Lightning Is the Only Way

The Black Demon remained silent for a couple of seconds.

"How much!?" he shouted in outrage.

"You heard me correctly," Gravis answered. 

"That's ridiculous!" the Black Demon shouted.

"As I've said, this is not something that you can pay with just your personal wealth," Gravis explained. 

"That's still too much!" the Black Demon shouted. "I have no issues with the Law Comprehension Areas, and I could also accept 50 Law Comprehension Fruits, but 50 Law Comprehension LIFE Fruits? We need to essentially sacrifice 50 Major Circulation Immortal Kings for those!"

"So?" Gravis asked. "You are pretty high in the hierarchy amongst beasts, and as soon as I give you my technique, the entirety of the beast territory will know it in no time. You are essentially just sacrificing a level of 50 Major Circulation Immortal Kings for something that can increase the Battle Strength of every beast in existence.. You are sacrificing a little short-term gain for an immense long-term gain."

"I can't accept that!" the Black Demon said. However, he didn't appear as angry as before.

"Then leave," Gravis said.

The Black Demon glared at Gravis, and his inherent pressure leaked out.

The cave began shaking, but Gravis only looked at the beast without amusement. 

"25," the Black Demon said.

"50," Gravis answered.

"35. We are taking a huge risk. You said yourself that your technique is hard to master," the Black Demon said.

Gravis remained silent for a bit.

"Alright, 40," Gravis said.

Some more seconds of silence.

"Fine!" the Black Demon shouted angrily.

Gravis nodded and grinned behind his helmet. "Deal. I want four Law Comprehension Life Fruits per level five Law. You can choose whichever level five Laws you want."

The Black Demon was not happy at all, and he seethed with anger. If Narcissus hadn't warned him, he would have already killed Gravis.

"I will return in a week," the Black Demon said. 

"Alright," Gravis said. "I will also purchase more Forging techniques in the meantime. However, I can't guarantee how good they are since I haven't used them before, but at least I can guarantee that everything on them will be honest."

The Black Demon huffed and left quickly. He didn't want to continue talking to Gravis.

"That was such a big trade!" Stella shouted with excitement as she hugged Gravis. 

Gravis laughed loudly. "Great, isn't it?" he asked. "You four haven't eaten any Law Comprehension Life Fruits yet, so I will give each of you four. You should be able to comprehend another level five Law with them."

"Really? You would do that?" Stella asked. "But those are basically portable level five Laws!"

"So?" Gravis said nonchalantly. "I've told you that you can't eat too many Life Fruits anyway. I'll only lose twelve and will still have 28 to sell. Underworld will be very interested in those."

"What do you plan to exchange for these Life Fruits?" Stella asked as she looked at Gravis with awe and wonder.

Usually, Stella wasn't easy to impress, but as soon as she and Gravis had become a pair, it was like Stella had become a young girl again, filled with excitement.

A lot of pressure had disappeared from Stella's shoulders, and she finally felt like she had someone that she could truly rely upon. Because of that, her mindset had relaxed.

"I will exchange them for access to level five Law Comprehension Areas," Gravis said. "After all, you guys can't go into the beast territories. The access to the level five Law Comprehension Areas in the beast territory is for Mortis and me, while you guys can go to the human territories."

"Right!" Stella shouted as she finally understood. "I was wondering about that."

But then, Stella remembered something. "But what about the Gravitas? If you give the beasts your own Forging technique, we will run out of business."

Gravis had to laugh at that. "Do you think creating powerful equipment with lightning is easy? You should know something about forging. Tell me, can you forge with lightning?" Gravis asked.

Stella quickly shook her head a couple of times. "No way!" she shouted. "Lightning is so volatile. If I use too little, nothing happens. If I use too much, the metal turns to ash. I would need to hit everything perfectly!"

"Exactly," Gravis said with a smirk.

"What do you mean with exactly? Don't you have a Forging technique that makes this easier?" Stella asked.

"That is my Forging technique," Gravis said.

"What do you mean?" Stella asked.

"That's it. You just have to know how to create something you want and then hit it perfectly with lightning. That's it. That's the entire technique. The beasts don't know the basics about forging, which is why they need a technique. However, we humans all at least know something about Forging. To us, this technique isn't really a technique."

"The only requirements are the fitting Laws and an excellent control over lightning," Gravis explained. "I guess the control over your lightning has to be about as good as the control over Energy when you create a good Space Ring."

Stella's eyes widened. 

She had heard from Gravis how the highest world had Space Rings. Theoretically, a Space Ring could be created by using the level six Law of Space and by manipulating Energy to the finest degree. Normal Space Rings didn't exist in the higher world. There were people that knew the level six Law of Space, but no one could control their Energy this finely. After all, why would they? It took far too much practice, and being able to control one's Energy better didn't really increase one's power by much.

It wasn't worth the effort, and powerful Immortal Emperors had better things to do.

Creating a Life Ring was even more difficult. One needed to basically create a Space Ring and then infuse it with the Law of the Dead World.

Wait, but the thing is called a Life Ring. Why did it suddenly need the Law of the Dead World?

Ironically, a Life Ring didn't need the Laws of Life. It only needed to create an environment that allowed Life to flourish. 

But wait, if the higher world didn't even have Space Rings, how could it have Slave Rings, which were basically Life Rings?

Simple.

Previous Researchers from the highest world.

There was an uncountable number of lower worlds and a ridiculous number of middle worlds.

However, the higher worlds were basically all cataloged. Because of that, there had been a couple of Researchers per higher world.

They were the ones that brought the Life Rings to this world.

Stella had heard all these things from Gravis, and because of that, she knew how difficult it was to make Life Rings and Space Rings.

Yet, Gravis had said that one needed as much control over lightning to use Gravis' technique as it needed to create a Space Ring.

That requirement was basically impossible to achieve without tens of thousands of years of practice.

The beasts would need to dedicate many Immortal Kings to only Forging to make any headway with this technique. These Immortal Kings would waste so much time practicing that becoming an Immortal Emperor was basically already impossible due to time constraints.

Stella felt bad for the beasts. To her, it felt like Gravis had scammed them. However, Gravis had said nothing but the truth. He had said that it could be the hardest technique to master out of all of them. He had clearly laid out how hard it was to master. 

The Black Demon could simply have said that it was too hard to learn and that he would return when Gravis purchased a more fitting Forging technique.

However, the Black Demon readily accepted. 

The Black Demon probably thought that Gravis was underestimating the beasts.

After all, how hard could forging be? Gravis didn't even lift his fingers and only shot a couple of lightning bolts at the ore. It seemed easy enough.

By now, the Gravitas had gotten a different token from Underworld. After all, contacting the Keeper of Underworld just to facilitate some trades seemed like a bit of a waste of time. 

Liam kept the token of the silver-haired girl from Underworld, and Gravis told him to contact her about Forging Techniques.

The girl quickly informed herself about Forging Techniques and told Liam about the details of the techniques.

Gravis very quickly shut her down. 

He wasn't interested in this trash.

The beasts were paying good money for these techniques, and Gravis wouldn't scam them with a useless one. 

Only the best techniques would suffice.

They had to be outstanding in at least one of the following departments and at least average in the remaining departments.

Complexity, Quality, Speed, Requirement.

Complexity described how hard the technique was to learn and master. Quality and Speed were self-explanatory. Requirement described what Laws one needed to know to use the technique in the first place.

Gravis' Forging technique, for example, had a poor Complexity. After all, basically no one could really use it. However, Quality and Speed were absolutely outstanding. Requirement was good. One still needed to know a fitting Lightning Law.

Gravis wanted several techniques with different rankings amongst the criteria. After all, he wanted to give the Black Demon a lot of stuff to choose from when he inevitably returned in a couple of years.

There was no way that the Black Demon wouldn't return. After all, this technique was essentially useless as long as they didn't have a beast with ridiculous control over lightning or as long as they didn't spend 100,000 years raising dedicated Forgers.

And like that, Gravis had spent a couple billion Immortal Stones again.

If one wanted to earn big, one needed to invest big.