Wizards: Starting with Synthetic Gems

Chapter 436 Discussion by the Yunze Cup Committee

Three days later.

In the White Dragon Tower, in the Plutarch family's communal potion room, Locke mixed the potion liquids from two crucibles together. The two dark potion liquids did not immediately become clear as described in the spellbook; instead, a vortex appeared.

With a 'bang,' the liquid inside the crucible splashed everywhere. Every drop of the liquid was highly corrosive, causing pits to appear on all four walls of the room. Many of the precision instruments were protected by magic applied by the School of Defense, and a magical barrier was immediately deployed to protect them.

Locke himself activated a permanent defensive force field, the Life Field, which blocked all the corrosive liquids in front of him.

Locke raised an eyebrow. "It failed again. The concoction of the Mind Control potion is more difficult than I thought. It must be that the heat was not handled properly, which caused a problem with the potion's properties. During the fusion reaction of the natural magical components, a corrosive change occurred."

Locke used the technique of compressing a permanent defensive force field to cover his fingers with a layer of light green life force field crystal wall system. Then he pinched the black corrosive liquid and observed it for a while. "This liquid is not bad as an offensive weapon."

"This corrosive liquid that I accidentally concocted actually has a certain corrosive effect on the magical barriers of the defensive school."

"Many potions are created from failed attempts at refining. Continuing to study them might be a good research topic, but unfortunately I don't have the extra energy lately."

Locke took out the Time Crystal Potion Bottle specially made by the alchemist, filled it with the black liquid, filling three bottles in total, and casually put them into his synthesis cube to see if he could synthesize something special.

After doing all this, Locke pondered for a moment and took out a set of the Brain Control Potion he had purchased from the Astral Ring. The core ingredients were only available from the market after Alicia informed him, and it cost him a total of 31,000 magic stones.

Because of the Augustin series of magical potions and magical plants in the southeastern corner of the region, which contribute 60,000 magical stones to him every month, he has accumulated 300,000 magical stones in the six months he has been in this land of six towers.

This is mainly because I don't have many expenses while I'm here.

I have a large amount of project funds on hand, which covers my daily living expenses, including food, clothing, housing, transportation, and material costs.

Alicia would often give him potion-making materials, so apart from the fees from the fairy family bank and the potion materials he had previously purchased separately for the Mind Control, he had no other expenses.

That's how you save money.

Open source and cost reduction are both important. Open source is very important, but cost reduction is also a major part of saving money.

At this moment, Locke reached out with his left hand, and a primordial flame fell into his palm. He placed the primordial flame under a crucible and began skillfully processing various materials. Ice elemental magic flames purified residual spiritual energy, wood elemental magic flames extracted natural magical structural components, and lightning elemental magic flames extracted difficult-to-extract components...

A primordial fire undergoes multiple transformations in a very short period of time.

Finally, two hours later, Locke mixed the liquids from the two crucibles together. The liquids in the crucibles shimmered with a crystalline spiritual light and became translucent, with crystalline bubbles rising from them.

Locke finally used the Primal Fire to harmonize the potion's properties and poured it into a Chrono Crystal potion bottle.

The potion quickly stabilized, and within the liquid inside, a phantom, spiritual brain was faintly visible.

This indicates that this is indeed a successful mastermind control potion.

Locke drank the potion in one gulp, and immediately his original psionic pool expanded rapidly, growing in size to support a much larger distributed psionic network.

Locke's virtual psionic organ at the back of his head became more complex, with dozens of virtual psionic tentacles constantly spreading outwards, while also binding him more tightly to his various magical plants, more than doubling the tightness compared to before.

A phantom forest spirit emanated from behind Locke.

One person is a forest!
"The Mind Control Elixir is indeed very important to me, and it greatly benefits my strength. It's just a pity that I can't refine the Mind Control Elixir without using the Primal Flame. And the Feathered Serpent Pavilion's test requires me to not use the Primal Flame."

Locke said, "But that doesn't stop me from successfully refining the Mastermind Control Potion first, and then using this successful experience to improve my potion-refining skills."

"With Alicia's help and improvement, I believe I will soon be able to complete the second round of tests at Quetzalcoatl."

After taking the Mind Control Potion, Locke's psionic pool expanded again, now roughly equivalent to the psionic energy of a liquefied wizard. It's conceivable that if he continues to take the Mind Control Potion regularly, he can push the total psionic energy in his pool to the level of a first-ring crystallized wizard.

Unfortunately, apart from using the plant mimicry technique: Green Dragon to gain Dragon Might, he had not learned any other mental magic and was unable to manifest the power of this spiritual energy.

If this kind of psionic energy is simply used to directly strike others, its power is limited, and its practicality is very low in battles of the same level.

"After six months of stabilization and my daily maintenance, my Forest Sanctuary has once again reached a level where it can transplant first-ring magical plants and increase the total biomass," Locke said. "I can go to White Dragon Street to purchase some materials, and the research group also needs to buy a new batch of materials."

……

The beautiful Yunze Wetland is picturesque, with lush green mountains and clear waters, a stunning environment that soothes the soul.

At this time, the Cloud Cup Tournament Membership Committee of Bonifacius University, after three days of reviewing twenty project applications from various wizarding lands, finally announced its results.

Wizard Trix listed the results in a table and showed it to the wizards. “Everyone,” he said, “if there are no objections, we will announce the competition results according to this table. The applications from the various wizarding regions that were eliminated were also good, but this year’s Cloudze Cup was exceptionally competitive, with outstanding geniuses emerging one after another, so we had to reluctantly reject them.” The wizards in the office were all studying the table, nodding in approval. They thought the evaluation criteria for this competition were quite objective; not only were their own wizarding mentors from Boniface University serving as judges, but four other top wizarding organizations from Cloudze Wetlands had also been invited to serve as judges.

Therefore, the outcome of this competition was not entirely controlled by the wizards in their office.

They are only responsible for maintaining the operation of the entire competition and managing the expenditure of the competition fund. The specific judges are selected by a comprehensive evaluation from themselves, as well as invited breeders from five universities, including Bonifacio University, and even those second-tier breeders.

A wizard looked at the rankings on the table and frowned, saying, "The first place goes to the 'Tree of Life' project led by Edgar David, the wizard from Sunshadow Peninsula. He traces the existence of this myth, and he himself successfully traced the 'Tree of War.' It's perfectly normal for him to be ranked first."

"If he really succeeds in tracing the origin of the Ancient Tree of Life in the Yunze Cup, even if he only succeeds in tracing a part of the Ancient Tree of Life Tree People and wins first place in the Yunze Cup finals, it can even increase the prestige of our Yunze Cup competition itself."

"The second place goes to Diana the Witch from our Yunze Wetland. Her proposed 'Luna Laurel Tree' project is also quite good. She has a lot of research on tree-people related projects, especially in the lunar tree-people family."

"The witch Diana undoubtedly had amazing insight. She put forward a unique viewpoint at the first crystallization stage and proposed that the two moons in the sky must be better than the things of the ancients. Therefore, she wanted to compete with the wizard Edgar in the field of tree people and use the tree people with the two moons in the sky to compete with the ancient tree people of the Tree of Life."

"As for the third place, it is the wizard Yennefer who came from the Spiral Basin. His project, the Mushroom King, is also quite good. The Mushroom King proposes the idea that it is both one and ten thousand, believing that one Mushroom King is equivalent to a mushroom garden."

"The top three are well-deserved. It's like a battle of gods, bringing our Yunze Cup to a height that no previous edition could reach. But this time, the Six Towers project was also approved and ranked sixth?"

"The seventh-ranked wizard, who is even a first-ring liquefaction wizard who came out of the laboratory of a second-ring wizard, is also exceptionally talented."

"The eighth, ninth, and tenth places are all filled by the most outstanding breeding teams from various wizarding territories. How could the project application submitted by the wizards from the Six Towers be ranked sixth? How could they be sixth?"

Not only the wizard who raised the objection, but all the other wizards in the office were also completely baffled.

Wizard Trix looked helpless and said to the wizard, "Wizard Nara, I'm just as baffled as you are, but there's nothing I can do. This is a decision made collectively by the senior wizarding instructors of the five wizarding universities. Unless you can point out a real flaw, some obvious problem, you can't change this result."

"Moreover, if you've seen their project proposals, you'll find that although their formatting is messy and their proposals are poorly written, everything else is perfect, from the preliminary experimental data to the project content."

The Nara wizard retrieved the project application submitted by the Six Towers Lands. After reading it, he questioned, "This project application is ridiculous. Isn't the goal too ambitious? A magical plant targeting a permanent defensive force field? Even in our Cloud Marsh Wetland laboratory, we might not be able to create that. Does the Six Towers Lands have the resources to do so?"

Wizard Trix said, "If it weren't for the fact that the second-ring wizards above considered that their team lacked past high-quality articles and projects to back them up, and that there were no hats or solid teaching positions in the team, so they suspected that this project proposal was just an exaggeration to improve their grades, they wouldn't be in sixth place now, but in first place."

"But putting that aside, you have to admit that the project proposal was very well written. At least it gave us a glimpse of hope that some of it could be completed."

Wizard Trix said, "The competition in Yunze Wetlands is fair, and their background should not affect the judging results. Therefore, their ranking has simply been lowered to sixth place."

"But we still let them pass."

"Even so, it has sparked debate among second-ring wizards. Some second-ring wizard teachers even believe that this project application should at least be ranked second or third."

"In short, this project application is indeed very controversial. If it hadn't come from a place like the Land of Six Towers, it would have ranked at least in the top three."

The Nara wizard opened his mouth, not expecting that such a project application from the Land of Six Towers would actually cause a debate among the second-circle wizards of Yunze Wetland.

Nara the wizard said, "Alright. We'll see what they're made of once we take them out for a spin. Let them pass the first round of the main competition. The second round requires them to create actual works, not just 'perfect' plans on paper."

"No matter how well the plan is made, it's meaningless if you can't produce a physical product."

As soon as Nara said this, many of the wizards in the office nodded in agreement.

Similar to the prejudices of Nara wizards, many wizards have always looked down on the research group from the Land of Six Towers, and are very skeptical about whether they can produce the finished product planned in the project proposal.

"Hmm... the equipment at the Six Towers is indeed a bit rudimentary. Hopefully, this team can overcome this difficulty and bring us amazing achievements." Wizard Trix frowned, his attitude subtly changing after reading the project proposal, unlike before.

Essentially, he is a designer who is extremely passionate about magical plant weapons.

He enjoys seeing good works appear before him.

He didn't have the talent to create excellent magical plant works, so he pinned his hopes on those talented contestants.

Although Wizard Trix had some doubts about whether the Six Towers could actually realize the project proposal, at this moment, deep down he felt not doubt, but rather a hope that the project proposal could really be completed.

Complete at least a part of it.

This magical plant that can unite everyone to form a permanent defensive force field—once it's completed, even if only a part of it is finished, it will surely be amazing.

Wizard Trix stamped his magic seal on the project application submitted by Locke's team, which read: 'Approved, grant of 50 magic stones.'

(End of this chapter)