What's wrong with me, a mage, loving to farm?

Chapter 257. Starlight Fields, Duke of the Reef

In the dukes' military camp.

After Ian and Athos parted ways, they tacitly put the potion given to them by Chloe into the food of the two dukes' personal retainers.

Thanks to the extreme food shortage during this period, the food being delivered now is basically not inspected, since when people are hungry they can even eat people.

Under such circumstances, their poisoning operation went extremely smoothly, and could be described as a thorough and satisfying operation.

The personal meals for anyone of even moderate importance were poisoned—how could the chefs dare to disobey the wishes of the two dukes' sons?

After the pleasant poisoning operation was over.

Yasos, carrying a tray filled with various animal entrails and dressed in loose clothing, entered his father, Duke Nar's, room.

Meanwhile, Ian, dressed neatly, entered Duke Olivier's room carrying a tray laden with exquisite pastries, milk tea, and cut fruit.

The door was sealed shut by magic.

Time passed slowly.

About half an hour later, the two dukes' sons came out of the room one after the other. Ian's clothes were still neat, and he was touching the ring on his other hand.

On the other hand, Athos's clothes were tattered, and there were obvious scars on his smooth skin. He also had an exquisite pouch on his belt.

But both of them had smiles on their faces as they carried their spoils of war, and went through all the rooms of their father's retainers, and then went into the military camp's storeroom, where they obtained some strange golden cherries from the two kittens.

Like children picking delicious fruit, they tirelessly explored the entire camp, arranging the golden cherries in every corner.

then……

A raging fire broke out in the military camp, accompanied by thunderous explosions.

The two cats, the squirrel, and the snake hiding in the corner were all marveling at the sight of the golden flames shooting into the sky.

"This is magic that the master researched from the book he got from Milfield. It is said to be the golden sacred fire that only the Holy See and the Holy Spirits possess."

The gray cat explained, "This flame won't disappear until the sun sets; it's definitely enough to reduce the entire military camp to nothingness."

The Emerald Serpent straightened up, hissing and flicking its tongue, its eyes filled with the sinister darkness unique to snakes: "They have committed far too many evil deeds on this land!"

The squirrel agreed, "Let them leave the North!"

As if to appease the two little ones, a gentle breeze swept in and blew into the camp, making the fire even bigger.

The sunlight became exceptionally intense, as if an eye was casting an angry gaze down, burning everything to ashes in its fury.

Outside the flames, with the help of nature and magical plants, Rob, along with Lina and Kemoye, had arrived here, followed by rows of mage knights and magical plant beasts.

Whether it's the Warcraft or those Battle Mages, if they're slightly restricted, they'll become excellent sources of labor.

Therefore, they were destined to be unable to leave the North; not one of them could escape.

……

Kroya, who was far away on the island of Hanju, was studying the magical plant called the Star of Astraeus when he unexpectedly saw the flames burning.

Now that the entire northern region is under King Muyao Quteng's surveillance network, he has naturally been keeping an eye on that area for a long time.

He was slightly surprised: "That's pretty fast."

"Looks like I can just wait to reap my spoils."

After a brief moment of surprise, he completely forgot about what was happening there.

I grabbed the little star that was trying to fly around and held it in my palm to examine it closely.

Through the Astral Imprint Technique, it can be seen that its core is actually only about one-tenth of its original size, and is wrapped inside by something with a crystalline texture.

Clear starlight shone through the crystal, illuminating the surroundings.

"This strange crystalline growth seems to be a natural magic amplifier, otherwise it would be impossible to make the starlight so dazzling."

Hmm...this is something worth looking into.

His fingers gently passed through the clear starlight, which flowed like water, and his long, well-defined fingers gradually became ethereal in the blue light.

At this moment, flesh and blood lost their meaning, leaving only a translucent blue, like bones, but in fact, it was the shape of fingers supported by the flow of magic, and the perception of magic became extremely acute in an instant.

It was as if some kind of blessing had been bestowed upon it.

"Yo."

Kroya shook her finger, watching it sway like smoke in the starlight, feeling a subtle sluggishness, as if she were drunk and had less control over her body.

His current control over his body is extremely exaggerated; he can even interfere with the growth of hair, and the entire magical circulation of his body is under his control.

It's quite amusing to see a part of the body suddenly become "drunk".

After swaying for a while, he squinted and felt the surrounding magic flowing into his fingers. The cool and refreshing feeling even gave him an urge to groan.

He had no more doubts and sighed softly:

"They really are astral walkers."

"I didn't expect this to contain such magic. Is it because the Holy Spring Merchant Guild wants to make me addicted?"

"However, it is indeed a precious gift."

He knew about this magic; it was originally developed by a great elven mage to alleviate his addiction to magic.

However, the essence of this thing is to minimize the presence of flesh and blood, allowing one's soul and the magic power within the body to directly contact the magic power of the outside world under the amplification of starlight.

Although both absorption and perception of magic become extremely sharp, the problem is... it's very addictive.

Without the constraints of the physical body, allowing the soul and magical energy to directly interact with the outside world, while making perception more acute, comes at the cost of developing a magical addiction.

However, in the world of mages, magic addiction is not actually a bad thing, as far as there are many mages who seek to confront the truth of magic directly.

Can it sharpen one's perception of magic? Can it increase meditation speed?

In comparison, a little bit of magic addiction is nothing to a mage. As long as one can strengthen oneself, magic addiction is not a big deal.

So this gift is quite precious.

Kroya pondered how to use the gift.

Logically speaking, this kind of gift can be used to train one's subordinates; it's like setting up a magic circle that accelerates meditation.

It seems that the original intention of the Solon Holy Spring was for him to use it to train his subordinates, and it should know that he was a lord.

However, Kroya did not intend to do so. He did not want his apprentices to become addicted to magic too early. It would be better to let them get used to it before entering the Astral Plane.

After a brief moment of thought, he suddenly realized... could he use the starlight emanating from the Star Astraeus to transform the magical plant into a pure astral magical plant?

Throughout the astral plane, this magic permeates everything, and the magical plants and beasts live in this environment, becoming extremely strange and unique.

In a sense, the environment of the astral plane is actually exceptionally stable.

Especially after being illuminated by this starlight, he could feel that the magic around him was completely suppressed by some kind of force.

Instead of acting immediately, he first sent a message to Estner, the mage association in the capital, asking him to help him resolve the aftermath of the war.

Now that the two dukes are dead, I can't skimp on what I need, especially the title.

After sending the message, he stood up and quickly entered a room on the top floor of the mage tower.

The Oak of Orpheus has grown to an enormous size, and so has its mage tower. While it doesn't quite match the tower the Mage Guild built specifically for level six mages, it's not far off.

Within this layer, he cultivated a special magical plant. These plants were imprinted with the magical coordination techniques he had learned from the Dragon's Nest, as well as the spatial folding array magic taught by the angels.

It can be considered an experimental field. It would be best if these magical plants could gradually improve during the growth process. If they cannot improve, it can also allow him to observe the changes in spatial magic.

"Tower Spirit..."

He said something out of habit before realizing that his tower spirit had gone out to play with the Woody Vine King, so he had no choice but to retrieve the data himself.

He tapped the crystal slab standing upright on the outer edge of the field a few times, and the current data was immediately displayed on it—

[Current growth progress of Sky Tulip: 8%]

Current spatial stability level: 3%

Yes, the data is appalling.

"That's really tragic."

After taking a look, Kroya couldn't help but rub his temples, suddenly feeling that his idea of ​​using tulips to refine the power of the Void into a stable and controllable spatial energy was a bit of wishful thinking.

"Sigh, there's nothing I can do. You're the only spatial magical plant I can get right now."

He sighed deeply, took the Star of Astraeus, and walked into the field of translucent, crystalline white tulips.

The tulip buds were all tightly closed, but you could see through the petals that inside was a small fragment of crystalline substance and some clear liquid.

The inner walls of the petals are covered with extremely fine magical patterns that are constantly emitting imperceptible, subtle magical power, gradually transforming the fragments of ethereal light and the white magical liquid inside.

【Sky Tulip (Kroya's Imperfect Spatial Stabilization Array and Magical Transformation Ritual)】

[During the growth process of this magical plant, there is an extremely small probability that it will penetrate and fuse with the fragments of the Void Crystal and the white spatial magic liquid inside.]

[The current magical imprint is not yet complete. It needs to be further imprinted and perfected, or we need to wait for the magical plant to grow on its own, with a very small probability of perfection.]

This was the first time Kroa had seen the Celestial Imprint Technique describe the engraving of magical runes inside a magical plant as having an "extremely low probability." In this situation, perfecting it was basically like praying for a few angels to appear by the roadside.

Angels are asexual.

It's better to hope you can learn it quickly on your own than to expect this, or you can only rely on external intervention.

After observing for a moment, he simply chose to ignore it, then reached into a pocket on the belly of his robe and took out a large pile of astral crystals.

This huge pile of crystals was produced by the Astral Crystal Turtle. After getting a wife, that guy wanted to have baby turtles, so he transformed an entire magic crystal mine into a turtle nest.

Therefore, Kroa did not hesitate to mine crystals from it, and tried to replace all of its important facilities and experimental equipment with astral crystals.

After gathering enough materials, he began to build individual small rooms, completely covering the few individual Sky Tulips, and then setting up magic transmission channels, water purification, and soil and air stabilization runes...

After a flurry of activity, he built individual enclosures for the ten Sky Tulips, containing a series of life-sustaining, monitoring, and regulating magical runes.

After doing all this, he placed the Astraeus Star, which was flying around everywhere, inside the ceiling of the experimental field, with only a few channels that could accommodate the starlight connecting to the individual rooms of the Sky Tulip.

Then he glanced at the magic crystal plate next to him and found that the magic stability column was rising at an extremely fast speed, which meant that it was indeed working.

Kroya nodded in satisfaction.

"If it works, that's good. If it really brings about a change, then I'll transform the entire tulip field."

In the following time, he simply inspected the magical beasts and magical plants he was raising and cultivating in his mage tower.

—There are coconut trees engraved with magical runes that transform dragon eggs into nutrients, four-colored sunflowers preaching to more sunflowers, earth-stealing rats building their own castles and kingdoms, magic-solidifying bottle grass that transforms magic potions, and magic crystal rats happily dreaming…

If outsiders came here, they would think they had entered some kind of special magical plant and beast zoo.

……

While Kroa was inspecting his mage tower.

Norland, the capital city.

Estner, a representative of the Mage's Association, is meeting with a count from the Heraldry Academy.

Both sides were quite embarrassed, but the one who was more embarrassed was definitely the chubby, doughy-looking, rather endearing count.

He is Count Sangab, the Vice-President of the Heraldry.

Theoretically speaking, he was already the second-in-command of the Heraldry, a noble institution, and a loyal retainer directly under King Norland.

His arrival actually represents the will of King Norland.

King Norland was not a useless ruler; on the contrary, he was quite intelligent, capable of creating a country with highly centralized royal power but no faith and no dominance by the church.

King Norland was well aware of the importance of the Mage Association, but he had never had a suitable opportunity to formally cooperate with the association. In his view, even selfish mages were much better than those people from the Holy See.

And now is an opportunity.

A mage duke who comes from the Mage Association but is granted a royal title can serve as a channel and signal for cooperation between the two parties.

Count Sangab, recalling King Norant's orders, said directly, "Mage Estner, how about granting the entire northern territory to Mage Kroya as his fiefdom?"

"Okay," Estner nodded.

Although this is already a fact, it must be mentioned, otherwise where will the royal family's face be?

"Independent trade rights, the right to migrate populations, the power of the Heraldry Council..."

Count Sangab then rattled off a list of powers that a duke possessed—frankly, they were all pretty useless; who in their right mind would be short of something so obvious if they were already a duke?

Estner patiently waited for him to finish speaking, then gently tapped the table, prompting, "What about Sky Island?"

"..." Count Sangab hesitated.

He tentatively asked, "Ten mu?"

His response was a cold laugh from Estner: "Ha."

A ten-acre floating island? Is it for distributing those slaves?

If he were really offered only ten acres of land, he could immediately represent Cloa in rejecting the ducal title—it would be better not to accept it in such a humiliating way!

"Please speak," Count Sangab said, sweat beading on his chubby face. He wiped it with a handkerchief and pleaded, "You know, that's the foundation of the royal family."

"Aren't they just a cluster of floating islands unearthed from the North? If it weren't for our Mage Association helping you stabilize the magical structure, they would have crashed long ago."

Estner stated directly, "At least three hectares."

He paused, then added, "There must be a cascading waterfall, fields of cloud-bright soil, and... miniature celestial mineral veins!"

Upon hearing this, Count Sangab was drenched in sweat, his meticulously crafted aristocratic attire completely soaked.

He shakily took out a gold knife inlaid with jewels, placed it on the table, and said with a deathly pale face, "You might as well just kill me."

"Three hectares, Flowing Waterfall, Cloudlight Soil are all options... but the Sky Radiance Mine is only found on five islands, and they are all royal territories."

He tried to argue that this matter was far beyond his authority, and that if he were to take that thing out, he would be stabbed in the back and commit suicide the next day.

"No." Estner shook his head, reached for the golden dagger, and pointed it at the obese count.

His voice was soft, yet it carried a chilling wind, and his eyes shimmered with a magical light.

"Does the territory that was once the domain of the Archmage Eurydice also belong to you?"

"Count, does King Norland think the same way?"

The count's facial muscles twitched violently, sweat poured down his face, and his complexion turned deathly pale.

Just then—

"Please don't make things difficult for him. He's just a dog my father keeps. Why do you have to do this to him?"

A clear, melodious female voice rang out, and the count immediately leaped up with an agility completely disproportionate to his size, taking out a magic scroll to clean the table and chairs as he went.

Then, like a dutiful dog, he stood behind the chair, respectfully watching a woman with long, flowing blonde hair gracefully sit down inside.

Estner seemed to have expected this, and bowed slightly: "Your Highness Mibecca, it seems that you really have to go there in person."

The woman he called Mibecca nodded slightly.

"I can agree to anything you say on behalf of the royal family, and I will personally convey my father's orders."

"This originally belonged to the Mage Association. It used to be the territory of the Archmage Eurydice. He also visited Han Reef Island. Perhaps this is what you often refer to as fate."

She smiled. "But please also contact Master Chloe and promise us one thing."

"Please speak," Estner said, not giving a direct answer.

"...My mother is dying, and I would like to ask the mermaid to sing a funeral song."

If Mage Kroya can help me with this, I will give him an item I once obtained from the Kingdom of Sethon.

"It is said to be a map of the Gopherwood Paradise left behind by a legendary knight of the Kingdom of Sessen."

Estner's pupils contracted slightly.

"I will contact him."

He didn't agree immediately, but planned to contact Chloe before giving his answer, thinking that Chloe would probably agree.

Princess Mibecca smiled and said, "Please come with me personally. I also want to see my brother and wonder how he is doing in the North."

"it is good."

After making this decision, the two finally smiled at each other, and the count immediately and diligently arranged for desserts that were more expensive than gold.

The scene immediately became peaceful.

Thank you everyone for your monthly tickets and recommendation votes!

(End of this chapter)