Wizard: Starting With Synthesized Gems

Chapter 659: A War of Plunder! The Demon Realm Black Hole! The Demon Realm Storm!

After finishing his call with Witch Scarlett, Locke returned to the Cinder Esoteric Order on Vortex Reef No. 13 in the Jade Splendor Enclave, then got in touch with Wizard Warwick, Wizard McKinley, and Witch Shirley, and together they submitted an article to the Star Domain Sea journal, "First Circle History."The four of them emerged from the White Wizard Association on the main island of the Jade Splendor Enclave and immediately let out a collective sigh. A single submission to the Star Domain Sea had cost them 80,000 magic stones.

Wizard McKinley was furious. His right hand had by now been replaced with an alchemical prosthetic, though it wasn't as though he couldn't grow a new arm. As an archaeology wizard, he certainly had no expertise in life magic himself, but an injury of this degree was something Locke could have helped him regrow in a short time. However, Wizard McKinley seemed to want to try the feel of a magical alloy arm, so he had simply gone ahead and purchased a soul artifact prosthetic limb.

Wizard McKinley said, "The Star Domain Sea has really gone too far. Just one submission, and they charge eighty thousand magic stones. This is nothing short of robbery! We plunder colonial planes, and they plunder us. In the end, all of the Jade Splendor Enclave's wealth flows straight to the Star Domain Sea!"

Witch Shirley couldn't help but fire back. "Most of the magic stones are already flowing toward the Star Domain Sea. They don't need to resort to tricks like this to bleed you dry."

"It's because the Star Domain Sea's magical tide concentration has been rising so steeply lately, making the transmission of matter and information increasingly difficult."

Wizard Warwick said, "That's true. A submission used to cost only thirty thousand magic stones in handling fees, but recently it's jumped to eighty thousand, which is due to a series of abnormal consecutive price increases."

Locke immediately recalled an article he had read in a free general-knowledge journal, explaining that high-magic regions and low-magic regions naturally generate a barrier force between them in order to maintain a stable gradient in magical tide concentration.

A high-magic region would instinctively rise upward, becoming a kind of special zone within a world. This was essentially the same principle behind the floating islands of the Jade Splendor Enclave. The higher the magical tide concentration gradient in a region, the higher it would rise within its world, while regions with lower gradients would sink.

Of course, there were a series of complex conditions involved. But in short, if the Star Domain Sea truly became a high-magic region, it would become increasingly difficult for it to maintain connections with the other fifty-two wizard lands of the eastern quadrant.

Eventually, differences in the flow of time and world laws would likely emerge, because the disparity in magical tide concentration between the Star Domain Sea and the other wizard lands of the eastern quadrant would be so vast that an invisible force of mutual rejection would arise between them.

Witch Shirley said, "So this is the growing pain of reform, I suppose."

"The Star Domain Sea is currently carrying out the Demon Elevation Plan, and many things within the eastern quadrant will change. Some things may even shift from one day to the next."

Locke said, "No wonder the Star Domain Sea wants to elevate all fifty-three wizard lands together. If it didn't, the Star Domain Sea would end up completely isolated."

Wizard McKinley shrugged. "Growing pains are only a matter of perspective for this era as a whole. For individual wizards like us, this isn't a growing pain, it's having flesh cut from our bones. Eighty thousand magic stones split four ways still means twenty thousand each. My salary at the Cinder Esoteric Order is only sixty thousand a month!"

"That's a full third of my monthly pay!"

Wizard Warwick coughed once, reminding him not to reveal too many academy secrets.

Witch Shirley glanced at them and said, "That income is already considered decent by Jade Splendor Enclave standards."

Locke gave a nod of agreement.

In the Cloud Marsh Wetlands, the average monthly income for a First Circle crystallization-stage wizard or potion master was around one hundred thousand. But one had to consider that this was the Jade Splendor Enclave, and that Wizard McKinley was an archaeology wizard.

Although the Cinder Esoteric Order only paid him a monthly salary of sixty thousand, there were other benefits, such as allocated access slots to wizard secret realms, and his involvement in other projects within the academy.

Locke estimated that Wizard McKinley's total monthly income was somewhere around one hundred thousand but if he happened to unearth something particularly valuable during an excavation and sold those findings or the relevant techniques, he could earn considerably more in a short span of time. A First Circle crystallization-stage wizard who had devoted enough time to a single field could still make quite good money.

Warwick and McKinley saw the two of them off to the wizard void ship dock, and Wizard Warwick said to Locke, "Locke, Shirley, we've now organized our archaeological findings and submitted them separately to 'First Circle History' and the Istoria Archaeological Award."

"The return address we listed is the Cinder Esoteric Order, Jade Splendor Enclave, so once we receive a reply, I'll notify you both immediately."

"Thank you both, for exploring that abyssal ruin with me."

"Are you sure you don't want to celebrate a little?" Wizard Warwick said with a note of genuine regret. "I've prepared quite a few fine wizard wines. The strong kind, enough to get all of us properly drunk."

The value of wizard wine lay precisely in its ability to intoxicate a wizard. That function alone was enough motivation for many wizards to pay a premium for it. After all, a wizard rarely had occasions to be mentally unguarded and free to speak carelessly, but with a glass of wizard wine in hand, you had a ready excuse to ramble or say things you wouldn't ordinarily dare to say.

Afterwards, you could simply claim you had been drunk and didn't know what you were saying, whether you truly were drunk or merely feigning it. For that one remarkably practical function alone, the Rain Marsh Swampland, as the primary producer of wizard wine, had built a trillion magic stone market out of it.

That said, Locke had no intention of getting into the wizard wine business. Many breeders did trade in wizard wine and improved varieties of it, and the brewers who produced wizard wine were themselves a variant profession that had branched off from breeding. But the problem, as far as Locke understood it, was that the wizard wine industry was even more cutthroat and rigidly stratified than the wizard shoe industry.

Unless you were a wizard who had graduated from certain specific academies in the Rain Marsh Swampland, you had virtually no chance of making money in it. You could sell on a small scale, but the moment you gained any real reputation, the suppression and sabotage would begin.

The forces behind it were deeply entrenched at the wizard land level, and so Locke had never had any intention of provoking that particular hornet's nest. At least not while he was still in the First and early Second Circle, when his magical level was insufficient.

The waters there ran far deeper and were far more complex than even the wizard shoe market.

Locke said to Warwick, "Mr. Warwick, I appreciate the thought. But Shirley and I are both in a hurry to get back to Golden Crown Mountain in the Cloud Marsh Wetlands to run experiments. And a jar of your wizard wine would very likely leave the two of us dead drunk for seven days."

"So we'll kindly pass."

Wizard Warwick laughed and said, "Fair enough, it really would get in the way of things. In that case, let's say our farewells here. Hopefully we'll have the chance to work together again sometime."

Locke said, "Absolutely. This collaboration has been a genuine pleasure."

After saying goodbye to the two of them, Locke boarded the wizard void ship together with Witch Shirley.

As the enormous, bulky void ship climbed into the air, Locke looked down over the Jade Splendor Enclave and watched the floating islands drawing magical tide from the earth below without pause.

The wizard void ship quickly ascended fifty kilometers, entering the Second Sky, then passed through a network channel into one of the waterways running through the Second Sky. The void ship moved like a vessel sailing along a river.

Witch Shirley settled into a seat in the free reading lounge, opened a magazine, and began leafing through it with no particular purpose.

Locke, equally at loose ends, wandered the same free reading area looking for journals or literature related to ecology.

He sat down in a corner of the library and, gazing out through the time-gold crystal window at the world outside, turned his thoughts inward. "I could give the Sea Gold Sand a Pixiu Angle Spiral as well, to enhance its power."

"And at the same time, whether it's the Tyrant Marking, the Pixiu Angle Fractal Spiral, or even the Abyssal Devourer Body, I could potentially spread all of them using lunar gravity as the medium."

"The Lunar Mirror is already more than sufficient as the essence of my Grand Magic, but I think my moon magic can still be developed into a better ecological cycle, with higher quality and more refined essence."

An idea leapt into Locke's mind. "The Lunar Mirror can reflect my magic, which means most of my spells could be applied to magical plants bathed in moonlight, using lunar gravity as the medium."

"Making good use of this mechanism might allow me to create an even better ecosystem."

"Of course, there are also major risks hidden within this," Locke thought, reading through the ecology materials in his hands while sketching out the concept for his Grand Magic in his mind. "Interfering with a local ecology on such a vast scale could easily trigger large-scale ecological collapse. I should find a plane to conduct the relevant ecological experiments."

"Conveniently, I have a full month on the wizard void ship, which I can use to carefully develop the related Grand Magic concepts."

"And I should also incorporate some energy-locking structures into my Grand Magic." Locke stepped out of the free reading room and made his way back to his cabin aboard the wizard void ship. Both return tickets had been purchased by Wizard Warwick, for himself and Witch Shirley, as thanks for helping him crack open that abyssal ruin.

He returned to his cabin, set up the simple laboratory that had been prepared there, and brought out ten flower pots to begin his air bromeliad experiments.

"One month from now is the submission deadline for wizard shoe designs, so I also need to make the most of my time and produce my fourth wizard shoe design right here on the void ship, to submit for the Golden Crown Mountain Demon Realm War collective procurement. The Big Snow Crown Bromeliad still isn't fully refined, and there are some adjustments I still need to make."

"What I had before was only the first version of the Big Snow Crown Bromeliad. I need to optimize it within that framework." Locke recalled the black wizards from the Twin Demon Realm he had encountered previously. "I'll need to make specialized design modifications suited for the Demon Realm War. It would be convenient if I had some black wizards to run experiments on. It would make things much simpler, and would make it much easier to validate the performance of the wizard shoes."

"Anyway, as long as I have the design drafts and samples ready within a month, all that matters is passing the Golden Crown Mountain wizard shoe collective procurement. After that, I can use Arthas's various production bases in their colonial worlds for mass manufacturing."

As long as he had orders, he had absolutely no need to worry about production capacity. A situation where orders existed and distribution channels were in place but manufacturing was impossible was unlikely to arise, especially in a society as commercially and industrially developed as the Three Marsh Lands.

Locke looked at the Big Black Diamond Swan Bromeliad and Big Snow Crown Bromeliad in front of him, waved his hand, and immediately the historical projections of ancient flowers appeared alongside both bromeliads.

Twenty-eight days later, the sound-transmission arrays throughout the wizard void ship chimed with an announcement. "Respected wizard passengers, greetings."

"Due to the recent rise in magical tide concentration gradients and the continued improvement of waterway networks across the various wizard lands, travel times between destinations have been steadily decreasing. What would originally have required a full month to complete has taken only twenty-eight days, and we are now approaching the Cloud Marsh Wetlands."

"Please prepare accordingly. We expect to arrive at our destination in approximately half a day."

"The Cloud Patrol Vessel Vocational Academy and all staff extend their respects to our wizard passengers."

Locke stood in the simple laboratory in his cabin and was mildly surprised. "Twenty-eight days already?"

"The travel times between wizard lands in the eastern quadrant keep falling. The transit costs, of course, remain considerable."

The Three Marsh Lands, by virtue of their special network channels and the Cloud Lake, required only about a month to travel to and from any wizard land in the eastern quadrant. If one were to forgo those special network channels and travel from one wizard land to the next in sequence, moving from the Jade Splendor Enclave to the Cloud Marsh Wetlands would take at least half a year. A round trip would consume an entire year.

In truth, that time scale was the normal one for traveling between wizard lands. It was precisely for this reason that the Three Marsh Lands had become a logistics and freight hub, and a marketplace for major magical resources.

Locke turned his attention back to the fifty bromeliad plants in front of him.

Over these twenty-eight days, he had continuously applied the finite element cultivation method to cultivate subspecies of the Big Snow Crown Bromeliad, using combinatorial magic to explore and identify superior subspecies capable of mimicking the special spiral angle structure. From this process, he had produced fifty Big Snow Crown Bromeliad subspecies in total.

Now, Locke raised his right hand and, following his design, used his magical force field to precisely extract the plant factors he needed from each of the fifty First Circle air bromeliad subspecies.

He then combined these plant factors into a complete plant essence and injected it into a single Big Snow Crown Bromeliad seed.

The plant then grew under the influence of Locke's last piece of Moss Heartwood and a rapid growth spell model.

The resulting Big Snow Crown Bromeliad had naturally grown into the shape of a wizard shoe, and its leaves showed no outward sign of the spiral angle structure.

Over these twenty-eight days, his primary work had been making functional fine-tunings to the Big Snow Crown Bromeliad to better suit the scale and intensity of the Demon Realm War. He had reviewed the relevant Demon Realm War materials beforehand.

Beyond that, he had added two major new functions to the bromeliad.

The first was anti-theft.

The second was concealment of the Pixiu Spiral Angle pattern, to prevent other wizards from discovering it.

When fighting black wizards from the Twin Demon Realm, the first concern was always having your belongings stolen. Locke had seen various solutions that wizard shoe manufacturers had devised to address this: some wizard shoes would automatically fly back to their owner if stolen, others required binding to a specific magical resonance signature before they could be used, and others used enchantments to increase the difficulty of theft.

The core of Twin Demon Realm theft magic lay in the twin siphon organ, and every black wizard's twin siphon organ had its limits. Much like how a shark's throat is no match for a whale's, many wizard shoes were enchanted to briefly and massively expand their magical pressure coverage area, in order to prevent a black wizard's twin siphon organ from swallowing them and achieving the theft effect.

The twin siphon organ functioned somewhat like a person's throat and tongue.

For this problem, Locke had conceived a better solution. The Pixiu Angle Fractal Spiral Constraint Equation System, as it existed within the Big Snow Crown Air Bromeliad, naturally caused this magical plant to have a mysteriously larger magical pressure coverage area, and thus a higher total magical pressure output, compared to other magical plants operating at the same upper pressure limit. Locke had then, through successive rounds of cultivation aimed at producing subspecies with ever-larger magical pressure coverage areas, progressively raised the total magical pressure output of this air bromeliad.

In this way, as a First Circle magical plant wizard shoe, its total magical pressure output was so far beyond the ordinary that it would be impossible for a First Circle Twin Demon Realm black wizard's twin siphon organ to steal it away. It was rather like a small fish being incapable of swallowing a baseball.

Locke released his magical pressure onto the Big Snow Crown Bromeliad before him, and the magical plant instinctively released its own magical pressure in resistance.

Without needing any instruments, just this simple test, Locke found that the total magical pressure output of this thing was unreasonably high for a First Circle magical plant.

Of course, this also meant the magical tide vortex it generated was correspondingly larger.

"This way, my wizard shoes won't be stolen by wizards from the Twin Demon Realm," Locke thought. "I could always commission an enchanter later to add a function that makes the wizard shoes automatically fly back to their owner. But considering cost control and functional priorities, that feature isn't necessary."

Based on the Demon Realm War materials, the current total magical pressure output of this Big Snow Crown Bromeliad was something no First Circle black wizard could possibly steal. And if a Second Circle black wizard managed to steal it, it wouldn't make any difference whether or not an auto-return enchantment had been applied.

Furthermore, that kind of enchantment was quite expensive. Having a single pair of wizard shoes enchanted this way could easily add a thousand magic stones to the cost. A poor-quality enchantment wouldn't do, it would need to be a good one, and good enchantments remained costly even in mass production.

As Locke read through his reference materials, he gradually came to understand that one of his key responsibilities in designing wizard shoes was controlling production costs. No matter how outstanding the functionality, if costs were too high, the design would never pass. After all, this was First Circle equipment, not gear for high-Circle wizards. There was no need to burn through vast resources in pursuit of peak performance.

The second major function, concealing the spiral angle, was equally necessary. This was to protect the secrecy of his technology.

Locke looked at the Big Snow Crown Bromeliad in front of him. Its exterior now showed no trace of the spiral angle. Three layers of decorative leaves covered the outside, while the bromeliad's true nutrient-absorbing leaves were kept within. The three decorative layers possessed spell-like capabilities akin to those of the Enchantment School, sufficient to serve as camouflage.

Locke had extracted these capabilities from other magical plants and incorporated them into the Big Snow Crown Bromeliad's plant essence through grafting and cultivation.

Some magical plants naturally possessed powerful spell-like Enchantment School abilities that could be used to conceal important designs and functions. As such, the breeding field already had an established set of methods for using those special magical plants to mask critical design elements.

These three layers of concealing decorative leaves could block various forms of magical detection, and were further equipped with a self-destruct mechanism that would trigger if anyone attempted to forcibly probe or dismantle them.

Locke placed the remaining pot of March Orchid into his astral ring. This was something his senior sister, Witch Shirley, had given him, since he had not prepared in advance for this particular type of special magical plant, the kind used specifically with the finite element cultivation method to extract plant essence and provide functional-locking capabilities for other magical plants.

"The March Orchid is the most common, the most effective, and the most expensive type of special confidentiality magical plant. Even wizards who know of its existence generally can't afford to acquire it. It's a special functional magical plant that only breeders in select locations like Golden Crown Mountain are able to obtain," Locke reflected. "The Big Snow Crown Bromeliad, combined with the March Orchid, will face no real risk of having its secrets exposed for quite a long time."

That safe window was approximately ten years.

The triple illusory leaves produced by incorporating the March Orchid's plant essence possessed a comprehensive and powerful multi-layered sealing capability. Breaking through it could only be done through painstaking human effort over an extended period of time.

In general, no one would likely think to look at the leaf-based energy-locking structure as the source of the bromeliad's special properties, rather than at some special plant factor. So as long as the product was further processed with Enchantment School spells in post-production, it should remain free of imitation products for the next fifteen years or so.

Of course, that guarantee would weaken over time. And if a high-Circle wizard specifically targeted it, that too would be a serious headache, likely shortening the time needed to crack it considerably. But even then, doing so would take time, and it would also violate ethical standards and risk drawing scrutiny from the ethics and conduct committee.

Moreover, Locke would eventually write and publish a paper on the Pixiu Angle Fractal Spiral Constraint Equation System anyway, so this brief window of protection was already more than sufficient. It was enough time for him to earn money and continue researching ancient flowers until the work was mature enough to publish.

"Even if I don't publish it myself, there's already a second wizard who knows about this special spiral angle," Locke thought, recalling Witch Yekaterina. "Though my teacher would certainly never go around telling anyone without my consent."

"Once I reach Golden Crown Mountain, I should head straight to Witch Scarlett. It's a good thing we're returning to the Cloud Marsh Wetlands early. Otherwise, I'd genuinely be worried about missing the design submission deadline."

Boom.

The words had barely left his lips when the entire wizard void ship shuddered.

Warning chimes from the sound-transmission arrays rang out throughout the void ship.

At the same moment, through the time-gold crystal window, Locke saw small fang-shaped void aircraft outside, each bearing the markings of the Twin Demon Realm.

Their target was not the void ship he was on, but rather a building belonging to some wizard organization. The building's foundations had cracked and broken apart, as though it had been seized and flung into midair, and was now being set upon by this gang of Twin Demon Realm thieves and brigands.

The Twin Demon Realm's small void aircraft swarmed around the wizard organization's building in a coordinated assault.

At the same time, Locke heard a tremendous grinding sound. He looked up, and saw a black hole opening in the upper reaches of the Second Sky, with countless buildings falling out of it like rain.

The Twin Demon Realm black wizard aircraft, like sharks scenting blood, immediately surged forward in a mass.

The captain's voice rang out through the void ship's announcement system. "Please do not be alarmed. Our void warship is fully equipped with security measures, and those formidable Twin Demon Realm black wizards will not attack us unprovoked!"

"Ladies and gentlemen, the Demon Realm War is about to begin. The world-force of the Twin Demon Realm is continuously invading the Cloud Marsh Wetlands, stirring up Demon Realm storms. Buildings, people, magical tide, and everything connected to them, even certain concepts, that are consumed by the Demon Realm storms will be drawn into the Twin Demon Realm through the Demon Realm black holes."

"Some things that are more difficult to digest, such as wizard academies swallowed by Demon Realm storms and buildings protected by magical barriers, are cast into the Second Sky or the void, where black wizards can attack them, overcome their defenses, and strip them of everything."

"When the Demon Realm War begins, the Twin Demon Realm, which ordinarily engages in only petty theft, transforms into a fearsome raider and launches a full-scale war of plunder against the wizard world. For countless years, the Twin Demon Realm has survived this way, plundering the wizard world, yet for some unknown reason its world scale has never grown significantly and has remained within a certain range."

"Please be assured that the affairs of the Twin Demon Realm have nothing to do with this wizard void ship. There is no need to worry about your safety. Furthermore, the opposing force in this Demon Realm War is the formidable Golden Crown Mountain of the Cloud Marsh Wetlands, so the damage these thieves can cause is limited. Wizard passengers, there is truly nothing to worry about."