Wizards: Starting with Synthetic Gems

Chapter 737 The Third-Level Council, the Wizarding Council!
Locke recorded the scene he had previously captured with the True Sight Crystal, and he would later submit it to the White Wizard Association, the Ethics Review Committee, and also give a copy to Golden Crown Mountain.

There's nothing to say about killing the dark wizard, but the only problem is that the barefoot second-ring witch Soras needs some evidence to prove that she was acting in self-defense.

At the same time, he could also question Solas about his lack of courage and demand compensation from them.

Locke glanced at the rings of the dark wizard and the barefoot wizard Soras, and both of their astral rings ended up in his hands.

Locke opened the astral rings of the dozen or so dark wizards and found some first-level resources, but they were all resources from the Holy School, as well as some disgusting sacrifices.

The second-ring dark wizard's astral ring was protected by a powerful magical lock from the School of Defense. If it were forcibly broken, the lock would activate a self-destruct mechanism, destroying the ring instantly.

Locke opened the witch's astral ring again. It was quite empty, containing only some very low-level resources. It was hard to imagine that this was the astral ring of a second-ring witch.

In addition, there was a pile of documents in the astral ring. Locke pulled out some of them and found that they were actually a bunch of loan and debt collection notices.

He glanced through it briefly and discovered that the witch was trapped in a tragic situation of compounding interest and debts piling up. Based on the extent of her accumulated debts, even if she were to suddenly have a stroke of luck and win tens of millions of magic stones in the wizard lottery, she still wouldn't be able to pay off her debts!

Debt slaves are terrifying!
Locke even noticed in some documents that her creditors were trying to cite various laws in an attempt to shift the debt onto her students, family, and friends.

One document caught Locke's attention: a potion shop called Dragon's Breath had testified to the Holy Court that the witch Jesse had purchased potions from their shop and given a low-grade potion to her student. Locke therefore claimed that they should seek repayment from Jesse's student for a debt she was unable to pay.

This claim was partially recognized by the Holy Wizard Court, which ordered the witch Jesse's student, who was currently a first-class wizard apprentice, to repay the Dragon Breath potion shop 10,000 magic stones!
Of course, even so, the Dragon's Breath potion shop must be very dissatisfied, because their original proposal was for Jesse's students to repay about 150,000 in debt, and it seems they also intend to collect debts from more people.

Locke immediately understood why, when Daniel was in debt, no one except himself and the witch Julian dared to have much contact with him.

Goodness, the more you interact with them, the easier it is for creditors to find evidence that you accepted the resources they owed you, thus allowing them to make you pay off your debts. Then they can continue to use your social connections to demand repayment from other people connected to you.

"No wonder there is social death once bankruptcy occurs. This debt collection method is even more powerful than the spread of the Blood Curse Magic of the Blood Curse Court. It's truly terrifying."

Locke searched around and found that the astral ring was filled with a pile of paper documents related to debts, including her body after her death, all of which had been mortgaged by more than one wizarding bank.

If it weren't for the laws against enslaving people and using human organs from living witches, Jesse the Witch would likely have been devoured alive by her creditors before her death.

Upon seeing this, Locke frowned and decisively threw the Witch Jesse's Astral Ring and her corpse to the ground.

At the same time, a note was left on it—

'Anyone who dares to contact me will be charged a storage fee. Also, I was injured in this witch's attack, and she hasn't paid a single penny for my medical expenses. If any creditors know the contact information of her relatives or friends, please let me know.'

Locke left behind such delusional words not really to ask for money, but to prevent her creditors from using her death as a pretext to claim control of her debts from the Holy Tribunal.

Therefore, it is even more unacceptable to take this body and the Astral Ring.

This isn't a resource; this is a debt meme that's ten thousand times more terrifying than the Blood Curse Court's Blood Curse!
Locke pondered, “The dark wizards of Crimson Deep are at best a cesspool, but these debt slaves are absolutely not to be touched.”

It is said that debt slaves cannot escape the debt repayment logic designed by their creditors. First, the debt will only increase, eventually numbing them completely.

Secondly, everything related to debt, including the dense network of mutual guarantees, will plunge these debt slaves into an abyss.

Normally, there is only one way to cut off debt: death!

Normally, even if you become a debt slave, you won't necessarily end up in a situation where you die or live in a very miserable state; you just need to keep working.

The fact that Jesse the Witch attacked him and gave him the opportunity to become a dark witch was essentially a deal.

At least her debts to Soras Barefoot can be wiped clean, provided she can actually escape to the Dark Wizard's territory and successfully avoid the punishment of Mount Golden Crown.

Meanwhile, among the wizards who were watching the spectacle in the mountains, many placed orders for wizard shoes designed by Locke, and many others boarded their magic carriages again and began their return journey.

Locke's water hyacinth system has received a lot of news.

He opened the messages and saw that someone wanted to buy the Bloodwave Pineapple Wizard Shoes from him, as well as some communications from second-circle wizards, which caught his attention.

Some of these people seemed to be wizard shareholders of Solas's Lightfoot and Melochy's Magic Step. At this moment, they seemed to have completely forgotten the previous unpleasantness and that just a moment ago, these people wanted him dead. Now, they were enthusiastically sending him messages, urging him to establish a shop alliance as soon as possible, use the rights of a second-ring wizard, and open up the shares of the wizard shop alliance so that they could invest money in him.

Locke even saw that among the second-circle wizards who had contacted him, there was even an ordinary second-circle wizard from the Rose Council.

This person was extremely enthusiastic towards him, seemingly recognizing the potential of the Pure Magic Plant Wizard Shoes and realizing that he didn't need to stick to one ship.

The Rose Council wizard Ciri Owen sent me a message—

"Locke, the wizard shoes you designed have been certified by me as top-tier in the industry. I believe you should establish a shop alliance as soon as possible and open up equity to quickly obtain start-up capital."

"I have high hopes for your wizard shoes and admire your concept of pure magical plant-based wizard shoes. Because I admire your talent so much, I am very much looking forward to the formation of your shop alliance."

'I am Shiri Irwin of the Rose Council, a well-known investor in the industry.'

Locke sneered when he saw the message.

The only person who could send such a message to him at this time would be a wizard shareholder or related stakeholder who hired a black wizard to intercept and kill him from his wizard shoe shop alliance.

As a result, after seeing that he had broken the deadlock, he was able to ignore all the previous barriers and send him this kind of message.

It just goes to show that capital is truly driven by money and can disregard everything else.

Locke did not reply, because he might not actually be short of money right now. He had spent all his previous money on buying World Stones, but the money should be coming in steadily over the next few days.

Moreover, opening up equity would cause a series of problems. I don't have a need to quickly obtain a large amount of funds at the moment, so there's no need to be in such a hurry.

Locke saw that Scarlett the Witch's congratulatory message was still inside the water hyacinth system.

Just as Locke was about to shut down the water hyacinth system, a streak of light suddenly flew across the sky. He paused for a moment, then realized it was a silver badge with the words "Second Ring" written on it.

Locke took the second-ring badge and was momentarily stunned, because he had registered the official wizard badge with Lilith's hut in the southeast corner of the region, which also granted him the right to use the various communication systems that only official wizards could use.

Unexpectedly, the second-circle wizard's badge suddenly flew over from somewhere. I don't know if this is a feature of Cloudswamp Wetlands or if it happens in all wizarding lands.

As Locke pinned the badge to his chest, the water gourd system in his hand immediately changed again, displaying a new interface. Locke clicked on the interface with a puzzled look, and a blue lotus base appeared before him. On the lotus base were seven perfectly formed lotus seeds, resembling pills, and at the same time, he heard the sound of a rushing stream.

Suddenly, he found himself on a green lotus leaf, beneath which flowed a gentle stream with several carp swimming in it. Before him stood a massive lotus root, which was now completely empty.

At that moment, Locke saw a line of text appear on his retina: "[No council meeting is currently scheduled for the Golden Crown Mountain District.]"

A screen appeared before him, with a white lotus root as its icon in the upper left corner, and seven green lotus seeds on the lotus root.

Locke raised an eyebrow. What is this?
This special space clearly uses a combination of multiple schools of thought techniques and is attached to the water hyacinth system and the second-circle wizard's badge artifact.

No wonder he wanted to issue himself a badge so quickly, and that badge was a second-level magical artifact.

So that's what it's called, a special purpose.

It is likely that every official wizard in the White Wizarding Association, after becoming a second-circle wizard, will be issued a wizarding artifact representing their second-circle status and pulled into this special space.

At this point, Locke could see that the interface was divided into two levels.

The top section displays the Yunze Council, while the section below displays the Jinmianshan District Council.

The Yunze Council itself seemed unable to access the interface; it could only see a preliminary screen displaying a recent topic.

The Golden Crown Mountain region shows no recent topics or voting options, but there are some past topics. Locke checked and found a total of eleven past topics.

All of them are related to the construction of public facilities in the Jinmianshan District, or to a certain public policy of the Jinmianshan District.

Locke also saw an issue that was the proposal from Jinmian Mountain to build a large-scale specialty market for magical plants in the Seven-Colored Nursery area.

This Golden Crown Mountain Regional Council seems to be the primary council that I, a second-circle wizard, can intervene in, and my identity in this interface is Councilor Locke Augustine.

At the Yunze Council level, I could only see a portion of the pages, which was clearly a strict restriction.

The space in front of us is clearly the Golden Crown Mountain Regional Council space.

It belongs to the illusion space.

However, the interface of the Yunze Council displays something more important. First, there is only one recent topic, and the past topics are not visible to oneself.

It seems that all he can see are the Yunze Council's agenda items, which he votes on after joining the council.

This is completely different from the situation at the Golden Crown Mountain Regional Council level, where one can access multiple past issues independently.

The current agenda of the Yunze Council is to cancel the tax exemption for first-ring wizards!

Locke quickly clicked on the page to learn about the tax exemption for first-ring wizards.

The gist is that, as members of the White Wizards Association, first-ring wizards should theoretically pay an annual membership fee. However, the Eastern Boundary Council's policy is to prioritize exempting first-ring wizards from their membership fees, with second-ring wizards paying the first-ring wizards' fees on their behalf, as a benefit for first-ring wizards.

Therefore, during his time as a first-ring wizard, Locke, as a member of the White Wizarding Association, never paid any membership fees for a long period of time.

Because he's been in the newbie benefit protection period!

Locke saw that there were two numbers next to the issue: the left one for opposition and the right one for support.

At this point, the number of opponents and the number of supporters were roughly equal.

It's approximately 261 to 237.

Of course, this is probably not the total number of second-ring wizards in Yunze Wetland, but only a small portion of them.

'The wizards voting here should all be second-ring wizards, so why are there more second-ring wizards opposing the abolition of the tax exemption privilege for first-ring wizards than those supporting it?'

Locke pondered for a moment, then looked at the detailed introduction in the topic, and immediately saw a crucial piece of information.

"Only wizards who pay membership fees can join the Wizard Council."

"I see. The Eastern Boundary Council has long been calling on the various White Wizard Association branches to waive membership fees for first-ring wizards. Therefore, first-ring wizards do not have voting rights in the various levels of councils in the Eastern Boundary, that is, the three levels of councils in the Eastern Boundary!"

"The reason why many second-ring wizards do not support the cancellation of the tax exemption privilege of first-ring wizards is because once first-ring wizards have to pay membership fees, they will also have the right to vote in the Cloud Ze Council."

"If they also had the right to vote on issues related to the White Wizard Association of Yunze Wetlands, that would change a lot of things."

If only second-ring wizards have the right to vote, then the wizarding organization with more second-ring wizards will have the advantage!

If first-ring wizards also had voting rights, then the wizarding organization with more first-ring wizards would hold a dominant position.

Therefore, it's clear that there are two powerful figures fighting behind the scenes regarding this issue.

Locke instantly realized that this deity might not even be in Yunze Wetland.

The tax exemption for first-ring wizards was ordered by the Eastern District Council. In other words, all first-ring wizards in the fifty-three wizarding territories of the entire Eastern District are currently exempt from taxation.

And it has remained so for a very long time.

But now, the various wizarding councils are required to hold separate votes and make choices, which means that there are forces at the Eastern Boundary level that want to give first-ring wizards the right to vote as well.

Locke simply didn't know which gods were fighting.

"Indeed, the world of a second-ring wizard is completely different from that of a first-ring wizard. It turns out that for second-ring wizards, the public affairs of a wizarding land and the changes in the situation can appear so concretely before their eyes."

"The situation in the wizarding world is not isolated. Within the various councils, one can observe the overall trend of the wizarding world's situation."

(End of this chapter)