Age of Adepts

Crimson Wings, a newly-emerged mega-city, had a terrifying population of up to two million.

In the wizarding world where transportation and resources were not so abundant, this was already rare and precious.

You know, the definition of a city in the wizarding world is: a small city with a population of 10-20,000, a medium-sized city with 20-50,000, a large city with 50-90,000, and a giant city with more than 90,000....

Naturally there is a deeper reason for such a defining criterion - transportation, food and water constraints!

In a higher plane like the Sorcerer's World, the Sorcerers have already been able to fly and escape from the earth, and can move mountains and seas with their bare hands. But in the lower strata of society, in the mortal world, they still follow a primitive way of life such as farming, fishing, hunting and animal husbandry.

The difference between the life of the shamans and the mortals is unimaginable. They would rather spend huge amounts of resources to breed sweet fruits and vegetables than to improve the yield of rice and grain for mortals.

This also means that the vast amount of farmland and arable land does not yield enough grain to feed too many people. The average farmer would have to work for a whole year just to get enough food to eat. If they wanted to eat meat and make sacrifices, they had to raise their own livestock or venture into the forest to hunt.

As a result, the lack of grain production makes it impossible to have a dense population within the region, otherwise the ruler would have a headache from the food problem alone.

There is not enough local food, so can it be imported from outside?

This brings me to the Wizarding World's abysmal roads and transportation.

Most of the roads in the Wizarding World were crude and rough, just plain dirt routes, simple roads that were crushed and trampled by the many travelers and caravans that walked them. Such roads were simply impassable in rainy days, and even if the weather was fine, the potholes and rocks everywhere could turn a trip into a disaster.

Most of the cargo transfer here is done by a heavy wagon, a wooden wagon pulled by a special horned horse. It is characterized by a low cargo load, fragile and slow....

With this kind of road and this kind of transportation, it is possible to transfer some things for a short distance. To import food, water, firewood and other basic necessities from hundreds of miles away on a daily and continuous basis, this was simply a joke.

It was this series of backwardness and primitiveness that limited the emergence of giant cities!

Even the few famous 4th rank power main cities in the middle of the continent had a permanent population of only 110,000 to 120,000. It wasn't that they couldn't gather a larger population, but they just couldn't afford the resource disaster caused by their huge population.

In contrast, the Crimson Wings, a giant city with a population of around two million, had a profound meaning that made many top-level sorcerers from afar secretly puzzled.

Had the Crimson Family's resources grown to such an extent that it could benefit ordinary citizens? But isn't it a huge waste of resources to expend on these lowly and despicable mortals?

You know, these mortals don't have the slightest talent for sorcery, their only value is probably to enrich their territory, and the other thing is to desperately give birth and use the overall huge number to pile up a certain percentage of sorcerer apprentices.

Only those sorcerer apprentices were of cultivation value, worthy of the resources that the sorcerer families poured into them. Whereas a mortal without any talent, in the eyes of many shamans, is just like mules and horses and livestock, just a tool to maintain the necessary population numbers!

Therefore, they had never bothered to spend their time and energy on these useless people, let alone solve their problems and improve their lives for them.

However, this massive wizard city Crimson Wings was clearly different!

It was a strange city that had integrated witchcraft into its society and life.

Neatly laid out streets, clean and flat stone pavements, shops and stores, uniformly styled living, commercial and entertainment areas... and most surprising of all, besides the throngs of pedestrians, are the many cargo and metallic vehicles that line the streets.

Crimson Wings had eschewed the slow and inefficient weight-carrying wagons in favor of magical battery-powered metal fiends as their primary means of cargo transport. It is no longer a slow-moving horse-drawn wagon that runs along a main road, but a bizarre magic armament made of all metal.

The small cargoes relied on land-based magic weapons for transport, while the truly large cargoes relied on a strange goblin airship.

After being powered by magic energy, these goblin airships do not have the horrifying sight of steam everywhere they go, nor the loud noise of their propellers. They are quietly shuttling to and fro in the sky, following some kind of special flight path that comes and goes, quite a kind of flourishing magic weapon civilization!

Ever since the Crimson Family had obtained a stable Quillas alloy from the Molten Fire City, the creation of magical melting furnaces had never stopped. Thus, magical energy was no longer a so-called problem that plagued the Crimson Family.

Several goblin shops were opened in Crimson Wing City, openly selling unarmed magic weapons to the public and providing free recharging of magic energy batteries. And such actions undoubtedly provided the greatest convenience for the promotion of magic weapons.

A land-based magic weapon that could travel hundreds of miles continuously without sleep was even more cost effective than maintaining an entire caravan. Therefore, in the entire Crimson Wings City, the ancient and primitive caravans of mules and horses were almost never seen anymore.

Instead, they were replaced by a caravan of magic weapons that ran as fast as lightning.

Only for the safety of pedestrians, all terrestrial magic weapons entering the Crimson Wings can only run at a minimum speed, and they must also travel on dedicated petrified roads.

The mass promotion and application of magic weapons and the blossoming of sorcery civilization on the ground also gave birth to many strange professions that the Crimson Wings did not have in the outside world. Like magic weapon technicians, magic weapon repairers, airship pilots, magic seed researchers, cleaners, city law enforcement teams....

It had to be a new world completely different from any other wizarding city in the wizarding world! The energy and vitality it imbibed was somewhat incomprehensible and indistinguishable even to a top wizard like Monash Gaia.

"Did that Grim eat his fill to come up with these new things?" Monash Gaia let down the curtain, full of incredulity, "What use is it that he serves these humans so well? When the enemy arrives, they won't be able to top shit, not as good as a wizard's apprentice being able to throw little fireballs!"

"You don't have to worry about that..." smiled Alfred, the molten fire lord sitting across from him, stroking his moustache and whispering, "Just tell me, are the inhabitants of this city happy and fortunate? "

"Happiness sucks at best, and what does wasting resources and energy on them bring? Could they help us take down a secondary dimension?" Monash Gaia is obviously a staunch supporter of the typical bloodline supremacy and sorcerer supremacy theory, and is not interested in these fancy things in front of him: "With their fragile little bodies, I'm afraid that as soon as they arrive at the alien plane, half of them will die before the other party comes to kill them.... ..."

The Molten Fire City Lord shook his head and smiled, not arguing with it, but changing the subject.

"You've seen the changes in this Crimson Wing, haven't you noticed the difference between it and other wizard cities?"

"You mean magic energy?"

"Good! You should have also felt that this city is full of magical energy, almost like a bustling city supported by magic energy. So don't you wonder where their magical energy comes from? Don't tell me it came from those wizard towers, they couldn't hold up such a huge demand..."

"You mean... the Crimson Family possesses some kind of endless energy source? What was that, a treasure or some sort of witchcraft formation or some special otherworldly means?"

"I've already investigated it, it's a special device called the Magic Melting Furnace, which is able to continuously extract berserk magical energy from the Void World and tame it..."

"That's exactly like the Elemental Altar, isn't it!"

"It isn't the same. At least the Elemental Altar requires the selection of a fixed earth node to build, and it's incredibly expensive to build. But this magical motion furnace they built is an energy source that can be moved at will and can be loaded on top of any magic weapon." Alfred narrowed his eyes and said with infinite emotion.

"No wonder the Crimson Family is able to use metal magic weapons on a large scale, it's because of these infinite magical energies! The minimum needs of any civilization or power that wants to grow and expand is nothing more than energy and resources, energy they are not lacking anymore, as long as they keep opening up outward and usurping the necessary resources of the alien plane, it is not difficult to build a huge power..." the Monash- Gaia also glumly exclaimed, "No wonder that Grim goes around stirring up fires and still gets stronger and stronger, that's the real reason they're strong!"

"Don't think too much about it. This time Grim has summoned us all here, we must be discussing how to deal with that upcoming magic tide. The attitude of Clara and I is very clear, everything is subject to your old brother's horse. If that Grim makes a request that isn't too excessive, we'll reluctantly approve it. If he extorts too harshly, we also hope that you, old brother, will be able to argue on the basis of reason and not let him do whatever he wants too much..."

Hearing this, that Gold One Clan Chief Monash Gaia's face appeared with a smile-like expression and said calmly, "Is this your attitude with Clara?"

"And Alyssa and Roderick... the only one left among the current Central Wizards who can break wrists with that Grim is you. So..."

"So you're just going to push me out and roast me over a fire?" Monash Gaia had a sneering smile on his face.

"Not against that Grim, just 'according to reason'!" Everett couldn't help but accost him.

Strength represented status.

Without strength, even their group of 4th rank wizards spoke with some weakness.