Wizard: Starting With Synthesized Gems

In the past, the Silent Witch had come to this plane in her Second Circle stage. It was the second time she had come to this plane, which she had named the Zorro Plane.

At that time, the Silent Witch was only an ordinary Second Circle wizard who had just constructed her Grand Magic.

She did not even yet bear the title of Silent Witch, because the name Silent Witch was a designation others gave her after she became a Throne-level witch, to commemorate the honor she had achieved in breeding studies for her systematic research into the Silent Shade Willow magical plant.

At that time, she was not yet the Throne-level witch whose name resounded throughout the Cloud Marsh Wetlands, occupying a position in the Cloud Marsh Wetlands like Witch Yekaterina did today. She was only an ordinary wizard who had just become Second Circle.

The Silent Witch came to the Zorro Plane with the heavy weight of taxation pressing on her shoulders. Because she could not pay her taxes, she had no choice but to serve the Cloud Marsh Council, using this form of service to pay off her tax debt.

The world of a Second Circle wizard was that difficult.

It turned out that at the First Circle wizard stage, there were still people above them holding things up. So even First Circle wizards were nowhere near as burdened as Second Circle wizards.

Responsibility and rights went hand in hand.

Second Circle wizards possessed enormous rights, while also having to fulfill their obligations.

If formal wizards were the adults of the wizard world, then Second Circle wizards were finally the reliable segment of those adults in the wizard world.

At that time, the Silent Witch entered the Zorro Plane, and then after a series of developments, the apocalypse descended. The Silent Witch at the time looked in astonishment as the world slowly sank into the darkness of a torrential rain. She could not stop it.

She saw that strange blue glow enter the retinas of everyone in this plane, and in the numb gazes of the plane's people, the apocalypse descended.

Even if there were one or two girls who were still lucid, looking at her with desperate and pleading eyes, the Silent Witch could not stop a disc creature that had already descended, drawn in by the planar gravity, from slamming into this plane.

That was beyond any human power to achieve.

That was the gravitational attraction of two planes pulling each other, with the celestial changes involved enough for meteorology wizards to collectively research for decades without necessarily mapping out all the rules of celestial motion.

What had baffled the Silent Witch beyond understanding was why Omega could descend so quickly and possess the power to control the Silent Plane's people.

That power was like some kind of psychic school magic...

Before the Silent Witch could think it through, the Zorro Plane was about to be destroyed. At this critical moment, the Silent Witch used a special ancient magic to seal this plane, preserving everything as it was at this moment.

However, it could not be sealed for too long, because due to Omega's tier, if she could not become a Third Circle wizard within one hundred years, the seal would fail.

The Silent Witch left the Zorro Plane, standing outside the crystal wall system of the Zorro Plane, and quietly sighed.

She had come this time because she had submitted a proposal to the Cloud Marsh Council that the Zorro Plane's native inhabitants had received the wizard world's civilization seed and therefore possessed the potential to become wizards. Furthermore, this plane was a promising potential commercial trading market.

Originally her task was to come to the Zorro Plane to spread magic, plant magical tides, and reach a commercial agreement with the Zorro Plane's civilization. Once a commercial agreement was reached, her tax burden for the past five years would be written off by the Cloud Marsh Council.

But things had not gone as planned.

The Silent Plane had been invaded by a disc creature. The young witch of that time looked toward the Zorro Plane with disappointed eyes, then boarded her small void aircraft and quickly left.

At this moment, the disappointed pupils of that young witch from long ago overlapped with the pupils of the Silent Witch today as she rose from the Silent Throne.

At the same time, the seven sun ring wizards on the judges' panel, too shocked to linger in astonishment, hurriedly rose from their seats.

The seven sun ring wizards were all the students of students that the Silent Witch had taught in the Three Marsh Lands, or wizards who worked for her. At this moment, all of them gave her a formal bow.

The Silent Witch stared at the image, showing a thoughtful expression.

So that was how it had been back then.

Her wish had been fulfilled. And she had also seen excellent successors emerge.

This trip from the Star Domain Sea to the Three Marsh Lands had been abundantly rewarding.

The Silent Witch said, "Edgar David, Locke Augustine. Both of these young people are excellent. Especially Locke Augustine. I very much look forward to him becoming a well-known breeder in the future."

"The wizard world needs exactly this kind of fresh blood. My Star Domain Sea's High Magic Plan needs talent like this to keep emerging in various places."

The seven sun ring wizards seemed to have received some kind of direction and, after discussion, announced the competition results.

The champion had emerged.

Locke had undeniably taken the championship. Second place was Edgar, third was Georgina, and fourth was Smith.

With the announcement of the competition results by the chair of the sun ring wizard competition committee, all the Golden Crown Mountain wizards, whether formal wizards or students, broke into jubilant celebration.

Quinn Jol had not been able to defend first place, but they had come to regard Edgar as a hero, and so they were also in good spirits.

The Bonifacius University wizards had accepted the current result. After all, the new textile studies' reputation had not suffered, since the two outside competitor wizards in this edition had been at a truly exceptional level by any measure.

They had even broken through the apocalypse that had appeared in every past edition of the Silent Chalice.

In that case, Bonifacius University could only say their luck had been poor.

But the Storm Tower wizards' expressions were extremely grim, as though they had swallowed flies, with collectively dark expressions.

First, they had finished last again.

Second, the black witch who had stolen their spot had escaped in full public view and was nowhere to be found.

Third, Wizard Smith had been trafficked, and doing the math on the time, he could probably only be found on the black market now.

At the same time, the wizard spectators collectively applauded for Edgar and Locke, applauding for the magnificent performance the two had given, and for the astonishing competition that had left everyone stunned.

Both persons' Grand Magics had left a deep impression on the spectators. In particular, the scene at the very end where they had made each other's Grand Magics mutual ecological communities was even reminiscent of the wizard spirit of the Age of Enlightenment.

To put it simply, it had quite an ancient quality to it.

The Cloud Marsh Wetlands wizards were each in fierce competition over metrics. No matter which direction they pursued, there had to be metrics for it. Whether virtual metrics or practical metrics, there needed to be metrics.

Such selfless cooperation had not been seen in who knew how many years.

However, at this moment, quite a few wizards had one question in their minds. How had Locke stopped the apocalypse at the final moment?

That had been a full collision of two worlds.

He had discovered the truth that the Silent Witch had not been able to discover back then?

At this moment, in the team waiting area, Wizard Chad was so excited he nearly leaped off the ground. He was even more excited than if he himself had won the championship.

"Yes!" Wizard Chad jumped in place, then turned to look at his three old rivals. "We won! Golden Crown Mountain, Landbridge won. We won!"

"We are the champions! We are the champions! Rush, did you see that? We are the champions!"

Quinn Jol's sun ring wizard Wizard Rush curled his lip. But his eyes still held a trace of surprise as they drifted over Edgar, then to thoughts of Locke.

In the competition, the option of genuinely cooperating with an opponent... in the eyes of performance-focused Cloud Marsh Wetlands people, was such an unusual thing.

But to everyone's astonishment, the cooperation of the two had accidentally resolved the apocalypse as a result.

Wizard Rush said, "I know. You won. We are second. This time you won fair and square. It is just that you won by too much. I wonder what the result was over at the Three Kings Tournament."

"If you won both, that would be quite amusing."

Wizard Chad also froze for a moment upon hearing this.

"This time, Golden Crown Mountain has already prepared to make concessions. This really cannot be blamed on us. As you saw, our Golden Crown Mountain honored the agreement and only provided Locke with the necessary competition support."

Wizard Rush gave a bitter smile. "You want me to go back and tell Quinn Jol's elders that Golden Crown Mountain casually sent one competitor and beat us?"

Wizard Chad coughed awkwardly.

In the Golden Crown Mountain waiting area, the Golden Crown Mountain wizards were all immersed in the honor of having won the championship. Even Third Circle wizard Wizard Fischer had the hint of a smile at the corner of his eyes.

"Very good, very good. We won. Hahahahaha. Those several unclaimed lands, this year's students will all be ours. Excellent. One of the unclaimed lands produced several promising force studies students this year. All of them are Child of Elements. I was worried they might be snatched away by other universities, but now it seems there is no need to worry."

The Academic Committee's sun ring wizard paused. "Well, even with enrollment this year, to enter Golden Crown Mountain would still require two more years, would it not? And they would also need to pass an examination to enter Golden Crown Mountain's main campus, and might first need to attend a lower-tier affiliated school before that..."

Wizard Fischer was in a good mood. "There is one promising student I have had my eye on, so this batch of students are lucky. If they can all time it right, they should all be able to enter Golden Crown Mountain's main campus within two years."

In the course of their conversation, they touched upon Golden Crown Mountain's complex system of affiliated lower-tier schools as one of the Cloud Marsh Wetlands' premier wizard universities.

Wizard Fischer suddenly came to a belated realization. "Oh no. That child Locke would not have actually resolved the unsolved mystery of the Silent Plane, would he?"

A chill ran down Wizard Fischer's spine. "The Throne-level wizard, did she warn him that this absolutely must not be done?"

"The interests tied to the Silent Chalice are too vast. It absolutely cannot be shut down."

At this moment, the seven sun ring wizard judges also looked toward the Silent Throne with expressions of concern.

After the emotions of surprise and delight had faded, a touch of worry formed in all seven of their minds.

The chair sun ring wizard had even taken a spiritual mushroom magical plant from his star realm ring and begun checking the stock prices related to the Silent Chalice competition.

This competition was tied to a large number of shop alliances. If this competition disappeared, just the number of wizards who would go bankrupt would be several hundred.

Among them were many wizards with connections, and even he himself.

At this moment, sun ring wizard chair Tatar pursed his lips, feeling uneasy.

In the Silent Plane, inside the mind network, Locke merged the two mind networks and completely dismantled Omega's mental dark web. Then he noticed two lines of text on the back of the chessboard.

These two lines of text seemed to have been written by two different wizards.

And they came from different eras.

The first line was a name. It stated that the person came from Bonifacius University, was named Hannibal Pericles, and left a single sentence: 'I was here. This is proof.'

Then, decades later, another person had written their name on it. This person came from Golden Crown Mountain, Emilia Carlyle, and had also left a sentence on the chessboard: 'It seems that Mr. Pericles and I were both too afraid to expose the truth of the Silent Plane. I wonder if the next wizard to come here will have the courage to make a different choice than ours.'

Locke thought about it. If Emilia Carlyle had been a Golden Crown Mountain researcher over a hundred years ago, she had probably left Golden Crown Mountain long ago.

He had certainly never heard of her at Golden Crown Mountain.

Locke thought about it and could understand why these two, despite having found this place, had both kept it to themselves.

First, they should have found this place, but if neither of them had connected all the beings of the Silent Plane to the mental chessboard and fulfilled wizard Zorro's dying wish, they would not have been able to do what he had done, suddenly merging the two mind networks and dismantling the disc creature's control over the Grand Magic that wizard Zorro had built.

Because only by giving all the beings of the Silent Plane corresponding positions within the mind network could the disc creature's control over them possibly be offset.

Without this step, even finding this place would have been insufficient to stop the apocalypse.

Second, and most importantly, the Silent Chalice competition had been running for many years, and the interests tied to it were beyond counting.

If he revealed the truth of the Silent Plane, the Silent Witch would very likely honor her commitment and shut down the Silent Chalice competition.

This would damage the interests of every wizard connected to it.

And a competition that involved a Fourth Circle wizard, with four of the Cloud Marsh Wetlands' premier universities participating, had an influence too enormous to calculate.

It was absolutely something that he, as he was now, could not bear the consequences of.

It was a completely different order of magnitude from upending the small-scale wizard shoe market.

No wonder neither of those two previous visitors, after finding this place, had dared to announce publicly that they had discovered the truth of why the Silent Plane was destined to be destroyed.

Then what about himself?

Locke thought about it for a moment and noticed one thing: the Silent Witch had never publicly stated what benefit a wizard who discovered the truth would receive. She had only promised to shut down the Silent Chalice competition.

Locke thought for a moment, made his choice, and engraved a line on the chessboard: 'If I said something, the competition would be gone. Would there still be four people who would discover this?'

Locke left this line behind, joining this dialogue that had spanned over a hundred years.

Disc creatures possessed the characteristic of all timelines unified, so this mental chessboard, at least on its back face, would not be reset.

The two lines already left there were the best evidence of that. Only who knew how many years it would be before the next wizard would join this conversation.