Lightning Is the Only Way

After another five years, something happened.

A new customer arrived, but this customer was different from all the previous ones.

It was a Black Demon with a snake head and four arms. 

As soon as he arrived at the Gravitas, Gravis looked over and stopped what he was doing.

"What's wrong? Why did you stop?" Stella asked, out of breath.

"It's time," Gravis said with a smirk. 

"Phase three of my plan begins!"

Stella looked with surprise at Gravis. Gravis didn't fully explain the phases of his plan to her since he wanted to surprise her. 

Gravis quickly transformed into his beast form and put on his armor to keep his Cultivation a secret.

Then, he used his Law of Perceived Reality to keep his identity as secret as possible.

He had to be incredibly careful right now.

Why?

Because Gravis couldn't feel the Cultivation of this Black Demon.

This meant that this beast was, at least, a Mid Major Circulation Immortal Emperor.

The Black Demon had to have heard that the Gravitas couldn't serve Immortal Emperors, but he had arrived anyway.

This could only mean that he was here for something that wasn't equipment.

Phase three was about to begin!

Siral felt nervous when he noticed the impossibly powerful pressure the Black Demon in front of him radiated.

SHING!

However, when Gravis arrived in front of him, his nervousness vanished, and he bowed to Gravis. "Master," he said respectfully.

"I'll personally take this customer," Gravis said with a calm voice.

Siral stepped back until he was in the background.

The Black Demon slowly walked into the Gravitas and looked at the armored Gravis in front of him.

He immediately noticed the shape of Gravis' body and realized that Gravis was also a Black Demon. 

This immediately changed the disposition that the Black Demon had towards Gravis.

What did the disposition change into?

Well, the Black Demon saw someone of his own race in front of him. 

What would a Black Demon feel towards their own race?

Rivalry, competition, battle, dominance!

Only other Black Demons could be on the levels of Black Demons, which created an intense feeling of rivalry in them.

The eyes of the Black Demon became filled with battle-lust, but suddenly, the battle-lust vanished.

Instead, his eyes showed a bit of reverence and fear.

Gravis had seen this change, and he knew what this meant.

Narcissus had just warned the Black Demon.

After all, Narcissus didn't want to kill one of his own beasts.

"What do you want?" Gravis asked evenly.

The Black Demon looked into Gravis' eyes, but he didn't dare to harbor any malicious intentions anymore.

Narcissus was here, and Narcissus was the most powerful being amongst all the beasts.

If the Black Demon offended Narcissus, he wouldn't even know how he had died.

"Forging techniques," the Black Demon said directly with a deep voice.

Behind his helmet, Gravis' smirk widened.

'It's indeed the start of phase three,' Gravis thought with excitement.

It was only logical that the beasts would want to learn how to forge this powerful equipment for themselves at some point. 

After all, getting a product and getting a method to create a product were completely different things.

The Black Demons often created their own weapons, but their culture and experience in forging were vastly inferior to humans.

One had to remember that there was a gigantic difference between how humans spread knowledge and how beasts spread knowledge.

Beasts often didn't spread knowledge since there was nothing to be gained, and even if they did, they simply told it to other beasts.

However, how did knowledge spread among humans?

Writing!

The wisdom, experiences, teachings, and techniques from Ancestors that had died millions of years ago could be preserved, spread, and built upon, unchanged and unaltered.

Something like the Weapon Technique of the Nine Elements Sect also took millions of years to form. This wasn't something that a single Cultivator could achieve in their lifetime without becoming a Star God.

Because of that, these self-learned Forging techniques that the Black Demons created could never create equipment on the same level of quality as humans. 

All of these Forging techniques were simply primitive, with a lot of things that weren't considered.

A technique might start out bad, but when someone else cultivated this technique and achieved greater success than the creator of the technique, they could expand and refine the technique more. At that point, the technique might even become average.

The same thing would repeat time and time again. Sometimes, a Cultivator would gain a sudden insight or crazy idea. Then, they would experiment on the technique, and some of these experiments would elevate the technique to even greater heights.

So, as long as one being didn't become ridiculously powerful, one couldn't create something better than a technique that had been refined over and over again by people with different insights and ideas.

That was why the beasts needed Gravis' Forging techniques.

"Currently, I only know a single Forging technique, and that is the one I use personally," Gravis said. "Getting good Forging techniques takes a ridiculous amount of wealth to purchase."

"There are more than one?" the Black Demon asked with narrowed eyes.

Gravis nodded. "Thousands and maybe even millions," Gravis said. "All of them have different requirements for materials, quality, methods, power, Elements, and Laws. You can forge with basically any Element, but you need the correct technique first."

"I only need one of them, and yours should suffice," the Black Demon said.

"I can give you mine, but I have to warn you. My technique is probably one of the simplest techniques in existence but also one of the hardest to master. Depending on whom you give it to, they might either master it quickly or never master it at all."

"What does your technique require?" the Black Demon asked.

"Only two things," Gravis said. "The fitting Matter Laws and a very good control over the lightning."

The Black Demon thought that this sounded rather simple.

"Show me," he ordered.

"You brought some ore?" Gravis asked.

The Black Demon opened his mouth, and a big stone of ore came out. The stone looked far too big for the Black Demon's small body.

However, Gravis didn't think that this was anything strange. 

BZZZ!

Gravis used some Punishment Lightning to create a fitting weapon for the Black Demon. This ore was only on the level of a Mid Major Circulation Immortal King. Forging something like this was easy. Gravis also only used Punishment Lightning since he wanted to show that one didn't need Divine Lighting to forge equipment.

"Try it," Gravis said.

Obviously, this weapon was useless to the Black Demon. After all, the Black Demon was a mighty Immortal Emperor.

However, he still tested the different aspects of the weapon and compared it to the raw ore. He even forged another weapon for himself and banged the two weapons against each other.

His own weapon shattered while Gravis' weapon didn't even get a single scratch.

The Black Demon had also looked at Gravis while he forged, and sure enough, Gravis had only used the Law of Punishment Lightning and the Hard Pure Law.

"I will purchase your technique," the Black Demon said. "What do you want?"

"Obviously, the prices between individual equipment sets and a technique to create these equipment sets are worlds apart. This trade will be far more costly. However, you probably have a very high status amongst the beasts, so you should have the necessary authority to procure the payment."

"However, I can assure you right now that your personal belongings won't nearly be enough."

"So, see this trade not as a trade between you and me, but as a trade between the entire beast camp and me," Gravis said.

This was phase three of Gravis' plan, and this was when the true treasures would appear.

There were things that beasts had that they wouldn't exchange only for equipment.

However, there were also things that humans had that they wouldn't exchange for Immortal Stones.

This was where the true meat of Cultivation was at!

The Black Demon narrowed his eyes. "I thought as much. State your price!"

Gravis smirked behind his helmet.

What were all these previous trades?

They were nothing!

In front of this trade, all the previous exchanges were worthless.

This single trade would be more useful to Gravis and his close ones than all the other trades combined.

"50 level five Law Life Fruits and 10,000 years in ten different level five Law Comprehension Areas each."