Wizard: Starting With Synthesized Gems

With the completion of the Grand Magic, Temporal Shadow Fern, the Land of All Spirits appeared in this world. This world, which had almost no animals or plants left to speak of, recovered a measure of vitality.

This world had originally had no concept of magical plants, but because of Wizard Edgar's Grand Magic, a connection to the Emerald Dream had been established, and a great flood of plant spirits came pouring in.

As these spirits flowed out from the Land of All Spirits, they spread through the wilderness and factories of this world, seeking out plants to inhabit. In this way, the world acquired a rudimentary concept of magical plants for the first time.

A great number of wild magical plants underwent evolution.

The Land of All Spirits was the underworld of plants, the resting place of plant death.

Therefore, as long as such a cycle of plant life and death was established in this world and connected to the Emerald Dream, magical plants could be created anew even in a world that had previously had none.

Throughout the seventeen provinces in the eastern part of the empire, wild grass suddenly erupted from the ground across many areas. Apprentice-level low-grade magical plants, the Nethermail Fungus Vine, the Soul-Devouring Tendril, the Wailing Briar, the Spirit Creeper, and the Humus Strangler, appeared across every region of this world, destroying and overturning the foundations of factories, sending machinery flying, and toppling boilers.

These magical vines were the ecological community guardians of the Land of All Spirits under the Temporal Shadow Fern Grand Magic, borrowed from the Emerald Dream to serve as protectors of the Land of All Spirits.

They were simultaneously guardians and an ecological community.

In other words, these Spirit Vines appeared alongside the Temporal Shadow Fern and combined with it to form the Land of All Spirits.

On the streets of the imperial capital, one vine, infused with the power of the Land of All Spirits, transformed into a Spirit Vine, the Soul Creeper. Its body was enormous, a massive grey tendril that reached out continuously toward any moving object in its vicinity.

But in the next instant, a bolt of psychic lightning fell upon it, and the vine was reduced to ash in the flames.

Locke furrowed his brow. Clearly, now that Edgar had brought his Grand Magic down into the world, that Grand Magic could no longer be concealed.

The emperor had found his target and was driving his mind network directly against it.

Two Second Circle-level existences had begun to clash with one another.

The imperial capital swung into motion. Telegram after telegram came back from the rebellious provinces on the front lines, throwing the entire empire into a state of total war. The empire mobilized all the manpower, resources, and armies from all seventy-eight provinces and the homeland, transporting them via railway toward the seventeen eastern provinces to suppress and eradicate these apprentice-level magical plants.

Edgar had clearly become the emperor's primary target.

Locke looked down at the Soul Creeper by his feet. "This kind of apprentice-level magical plant is rarely seen even in the wizard world. Although it is a low-grade magical plant, it requires an extremely rare growing environment. I have only ever seen it in books."

"Is this the material foundation of the Land of All Spirits in this world?"

"If that is the case, then the Land of All Spirits is essentially very similar in nature to a Kingdom Domain," Locke mused. 'A Kingdom Domain is a special magical realm created through spell models.'

'The Land of All Spirits is likewise a special magical realm created through spell models. The only difference from a Kingdom Domain is that one is a product of the convergence of all the citizens of a magical kingdom and the power of ley lines, while the Land of All Spirits is a product of the convergence of ley line power and plant life.'

'Beyond that difference in their primary components, there is no other difference between the two.'

In that case, it was no wonder that Kingdom Domains had been superseded by Grand Magics.

A Grand Magic could encompass a Kingdom Domain, but a Kingdom Domain could not encompass a Grand Magic.

Although the Land of All Spirits that the Temporal Shadow Fern had produced, which resembled a Kingdom Domain, could not be said to be entirely identical to one, its overall framework was much the same.

Locke looked toward the east. "In that case, Edgar has taken the lead for now. Taking the lead means seizing the initiative. Edgar could very well take this opportunity to locate the three of us ahead of time and move against us, driving us out of this plane. Except..."

Locke looked toward the east, where the mind network that blanketed this world was drawing upon enormous amounts of magic pressure, pressing down against the Land of All Spirits in an effort to stop its spread and destroy it.

The mind network continued to suppress the world's will on one side while simultaneously destroying the outermost regions of the Land of All Spirits on the other.

This left the mind network without the capacity to seal the sky entirely.

Some meteors would still be summoned down by the star-prayer devotees, and occasionally a streak of light would cross the sky and fall upon the earth.

Locke said, "Edgar originally had the advantage of being in the lead. Only, he was the first to bring his Grand Magic down into the world, which drew the emperor's full retaliatory force. Although the Land of All Spirits has already been established, the emperor has been operating in this world for many years, and his system's total magic pressure is still the greatest."

"So what will follow is a battle between the native emperor and Edgar."

"The emperor's mind network contains a great deal of technology from the wizard world, though what he obtained was not the whole of it."

"Moreover, it is a somewhat outdated form of that technology. The inspector system was inspired by it, and was then created by either him or some other native of this world."

Locke looked at the book in his hand. "The emperor has collected a vast number of books in his library, books that only his most trusted confidants are permitted to read. No one else is allowed access. Yet this has inadvertently allowed me to obtain the concentrated knowledge of this entire world with ease."

"It can already be confirmed at this point that the emperor has received knowledge from the wizard world."

Locke opened the illustrated section of one book and found a painting, showing a meteorite that had come from beyond the heavens. The meteorite had fallen from the sky and brought with it knowledge and civilization.

Locke looked at the special script on the meteorite in the illustration and furrowed his brow. "The Age of Enlightenment? This appears to be some kind of ancient artifact from the wizard world."

Locke snapped his fingers. His legendary history tome sprang forward in the form of a paper-folded giant dragon, bouncing toward him, and scanned the negative energy particle field archive information from the book into itself.

Locke read the words upon it. 'This is the first year following the arrival of the Age of Enlightenment. One year has passed, and the wizard world is thriving. The total magic pressure of our world is recovering.'

'This proves the correctness of the choice we made.'

'It is now one year since the founding of the Four Clarity Waters Council, and all member wizards of the council have made an oath to the White Wizard Association, a promise to truth, that from this day forward knowledge will no longer be the private treasure of wizard monarchs.'

'To fulfill our promise, we have entrusted meteorology wizards to carry a portion of the knowledge of the Four Clarity Waters wizard lands and send it out into the infinite void. Wherever the meteorite lands shall be a place where knowledge spreads.'

'We firmly believe that knowledge should always be free and open, and that anyone in the entire world who wishes to learn should be able to access whatever knowledge they need with ease. Following this reasoning, we hold that knowledge should be opened to the entire void.'

'Should there come a day when knowledge is no longer free and open, that will mean our past efforts have come to nothing. Our era will end along with it.'

Locke paused as he read this passage. "Has the wizard world ever had a period when all knowledge was free and openly available?"

"The Age of Enlightenment..."

"It seems that the wizard world has been different in every era. In the modern magic era, the most precious treasure in the wizard world is knowledge. All knowledge is essentially paid for, and moreover, much secret knowledge has been concealed and passed down as school lineages."

"But in the wizard world of the past, during the Age of Enlightenment, was all knowledge truly free and openly available? This is quite a surprising discovery."

"What happened afterward that caused knowledge to require payment in the modern magic era? Could it be that one of the hallmarks of the Age of Enlightenment's end was the moment knowledge began to carry a price?"

Locke thought about it. "No, that is not quite right. Golden Crown Mountain and the wizard airships do have free libraries."

"Knowledge has simply been tiered. Some of it is free, and some of it requires payment."

"So what it means is that in the modern magic era, the major wizard universities no longer share their knowledge systems as selflessly as the wizards of the Age of Enlightenment once did, freely opening them to any wizard who was interested and capable of learning, allowing them to roam freely through the ocean of knowledge."

A thoughtful expression settled on Locke's face.

He placed this portion of historical material into his legendary history tome and made a note to look up related texts upon his return, after which he would be able to publish an archaeological article on the subject.

It seemed that wizard civilization in the Age of Enlightenment had consciously engraved knowledge onto meteorites and sent them out into the infinite void in the hope of spreading that knowledge.

In doing so, they had fulfilled the Public Knowledge Oath that all members had made to truth at the original founding of the White Wizard Association.

Clearly, when this world's emperor received this portion of knowledge, what he did was not follow the instructions carried on the meteorite and make the knowledge free and openly available. Instead, he decisively kept it for himself.

He placed it in his library, locked away on a shelf to gather dust.

To enter his library, one had to be a senior official of the empire.

In other words, fewer than ten people in the entire empire could enter it.

And those ten people, holding high offices, would inevitably be consumed by constant business and could not possibly find time to read.

So the concentrated knowledge of an entire world had been quietly accumulating dust inside the library all along.

For some reason that was not clear, the emperor still allocated funding to the library every year and had people organize and maintain the books inside a library that had no readers.

Locke said, "So that is why the emperor's mind network carries the technical hallmarks of the wizard world's systems."

"But there is still one more question. Given the emperor's character as it has been observed so far, was the inspector system and the mind network truly something he devised on his own?"

Locke said, "I should go back and look through more of the books in that library. I did not expect to stumble upon such an unexpected gain."

...

In the spectator area beneath the Silent Throne, the seven sun ring wizards of the competition committee were murmuring among themselves.

"In past years, many competitors guessed that the native emperor must have come into contact with wizard civilization through some means in the past, but no one ever actually unearthed the secret. I did not expect that it was because a civilization seed from the Age of Enlightenment had once fallen upon that world."

"During the Age of Enlightenment, a great many void plane civilizations that were close to wizard civilization came into being."

"The Age of Enlightenment... it was truly a great era, and also a foolish one. Regardless, that era has already come to a close. Knowledge free of charge? That is impossible..."

"None of the previous competitors ever helped the emperor spread a religion. Naturally, none of them could ever have entered that library. And after winning their battles, there would have been no time during the competition to go to a library and browse books to pass the time."

"Look at the other three competitors. Every one of them is working tirelessly, matching wits against the emperor's agents, scheming against the other competitors, and developing the total magic pressure of their own Grand Magics."

"But this Golden Crown Mountain competitor... how long has it been since he moved from his position? Is he actually competing?"

The audience too had been left baffled and started discussing among themselves.

Although Locke had infiltrated the emperor's faction and entered the library, unearthing the origin mystery behind the emperor's mind network and inspector system, something no previous competitor had ever managed, Locke's total magic pressure had not changed even once since he entered the world.

On top of that, through his continuous preaching activities, he had actually been steadily increasing the emperor's magic pressure.

Originally, the emperor's total magic pressure should have had a tendency toward collapse under the dual pressure of the apocalyptic crisis and Edgar's Grand Magic descent, but through Locke's congregation it had instead grown more and more stable, drawing the emperor into a fierce deadlock with Edgar.

In the spectator stands, Witch Camilla of Magic Pivot City wore an expression of deep frustration. "What on earth is that fellow Locke doing? Did he go there to conduct archaeology?"

On the other side, Hussein furrowed his brow, then suddenly let it relax. "The onlooker sees the game most clearly. So that is what you have in mind. You are quite something, Locke."

The senior partner from the Mithril Law Firm beside him, a sun ring wizard, looked toward Hussein. "Young Hussein, do you know that Golden Crown Mountain competitor?"

Hussein nodded. "Yes, we are friends."

The sun ring wizard senior partner said, "Then you are in luck. Golden Crown Mountain is a place where trouble is never far away. You will have no shortage of work in the future. That is not a bad thing either. Our Mithril Law Firm has actually been looking to expand business in the direction of Golden Crown Mountain lately..."

In the Golden Crown Mountain spectator section, some wizards were also casting doubtful looks toward their own competitor. They were all somewhat bewildered, unable to make sense of what Locke was trying to do.

In the spectator stands, the wizards from Solas Light Foot and Melechi Magic Step were the happiest of all upon observing Locke's apparent inaction.

Several wizard agents from the wizard shoe shop alliances chuckled to themselves.

"This person has been competing with our shop alliances for market share. The more successful he is, the better his products sell, and the greater our losses. The worse he performs, the more easily we can rest easy."

"If Golden Crown Mountain finishes last this time, that would not be unwelcome at all. It would suit our purposes just fine."

Elsewhere in the arena, Wizard Zalan Bailey was making his way over from the Group 2 Research Institute.

Because the Silent Chalice competition ran for a long time, many wizards did not stay for the entire duration. They attended to their own affairs while having their students come and record footage, remaining on hand to notify them of important competition milestones so that they could come from wherever they were when those moments arrived.

During the week when Locke and the others had been lying low in the Silent Plane, for instance, there had not been much to watch, and so at least half the audience had been absent from the spectator arena.

But now, with the descent of Edgar's Grand Magic, a great many wizards had rapidly fast-forwarded through the footage their students had recorded at ten times speed and then boarded their transportation to come and watch the competition in person.

Wizard Zalan Bailey looked up toward Locke's magic pressure, and a flash of apprehension crossed his eyes.

Because Locke's magic pressure in the competition had already firmly surpassed his own by a full two thousand points.

Which meant that if Locke gained just one thousand more points of magic pressure, he would have one more Grand Magic Rune than him.

For Second Circle wizards, the gap in combat power produced by one additional Grand Magic Rune was very significant.

Wizard Zalan Bailey sat on his stool with a certain restlessness, though Locke's apparent lack of action offered him a small measure of comfort.

'No need to worry. If things continue at this pace, he will finish last. That way he has no chance of competing with me for the special grant.'

Wizard Zalan Bailey let out a long breath.

A wizard beside him looked up at the scene unfolding on Edgar's side. "That native emperor is astonishingly powerful. Faced with Edgar's complete Grand Magic, he is actually holding his own."

Wizard Zalan Bailey looked in that direction. "That native emperor obtained some of the knowledge from the Age of Enlightenment. That is probably also the reason he was able to become a Second Circle existence."

"He has been operating in that world for many years, and although Wizard Edgar is certainly powerful, he has only just arrived."

At this moment, in the rebellious province, Wizard Edgar summoned a great number of Vine Servants from the Land of All Spirits and launched them against the emperor's army.

The two sides remained locked in a grinding stalemate for an entire week.

They fought battle after battle in the rebellious province. The emperor's inspectors had been granted the right to unlock their gene locks and learn the power.

Each time they unlocked a gene lock, their physical abilities and psi-force both increased, and by the third unlock they could even slightly bend reality through willpower alone.

That would put them at the equivalent of a second-class wizard apprentice, the same level as the gunfighter of this world.

As time passed, Edgar found himself nursing a mild headache. "Why is the emperor's magic pressure so stable?"

Edgar complained to the gunfighter and girl priestess at his side, "My plan was to summon the Land of All Spirits in the eastern part of this world, stir up panic among his people, and let his mind network system fall into turmoil on its own. His total magic pressure would then continuously decline, at which point I could immediately suppress the emperor and then apply pressure to the other three competitors."

This was also the strategy that the Quinn Jol side had instructed him to follow.

It was a speed-clear method that Quinn Jol had commissioned a moon ring witch to research for ten years and refine to completion.

But the problem was that the emperor's magic pressure had not fragmented. Instead, through the mind network, he was continuously channeling magic pressure into the inspectors, rapidly elevating their standing in this world's force system within a short span of time.

And Edgar did not dare use his Grand Magic directly. He could only use the ecological community of the Land of All Spirits to attack the emperor.

Because if he used the Grand Magic directly, at his current level it would be enough to obliterate the emperor and his mind network system in a single strike.

But if he did that, his total magic pressure would drain to nothing in an instant, and if Locke, Smith, and Georgina all joined forces and moved against him during that window, he could very well be eliminated from the plane immediately.

Wizard Edgar fell into thought, weighing whether to gamble, and while he still held the initiative, use his Grand Magic directly against the emperor to crush him and his laughable army in one blow.

But there were still three other competitors lurking on his flanks.

Edgar's gaze sharpened. He decided to stop hesitating and use the Grand Magic directly to crush the native army before him.

After all, he was the only one who had brought his Grand Magic down into the world so far.

If he was going to be timid and indecisive when he was already holding the initiative, then there was no point in competing in the first place.

At this moment, in the rebellious province, inside an abandoned factory, countless Spirit Vine Servants came crawling out from the corners of the factory and launched attacks on the inspectors.

The inspectors seemed to have grown eyes in the backs of their heads. They raised their guns and fired behind them without turning around, the psi-force-accelerated bullets blasting straight through a Humus Strangler.

Then a Wailing Briar suddenly erupted from the ground and seized one inspector by the right leg, dragging him downward.

The inspector let out a wretched cry as the Wailing Briar, its leaves like black steel needles and its movements accompanied by a sound like wailing, dragged him beneath the surface.

Inspector after inspector raised their flintlocks and used psi-force to accelerate their bullets, firing shot after shot, punching through the vines.

Their goal was to fight their way to the Temporal Shadow Fern at the very heart of the rebellious province.

As long as the Temporal Shadow Fern was cut down, the Land of All Spirits would collapse, the Grand Magic would collapse, and the emperor's crisis would be resolved.

One badly wounded inspector clawed his way to the top of an abandoned factory, his eyes wide and blazing. "For His Majesty the Emperor!"

In the grip of duty and extreme fury, he broke through his gene lock, advancing from the third-tier gene lock to the fourth, and his magic pressure leapt in an instant to the level of a first-class wizard apprentice.

Then, burning every last bit of his psi-force and sacrificing his own life in a single moment, he fired one shot at the Temporal Shadow Fern in the distance.

This was the inspectors' art of gunfighting, the Sacrifice Bullet.

That bullet, condensed with the psi-force he had wrung from his very life, moved through the air like a line of magnetic force, streaking toward the Temporal Shadow Fern standing thousands of meters high in the distance.

But in the inspector's eyes, full of despair, the shot he had poured his very life into had not yet come close to the Temporal Shadow Fern when it was enveloped by the Land of All Spirits, and a First Circle-level Briar Queen descended.

It was the same type of plant that Locke's Forest Sanctuary had also cultivated, a magical plant that existed somewhere between vine and tree. The Briar Queen had been materialized by Edgar at great cost to his total magic pressure from within the Land of All Spirits, then awakened into a treant.

The moment the Briar Queen treant appeared, it swatted the pathetic bullet away with one hand.

Before the inspector died, he roared, "No!"

In that moment, the tens of thousands of inspectors on the battlefield were also gripped by grief, their rage ignited by their comrade's death.

All across the battlefield, there were those who unlocked higher-tier gene locks in the face of life, death, and a sense of duty.

Some inspectors, under the infusion of magic pressure from the mind network, even paid with their lives to temporarily unlock the seventh-tier gene lock, equivalent to the magic pressure level of a First Circle wizard.

In their struggle against Edgar's Land of All Spirits, the inspectors, faced with these inhuman opponents, were not crushed. On the contrary, their sense of responsibility and their courage as human beings were awakened.

Under these circumstances, the inspectors broke through their gene locks one after another.

The world's will manifested through them, and that increasingly vivid world will became active, moving in response to their will.

Even though the world's will actually leaned toward the four wizards, these inspectors were the finest people this world had to offer. Their fury, their hope, their resolve had significant sway over the world will's choices.

And as they stood against the ecological community of the Land of All Spirits, forced into unified purpose by war, even Edgar could sense the world will growing increasingly reluctant to aid him.

Inside an abandoned factory, Wizard Edgar stood with his hands behind his back. "The strong get stronger. Alice."

The girl priestess gave a sound of acknowledgment. "My lord."

Edgar curved the corner of his mouth. "Alice, I like that title. Alice, Toman, I promised you both that I would show you the truth of this world."

"So watch closely. This is my Grand Magic."

Edgar opened his left hand, palm facing upward, and was about to activate his Grand Magic and drive the Land of All Spirits to launch a direct assault on the emperor, when at this moment a tremor came from within the Land of All Spirits.

Edgar decisively stopped himself. 'The spell model of the Temporal Shadow Fern that Senior Sister developed incorporated part of the spell model from Quinn Jol's specialty, group prophecy studies. In other words, my Land of All Spirits carries a degree of prophetic ability, capable of giving me warnings in advance. The strength of this ability is not high, but it is genuinely there.'

'At this moment, the Land of All Spirits is warning me to stop using the Grand Magic. Could it mean that if I use the Grand Magic right now, I will be thrown into a desperate situation? How could that be?'

Edgar thought it over. He was no fool.

Edgar still chose to hold back. "Those native soldiers are actually continuing to raise their own power levels. My ecological community has actually been forced onto the back foot."

"Even though it is a Grand Magic I have not put my full effort into... damn it, who is helping the emperor stabilize his magic pressure? If not for you, that emperor would have been no match for me long ago."

Wizard Edgar looked toward Wizard Smith. "Your presence is welcome enough. Let us deal with the emperor first. As long as this world's native force holder dies, all four of us competitors will be free to move without restraint."

"The emperor is still the person in this world with the most capital and the greatest assets. He has only experienced a temporary disruption in his capital flow right now. If he is allowed to recover, he will still be quite troublesome."

Just after Edgar stopped himself, the sky suddenly plunged into darkness again.

Then, from the sky above, countless meteors came raining down, one after another.

The total magic pressure of this world rose again.

The second Grand Magic descended.

It was Wizard Smith's Meteor from Beyond the Heavens.

Edgar suddenly understood. "I see. If I had not held back just now and used my Grand Magic directly, and then Smith let his Grand Magic descend right at that moment, I would have been drained of magic pressure and immediately eliminated from this plane by Wizard Smith."

"I was that close to being knocked out."

Beneath the Silent Throne, in the spectator section belonging to Storm Tower, a round of applause broke out. Not just from the Storm Tower wizards, but also from the wizards of all the affiliated wizard organizations under Storm Tower, everyone was clapping.

The Second Circle wizards of the Smith Family were beaming with delight.

"It has finally descended. Ha, the second Grand Magic to descend, and not at all bad, with perfect timing to boot."

"Hahaha, everyone, this is our Storm Tower's Grand Magic, Meteor from Beyond the Heavens. The construction this time differs somewhat from the last, so please observe carefully."

On the other side, the moon ring witch from Quinn Jol was growing anxious.

She looked at the competition field with bewilderment. "Edgar, what is wrong with you? Why, when you have clearly already finished constructing your Grand Magic, have you not had one of your two teammates descend into that world?"

"That way you might have been able to crush the emperor ahead of time, seize the initiative, and expand the total magic pressure of your Grand Magic. How could you have allowed yourself to fall into a predicament where you can neither advance nor retreat?"

"Why have you not let yourself, or one of your two assistants, descend?"