Wizard: Starting With Synthesized Gems

Locke called Witch Scarlett directly on the image call. After waiting a short while, she accepted. She was wearing a wizard's hat pinned with a peacock-woven feather and a pearl necklace around her neck, dressed like a noblewoman.

At that moment, she was clearly in some colonial plane under the Cloud Marsh Wetlands' jurisdiction.

This colonial plane had been captured into the near-void orbital trajectory of the wizard world, otherwise it would have been impossible for Locke to call with Witch Scarlett while she was inside a colonial plane.

Around Witch Scarlett stood many minotaurs with red skin, working in the fields. One minotaur wearing clothing similar to wizard world attire looked at Locke's projection with reverence and bowed in admiration.

Two red-furred minotaur servants were also holding banana-leaf fans and fanning Witch Scarlett.

Witch Scarlett took a sip of the drink a red-furred minotaur servant had brought over, looked toward Locke and said, "My dear partner, Locke. It's been a long time since we last contacted each other, nearly two months now."

"What have you been up to lately?"

"Heh, I'm just asking casually. I can tell from your expression that you don't want to say, so let's skip the pleasantries. We're close enough by now for that."

Witch Scarlett smiled.

Locke looked at Witch Scarlett's grand setup and said, "Two months apart, and your setup has grown this impressive, Witch Scarlett."

Witch Scarlett paused. "Oh, you mean this. This is the treatment bestowed upon me by the minotaur emperor of this colonial plane. If I refused it, these minotaurs would be punished."

"This plane is one of Arthas's traditional plane worlds. Arthas has cooperated with the minotaur emperor here to establish many plantations, and this world and its minotaur empire have earned quite a lot of money from it. It's just a pity that the minotaurs of this world rarely produce wizards in terms of talent."

"So they can only serve as a cheap production base," Witch Scarlett said. "Not long ago, Arthas just conquered a medium-scale plane and discovered that many of the intelligent beings in that world possess wizard talent. They can naturally be drawn to our side, their aesthetic sensibilities are close to ours, and so their culture can be absorbed and assimilated."

"Therefore, Arthas has been investing in free infrastructure for them."

Locke raised an eyebrow with curiosity. "Oh? I thought the Arthas Store Alliance went out to make money."

Witch Scarlett smiled and said, "The vision of the Arthas Store Alliance runs far deeper than you imagine, my dear friend Locke."

"Traditionally, the Cloud Marsh Wetlands has had only two types of colonial territories, cheap production bases and talent markets drawn in by cultural appeal. But through constant competition, the Ten Great Store Alliances of the Cloud Marsh Wetlands have recently found that using these colonial worlds only in those ways is a waste. Take a world that has the potential to become a second society within the wizard world. If you make magical investments and infrastructure investments and help them establish a basic magical civilization education, you can cultivate a great number of wizards."

Witch Scarlett grew excited as she spoke, gesturing animatedly. "Think about it. Would you rather do business in a society with only ten wizards, or in a society with ten thousand wizards?"

"So Arthas will invest in that world and help them elevate their civilization. Arthas firmly believes that as long as a world's magical civilization is developed enough, there will be consumption, and where there is consumption, there are goods to sell."

Locke thought it over and nodded. "That does make sense. Though can you still call it colonization at that point? You're practically becoming angel investors."

Witch Scarlett used her eyes to signal a minotaur servant to bring a drink to her lips. "Call it whatever you like. Calling it colonization is just historical inertia."

"As long as it makes money. The Cloud Marsh Wetlands is different from other wizard lands. There is no rigid ideological conformity here, so we don't pay much attention to the naming."

"Making money is what matters. As a store alliance operating at the hundred-billion magic stone scale, Arthas has recently been investing in many colonial planes of this kind," Witch Scarlett said. "However, this kind of thing requires long-term investment and won't generate profit in the short term. The ones who have really been making money from it are the architect store alliances and related wizard academies, since building infrastructure requires investing through them."

Locke gave a nod. "Witch Scarlett, let's set aside those big wizard dealings for now. Those businesses have nothing to do with us First and Second Circle wizards."

The scale at which one could do business in the wizard world was closely tied to the hierarchy of magical levels.

A First or Second Circle wizard was simply not positioned to conduct business on that scale.

High-Circle wizards, on the other hand, could directly run large platform-type store alliances and have the majority of breeders working for the platform.

In essence, the owner of such a platform was simply an immense landlord.

Of course, the owner behind this store alliance was likely not a single individual. It was a publicly listed store alliance, and the equity ownership structure behind it was extremely complex.

Locke said, "Let's talk about things that are relevant to the two of us. Things related to my wizard shoes, and whether you, Witch Scarlett, can become a platinum-tier dealer. I'd like to ask how much each of my two wizard shoe designs has sold for."

Witch Scarlett paused and said, "I ran operations for you during the Shoe Exchange Festival and World Walking Day, and altogether earned three million magic stones. Take a look. That's quite good already. After all, purely plant-based wizard shoes are uncommon."

"If it weren't for your title as champion of the Spell Combat Tournament, I estimate we could only have earned one-third of this net profit."

"There might even have been a loss. Of course, there was also the initial success of our operations for the Augustus Wizard Shoe brand. We successfully built a preliminary impression among quite a few of our wizard clients of the Tyrant Hummingbird Wizard Shoes, endorsed by the Spell Combat Tournament champion."

"I also pushed labels like eco-friendly and second-generation Tyrant-enhanced magical plant product, which helped raise your returns."

Locke gave a slight nod.

He had already anticipated roughly this level of profit.

After all, he hadn't invested much effort into these two products. The reason he had earned this amount was mainly because Witch Scarlett had been running operations on his behalf, and his track record was decent, so he had simply benefited from favorable winds.

Before he had discovered the Pixiu Angle Fractal Spiral Constraint Equation System, the performance of his wizard shoes had only been average at best.

That they had sold at all was largely thanks to the boost from the Spell Combat Tournament.

"Three million magic stones. That will do," Locke said.

It was at least enough to pay off his debts and launch the next round of research.

With the abyssal ruin exploration complete, he could finally focus his energy on completing the Tier 1 Funding Project for the Origin Academy.

He could do some serious research on energy-locking structures.

Conveniently, optimizing his first Grand Magic and developing ideas for the second Grand Magic also required energy-locking structure research.

The Era of Stars had lacked research into energy-locking structures, and the Grand Magic he had conceived during the Historical Reconstruction of the Era of Stars needed to be refined and optimized once more using energy-locking structures.

Locke said to Witch Scarlett, "By the way, Witch Scarlett, I've figured out how to develop my fourth wizard shoe design."

Witch Scarlett was very pleased to hear this. "Wonderful. If we keep up this momentum, our Augustus Wizard Shoes should be able to become a third-tier wizard shoe brand in the Cloud Marsh Wetlands region."

"At least we'll have carved out a place for ourselves."

Locke raised an eyebrow. "Third-tier? Witch Scarlett, if we're going to establish a wizard shoe brand, we should establish the best one. I've also been adapting to life in the Cloud Marsh Wetlands during this time. The highly developed commercial society of the Cloud Marsh Wetlands really was difficult for me to adjust to at first, but I think, for the sake of my future potential, I need to consider how to earn as much as possible."

"I want to build a serious wizard shoe brand, and to do that I need to be the best."

Witch Scarlett paused, then turned serious. "All right. I love a partner with ambition."

She took it as nothing more than youthful enthusiasm.

But as Locke's gold-tier dealer, encouraging him a little cost nothing, so why not?

After all, it was just a few words, and no money was required.

Locke asked, "Witch Scarlett, you mentioned previously about the wizard shoe collective procurement for the Demon Realm War at Golden Crown Mountain. I've made some progress on that matter. By the way, what is the submission deadline for the designs and samples for that procurement?"

Witch Scarlett paused, then appeared to recall something, and a slightly guilty look crossed her face.

"The deadline is one month from now."

Locke gave a slight nod. One month. That was still enough time.

After all, he had already worked out the Pixiu Angle Fractal Spiral Constraint Equation System, and as a breeder, he only needed to use the Big Black Diamond Swan Bromeliad and graft it with the Big Snow Crown Bromeliad and its subspecies in order to cultivate a bromeliad magical plant capable of mimicking the Pixiu Angle Fractal Spiral energy-locking structure.

Then he could use the synthesis cube to improve the cultivation speed and quality.

One month was more than sufficient. He would even have time left over to calmly and steadily work on some research for Group 2.

And to get the Origin Academy Tier 1 Funding Project application submitted as quickly as possible.

Witch Scarlett looked a little guilty. "Locke, but about this wizard shoe collective procurement. I've been thinking it over carefully, and I realize I was shortsighted before. After all, I was only a silver-tier dealer then, and my perspective was limited."

"Now that I've become a gold-tier dealer and my social circle has expanded, I've come to realize that this wizard shoe procurement is far more complicated than I thought."

"I think the waters here run very deep. We'd best not place too much hope on it."

Locke looked at her with confusion. "Is there some problem with it? Even you have so little confidence?"

Witch Scarlett saw that Locke was standing outdoors with no one nearby, and she was in a colonial plane, so she spoke directly without beating around the bush. "I didn't expect that anything involving the magical weaver industry would be this murky."

"Locke, do you know about the magical weaver industry's Service Fee Alliance?"

Locke thought for a moment. "What is that?"

He had heard some things about the corruption and disorder that had accumulated within the magical weaver industry.

Witch Scarlett said, "This gets right to the heart of why purely plant-based wizard shoes are viewed with hostility and suppressed by magical weavers, and why they are not permitted to exist."

"Generally speaking, if it were purely about making money, there would certainly be magical weavers who would independently discover a way to profit from purely plant-based wizard shoes and try to enter that market."

Locke gave a slight nod. "Wherever the profit is, that's where wizards will be."

Witch Scarlett said, "The problem lies precisely with the Service Fee Alliance. I had no exposure to this before, and I didn't know that magical weavers had so many unspoken industry rules."

"The major textile workshops, store alliances, and high-Circle magical weavers have formed an industry standard-setting body through their magical weaver industry guild, and among the standards they set is the Wizard Shoe Service Fee Standard."

Witch Scarlett said, "The standard document is prohibited from being circulated, so I can't show it to you. I only saw it at a dealer gathering."

"This is completely different from our breeder industry. Our breeder industry guild only protects the rights of individual breeders and would never do something like this."

"The Wizard Shoe Service Fee Standard covers the periodically charged internal recharging service fee for wizard shoes, as well as wizard shoe maintenance services, such as cleaning and repairs."

Locke raised an eyebrow.

Witch Scarlett said, "According to this standard, magical weavers, when crafting wizard shoes, will always incorporate planned obsolescence."

"Systematic failures, to ensure that individual buyers and academies who purchase wizard shoes must pay a substantial maintenance fee every year."

Locke was rendered speechless. "This... the current price of wizard shoes is already on the high end among soul artifacts, with a significant amount of markup baked in. And they still charge a maintenance fee on top of that?"

Witch Scarlett said, "The unit price of the maintenance fee is even higher than the profit margin on the wizard shoes themselves."

"And there is also waste material recycling. Using their dominant market position, magical weavers include in the purchase contract a clause stipulating that discarded wizard shoes must be returned to certain designated store alliances for environmental disposal."

"In reality, that is just cost recovery."

"Wizards who violate this may be taken to court and fined."

Locke furrowed his brow. He had heard vaguely of this before. It was something anyone could find out without much difficulty.

But the service fee, he genuinely had not known about.

No wonder, after winning the Spell Combat Tournament championship and topping the sales chart, the magical weavers had such strong objections to him.

At the time, he had assumed they simply felt that a breeder had no business selling wizard shoes.

Now he understood that there were so many layers of interest beneath the surface of wizard shoes, and he had blundered in selling plant-based wizard shoes, directly disrupting the unspoken rules of their industry.

But then again, what did that have to do with him?

He had the backing of Golden Crown Mountain behind him, and he was just selling some First Circle wizard shoes. There was nothing anyone could really do about it.

Given his current status, entering this business and finding his own blue ocean market was the right move.

As long as he had the ability to take the market, that was all that mattered.

Witch Scarlett said, "So if you participate in the collective procurement, I'm afraid you'll run into serious obstacles. If you push them hard enough, they could easily band together and collude, for example by jointly undercutting you to a price you simply cannot match, and win the procurement that way. So no matter how you look at it, we cannot win the collective procurement."

"I made a mistake earlier by suggesting you try to participate in the Golden Crown Mountain Demon World combat gear collective procurement. I'm sorry, Locke."

Locke gave a slight shake of his head, and after a moment's thought said, "No. You brought me good news. You've made me realize that the competitiveness of my wizard shoes is even higher than I thought."

If that was the case, then with the Pixiu Angle Fractal Spiral Constraint Equation System, the wizard shoes he produced could very well completely defeat the competition in the Demon Realm War collective procurement.

The opposing side, due to its long-standing monopoly, had already done far too much to drive up costs for buyers, while he, as a breeder, had absolutely no reason to be constrained by any Wizard Shoe Service Fee Standard.

The rules set by the magical weaver industry guild, what did any of that have to do with a breeder?!