Rise of the Darkness Tycoon

Chapter 18- Jewelled Eyes

Calvin ignored the couple and continued toward the exit, where Tom was standing with a frown on his face after watching the exchange between Calvin and the couple.

As he saw Calvin stepping out, he immediately spoke.

"Isn't it funny? You can't afford gold accessories yourself, and yet you're so jealous of those who can."

“If you can afford it, why don’t you buy some for yourself?” Calvin shot back as he walked past him and left the store.

He didn’t even bother looking back at Tom’s humiliated expression to know he’d hit the mark.

‘I’m willing to bet he doesn’t even get that much of an allowance despite acting like some rich kid.’

Shaking his head, Calvin pulled out his phones to check the file transfer progress, and just then he caught sight of Ashley leaving the store she’d entered, a branded bag in her hands.

‘Perfect.’

With that thought, he slipped the old phone back into his pocket and walked up to her.

“Yo. You done?”

“Ah! There you are! Where did you go?”

“Went to look around,” Calvin replied. “Can we go to the salon already?”

Ashley glanced toward the area behind Calvin, as if trying to figure out where he’d been, before she nodded in silence.

Soon after, the two of them headed up to the hair salon on the next floor of the mall, and within minutes the main stylist, one of Ashley’s aunts, had Calvin seated in front of a mirror with a pair of scissors in her hands.

She began trimming his hair, and less than half an hour later, Calvin’s appearance had changed completely.

The unkempt hair and the gloomy impression it gave him were gone, with his bangs almost entirely cut away.

‘It suits me well. She’s good,’ he thought.

He opened his new phone and paid the bill, graciously accepting the discount from Ashley’s referral, and as he looked at himself again in the mirror while the stylist cleaned the loose hair from the apron he was wearing, another thought formed in his mind.

‘My eyes… they’re glossier than they were before.’

That thought lingered as he instinctively moved a hand to his chest, feeling the faint presence of the Elemental King’s Core within him.

‘One particular trait of those who possess Elemental King Cores is their jewelled eyes,’ Calvin thought to himself.

In his past life, he had already reached S-rank before gaining the core, so his eyes had instantly changed, becoming less like irises and more like polished obsidian.

‘This time, I’m still F-rank, so it’s barely visible. But as my strength rises, my eyes will change further.’

His gaze shifted to the glasses placed on the side of the table, and another thought followed. ‘I guess I’ll be using these for a while. Maybe I’ll need contacts too to hide the jewelled eyes when they fully manifest.’

With that in mind, he picked up the glasses, removed the apron completely, and turned toward Ashley.

“Now then, do you happen to have another relative who owns a glasses store?”

Ashley looked up from her phone, raised an eyebrow, and asked, “Really, Calvin?”

Calvin shrugged. “What? I was just guessing.”

Ashley shook her head lightly, then locked her phone screen and stood up, closing the distance to inspect his new look.

“Hmm. Good. That unkempt style of yours was hiding your best features. You look a lot more handsome now.”

“Why, thank you,” Calvin replied, lifting his glasses slightly as he added, “So, about those glasses, know a place?”

Ashley was about to shake her head, but paused, rubbing her chin in thought for a moment before speaking.

“Actually, I think I might know somewhere upstairs. I remember someone bragging about the frames they got there last week.”

“Then lead the way,” Calvin said.

Like so, the two of them went up to the top floor of the mall, where there was a glasses shop that specialised in reinforced steel alloy frames.

They were light yet incredibly durable, almost impossible to break under normal conditions, having been made from steel alloys sourced from beyond the Rifts.

Naturally, as products crafted from Rift materials, they were expensive, and Calvin ended up spending thousands of dollars on a new pair of frames. He paid without hesitation, then had them take apart his old frames and fit the lenses into the new ones.

Afterwards, Calvin left the store, his new haircut and new glasses making him look drastically different from before.

As they descended the escalator, Ashley glanced at him and said, “The only thing left now is your clothes.”

Calvin looked down at his outfit, which showed clear signs of wear and age in several places, then shook his head. “Nah, I’ll save clothes shopping for my mom.”

He wanted to give Martha the joy of going around picking clothes for her son without any limit to her budget.

Ashley shrugged lightly, not pushing the matter further. Then she asked, “Anything else you want to do?”

Calvin shook his head. “No, I’m a bit tired, so I might as well go home. Plus, I want to absorb all the elemental cores I got today.”

At the mention of the elemental cores, Ashley went quiet for a moment before asking, “Are you sure you’re going to be okay? One of those cores is D-rank. The elemental energy inside a D-rank stone isn’t something an F-rank can absorb.”

“I know that. I’m not planning to touch that thing until I reach E-rank. I’ll make do with the F and E-rank core for now. Those should be enough to push me to E-rank, and then I’ll start absorbing the D-rank core.

Bit by bit, I’ll eventually finish all the energy inside it.”

“Okay, just be careful though,” Ashley warned.

Calvin nodded without a word, his thoughts already moving to what he was going to do with the rest of the profits he had made today.

Aside from acquiring the elemental cores that would increase his personal strength, there was also the money he had earned from selling the elemental beast corpses.

After splitting the 8 million they had gotten from selling the beast corpses, Calvin would be left with roughly 3.5 million for himself, and he was already thinking about how to use it.

The 500k he had made earlier would be more than enough to cover living expenses with Martha for the foreseeable future, even if he gave some to Irma as thanks for all her help over the years.

The remaining amount was what he planned to use as capital to start his businesses, the ones that would bring in even more money for him.

‘But starting a business from scratch is easier said than done. Maybe I’ll have to settle for buying already established businesses and simply taking over management.’

Thinking of how much he had now, he began forming a plan.

‘Maybe I can use elemental core gambling to get extra funds and also find a rift where I can hunt elemental beasts and gather more corpses to sell. Then, I’d use that to either invest in the stock exchange or buy out a small company.

I just can’t buy out any company, though. I have to pick ones I understand how to manage and grow. That limits the types of businesses I can take over to just a few.’