone against diamond, chipped away at every hit.

Wondering what to do with it, Ezra decided to send it to Quartez with before resuming his adventure.