Wizard: Starting With Synthesized Gems

After parting with Daniel, Locke put away the Viren Mist in his hand and opened the water hyacinth system to check his personal developer backend at the Arthas Shop Alliance.

It displayed that his improved version of the Snow Crown Bromeliad wizard shoes, the Demon Realm Bromeliad wizard shoes, had recently topped the sales rankings for First Circle wizard shoes.

In just a few short days, over five hundred pairs had been sold, earning him twelve million magic stones, which is to say 1,200 magic crystal cards.

Locke sat in his bedroom, instructing one of his spirit maid servants to clean, while feeling somewhat curious about why sales had suddenly risen so dramatically.

After all, wizard shoes priced at fifty thousand magic stones a pair were not cheap by any means. While there were many wizards, there were also many shop alliances.

The only reason he had been able to earn ten million magic stones in one go before was because of Golden Crown Mountain's bulk purchase order, which had bought over four hundred and sixty sets of the Demon Realm Bromeliad wizard shoes all at once.

"I see. The sales range has expanded..."

Locke saw that according to Arthas's rules, he was now permitted to sell his products in both the Golden Crown Mountain district and the Quinn Jol district. This had led to an increase in the sales volume of all four wizard shoe styles and other products sold through the Arthas shop.

Doing a rough calculation, setting aside the Demon Realm War edition wizard shoes, the monthly sales of the Hydra and Nine-Headed Snake styles had also improved, selling four million magic stones' worth this month.

In other words, simply from winning the Silent Chalice championship and the direct financial gain it represented in terms of his personal brand, his total earnings were a staggering sixteen million magic stones.

And that was not counting the accumulated brand benefits that would follow.

One could say the Silent Chalice championship had directly brought him enormous material benefits, as well as various honors tied to it.

Locke thought to himself, "If that is the case, my regular monthly income going forward should also increase significantly."

"Three million in wizard taxes seems less daunting compared to that. No wait, the resources needed for a Second Circle wizard to do research and improve are simply exorbitant, so the more money the better."

"At its core, three million in wizard taxes still accounts for a very large portion of my income."

"And mine is a special case. If a wizard who had just become a Second Circle wizard lacked all of these projects of mine and had also spent down their entire accumulated reserves during the breakthrough, then they would truly be..."

"In serious trouble."

Locke thought to himself, "After the Silent Chalice delivers the plane coordinates to me, I will have to go out and do plane pioneering. That will require another large sum of money."

"On top of that, I still need to purchase magical resources to improve my own power. So this tax is still quite a burden."

Locke noticed that the volume of hostile messages cursing him in the backend had multiplied, at least doubling, and were essentially all from interested parties whose livelihoods his work had affected, all of them magical weavers.

Well, using Bonifacius University's terminology, these would all be old-school magical weavers.

Because the practitioners of magical items such as wizard shoes, magical gloves, and wizard robes were predominantly old-school magical weavers aligned with the Rose Council's side.

Of course, different from before, because he had now become a Second Circle wizard, not only did he have magical weavers cursing him, but old-school magical weavers were also sending messages to his backend, attempting to use the one permitted opportunity of a friend request message to invite him into cooperation.

Among them was the Rose Council's Wizard Shiree Owen, that wizard who called himself a veteran investor.

Locke sat on his bed thinking, "This wizard has not given up yet?"

It appeared he had purchased a premium membership, granting him special privileges, which allowed him to send friend requests without limitation. Of course, that section could be hidden.

So it did not affect his usage.

And he seemed to be able to block him.

At this moment, Wizard Shiree Owen had sent him over a dozen messages, all roughly the same in content. Locke looked at the most recent one:

"Hello, Wizard Locke Augustine. You must have been very busy lately and unable to see my messages. I am Wizard Shiree Owen, a star ring wizard of the Rose Council and a veteran investor in the Cloud Marsh Wetlands. I would like to invest the funding you urgently need in your shop alliance."

"Please open up the buying and selling of shares in your shop alliance. I believe this can allow you to aggregate tens of millions of magic stones in capital within a short time."

Locke used his Lingzhi magical plant to open a search interface and looked up background information on this Wizard Shiree Owen, reading through his articles, past projects, and general history, to assess his academic lineage.

After all, from the Second Circle world onward, it seemed that team affiliation and academic lineage were extremely important.

The very first moment he became a Second Circle wizard, he had been dragged into an academic lineage struggle.

The dispute between the Rose Witch and the Red Dragon Witch.

"He is actually the student of a student of a student of the Rose Throne Witch..."

After a long time examining the materials, Locke finally pieced together the other party's identity and background.

"Worthy of a white wizard. Desperate enough to make money that he completely disregards factional allegiances and still wants to cooperate with me?"

"He should have looked through my information."

Locke thought about it for a moment and decided to block this persistent Wizard Shiree Owen, preventing him from continuing to add him.

If he wanted other people to invest, he would open up share transfers and sales on his own initiative.

But right now he had not yet made a decision, and he also did not yet have a thorough understanding of this area of shop alliances. This was an entirely new domain for him.

And furthermore, this person's identity was sensitive, so there was no need to cooperate with him.

Locke glanced through the other magical weavers who wanted to cooperate with him as well, but paid none of them any attention.

After all, there was no need to.

How many of these cooperation requests were and how many were traps was impossible to say.

The precedent of Wizard Daniel was right before his eyes.

Locke looked at a friend request from one wizard and paused, because the witch sending the request was none other than Witch Georgina.

Locke hesitated briefly but decided to accept.

The other party had not left a message with the friend request, just sent it plainly. But as a fellow competitor from the Silent Chalice finals, he, the champion, still had to show this third-place finisher some courtesy.

After he accepted her request, Witch Georgina sent him a message almost immediately. She had probably set some kind of audio notification.

"Locke, good evening. It has been several days since we parted after the competition. I was wondering whether you might have some time available recently?"

Locke looked at this out-of-nowhere message and was momentarily taken aback, while also feeling that Witch Georgina seemed somewhat overly formal and rather stiff when speaking to him.

"Well, I was going to say Second Circle wizards are generally quite busy, but I am in fact at a stage right now where there is not much pressing on me."

This was mainly because he had only just finished the Silent Chalice competition and become a Second Circle wizard.

Locke was a little curious about her Second Circle magic pressure.

"You have become a Second Circle wizard? That quickly?"

Witch Georgina sent back, "Yes. Wizard Edgar has also become a Second Circle wizard. I only learned this from my cooperating instructor."

"After competing with Mr. Augustine, I gained a great deal. After returning to Bonifacius University, with the assistance of the academy's resources, and in combination with what I gained in the Grand Magic competition, I advanced to Second Circle wizard status through prepayment."

Locke sent back a message asking, "Prepayment?"

"That is possible? What is the principle behind that?"

After sending this message, Locke assumed this might involve secrets of Bonifacius University, so the other party might not necessarily answer.

But to his surprise, Witch Georgina replied directly.

"This is a concept from our new textile school. A magical garment is like a second skin. By weaving the warp and weft patterns of the magical garment, and using the Celestial Garment Hunters Curse, one can simulate the existence of a Second Circle wizard."

"If I myself am already very close to being a Second Circle wizard, I can use this method to weave an illusion of a Second Circle wizard."

"Of course, it is only an illusion, merely a layer of a Second Circle wizard's magical garment. But because during the Silent Chalice competition I had been a Second Circle wizard at one point, by using the Celestial Garment Hunters Curse I can, for an extremely brief period, make myself appear to truly be a Second Circle wizard."

"Of course, this is a matter of obtaining a Grand Magic through a magical garment in advance, so I still need to go back and construct my own Grand Magic afterward."

Locke more or less understood.

This was essentially buying now and paying later.

"The other party is being this forthcoming in showing me this. It must be to promote their new textile school magic."

Locke thought to himself, "No wonder they want to push for it to become a first-tier discipline."

"In this way, new textile school wizards, during the First Circle soul declining period and at the First Circle magic pressure ceiling, could potentially borrow some of the power belonging to a Second Circle wizard."

"For a special wizard like Witch Georgina, she could even borrow Second Circle power in advance and then use it to actually become a Second Circle wizard."

Locke thought, "If you first possess Second Circle power and then go on to become a Second Circle wizard, one can imagine how much the difficulty of constructing a Grand Magic would decrease."

"Although Witch Georgina is a unique case, other ordinary new textile school wizards could completely borrow even a tiny fraction of Second Circle power, and even the most minuscule amount could significantly improve their construction of Grand Magic."

Locke gave a slight nod.

This was perhaps why Bonifacius University had the confidence to push for the new textile school to become an independent first-tier discipline. It was impressive.

Locke carefully sensed the other party's magic pressure, and a tiger's eye appeared on his forehead gazing downward.

"No, something is off."

"This method has a hidden problem. I use the three-eyed pupil technique to enhance my insight and capture the flow of the other party's magic pressure. I find that her Grand Magic is fundamentally the same as during the competition, but in many fine details it is imitative, somewhat ersatz."

"Right. Using the Celestial Garment Hunters Curse to weave the existential spirituality pattern of a Second Circle wizard results in a significant deviation from Second Circle existence, with distortion present. Even if Witch Georgina had been a Second Circle wizard at one point, this would still be the case. And so this method of advance borrowing carries serious long-term consequences."

"It will lead one down the wrong path and leave behind various hidden problems."

Locke thought, "I am not sure whether the other party has noticed this. The matter is of great importance, and it would be better for me not to say anything more. Moreover, the other party has most likely already noticed, and is probably only in the middle of conducting tests right now."

Still, looking at things from this angle, the Rose Witch and Witch Yekaterina were in conflict over multiple grant projects.

And within the Rose Council's magical weaving direction, an even larger trouble had now surfaced, with a conflict arising between it and Bonifacius University, or perhaps not so much a conflict as a parting of ways.

Looking at it this way, among the seven premier wizard academies, the Rose Council was currently the most deeply entangled in disputes.

The Cloud Marsh Wetlands' institutional design valued everything by performance and welcomed free competition.

Looking at it now, this kind of competition was perhaps the mainstream state of the Cloud Marsh Wetlands.

Locke replied, "So the Celestial Garment Hunters Curse can be used this way too. This is truly eye-opening."

Witch Georgina sent back, "Not at all. I heard that you recently used your Moon of Evolution to simulate an Abyssal Moon and killed a Second Circle black wizard."

"And established the reputation of the Eye Demon Wizard."

"Being able to personally kill a Second Circle black wizard is something I find both thrilling and admirable. My only regret is that the one who killed the black wizard was not me. Black wizards are something everyone should kill on sight. Their living harms the world, their dying also harms the world. Alive or dead, they are a scourge."

Witch Georgina sent him another message.

"I extend my gratitude to the Eye Demon Wizard for ridding the world of a menace."

Locke almost thought he was chatting with a holy mage.

No.

Even the holy mage wizards at Golden Crown Mountain were not this fanatical.

Witch Georgina sent another message.

"I came to find you in order to pass along a cooperation invitation from a key laboratory director at Bonifacius University, a sun ring wizard."

Locke asked curiously, "Bonifacius University also has an interest in wizard shoes?"

Witch Georgina replied quickly. "Of course not. The cooperation is not about that, but something else. Our new textile school is currently advancing rapidly, changing at every moment, and it is precisely because of this constant change that it progresses. Weaving technology is advancing day by day."

"But we also need more new materials. And we believe the new textile school should not fall into the trap of the alchemy school again, and so we need to rely more on natural materials, namely your magical plants. We want to reach some form of cooperation with outstanding breeders like yourselves, entrusting you to create for us the magical plants needed to produce specific silk threads."

"Lotus silk, mulberry silk, wood silk, catkin, manila hemp... all of these can become threads."

"If Mr. Augustine is interested, we can have a deeper conversation. The price is negotiable. We will offer satisfactory compensation, and you will gain the friendship of the wizards in the new textile school."

A flash of interest passed through Locke's eyes. First and foremost, he certainly could always use more money. And second, he was interested in the new textile school's Celestial Garment Hunters Curse.

From his perspective, it was essentially an automatic weak-point-finding curse. If it could be used in magical plant research and development, it could completely be used to test the weaknesses of his magical plants and spell models.

He could produce very refined results in an extremely short amount of time.

If this kind of magic could assist him, completing Witch Yekaterina's tasks and producing three notable Second Circle wizard shoe styles, would that not be countless times simpler?

Moreover, although he had just received sixteen hundred magic crystal cards, he was still short on money. A single plane conquest could consume all of that money and still not be enough.

Locke sent a message.

"Show me the task requirements that your sun ring wizard laboratory director has put forward."

Witch Georgina replied, "Mr. Augustine, you jest. We are all Second Circle wizards, only collaborators. There is no such thing as task requirements between us."