Wizard: Starting With Synthesized Gems

In the Silent Plane, Locke, the girl priestess, and the gunfighter arrived at an abandoned factory. Inside the factory were over a hundred disciples.

At the same time, outside the factory, inspectors were approaching on patrol. Every one of these inspectors had a black band tied around their right arm and all carried a pistol.

Locke looked toward his gunfighter, who said quietly, "Those are ordinary inspectors with no extraordinary abilities. Inspectors serve the emperor and represent the highest position that any ordinary person can obtain through examination."

"Every inspector must pass a rigorous examination process, selected as the best of the best, before they can become an inspector. They are then responsible for managing several districts within the city."

"I imagine the emperor's department has ordered them to sweep the city, and they have come to check on us as part of a routine inspection."

Locke's face held a faint smile, and he said nothing.

The girl priestess tensed. "Deity, what should we do?"

The gunfighter whistled, raised his two guns, and said, "I'll go out and take them down."

"They are only ordinary lackeys of the emperor. Killing them will not be any trouble."

Locke glanced at the gunfighter. This gunfighter possessed a degree of psychic force, roughly at the level of the Second Tier wizard apprentice stage in the psychic school's psi-force magic sub-branch.

If this was innate, then by the standards of this world's native force system, he should be considered a kind of genius.

But the force system of this world had been suppressed by the emperor, so ordinary people believed this world had no extraordinary abilities whatsoever and had no access to that information.

Whether or not they had talent, it no longer mattered.

Locke shook his head. "There is no need. This emperor is truly cunning. He is far too self-serving."

The gunfighter looked at Locke with puzzlement.

Locke said, "The emperor's department giving the order to search everywhere is another attempt to trick us. Once these men are killed, their colleagues will know at once, and the emperor will be able to confirm our approximate location."

"As for myself, I do not particularly care. This body can be at a place a thousand miles away in the blink of an eye. It comes without a shadow and leaves without a trace. The problem is on your end."

Locke looked at the girl priestess, then back at the gunfighter. "Even you could not travel on foot from one city to another in a single day, could you?"

The gunfighter put away his two guns. "Impossible. Although I am a gunfighter, I am still flesh and blood, and moreover, this world's night cannot be ventured into."

"Leave the light source, and death becomes likely."

"But we can take the train."

Locke said, "Precisely. So you, the priestess, and everyone here cannot leave on foot within a single day. But as long as they confirm which city we are in, the other side will seal off all nearby trains. Your world's mode of transportation depends heavily on trains. As long as the inspectors seal the trains, they can seal your movement."

The gunfighter gripped the guns at his waist with complete self-assurance. "So what if that happens? As long as I have these two old friends of mine, even a hundred inspectors standing in front of me would not be enough to stop me from wiping them out."

Locke looked at him and said, "That was before. These inspectors will not be ordinary people for much longer."

Locke now understood what the actual gameplay of this competition was.

On the surface, this was a war between four Second Circle wizards and one Second Circle-level native, along with a world-ending apocalypse that was destined to arrive.

But in truth, in order to constrain the wizards, this competition had given them a significant vulnerability, namely the summoner.

'Before my true body descends, if something happens to my summoner, the interruption of the sacrificial magic will force my holy avatar to disappear.'

Locke thought with alertness, "The single greatest enemy of all four competitors right now is not each other, but the native emperor of this world."

"Although as time passes, the emperor's power and the power of the world's apocalypse will inevitably move in opposite directions. But at this moment, at the very start of this game, he is the most powerful presence on the entire board."

"Therefore, in the early phase of the competition, all four competitors will inevitably move against the emperor without any need to coordinate."

Outside the abandoned factory, an inspector carrying a pistol drew close, saying, "This rundown place, the door's already shut? These are footprints..."

"There are people here! Could the emperor's traitors that His Imperial Majesty spoke of be in here!"

The inspector wore a double-breasted crimson wool overcoat, a black ammunition belt slung diagonally across the left shoulder, a nickel-plated military saber hanging from the right hip, and white trousers with twelve matte copper studs on each leg.

A gleam of excitement flashed in the inspector's eyes. He had gone through far too many examinations to become an inspector, but having no connections had left him stuck as the most ordinary kind of inspector.

But if he could capture these traitors now, he could become an official, a high official.

And all those years of effort would not have been in vain.

A fiery light flashed in the young inspector's eyes as he raised his pistol. The ten ordinary soldiers behind him immediately raised their guns as well.

The inspector barked sharply, "Traitors inside, come out."

A harsh look crossed the inspector's face. "Anyone who defies the emperor deserves to die immediately. Come out."

He kicked the abandoned factory's door open with one foot, and found the interior completely empty.

The inspector paused, and then heard the sound of dozens of people fleeing. He snapped his head around and caught sight of a group of disciples running away from an entirely different direction.

The inspector, seeing this, felt as though his chance at glory and promotion was right before his eyes. "After them."

He sprinted back to a steam motorcycle parked a hundred meters away, mounted it, and set off in pursuit of the fleeing disciples.

"I am going to become an official. I am going to become an official. I am never going to be a mere inspector again. I want to go to the Inspector's Bureau and be a high official."

"I am clearly the best examination taker in the world. How can someone like me not become a high official and enjoy the finest things this world has to offer?"

Inspector Charles's eyes flashed with extreme hunger for power, and this hunger triggered a spiritual fluctuation within him. He found himself possessed of an ability that allowed him to see, with the naked eye, every fine detail of everything in motion around him even at high speed.

In truth, it was by relying on this special talent that he had excelled in the combat portion of the inspector examinations.

And this talent, for reasons unknown, had suddenly become more pronounced today.

Locke's holy avatar walked alongside him. Because the magic pressure had formed a magic pressure wall, the man could not see him.

Besides which, the steam vehicle's speed was nothing exceptional, and so Locke walked alongside him with both hands clasped behind his back, taking an unhurried stroll yet always maintaining an exactly matching pace with the man riding the motorcycle.

Watching this scene, Locke thought, "This person clearly has a strong psychic talent. By all rights, he should be extremely well suited to this world's native force system. Just like that gunfighter, and yet he is wholly consumed by the desire for official rank."

"I see. The emperor does not only forbid the spread of knowledge related to the force system. He also uses an inspector examination to lure every intelligent and naturally gifted person in this world and drown them in the pursuit of the power that comes with being an inspector."

"Even the most ordinary of small inspectors is immersed in the pursuit of power. This inspector's body is rich in planar force. If the emperor had not used the inspector examination to capture his attention and shape his values from childhood, this person, as someone specially favored by this world, should have been capable of accomplishing something meaningful, something that bridged the past and future of this world's civilization."

Locke shook his head. "A tyrant who stands alone."

"A one-man civilization? You have actually engraved this into the world's laws, intending to use your own philosophy to replace the natural laws of the world."

Locke laughed coldly. "Ignorant and without self-awareness."

The workings of a world were incomprehensibly complex. Even a Third Circle wizard would not dare claim to fully see through a small-scale plane.

Even the smallest error in any of this would bring untold suffering to the living.

Of course, a native emperor like this clearly cared nothing for others, only for himself.

Beyond himself, he cared for no one, and so what would come of these actions was something he was entirely indifferent to. He cared only about his own power and authority.

Locke returned in an instant to the factory. A full moon rose inside the factory.

His Lunar Mirror could reflect all things, so just now it had projected images of the disciples for the inspectors to see, but the direction in the mirror was reversed.

So the direction the inspectors were chasing was also reversed.

The hundred-or-so disciples from this opening gift had already slipped back through the factory's side door.

Locke smiled at the gunfighter. "Your emperor has already loosened his suppression of this world in order to strengthen the inspectors. Very soon, all these inspectors will become wielders of extraordinary abilities. The only question is, what exactly is this world's native force system?"

A look of awkwardness flashed in the gunfighter's eyes. "According to what that girl said, everyone in this world can master extraordinary abilities through study and training. But for thirty-five years, I have believed this was a power I was simply born with."

He raised one of his guns and suddenly fired at Locke, but the bullet curved mid-flight and struck a rusted iron window frame fifty meters away.

The iron bar was snapped clean off.

The gunfighter said, "This is my extraordinary ability, the art of gunfighting. I am a gunfighter of reasonably decent skill, so I can make bullets curve. I can also fire two shots in rapid succession and use one bullet striking the tail of another to redirect a bullet mid-flight."

"I can also use my willpower to accelerate a bullet."

"In addition, after years of training, no one can match the speed at which I draw."

Locke gave a slight nod. As a Second Circle wizard, after only a moment's thought, he directly understood why the other could do all of these things.

It was nothing more than the rudimentary application of an innate psychic talent, applied very crudely, practically in its instinctual form.

He already had magic pressure at the Second Tier wizard apprentice level.

Yet he could only do what a Third Tier wizard apprentice in the psychic school could easily accomplish.

That was sufficient evidence of just how appallingly low his utilization rate of his own power was.

The priestess also confessed to Locke with some embarrassment, "Everything I know, you told me yourself. So I am sorry, I also do not know what this world's force system was originally supposed to be like, or what it should be called."

Locke said, "That is an insignificant matter."

The priestess asked, "Deity, what should we do now?"

Locke thought for a moment.

The construction of his Grand Magic required a large quantity of magical plants. Plants that evolved under the illumination of his Moon of Evolution would provide him with large amounts of energy feedback.

Not only evolution and transformation, but any benefit arising from contact with his Moon of Evolution was equivalent to completing an ecological covenant with it.

A botanical wizard's Grand Magic would have an ecological community uniquely its own.

And his Moon of Evolution could receive large quantities of energy feedback from plants.

So he needed a large number of plants.

But right now there were two problems. First, the plants he had seen throughout this world on the way here were genuinely very few.

The entire city resembled a mechanical city. There was not a trace of greenery, not a single wild creature.

The ground was all concrete and steel plating. There was not even soil or insects.

Second, he could raise his moon high into the sky, and this world would have two moons.

That way, he could directly control all the plants in this entire world.

But the problem was that the native emperor of this world was currently the most powerful force on the map. So he could not do this.

Not only that, raising the moon to illuminate even a single city would immediately draw the emperor's full attention, and the emperor would focus fire on him and eliminate him from the Silent Plane first.

The girl priestess asked, "Deity, shall we go to this world's ecological preserve? You told me in a dream that plants can bring out your power. We can go to this world's ecological preserve. There are primeval forests there."

Locke looked at the girl priestess.

So that was it. He had thought this world would be unfavorable to his Grand Magic.

But it turned out this world did have regions suited to his Grand Magic. It was simply that this completely plant-free industrial city was not one of them.

'Following the normal procedure, I should go along with this girl priestess, evading the inspectors' pursuit along the way, and make for this world's forest preserve. Then I would obtain the primeval forest there as the ecological community belonging to me.'

Locke's thoughts shifted, and the surviving percentage of forest preserves in this world appeared in his mind, '1.3%.'

'...' Locke was silent. 'That is far too little. Normally it should be somewhere around fifteen to seventeen percent. It seems this world had very few plants to begin with.'

'Going to the forest preserve should be the first destination for a botanical wizard. Get a wave of forest first to increase my ecological community.'

'Then, probably recruit people in this world and rapidly cultivate plants. That should be the general approach.'

Locke thought, 'But that would be too slow.'

'And there is another botanical wizard in this world, Edgar. Taking that approach would mean competing with him for ecological community as well.'

Locke had previously read through the competition materials and naturally had some understanding. He had known in advance that this world had few plants. He simply had not imagined it would be this few.

'I will stick to the plan I had previously. I will use that plan to create my ecological community.'

'So not only will I not go to the forest preserve, I am going to the busiest district in the city.'

Locke asked, "Where in this world is the population most densely concentrated?"

The gunfighter said, "The imperial capital, obviously."

Locke curved the corner of his mouth. "Then let us go to the imperial capital."

Below the Silent Throne, in the spectator stands, a whole crowd of wizards looked completely dumbfounded.

Witch Camilla almost rose to her feet in indignation. "Is this not a botanical wizard? Instead of going to find the forest preserve, why is he going to the imperial capital?"

"Are there any plants there? What is he trying to do?"

"In this competition there are three competitors I cannot understand at all."

Indeed, Edgar, also a botanical wizard, had not gone to the forest preserve either.

He had gone straight to the site and seized the Inspector's Bureau, raising the banner of resistance against the empire and calling on everyone in the empire who wished to resist to rise up together.

This move had left all the wizard spectators thoroughly bewildered.

The opening of this year's Silent Chalice Competition was undoubtedly the strangest in a century.

The magical weaver was reducing her own magic pressure to weave clothes for mortals.

The botanical wizards were not going to the forest preserve. One was heading for the most densely populated, most industrially advanced city, and the other was even more extreme, simply staging a rebellion on the spot and going head-to-head with the native political power of that world.

So the only one behaving normally was, of all people, the Storm Tower's Wizard Smith.

He was the only one who was seriously reaching out to the native world's potential allies.

This too was a fairly common opening in past Silent Chalice Competitions, because it was useful and therefore classic and common.