Wizards: Starting with Synthetic Gems

Chapter 443 Grafting of Animals and Plants
The next day, after completing a day of meditation, Locke returned to the special-grade laboratory to research materials and use the magic resonance cultivation method to mutate the chain magic vine in a targeted manner, so that the chain magic vine could gain further abilities.

During this process, Locke answered several students' questions. Locke said to Leopold, a student who had just obtained his formal breeder certificate this year and whose mana had just reached 800 last month and who was currently a capable assistant in the laboratory, "Your question about using grafting to breed animals and plants is indeed meaningful, because this is what breeders at the first stage need to study."

“Using a first-level grafting healing technique, a portion of an animal’s bloodline essence can be grafted onto a plant to form a special plant.”

Locke said, "But such side effects would also be significant."

Locke pondered for a moment and decided to demonstrate for Leopold. Leopold's mana fluctuation had reached 800, making him very capable and the group leader among the wizard apprentices.

Locke reached out, and an apprentice-level subspecies of Chain Vine landed in his hand. At the same time, Locke took out a glass bottle containing the essence of the Tarantula bloodline from his Astral Ring.

Locke then severed the subspecies of demonic vine, opened the glass bottle containing the tarantula's essence, and grafted the two together, while simultaneously using a first-level grafting healing spell.

Leopold stared in astonishment at the scene. He hadn't expected that a first-level grafting healing technique could achieve such a feat.

Soon, the subspecies of demonic vine absorbed the essence of the wolf spider, and the entire vine underwent some changes in its shape.

When Locke released the subspecies of the magic vine, the vine turned around and attacked Leopold, who was standing to the side. The magic vine, which had been enhanced by the tarantula, was so fast that Leopold could not react at all. Before he could even utter any defensive spells, the magic vine was already in front of him, about to pierce a hole in his forehead.

Leopold turned pale with fright, but the next moment, Locke reached out his left hand, grabbed the magic vine, and squeezed it slightly, causing the entire magic vine to explode.

Leopold gasped for breath. "Professor Augustine, that demonic plant... it's gone berserk... it's gone berserk..."

Locke nodded slightly. "The bloodline essence of magical creatures is too different for magical plants. Even if grafting is used to heal them, it is usually more difficult than grafting between plants."

"Moreover, when magical plants combine with bloodline essence, they are prone to going berserk. This is because bloodline essence contains several special factors that plant essence does not have. These factors are originally used to stabilize the body of magical creatures and to handle the rapidly changing magical energy. Magical plants, which remain relatively still, do not need those special factors. However, once the two are grafted, the magical plant gains those special factors and will go berserk as just mentioned."

“Once a demonic plant goes berserk, it often unleashes power it never had before,” Locke said. “But it also means that this demonic plant is leading itself and everything around it toward destruction.”

Leopold asked doubtfully, "But Instructor Barbara and Instructor Montgomery are still grafting magical creatures onto magical plants..."

Locke nodded and said, "Sometimes, grafting magical plants with magical creatures can yield unexpected results in order to solve difficult problems. But this requires extensive grafting experience, and Barbara is also a bloodline wizard. With her guidance, Montgomery was able to perform this kind of grafting."

"Alright, Leopold, that concludes the answers to your questions for today."

Leopold bowed to Locke. "Thank you for your guidance, Professor Locke. Thanks to your instruction, I have a better understanding of grafting techniques, and I hope I can help our research group in the future."

Locke nodded.

Leopold was also a commoner wizard. Before joining his own research group, he had been writing for several first-class wizard apprentices from the Plutarch family.

I heard he even ghostwrote articles for George Plutarch.

He stopped such activities after joining his research group.

However, after Leopold's magic power reached 800, his advancement potion went to his original wizard mentor, since Locke did not hold a teaching position and was not his true wizard mentor.

Leopold works within his own group and has not done any work in his former mentor's group.

The problem is, if he wants to obtain the advancement potion, or even just the hope of obtaining it, he needs to be a slave to his original wizard mentor; otherwise, he will never be able to get the advancement potion.

Locke didn't know what Leopold was thinking. Ever since he reached 800 mana, he hadn't been meditating much these past few days. Instead, he had been working diligently in his group and hadn't been in a hurry to advance his potion level at all.

Leopold bowed to Locke and said, "Professor Locke, I have finished my experiment for today and I would like to go back to my dormitory to look up some information."

Locke nodded. "Yes, that's fine. It's up to you."

"Remember to compile a list of the information on the subspecies of magical plants that our group has recently produced and send it to all the first-ring wizards, including me."

“Yes, Professor Locke.” Leopold bowed again and left.

Locke looked up at Leopold's departing figure, frowning slightly. A student like Leopold, if he were in an outside wizarding land, would have already obtained the potion for advancement, and their wizarding mentors would urge him to advance to the first level of wizarding as soon as possible.

Every wizarding mentor benefits greatly from teaching a formal wizarding student.

It's not just the implicit benefits of networking; you'll also gain reputation, prestige, application resources, and more student slots.

Moreover, the White Wizard Association would give special rewards for each formal wizard they trained. These rewards were all tied to the teaching position. As long as the system was still in effect, wizard instructors would hope to have more formal wizard students under their tutelage.

However, the reward system in the Six Towers Land has completely collapsed and is now entirely controlled by family wizards. Naturally, they no longer care whether their students can become formal wizards.

Instead, they would suppress their students to prevent them from escaping their control and ceasing to work for them once they became official wizards.

Locke frowned. Advancement potions were highly confidential resources of the White Wizarding Association and were prohibited from circulation on the market, so it was impossible for him to help Leopold obtain them.

According to the rules, Leopold's potions would be given to his teacher first, so there was really nothing he could do about it.

Locke snapped out of his reverie and focused his attention on the small group chat on the Gray Mist Slab. Since joining the group, he had been frequently checking the chat content and discovered that the research group ranked tenth in the group was indeed on the verge of disbanding.

He was a wizard from the Land of Dragonfall, but while the wizarding class there was high, they were always more skilled in alchemy and enchanting, and had absolutely no interest in breeding. Therefore, his wizarding academy never intended to support him from the beginning. It was only after he actually entered the Cloud Ze Cup that a large group of people from the academy tried to squeeze him into his research group.

This wizard, Marius Lawrence, was also easily influenced. Before long, his research group was not only full of people with connections, but also squeezed out those who were originally capable of doing the work.

This led to a loss of morale among the remaining people.

This morning, Marius Lawrence spoke up in the group chat, immediately criticizing the Mountain Shadow Council College, where he works, for not valuing their breeding program and their breeders, and for now completely messing up his project.

In short, Wizard Marius was full of grievances. He dared not voice them within the Mountain Shadow Council, so he needed to find a place to vent, and the Cloud Ze Cup finals small group was a good outlet for his frustrations.

Locke, peering through the screen, remarked that it seemed every participating research group had its own problems. Perhaps, as Barbara the Witch had said before, the problems we would encounter would also be encountered by our competitors.

Whoever has more patience has already gained the upper hand.

Locke saw in the group chat that Alaric, the wizard from the border between light and shadow, had offered him some words of comfort, while Yennefer, the wizard ranked third, unusually tagged him in the group chat—'You can't blame anyone else; you're just too easily swayed. Your students are even more wronged than you. They worked so hard to help you win the competition, and you replaced them with those nepotism hires as soon as you entered the finals.'

Marius Lawrence seemed stunned for a moment before tagging Yennefer of Spiral Basin in the small group chat: 'It's not my fault. The new students, even the wizard mentors, all have resumes far more impressive than those in my original research group! I believed in selecting the best of the best, which is why I made the last-minute changes.'

Yennefer sent him a cold, mocking emoji.

Meanwhile, the wizard Alaric, located at the boundary between darkness and light, spoke up: "You can't say that. You can't just look at resumes. Resumes can be inflated; competence is what matters. Changing commanders on the eve of battle is a major taboo."

"By the way, so your project is failing? Does that mean we'll only have nine participants in the finals?"

Wizard Alaric was undoubtedly trying to gather intelligence again, but Wizard Marius Lawrence was provoked and immediately said that his project was still progressing and that he would try his best to complete the experiment within the stipulated time, and then said a lot of details that revealed the progress of his experiment.

Locke raised an eyebrow. "It seems that I no longer need to worry about this first-ring wizard in the crystallization stage in the Land of Dragonfall. He is no longer my competitor. Judging from the details he revealed, his project has indeed slowed down, and most of the core personnel have left."

Locke closed the gray fog slab and heard a knock at the door. He opened the laboratory door and found it was a director of the Plutarch family's finance office, a first-stage liquefaction wizard.

They didn't have a good relationship with Eric's branch of the family, and were considered neutral members of the Plutarch family.

The head of the finance department is Eric's relative, but there are a bunch of other directors under the finance department.

The liquefaction wizard, upon finding Locke, immediately brightened his eyes and handed him the bill. "Wizard Augustine, I've finally found you. I wouldn't have dared to trouble you unless I had something important to say."

"But look at this."

"Look at this bill. He bought high-grade nutrient soil, but he added an extra zero. Ten thousand magic stones became one hundred thousand magic stones. The key point is that I even signed it, and the bill was even submitted."

Wizard Sphinx said, "This is a major mistake. The student who submitted the expense report is named Leopold."

“He is a first-class wizard apprentice. Look how careless these common wizards are. They accidentally caused such a big problem. This is an account of 90,000 magic stones. This is a serious issue. I manage the assets of the Plutarch family and am responsible for the family's property.”

Wizard Sphinx frowned in disgust, making no attempt to hide his hostility and loathing for commoner wizards in front of Locke. "Those commoner wizards must have dared to make such a big mistake because you've been too good to them."

"You'd better place some of our reliable family wizards in your research group. Maybe that first-class wizard apprentice did this to embezzle those 90,000 magic stones for himself."

Locke frowned, glanced at the wizard Sphinx, then took the bill from his hand and found that it was signed by the witch Barbara.

Locke summoned the witch Barbara, whose face was covered in mud. When Barbara saw the bill, she was startled. "What's going on? Why did Leopold write an extra zero?"

Barbara the witch looked at the furious wizard Sphinx, then at Locke guiltily, and said, "Maybe I trusted him too much, so when he gave it to me, I signed it without looking at it carefully."

"That's nine magic crystal cards... This is a big problem."

Ninety thousand magic stones is not a small amount. It can buy nine first-ring magic plants, nine medium-quality first-ring magic artifacts, or even seven or eight magic golems, or a large number of resources to aid meditation.

This amount of money would be a drop in the ocean for large projects, but it would be more than enough for a wizard's training.

Barbara the witch quickly realized that this mistake could become an excuse for family wizards like the Sphinx Wizard to cause trouble, and that this matter could be serious or minor.

To put it bluntly, this was an attempt to falsify accounts and defraud the Plutarch family of their funds, a serious crime. Not only would it be impossible for him to remain in Locke's research group, but the wizard Sphinx would likely send Leopold to a wizarding prison.

Locke was extremely frustrated. Although he had heard before that the dispute between the research group and the finance department was very complicated and that the two were often at odds, he never expected things to develop in this way.

This was the first time I had encountered this situation, so I wasn't prepared.

The witch Barbara spoke up for Leopold. "Boss Locke, Leopold doesn't have the guts to steal nine magic crystal cards. Even selling him wouldn't be enough to pay off the debt."

"He must have been too busy with work, which led to the mistake. Some time ago, his wizarding mentor took away his advancement potion, and he was depressed for a while. The mistake probably happened around that time."

Wizard Sphinx said coldly, "Commoner wizards rarely see money, so it's normal for them to have wicked thoughts when they suddenly see such a large sum of money."

“I am not here to cause trouble. I have great respect for Wizard Locke Augustine and I acknowledge your and Miss’s leadership over our family.”

“But I think the wizard Augustine has been too kind to those commoner wizards. I’ve found evidence of their embezzlement this time, but how much more is there that I haven’t discovered? When I get back, I will thoroughly investigate all the previous accounts!”

Barbara the witch turned her head, "You..."

She felt somewhat powerless. During this time, the wizards of the Plutarch family and the various families within the White Dragon Tower seemed to have been provoked, frequently targeting the commoner wizards in their research group.

The hostility of the Six Towers towards commoner wizards has reached an unbelievable level.

They can accept how outstanding or even dominant foreign commoner wizards may be, but they absolutely cannot accept how excellent the commoner wizards within the Six Towers Land may be.

Locke thought for a moment and said, "Leopold is currently in his dormitory. Let's go find him. Barbara Witch, go check our research group's internal accounts. If it's just a misunderstanding, return the extra money to the finance department."

Barbara the witch quickly replied, "Yes."

(End of this chapter)