Wizards: Starting with Synthetic Gems

Chapter 807 The Pirate's Manga System

Silver Ring Green Seedlings?

Locke's clone, seated on the wizard's airship, quickly researched the relevant information. It was a special apprentice-level magical plant that could be grown on the surface of the ocean, belonging to the category of food crops.

Silver ring green seedlings are a type of grain, but they don't taste good, are difficult to digest, and have little nutritional value. Their only advantage is that they can grow in seawater and have extremely high yields.

This is one of the research findings of Jinmian Mountain.

A strange look flashed in Locke's eyes. The two buds of the Demon Dragon Rose bit into the shoulder of the old pirate Henry and said, "Why are you trying to destroy the Silver Ring Green Seedlings?"

Old Henry the pirate cried out in pain.

"You should ask yourselves that question. You hypocritical white wizards. The Mediterranean World is a vast world."

"But the surface there has been plunged into eternal winter, and underground lies a vast ocean with only a few scattered islands. The people there have long faced food shortages and can only purchase food from the Rose Council."

"Isn't the grain market of the Mediterranean World always held by the Rose Council? And your Golden Crown Mountain is going to sell that batch of grain seeds to the people of the Mediterranean World, and also give away a first-class wizard apprentice and send him there for technology transfer."

"In this way, the natives of the Mediterranean world will gain the ability to grow food crops on the sea, which would be a loss for the Rose Council."

Old Henry the pirate looked on with disdain.

“Every penny in the White Wizard’s hands is dirty, and we feel perfectly justified in robbing him.”

Locke suddenly understood; it was a business competition.

Locke checked and found that the Silver Ring Green Sprout, an apprentice-level magical plant, was the result of a research project funded by the Youth Cadre Fund, a second-ring fund project, which his teacher had applied for.

This technical approach was followed by his second senior apprentice, Heidegger.

Clearly, this is not a conflict between the Rose Council and Mount Golden Crown, but a continuation of the struggle between the Red Dragon Throne and the Rose Throne.

On the other side, a keelback pirate ship restarted and began its retreat.

Clearly, the pirates realized their operation had failed, and the captain ordered a retreat.

Old Henry, the pirate, looked at Locke defiantly and said, "White Wizard, you can kill me now."

"How could I be someone who clings to life and fears death! I..."

Locke looked at him speechlessly, wondering who it was that immediately spilled his plans after being threatened by him.

So you weren't the one from earlier?
That's incredibly stubborn.

Old Henry the pirate was clearly a man who never reflected on his actions or engaged in internal strife. He said angrily, "If it weren't for these terrible wizard shoes on my feet, how could I have possibly lost to you?"

"I lost to you, young upstart, simply because these wizard shoes are no good!"

"If I can get back alive, I will definitely file a complaint and demand a refund."

Old Henry the Pirate's face flushed red. "Damn Solas Barefoot! I'm going to tell all the Void Pirates that it's a piece of junk."

Locke frowned.

He had just tried to create a powerful magical clash with the other party, but this guy was the 'human tool' of the captain of that pirate mothership, and he couldn't possibly engage in a world war with him like he did with the dark wizard of the Pale Pilgrimage.

On the contrary, Locke made a new discovery.

Locke discovered a spell model rune within the pirate's soul, and his mental energy was even detected by this spell model rune after entering the pirate's body.

If I can pass the test, then I can use this pirate's body as a magical artifact.

'Are the pirates of the mothership lineage in the Great Void truly pirates?'

Locke was secretly alarmed when he realized this, feeling that the situation was completely puzzling.

'These guys are practically shared magical artifacts; as long as I can pass the detection of that spell model, I can leave a mental imprint on them.'

'Then these guys will become my magical artifacts. These pirates are practically born with the ability to cultivate and forge their own magical artifacts!'

Locke's pupils suddenly contracted.

'Where did that Truth Wizard on the Chaos Mothership come from? Which wizarding university does he teach at, and where is he the dean? If I'm not mistaken, this is incredibly corrupt. The so-called human-device enchanting system isn't about treating the human body as a composite magical artifact at all.'

'What he's pursuing is likely a magical artifact that invests its own resources, cultivates itself, and then he can share it publicly and earn rental income. Ordinary magical artifacts, if rented out, require the enchanter to pay for maintenance and upkeep. But this kind of artifact, being a human-made device, will maintain itself and upgrade its own technology.'

'That truth-seeking wizard has played a very sophisticated game.'

Locke was alarmed by his own conjecture. 'If that's the case, what exactly is the purpose of the Truth Wizard sending these pirates to plunder throughout the void? Is there some other ulterior motive?'

'Furthermore, since this spell model exists, does that mean that those at a higher level can utilize these shared magical artifacts through certain methods?'

This is practically letting the magical artifact forge itself!

This may be an extremely sophisticated enchanter's understanding of magical artifacts.

But clearly even the White Wizarding Association could not tolerate this.

Locke glanced at the old pirate. His original plan was to kill him, extract his energy, and refine it into the Zero Potion.

That's not cruel at all.

Because in Locke's eyes, this person would definitely kill him if given the chance.

As an enemy, if he attacks me, I have no choice but to kill him.

But Locke suddenly realized the old pirate's burning rage towards Solas, which made Locke think for a moment.

'Killing him would just mean gaining another second-level spiritual energy, wouldn't it?'

'Trajan has already killed enough second-circle wizards this time; one more or one less won't make a difference. But letting him go back could cause Solas the Barefoot a lot of trouble.'

Locke gave the old pirate a cold look, then looked at the keelship that was already preparing to retreat.

"You lost to me because your wizard shoes were no good, they were inferior products. But stop talking nonsense."

"I'll give you a chance: convince me not to kill you."

Old Henry blinked, his eyes instantly clearing, the arrogance from before completely gone. He immediately said, "I'm a pirate, penniless, only myself. I'm very familiar with void exploration, and we pirates sometimes act as sailors. If you need my help, you can call me a sailor."

Locke looked strange.

I never expected this guy to propose such a deal.

Locke said, "Although I haven't directly killed any of you, I've collected so many of your corpses and refined them into potions. Do you think I can still cooperate with you, or do you expect me not to call my friends and gang up on me?"

The old black wizard immediately shook his head and said, "It's not the same. Every pirate knows that it's a dangerous job. Even if your hands are stained with pirate blood, it has nothing to do with me."

"Because maybe those pirates you killed originally wanted to kill me too."

"You can't assume we're all in this together just because we're pirates. If we were all this friendly, why would we be pirates? We could just band together and do business!"

"Don't kill me. I'm very useful, especially for navigating through the void and finding my way."

Old Henry the Pirate Way.

"Many of you white wizards are afraid to hire us pirates, but as long as you can keep those pirates in check, we void pirates are actually the best sailors."

Locke fell into thought.

Old Henry grew increasingly anxious as he watched the pirate ship seem poised to fly away at any moment.

"Give me a straight answer, is it possible or not?"

Locke glanced at him.

"Aren't you supposed to be fearless and a tough nut to crack?"

Provoked, old Henry immediately retorted, "Of course! I, Henry Mok the Stormblade, have never been afraid of anyone. Kill me if you want!"

"Give me a good time!"

Locke was speechless. Good heavens, this guy is just being stubborn.

Old Henry, seeing Locke's thoughtful expression, felt a little panicked again.

“I have a special skill: I can quickly determine our latitude and longitude in the void.”

“I can determine our relative position using only the starlight of the astral plane, and I’m very accurate at finding my way. You have the blood of a multi-dragon, and I’ve heard rumors about the dragon race in some planes of the void. You will definitely seek out more medium-sized planes to build great magic.”

"I can show you the way!"

Locke simply asked, "How can I contact you?"

Old Henry said, "I also have the water hyacinth system from your Yunze Wetland. We can just add each other as friends. Let me know when you set off."

"If you don't trust me, you can sign a contract with me."

Locke sneered and threw him out.

"you can go now."

Old Henry clutched his throat and looked at Locke in surprise.

"You're just letting me go like this? Don't you white wizards love signing contracts and agreements?"

"I haven't even signed a contract yet, and you're already telling me to leave? Hahaha..."

Locke gave him a cold look.

"Yes."

“If you dark wizards would abide by contracts, you wouldn’t have become dark wizards in the first place. Since you’re already dark wizards, why would I sign a contract with you?”

"If I need you later, I'll call you through the Water Hyacinth system. If you don't come, the next time we meet, I'll kill you and wipe out your entire ship."

For a fleeting moment, a look of terror crossed old Henry's eyes; he even thought he was talking to some great pirate.

Old Henry glanced at Locke, then quickly found a way to return to the pirate ship and threw the pair of Archangel Boots overboard.

"What trash shoes, I don't want them anymore."

His loud voice was loud enough for everyone in the entire transport station to hear.

"Soras's barefoot shoes are all garbage!"

The wizards at the transport station looked at each other in bewilderment.

Under Trajan's attack, the pirate ship fled in panic, breaking through the void before it and disappearing into the distance.

Trajan, however, did not rashly pursue them.

The wizard Trajan tidied himself up, then pointed at Locke and said, "Junior brother, in the void, never rashly chase after anyone. The void is vast, and it's easy to lose your way while chasing."

"We're lost in the void. Besides, those pirates are more familiar with the void routes than we are. If we chase them, we'll easily find ourselves in a deadly situation."

Trajan the Wizard said, "This time we killed 19 full-fledged wizards and 3 ordinary second-ring wizards from that group of pirates."

"There is also a Star Ring Wizard."

A flash of madness crossed Trajan's eyes, but he quickly suppressed it.

"That felt so good."

"Junior brother, you can have all those dark wizard corpses, but I'll keep the badges. I want to exchange them for rewards. Valerie Quinn wants to break through to the second ring, so she needs to start accumulating resources now."

Locke had no objection to this.

Since Trajan had brought him here to gain experience in void travel, he had already benefited greatly. Moreover, Trajan had killed all those dark wizards by himself, and he had gotten these bodies from him for free, which was already a huge profit.

I don't have much to say.

Locke glanced at Valerie Quinn, the witch. Although Trajan was very strict with Valerie, their true relationship could be seen from the distribution of actual benefits.

Turalyon was just his senior apprentice, so he was only taking him on a Void quest. It seems that some of the badges from the pirates he killed would be given directly to the Witch Valerie as her credit.

This will be of great benefit to her future development.

This is especially true when looking for a teaching position with a particular bias, particularly within the Witcher corps.

Trajan turned to Locke and said, "By the way, junior brother, I'll give you the body of the Star Ring Wizard. I think you can extract its energy and turn it into some kind of special potion."

"Hope this helps."

Locke's eyes brightened slightly. "Thank you, Senior Brother."

He put the corpse of the Star Ring pirate into the bronze cauldron. The Star Ring Wizard was one level higher than him, so he was indeed interested in the Star Ring Wizard.

Trajan glanced at Locke, then suddenly remembered something and said, "By the way, when I saw you using that special potion-making method, it seemed you could manifest the spirit within the other person's body and see the path of some of that spirit's movement. That's indeed very good, but I advise you not to learn anything from these Star Ring Pirate wizards."

"That's the wrong approach."

"The entire 'human-machine' enchanting system is just a [large net]."

Locke was surprised.

"A big net?"

Trajan the wizard seemed to be very secretive.

"It involves a lot of complexities, so I won't go into details. In short, you can just reuse these corpses. Just don't try to learn the human-equipment enchanting system, or I'm afraid you'll learn it wrong and then the teacher will criticize me."

"The teacher is very strict."

Trajan the wizard seemed to still harbor some lingering fear of Catherine the Witch.

Valerie glanced curiously at Trajan, the wizard. She could hardly believe that her master would criticize her teacher, and the teacher would remain silent in fear.

This is so... interesting!

Trajan clapped his hands. At this moment, the headmaster of the Trix Transport Station Academy, who had arrived at the transport station, stepped onto the surface of the station to thank Locke, Trajan, and Valerie.

Trajan, as a Sun Ring Wizard, exchanged a few words with him, and the two had some communication before returning to Peach Boat.

On the Peach Boat, the wizard Trajan said, "This mission to the Void Near Earth can be considered a complete success, and it can even be said that we have gained more than we expected. I didn't expect to encounter the mothership pirates targeting our Silver Ring Green Sprouts of Mount Golden Crown."

It was Locke who told Trajan the wizard about this.

Trajan the Wizard stated, "The Silver Ring Green Sprouts project has always been handled by my second senior brother. It seems the competition between the two academic lineages is becoming increasingly fierce."

"The ideas of the Rose Throne are different from ours. They have always maintained the practice of directly selling grain to the major colonies."

"As for Teacher Ekaterina, she instructed us to transfer the basic technology and seeds to those colonized worlds, and then make money through technology upgrades and maintenance in the future."

"In other words, we prefer to teach people how to fish. Teacher Catherine believes that teaching people how to fish will make us more money. But the Rose Throne only gives people fish."

Locke nodded slightly.

“Selling grain directly puts the least pressure on working capital and involves the least competition. On the other hand, making money through technology transfer and upgrading is very risky and highly competitive, requiring us to maintain the motivation to continuously develop new technologies.”

"However, the advantage is that the upper limit is high."

Locke began to think.

'My Augustus Wizard Shoes Shop Alliance doesn't really need to follow the old path of Solas's Barefoot and Melochy's Magic Step. I'm a breeder, not a magic weaver; there's no need for so many rules and regulations.'

'If I successfully develop and mass-produce wizard shoes, I can even bring others to join my business by transferring wizard shoe seeds. As long as I control the magical plant seeds, I can have a large number of breeders, and even magical weavers, help me manage the product and boost sales for free.'

Locke believed that he absolutely could not follow the asset-heavy model of Solas.

First, if you follow someone else's path, you'll only end up falling into their trap.

Secondly, I don't have that much money to spare right now.

'Yes, the teacher and the Rose Witch are essentially different in that they operate on a heavy asset and light asset model, respectively.'

Locke realized what was happening.

The food sales system of the Rose Throne is clearly similar to that of the Wizard's Shoe Shop Alliance, both of which follow the route of directly selling products.

That would definitely require a large number of magical farms and a large number of employees to maintain.

Of course, the Rose Council also has people.

From what I've seen so far, if the teacher's system mainly focuses on making money through technology transfer, then it's actually a light-asset model.

Both asset-light and asset-heavy approaches have their advantages and disadvantages.

The two had very similar academic paths and industries, but their business models were completely different.

This is probably why the two are so sworn enemies.

Locke never expected to get involved in such an academic war, but the key point is that if he wants to move up, he will inevitably have to join a team.

Once you join a team, you're more likely to encounter conflicts.

Essentially, this is a competition between the Rose Throne and the Red Dragon Throne for the resources to become a fourth-circle wizard.

If one's mentor at the Institute of True Knowledge becomes a fourth-circle wizard, it would be of great benefit to oneself.

This means that his sect will officially become the sect of a fourth-circle wizard.

This means that I can enjoy a better platform and resources.

In any case, all I need to do is focus on my own work, complete more projects, win better awards, and publish higher-quality articles.

Therefore, Locke did not have any particular opinion on this debate over academic lineage.

Because regardless of this dispute, he would have had to compete with the shop alliance of the Magic Weaver and Wizard Shoes, and now that the academic lineage dispute has taken hold, things will actually become easier.

Locke fell into deep thought.

Wizard shoes alone can't earn you more money; the resources required for a second-circle wizard are simply too numerous.

I might need to look at other markets and think of other solutions.

Now that this academic debate is in full swing, I can see for myself what I can gain from it.

This grain and seed market looks promising.

In short, if you want to improve yourself, you definitely need to join a team and gradually enter the core of that circle through your own efforts.

In this process, it is easy to get involved in academic conflicts.

Trajan the wizard patted Locke on the shoulder.

"Alright, let's go back to the Gates of Hell. I'll inform my second senior brother about these things. He'll figure out a solution."

"If he doesn't win the rice market competition from the Rose Council, hehe, that's fine too. It'll be good to have my second senior brother join me as a plant hunter. Locke, if you want to be a plant hunter too, that's fine too. The three of us can team up and venture deep into the Dark World."

Trajan the wizard seemed to have thought of something bad.

"Perfect timing. I fought the Dark King of the Dark World three times, and each time I was at a complete disadvantage and could only barely escape. And the Dark King is just a minor ruler of the Dark World."

"The Dark World is a recently discovered world, and it still holds many secrets and many unknown magical plants that have never been discovered before."

Locke said, "I hope Second Brother's rice market won't close down."

"I'm also hoping to get a discount at the rice market."

……

In the void, on the escaped dragonbone pirate ship, the Moon Ring Wizard Captain Farrell looked at the old pirate Henry and questioned him, "Henry, how could a nobody like you defeat a well-known pirate wizard like yourself?"

"I asked you to sabotage the warehouse in Zone C, couldn't you do it?"

Henry the old pirate immediately changed the subject.

“Richard did burn down the warehouse. He had already approached the warehouse using the Enchantment: Invisibility spell model.”

Immediately, Captain Farrell looked at Rick, a second-circle dark wizard who appeared to be relatively young.

Rick the pirate had a scar on his face. "That young wizard's perception is just too strong. I almost got detected by him several times. If I get close to Area C, he will definitely be able to see me. My magic pressure is no more than 10000."

"Both of you have higher magical pressure than I do."

"None of you can deal with those white wizards."

Captain Farrell said in a low voice, "Enough. Stop shirking responsibility. I know what you're thinking."

"Isn't it just that burning down that warehouse makes you feel uneasy?"

Rick the pirate suddenly spoke up: "That's right, something just doesn't feel right. Why did we become pirates? It's because we were driven to desperation by the evil White Wizards. Then why are we working for those White Wizards, burning down magical plant seeds that could have been the food of a great world?"

"Aren't pirate motherships part of the rebel army?"

Captain Farrell and Pirate Henry looked at him with surprise.

Then the two of them suddenly showed their big yellow teeth and burst into laughter.

Henry the Pirate said, "Hahaha, that's hilarious. I can't believe you're still so naive even as a second-circle wizard."

Captain Farrell's smile faded, his expression turning serious. "That young second-circle wizard we encountered this time is no ordinary person. He might just become another executioner wizard in the future."

"Alright, let's go have a drink. This loss was too great. The heist failed. We lost two boats and so many people. I don't know how I'll ever be able to apply for another heist."

The pirate mothership system follows the foundation system of the White Wizard Society.

These pirates also wrote reports and applied for projects, except that the pirate mothership did not provide funds, but rather virtual flight paths for their targets.

With such heavy losses this time, it will be extremely difficult for them to pass the test next time.

Captain Farrell said, "So, let's go for a drink."

Henry the pirate immediately agreed.

"That's right, if we're stuck, we just drink wizard's wine. As we drink, we'll forget about the problem."

"That's how we pirates live."

"This time I also made a deal with that young white wizard; he'll probably take me on a trip to explore the void. Captain, you have to agree to give me a vacation."

Captain Farrell was slightly taken aback.

"He actually has such magnanimity?"

"Then go ahead. It's your freedom. We, the pirate mothership, are freedom itself."

"However, you are not allowed to go when we are on a mission."

Captain Farrell thought for a moment and said, "Forget it, you should go first. My target, the notebook, is probably going to be in trouble lately."

"We don't seem to have any goals for the foreseeable future."

(End of this chapter)