Krunes face was hurting, when he came back he found Yusa consoling Shinja, he couldn't understand, he was sure that he was right this time, he went beside Ao to ask.
"I was sure I wasn't wrong this time, I even researched about that, why did I get beat again?"
Ao could only sigh
"Brother, you must understand that when it is related to women, knowledge is far from enough."
Krune wasn't satisfied this time, he waited until Yusa was back and asked her directly.
"What's wrong with you, I was doing my best there to show that I understand her feelings and you kick me out of nowhere, are we really friends?"
Yusa was even colder.
"Understand your head! You can't even see what you did wrong."
Krune didn't fall back.
"Then tell me! If no one talks, how do you expect me to understand anything?"
"This is not something that women talk about with men, you can forget about it!"
"What? First you say I did wrong, then you say you can't say what's wrong, it doesn't make sense!"
"You are the only thing here that doesn't have sense, shoo, shoo, get away from us."
"What does shoo even mean?"
Ao just pretended that he didn't know those idiots, he had long understood that he shouldn't intervene in the siblings bickering.
On the other hand, Shinja, the ice block, was doing her best to hold back her laugh, but when Krune asked what shoo even means, she lost it, she laughed so hard the she was holding her stomach, she couldn't even remember last time she laughed so much.
Krune looked at that gloomily, in the end, Shinja was even laughing at him and he didn't know why.
'The world is against the wisps, that must be it.'
Yusa`s face got warmer after seeing that though, she thought that she might had had the wrong idea about Shinja.
"Forget about it, just don't talk about a woman's period anymore, look, your barbecue is about to burn."
Krune's attention immediately shifted away, in his eyes, his barbecue is much more important than women issues.
Yusa grabbed Shinja's hand and brought her over to eat some too, she also sent her a Divine Sense message.
"Remember, Krune's EQ is as good as a mule's, if you don't give him a beating, he won't learn. Look, I just said that his barbecue was going to burn and he completely forgot about everything that just happened."
Shinja smiled bitterly, since when did she care about someone's EQ? First of all, what did even happen to her?
Ao also sat back down and started eating again, Krune's EQ might be inexistent, but his culinary skills are the real deal!
Krune is really different, by the time they finished eating, he had already stopped caring anymore about who was right or who was wrong, he was happy as long as his friends were happy, they started to move back into the city to resume their own activities, Ao was going back to the mercenary guild to use their training room, Yusa was going to check the market to buy a few things she needed and Krune had his pills to be concocted at the Alchemist Guild, on their way back they talked about trivial things as they always did after lunch.
Shinja, on the other hand, was feeling a bit out of place, Yusa wasn't letting go of her hand so she was more or less forced to stay with them, sometimes the conversation was directed at her but she couldn't say more than a few simple words, but Krune's group didn't seem to care though, Krune's weirdness had already started to affect Yusa and Ao.
Yusa was the first to part ways with them.
"Shinja, remember, if Krune says something idiot again, just give him a beating, it's that simple."
Krune was taken aback, why give him a beating? He tried to look in Ao's direction looking for a friend's hand, but by the time he turned his head, Ao was nowhere to be seen.
"Traitor!"
---
After that he went back to the Alchemist Guild, he had to make money after all, Shinja stayed quiet all the time, she just looked absent minded while he worked, in fact, her mind was in Chaos, there was shame, sadness, joy, denial, etc.
'What was wrong with me? How could I fall crying just like that? It's all Krune, Yusa and Ao's fault, if not for them, I would not have reached that state, yes, that must be it!'
She then remembered the little time after that.
'But…'
She didn't want it to be over, the feeling of being part of the group without anyone expecting anything from her, the fact that if she said something, the other part would simply answer whatever way they liked, not caring for her status or talents, how long had she dreamed with for such day to come?
In the end it became a battle between her desires and her pride once more, while her internal struggle kept going, Krune had just finished another batch of pills.
"Great! I was able to concoct three healing pills of three stars quality at once, the order only asked for two to be done and any extra would be part of the alchemist's payment."
Krune had been gathering some pills like healing pills, cultivation stabilizing pills or anti poison pills, he wanted to be prepared in case there was a need for them, so he always gave his best during the concoction to create more than the amount ordered by the customers, that way he could take the extra pills for himself without paying a single spirit stone, not to mention that his proficiency in pill concoction got much higher, he is already able to sync more than 30% of the medicinal liquid elements inside the pills.
Because of his high rate of success, he started to receive even more orders, of course, he only accepted the ones that were worth in his opinion, and it was then that he saw an order for a pill that shouldn't be there.
"Appearance changing pill? Isn't this thing a Four Stars Pill? Why would someone send me a Four Stars pill order?"
In fact, as a specially accepted Four Stars Alchemist, Krune could accept Four Stars pill orders too, but he didn't want to catch much attention, so he had never took an order of Four Stars, he thought it wouldn't be too late if he started concocting Four Stars Pills when he got to the late stages of the Foundation Establishment, but since this order appeared in between the Three Stars Orders that usually came for him, his hand got itchy, in the end he decided to try this one, he then received the recipe and the materials.
Although the appearance changing pill isn't that difficult to make, the Star Coral used in the recipe was extremely rare, Krune went back to the check the order and noticed that it had a very high payment, two thousand Rank Three high quality spirit stones!
"Holy sh*t, high quality! I will definitely succeed in this concoction!"
The order specified that he should deliver only a single pill, any extra material or pill that remains can be part of the alchemist's payment. Since that was the case, Krune would definitely give his best.
Krune first practiced the pill concoction mentally, he revised every step, the cauldron temperature, the elements of the elemental herbs, the pill formation, etc.
An hour later, he started to work, every step went as expected, the Star Coral was very good too, no wonder it was considered a high quality material, it was one of the easiest to include in the formula, he had been very cautious, there was only one Star Coral after all, when the time came for him to form the pills, he calculated how many pills could be made with the medicinal liquid inside.
"Three pills, if I'm careful I can make three pills!"
The pill formation, which should be one of the fast parts of the concoction, end up taking him almost an hour to complete, but Krune wasn't dejected, because he had done it! Three appearance changing pills of the Four Stars quality, don't think about lower quality appearance changing pills, any quality bellow four stars would only have a temporary effect, but as long as it reaches four star, it will be permanent!
"I've done it!"
He immediately sent the order back with one of the pills for exchange, and as expected, it only took a few minutes for the person who ordered the pill to receive the product.
"That's to be expected, Star Coral is very valuable, I'm impressed that he even tried to concoct it here, the fact that he stayed inside the guild waiting for an alchemist to accept and finish the order show its value."
Krune took his 2000 Rank Three high quality spirit stone and put it into his ring, as for the mysterious person who ordered the pill, who cares? Krune received the payment, anything else has nothing to do with him.
He then submitted the extra two pills to be sold by the guild, although appearance changing pill is extremely rare due to the Star Coral, the pill itself has no use for him, if it at least changed the hairs colour, then he would have taken one himself, but it only changed the body's appearance, the hair, unfortunately for Krune, would still be the same, so he might as well sell it for spirit stones.
What he didn't expect was to receive a call from supervisor Go Gao straight away after this.
"Are you sure you want to sell the appearance changing pill? It's very hard to find Star Coral after all."
Krune just replied.
"Yes, I have no use for that anyway, just sell both, how much you think it would go for?"
Supervisor Go then said.
"Probably something between three thousand and four thousand Rank Three high quality spirit stones."
Even though Star Coral is very rare, it's only use was basically for appearance changing pill after all, it didn't help with cultivation or combat prowess anyway, it is also useless to hide the identity since cultivators can recognize each other through their auras, it was mostly used to restore scars or changing the face when the people didn't like the one they had, that's all.
"That's great, please go ahead with it."
Later on, some news appeared in Kaley City, Appearance Changing pills were being sold and there were even two of them! Man didn't pay much attention on that, but women went crazy, of course, those who could afford three to four thousand Rank Three high quality spirit stones are very few.
Later on, Krune's group gathered together again, Yusa and Ao could see that Krune was in a very good mood.
"Seems like you did a lot of money today."
Krune nodded quite a few times.
"Yes! There was a customer who ordered for an appearance changing pill to be made, in the end I was able to concoct three of those pill, other than the payment for the for the job, I also got two of the pills, after selling them, I end up with almost ten thousand Rank Three high quality spirit stones!"
He then laughed out loud.
On the other hand, Yusa and even Shinja, who had her mind over the moon the entire day, immediately showed shocked faces! Yusa was the first to talk.
"Those pills from the news earlier were yours? Why didn't you give me one?!"
Even Shinja agreed, she also wanted one, in fact, she had the money to buy one of them, but because her mind had been occupied with the thoughts about Krune's group, she didn't notice it that such rare pills appeared for selling, she was even blaming herself for not noticing Krune making those pills.
There was one thing that Krune didn't know but any woman who cared about their appearance definitely would, the appearance changing pill changes one appearance permanently, but in case you decided to not change your body, the effect of keeping the appearance permanently would still apply, simply put, this pill could be used by women to look young until their deaths.
Krune, of course, paid no attention for this fact, he was trying to understand why both girls would want to change their appearance. But it was then that he remembered that might it be Yusa or Shinja, they seemed to never attract the opposite gender to them, he doesn't remember to have ever seen a man courting any of them.
'I see, so they are considered ugly between the human women, no wonder, no wonder.'
Poor Krune, even gods wouldn't understand how he thought like that.
The reason that Yusa wasn't bothered by men was because she is quite famous, in their few months in Kaley City, everyone came to know that she is very shameless and only loved money, it scared all the men away even though she is a beauty.
As for Shinja, it was quite obvious, she might be a super beauty, but her cold face and the frigid air that surrounded her body made the men around only dare to look from distance, they wouldn't risk offending this ice goddess.
Krune decided to help them understand that learning to love oneself is the first step to happiness!
"Sigh, what are you even thinking? Let me tell you this."
After spending so much time together, Ao Sulian had become more or less capable of detecting when Krune was about to say something 'marvellous', and while no one was paying attention to him, he turned around and disappeared with the wind before Krune continued speaking.
"Doesn't matter how ugly the two of you are, both me and Ao will always be your friends, you have no need to change your appearance, so what if no men prefer beauties? Look at me, I can still show a smile when I'm looking at you, the first step of happiness is to understand how to love oneself."
He then stood up from his chair and said.
"Come on, repeat with me!"
"I might be as ugly as a dragon, but there is definitely people who cares about me!"
This was bound to be a day that Krune would never forget.