1104: Tricked

Tricked

Date- 4 April 23211

Time- 18:31

Location- Southern Region, Blossom District, Unknown Location

"This is not what I had in mind when I agreed to give you 5% of my cut of the phantom sword wood," I complained to Jill as I looked at the golems pumping in logs of phantom sword wood into a big array formation and the big array formation pump out stacks of phantom sword wood ingredient cards.

"Would it help if I told you that the operation of this array formation consumes a lot of energy," Jill spoke with a guilty smile even though she did not feel even a shred of guilt for tricking the boy. 

"No, it does not. The artificial soul energy vein is powering this array formation. You speak as if you are making a loss," I honestly did not know that array formation could be used to mass produce cards of a kind, especially an ingredient card. If I had known when Jill offered to convert my share of the phantom sword wood into card ingredients for a 5% of my shares in the phantom sword wood plantation I would have rejected her without giving it a second thought.

"Well too bad you can't go back on your word now," Jill clearly was enjoying her victory but was holding back her smile in order not to rub salt in the boy's wound. 

"Bask in your victory as much as you can because soon I will get you for this," Was I being petty? Yes, and I felt that Jill appreciated this petty part of me. 

"Haha, bring it," Jill no longer suppressed her laughter and began to laugh without restraint. Jill was a sore winner and a firm believer that rubbing their victory on the face of the loser was the right of the winner. As a result, she had very few friends. 

She restrained herself to not hurt the feelings of the boy as she really liked him. But now knowing that she could be herself around him she started to like him even more. And the fact that the boy dared to challenge her was an added bonus. Only time could tell if he could keep up with her.

"..." I was left without words witnessing Jill laugh without restraint, was it me or she looked alluring than usual. 

"I was waiting for you to negotiate but you astonished me by agreeing to my proposal. I even felt a little regret for not asking for more than 5%. How can you not know that array formation can be used to mass-produce ingredient cards and other simple cards? And you want me to believe that master Lorenzo was the one who taught you array mastery," Jill was not done with just laughing at me but she also had to call me on it. 

"First, I was not taught array mastery by anybody I was self-taught. 

Second, Lorenzo only lent me some of his study material, he wishes he was my array mastery teacher. Get your facts straight, women," being mocked by Jill I had to make some things clear before misunderstanding becomes the fact. 

"Now you confess," I did not know if Jill was saying this intentionally but I clearly remember telling her otherwise this morning. 

"Whatever, are you done?" The more I refuted Jill the more she will use this to poke fun at me. So I decided to act aloof. 

"Not, yet but what is it?" Jill was far from done making fun of me but feeling that I needed her assistance she paused her victory lap. 

"I need these ingredients, do you have them or should we get them from the city," I said, sharing the ingredient list with Jill's grimoire.

 Jill summoned her grimoire and went through the ingredient list forward by the boy. Then before giving the boy an answer she asked, "Most of these are the ingredients to create an A-rank dungeon prevention array formation, are you planning to use these ingredients to create an array that can detect the formation of soul energy vein?" Having spent decades trying to reverse engineer the dungeon formation array to create an array to detect the formation of the soul energy vein, Jill immediately noticed what the ingredient list shared by the boy was for. 

"Yes, yes I am," I answered Jill casually.

"Well then let me save some time for you, I have tried the same numerous times with different sets of ingredients each time but the results were always disappointing. The dungeon prevention array is very stable but even a slight change to it will cause the array formation to collapse. I have tried to figure out the root cause of this and you know what I found?-" 

"You found that the dungeon prevention array formation gets unstable with a slight change because the predecessor who created it wanted it to be so," I interrupted Jill and spoke the words in her mind. 

"Y-you, how did you figure that out in such little time? It took me years to come to that conclusion," Hearing the boy reach the conclusion that to her years to reach within less than half a day she was astonished.

"Don't beat yourself over this, if not for the idea behind your device, It would have taken me longer to reach this conclusion," I was not lying when I said this but I left out a fact that even if it would have taken me a lot more time to reach this conclusion, it would not have taken me years. 

I had three slave consciousnesses to share my workload, Soul pupils to help me explore the mysteries of soul pathways involved, and the Hive Al to run simulations on the theories I came up with. With such efficient tools at my disposal, it would be embarrassing if it took me longer to reach this conclusion.

"No, even with my device and the research behind it, it is impossible to reach this conclusion in such a short period," Jill did not take the easy explanation I gave to her. 

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