Wizards: Starting with Synthetic Gems

Chapter 135 Zack's Feedback on the Centralized Procurement

Witch's Kitchen.

In private room number 3, Zack ordered two servings of tricolor salted steak, one serving of chilled manatee liver, two servings of lava spirits, and one dish made with potato-like magical plants.

Locke discovered that Zack had a membership badge similar to the Platinum Star of Lijin Secrets, a Witch's Kitchen badge, which was awarded by the Witch's Kitchen as a gourmet badge.

The badge is shaped like a curled-up tongue.

Having a Gourmet Badge grants a 50% discount on all purchases at the Witch's Kitchen. However, it seems that a significant amount of spending at the Witch's Kitchen is required to earn this membership badge.

Locke guessed that Zack, as one of the heads of the academy's purchasing department, obviously frequently brought his business partners to the Witch's Kitchen.

Zack was clearly very familiar with the seasoners in the Witch's Kitchen. Whenever he arrived, the most skilled seasoners in the Witch's Kitchen would personally come out to prepare food for them.

At the dinner table, Zack became even more enthusiastic towards Locke. "Locke, to be honest, at first, purchasing your magical plants put a lot of pressure on me."

"Because this is a gamble."

Locke raised an eyebrow curiously. "It has my teacher's certification."

Zack explained, "Yes, the requirements for magical plants are much more lenient than those for magical potions. They don't require human trials; a simple test is all it takes to issue a certification. However, performance testing is often limited to only a few aspects, which is very restrictive."

"Many magical plants only reveal their weaknesses when used in large quantities. Many breeders want their creations to be included in the academy's procurement, partly to make money and partly to better test their magical plants."

Zack explained, “For example, I once purchased a slightly modified version of the Bellflower magic plant from a breeder. On paper, it performed slightly better than the traditional Bellflower, but I encountered problems when I distributed it to the combat wizards at the academy.”

Zack raised his index finger and gestured in the air, saying, "That variety of Bellflower Magic Plant is very unstable. Its performance in a stable state looks excellent, so it ranks at the top in the certification tests conducted by advanced breeders. But in battle, once it enters an unstable state, its power will be greatly reduced."

Zach's expression wasn't good. "That mistake almost wiped out my entire fortune."

"But there's nothing we can do about it. Potions are meant to be ingested, so the approval process is very strict. But for external things like magical plants, the approval process is definitely not as strict."

"There's no need for that. After all, problems can only be found by large-scale real-world testing of such things; simple testing is very limited."

Zack held up a glass of lava liquor and said to Locke, "So when I was purchasing your Crystal Palm Fire Lotus, even though I saw the excellent performance on the certificate, I was still a little apprehensive."

"It's just that the power of your Palm Fire Lotus has increased by two times, and I really can't see any problems with it, so I risked signing that order worth 20,000 magic stones with you."

“But the result was unexpected.” Zack laughed. “Just three days ago, a group of battle wizards from the academy engaged in a fierce battle with the Blood Curse Court in the capital of a mortal country outside the territory of Lilith’s Hut.”

"That country is a vassal state of the Blood Curse Tribunal. In its capital, there is a Blood Curse Tribunal research institute for curse techniques. Many evil curses were developed there and used in the war against us."

"In response, we decided to implement the Scorched Earth Bombing strategy against that cursed sorcerer's research institute, aiming to destroy the place beyond recognition. However, due to a shortage of Palm Fire Lotus at the time, they accidentally used your Crystal Palm Fire Lotus."

"According to the existing unspoken rules, a new type of magical plant like yours would not be given priority in important battles. So this is a coincidence."

Zack said, "But the combat test results were very good. This new variety of Palm Fire Lotus can increase the actual power of the Scorched Earth Bomb to between 0.6 and 0.7 rings."

"A thousand scorched earth bombs have the effect of at least two thousand scorched earth bombs. Moreover, the power of a single scorched earth bomb is much greater, making it even more difficult for the vampires of the Blood Curse Court to survive such an explosion."

"Not only that, it actually produced a special effect in actual combat."

Zack handed Locke a document, a set of pictures quickly drawn using magical techniques, almost identical to the real scene.

This is the work of a branch of the illusion school—the sketch artist. Locke flipped through the photographs one after another and discovered that the land of the enemy capital, which had been bombed by scorched earth bombs, was not the charred black described in the book, but rather a scene of rolling lava.

In other words, part of the enemy country's capital was directly blasted into a small-scale sea of ​​lava.

The scalding lava continued to flow across the ground, inflicting further damage on the surviving ground defenses of the Blood Curse Court and causing concentrated destruction to the rune arrays of various cursed magical traps hidden within the ground.

Locke's eyes became serious, because this was a single Crystal Palm Fire Lotus, which could not achieve the same effect when combined with the Scorched Earth Bomb.

"After a scorched earth bomb explodes, the standard change to the land is that it turns black. Even a large-scale concentrated explosion would at most turn the land black. This kind of spell result cannot be the designed effect of the scorched earth bomb spell model."

Locke was a wizard specializing in life magic and botany, as well as a breeder and potion master, which immediately made him think of another possibility.

"Wait a minute, the biggest difference between the Crystal Palm Fire Lotus and the ordinary Palm Fire Lotus is that the Crystal Palm Fire Lotus has exhibited the phenomenon of [wood element fiber crystallization]."

"Ordinary palm-shaped fire lotuses only contain wood element fibers. Crystallized wood element fibers can hold more individual fire elements. Furthermore, crystallized wood element fibers are extremely hard. Even if an explosion occurs, they are not ignited instantly, but rather shattered into countless small fragments that scatter in mid-air."

"So during the large-scale concentrated explosions..." Locke then realized that he had overlooked a very important thing.

"We can't just consider the burst of fire element stored inside a single palm fire lotus, or the energy conversion produced when wood element is ignited by fire element."

"We also need to consider the crystallized wood element fibers inside those thousand palm-shaped fire lotuses. Even if those wood element crystal fibers were torn apart by the explosion..."

"However, because the concentration is too high in a short period of time, if they still try to gather the flame energy together, a compression effect will be formed, which causes the flame energy to be gathered after the first explosion while maintaining the explosive power, forming molten lava."

Locke's eyes brightened slightly. "That magma isn't ordinary magma; it's the result of highly concentrated magical flames, which will inflict a second, fatal blow on the enemy's territory."

"It is at least very advantageous in sweeping up survivors and destroying enemy magical traps hidden underground."

Locke pondered. "However, if that's the case, the Scorched Earth Bomb won't be able to fully utilize the Crystal Palm Fire Lotus's power. The academy needs to develop a new spell model to complement the Crystal Palm Fire Lotus."

"I think now that we have a clear direction, development should be quite simple."

Zack couldn't help but applaud, "As expected of the developer of the Crystal Palm Fire Lotus, you figured it out as soon as I mentioned it. Afterwards, the first-class apprentices of fire magic and plant magic from the academic school of energy manipulation analyzed it together and gave similar opinions."

"They call this phenomenon the 'Lava Conduit' phenomenon. A series of follow-up spell development plans have also been arranged around the special structure of the Crystal Palm Fire Lotus you developed, the crystallized structure of wood element fibers."

Zack briefly stated, "It's basically about using your creation as a platform for developing magic trick models."

"In the future, the academy will develop a series of magic tricks based on this work, just like how Magic Vines has Vine Hand, Vine Frenzy, and other series of spells."

"It's a pity that the committees of those breeding competitions couldn't know this, otherwise you might not have been fifth in the preliminaries, you might have been first."

Locke humbly replied, "It was just luck."

I really didn't expect this to happen.

It seems that sometimes it is indeed necessary to provide a large number of magical plants to the wizards in the war department, so that they might discover many things that cannot be discovered when a person uses magic alone.

Zack thought for a moment, "By the way, the higher-ups at the academy also want you to join this development team. Of course, the decision is yours."

"With your help, our work here should progress quickly. What do you think?"

(End of this chapter)