Wizards: Starting as a Potions Master!

Chapter 290 The Second Ring Wizard Tower and the Usury Dimension

After Su Nan and the others stepped through the Gate of Reincarnation, they found themselves in an unfamiliar plane.

The land in this plane is very barren, almost entirely made of stone, with few plants and animals, sparse trees, and farmland full of gravel.

These plants all grow in the gravel.

Along the road, there were stone statues of a short man everywhere, with the words "God of Gold" written on them.

Mary said to Sunan, "This is...this is no longer subspace, this is...a plane. The Golden Wizard actually possesses a plane!"

"Although it's only a small plane. I've heard that some Forsaken factions control planes even larger than Abyss."

"But I never expected that this mere wizard's ruins would contain a small plane. It's just that this small plane is far too barren."

Su Nan also realized that this barrenness referred not only to the land, but also to the plane itself. Because if the five elements that make up a plane—wind, water, fire, earth, and ether—are too scarce, it will result in the plane being barren in every aspect.

The five elements in this plane are extremely scarce and contain many impurities, making it impossible for this plane to be rich. Moreover, the magical power here is several times scarcer than that in the prime material plane.

Su Nan suddenly felt as if he had gone from a pond to a small puddle.

The magic here is too weak.

As a result, even here, I can't use my full strength.

Su Nan pointed to a huge golden tree in the distance and said, "It seems that the golden tree over there is the wizard's tower of the Golden Wizard."

"That wizard tower must be the second-circle wizard tower. The black magic originated from that golden tree, and it had a stabilizing, strengthening, and rule-altering effect on the entire minor plane. I see..."

Having witnessed the Second Ring Wizard Tower, Su Nan finally understood that the biggest difference between the Second Ring Wizard Tower and the First Ring Wizard Tower was the modification of the surrounding environment.

If that's the case, this is just a glimpse into the bigger picture, and it might also be the difference between a first-ring wizard and a second-ring wizard.

If that's the case, then there's hope for me on my path to becoming a second-circle wizard.

The enormous golden tree that Su Nan was pointing to was emitting a mesmerizing golden illusion, and there was no sun in this world.

It's possible that this small plane couldn't accumulate enough fire and ether elements to create a sun.

Therefore, the light in this plane all comes from the light of a second-ring wizard tower.

The entire plane is only about the size of a prefecture-level city in my previous life.

Therefore, they could easily see the boundary of this plane, which was made up of invisible walls, the colors of white clouds and blue sky, like a curtain covering the sky above this plane.

Su Nan speculated that the original edge of the plane should have been just a wall of elements composed of chaotic elements. The current appearance of the plane's edge must have been modified by the Golden Wizard.

Mary asked Sunan, "Are we going to that second-ring wizard tower?"

Su Nan said, "There are many scattered settlements in this plane. Let's go check these settlements first. This plane has most likely been transformed into a world based on the Mandala system by the Golden Wizard. Moreover, look at the footprints on the ground. People have entered this plane within the past month."

Mary, Warwick, and Vasilyan immediately saw a series of footprints on the ground.

These footprints varied in size, suggesting that another group of people entered this golden city.

Su Nan walked more than 500 meters forward and found three families living in wooden houses. When he went in, he saw that the people living in the three wooden houses were actually human.

These people are praying before a statue of a golden wizard, chanting the name of the god of gold.

From Su Nan's perspective, the Golden Wizard looked like nothing more than an ordinary short old man, only about 1.2 meters tall.

Su Nan had some doubts: was he a dwarf, or did he have dwarf blood?

But the three households were extremely devout in this regard.

They were barely clothed, probably because of extreme poverty, yet they still seemed to spend a lot of time praying to the Golden Wizard every day.

Upon seeing Su Nan and his group enter, the farmers of this golden miniature world looked extremely bewildered.

But after looking at Su Nan and the others' clothes, they became extremely enthusiastic, bowing their foreheads to the ground and trying to kiss their toes.

Mary immediately stepped back and dodged.

The male head of the farmer's household, upon seeing Su Nan and the others, devoutly clasped his hands together. "Thank you, God of Gold, for allowing us to meet such benefactors."

"The God of Gold said that because of the evil we did in the past, we can only be poor farmers in this life. But as long as we worship the noble people and offer them gold, we will receive blessings and our social class will be better in the next life."

"My goodness, we're so lucky to see such distinguished people in the countryside of Golden City. You must live in Golden City, and probably in the core area. Those are the places where only the most virtuous souls who have done ten lifetimes of good deeds can be reincarnated."

Su Nan was somewhat speechless, and secretly released magical fluctuations to record the characteristics of this small plane.

Su Nan said to the farmer, "Can you tell me what the God of Gold has done for you?"

Su Nan was testing the waters regarding the legends surrounding the Golden Wizard in this plane.

Formal wizards, especially those at the half-step second ring level like him, possess immense power, making them practically godlike beings in this small plane.

It seems that once a second-circle wizard is reached, they will possess the ability to modify smaller planes.

As for the Gold Wizard, a half-step second-ring wizard, he already possesses some of the abilities of a second-ring wizard, and therefore can also modify the environment of a small plane.

The male head of the household, as expected, thought Su Nan was testing him. He said excitedly, "The God of Gold created this world and set rules for it—good people will be reincarnated into the Golden City, while unkind people will be reincarnated as poor outsiders. If they continue to do evil, they may not be able to remain human and can only become insects, slimes, or the like, such as those golden centipedes and golden slimes..."

Su Nan and Mary exchanged a glance. So that's how those special golden creatures outside the Golden Plane came about.

The male head of the farm said, "I have memorized all the doctrines of the Church of the Golden God. My noble golden relatives, I'm sure I can be a better person in my next life!"

"As long as you keep doing good deeds, you can even be reborn as one of those powerful golden noble creatures, become a giant, or even something better than a golden giant—the golden dragon in the very center of the Golden City..."

Upon hearing the word "dragon," Mary shook her head and whispered to Su Nan, "Impossible. Even the weakest adult dragon has the strength of a third ring or higher."

"At the level of a Gold Wizard, they can't even come into contact with dragons."

Su Nan looked at Vasilyan and said, "It may not be a pure-blooded adult dragon. It could be something similar to a dragon, or something related to dragons."

"My guess was right."

"This entire plane has been transformed into his mandala system by the Golden Wizard. The people he curses in regions like the Storm Kingdom are merely making a little extra money with his mandala system. The two cursed wizard families, on the other hand, are an unexpected gain. This golden small plane, which has been completely transformed, is his true base."

"It's just that as a wizard, engaging in this kind of feudal superstition, promoting himself as a god, and collecting faith power is really... annoying."

"He probably wanted to use this method to become a second-circle wizard, but it seems he has failed. Even if he really wanted to break through by relying on the divine path, a first-circle wizard is still quite far from the level of a god."

Mary nodded and said, "As a wizard, he gravitates towards the gods, but he's not even a true god. He can only deceive mortals here. This small plane is too small to support even slightly complex advanced animals. He must have plundered people from the prime material plane, imprisoned them here, and created a small world according to his own ideas."

"This must be his laboratory."

Su Nan shook his head slightly. "I think it's more than that, so I'm going to conduct an experiment too."

At that moment, the male farmer, listening to their conversation, sensed something was amiss and became enraged. "You are not nobles from the City of Gold, yet you dare to question the God of Gold!"

"No, I'm going to kill you all."

Though he said this, his eyes revealed not only anger, but also a greater excitement and greed. "If I kill you all and fight for the God of Gold, I will be even richer in my next life!"

The next moment, he picked up a hoe, but before he could get close to Su Nan and smash the hoe into Su Nan's head, his body exploded.

Su Nan looked at the farmer's body and saw that his soul had left the corpse, while a spiral-shaped entrance to reincarnation formed above the wooden house.

"Hahaha... I'm finally going to be rich!"

"With money, I can donate to the Church of the God of Gold, and then I'll be reborn into better and better lives!"

The next moment, Su Nan grabbed his soul with his large hand, forcibly interrupting his reincarnation process.

The smile on the golden farmer's face suddenly stopped, as if he had frozen in place.

"What did you do to me?"

Su Nan observed his soul and indeed found that there was a curse on it. "So that's how it is. The Golden Wizard spread curses outside that charge exorbitant interest on lifespans, while he spreads curses here that charge exorbitant interest on luck."

Among the five apprentice-level black magic spells that Su Nan acquired outside, there was a spell to curse bad luck. After observing the spell to curse bad luck, Su Nan then observed this spell on the soul and immediately realized that it was a more advanced form of black magic to curse bad luck.

In other words, the Golden Wizard not only seeks to collect the power of faith, but also uses the mandala system and black magic as support to harvest the luck of the common people within the entire system and concentrate it on himself.

Sunan said to Mary, Warwick, and Vasilyan, "This mandala system is one that he created himself to break through the second ring of the minor dimension."

Ultimately, all the luck and faith will flow to him alone.

"The entire plane can be said to be firmly trapped by his usurious loans."

Su Nan imagined that a half-step second-ring wizard, with the magical tide gradually declining and seeing no hope of breaking through, could only place his hopes on such an evil technique.

Su Nan frowned. "He used such a massive usury system to deceive people in an entire plane, concentrating all his luck on himself. In this system, what he used as exchange were empty promises and gold."

"His path in magic is probably not just about believing that gold can be exchanged for lifespan. Rather, it's about believing that by using gold, one can exchange for everything within the cycle of death and reincarnation."

"But what exactly is his state right now?"

Why did the magic backlash occur?

Hearing footsteps outside the door, Su Nan looked out and saw a first-class wizard apprentice dressed in a wizard's robe. He looked surprised to find an outsider here.

But the next moment, he directly hurled a 0.5-ring spell from the Gold School, [Golden Spikes], at Su Nan.

Su Nan caught the golden spike that was shot at him and instantly transformed into a vampire viscount. He had already created a vampire module within his body using a human virtual machine, and thus drank the vampire viscount potion.

Su Nan crushed the golden spike, and the next moment, using the Vampire Viscount's speed of 50—almost at the limit for this level—he appeared before the Golden School wizard apprentice as if by teleportation, grabbed him by the throat, and lifted him up, saying:

"Who are you? You shouldn't be from this small plane. This small plane can't even support a second-level wizard apprentice."

The magical tides in this small plane are too thin.

Therefore, Su Nan suddenly realized that vampires had an advantage in this kind of battle. After all, his own vampire system didn't rely much on magic in combat.

While werewolves don't necessarily need it, they do rely on a high concentration of magic in the surrounding environment when using Magic Blood Charge, Boiling Blood, Bronze Blood, and Hunting Fury. After all, when Su Nan was creating the werewolf series of potions, the concentration of the surrounding magical tide was gradually increasing, so he could utilize the magic in the environment.

Similarly, Su Nan is also preparing to activate the virtual machine and apply the Death Knight system to himself.

In this way, as his three major potion series improve, his basic combat power will also increase.

Under Su Nan's cold hand, this Golden School wizard apprentice coughed and said, "I...I, why are there outsiders in the Golden City?"

Su Nan wasn't going to waste any more words with him and directly used [Hypnosis] to make him reveal why he was there.

The wizard apprentice, lost in thought, muttered to himself, "I...I am an apprentice of the Golden Sword Wizard, [Grel]. Garrel is a descendant of the Golden Wizard, and quite possibly the most talented of his descendants. The Golden Wizard had hundreds of mistresses and left behind hundreds of children."

"Grel is the descendant of these offspring."

"Grel believes that he should inherit everything the Golden Wizard has here."

"Therefore, he used his family's treasure, a golden key staff, to teleport into the Golden City. He came here to collect the second-ring wizard tower within the Golden City."

Su Nan raised an eyebrow, surprised that there would be a first-ring wizard whose goal conflicted with his own.

Warwick asked Sunan, "Master, what should we do?"

Vasilyan simply said, "Kill."

Su Nan looked at the two of them. "There's no need to be so violent. After all, I'm very good at communicating with people."

"If communication fails... then it's not too late to kill them."

Mary Palermo, the "Justice" witch, raised her eyebrows and made a comical face.

Su Nan then used the vampire viscount's hypnotic abilities to look into the wizard apprentice's eyes and said, "We hit it off immediately, and you are impressed by the erudition of a first-ring wizard. You will tell me about the golden magic system."

The Golden School wizard began to mutter to himself, "The essence of the Golden School of Magic is black magic..."

"Through black magic, the target is made into a state of 'debt,' and their corpse and soul are transformed into a golden creature..."

"Besides that, they use the energy difference created by black magic to manipulate gold and launch attacks. The Gold School needs to be extremely wealthy, so Grel especially desires riches. Because he imitated his ancestors and married too many wives, he no longer has enough money..."

"He needs this golden city, and its most valuable treasure, the second-ring wizard tower."

"He reached a cooperation agreement with a half-step second-circle wizard—the Pure White Wizard. He wanted to sell the second-circle wizard tower of the Gold Wizard to the Pure White Wizard. In exchange, the Pure White Wizard would hand over all the wealth he had amassed through the Pure White Wizard Council, as well as the millennia-old wealth accumulated by the Pure White School, and would also help him scheme against the Platinum Commercial Republic..."

Su Nan was speechless. "That Griel really thinks a lot. How wonderful."

Mary chuckled.

After acquiring all the relevant inheritances of the Golden Wizard, Su Nan hypnotized him again, implanted a wisp of his own thoughts into the wizard apprentice, hypnotized him to forget himself, and made him return to Griel's side.

This thought process allows Su Nan to directly manipulate the wizard apprentice at crucial moments, as if he were possessed.

(End of this chapter)