Wizard: Starting With Synthesized Gems

Locke ended the voice call with Wizard Salvador, went to find Witch Mason, and let them know he was leaving Group 2's facility and heading deep into the Dune Plane.

Then, under the astonished gazes of Witch Mason and the others, he walked out of the ecological membrane alone and entered the desert.

Locke gazed at the yellow sand stretching into the distance and thought, "The Tier 1 project grant at the Origin Academy should be completable just by analyzing the special energy-locking structure of the ancient flower root and drawing the corresponding conclusions. The hardest step was finding the ancient flower."

"So I don't need to worry too much about that. But there is one thing I genuinely care about, and that is why there are still high-level life forms surviving in the Dune Plane."

Locke looked up at the sky shrouded in heavy-element particles, and at the hundreds of conversion plants standing in the yellow sandy earth below like iron nails. "How should natural transformation balance efficiency with long-term benefit, and how can the short-term ecological boom be avoided?"

Locke walked into the sandstorm. Instantly, yellow sand howled in from all directions, but in the very next moment, Myst's Power manifested as a natural force field, like a terrifying forest arriving from beyond, and the entire sandstorm dissipated in an instant.

Locke walked for about half an hour. Looking at the boundless expanse of yellow sand, he furrowed his brow slightly. "Using the naked eye to search is too slow."

"Thinking about it more carefully, wherever the Dune People are living, this Dune Plane most likely still has some rudimentary ecosystems barely hanging on. Finding plants should lead me to whatever remains of the Dune People."

Locke waved his right hand, and at once a full moon descended into the sky, appearing behind him like a star hanging beyond the heavens.

He then transformed into a dark sun, using the special operational logic of the dual movement of sun and moon, layering the gravitational pull of the dark sun and the full moon together, causing the lunar gravitational force to increase twofold out of thin air.

At the same time, the full moon hung in the sky of this plane. Because this plane's world-force had already become extremely faint and fractured, Locke's prototype Grand Magic became a formidable magical phenomenon suspended at the horizon.

It illuminated the entire plane without being blocked by world-force, and without suffering the kind of attrition that casting magic in another plane normally generates from being suppressed by world-force.

Locke even sensed a feeling of welcome from this world toward him.

"Found them." Relying on the full moon's gravitational pull, Locke locked onto the clusters of magical plants hidden beneath the desert floor, then flew down through an underground river entrance using the Large Green Leaf Dragon Sparrow.

Moonlight still filtered through the rivers and crevices in the rock, illuminating the space underground.

Locke emerged from the underground river and looked around at the interior of this underground channel, where large numbers of low-level magical plants grew, mainly ferns and mosses.

"There are actually this many magical plants here? The temperature... is very low, about thirty degrees Celsius."

Locke looked at a massive block of ice beside the underground river. "I see. This area has large amounts of underground ice. The surface of this region was most likely covered by an ice layer in the past. By now, the ice on the surface has melted and the soil has turned to yellow sand, but some of the underground ice has not yet fully thawed."

"So there is still a water source here. And because of that, some simple magical plant communities remain. Fern magical plants and other low-level magical plants are those with the lowest demands on their living environment."

In essence, trees and grass-type magical plants do not surpass fern magical plants in terms of life tenacity, nor do they completely outperform fern magical plants in reproductive capability.

Even in the wizard world, in regions with abundant moisture, fern magical plants can still outcompete those grasses and trees.

Fern magical plants lose to the more advanced magical plant grasses and trees only because, under conditions of extreme natural abundance, their lack of specialization and complexity causes them to fall behind.

Therefore, in conditions of insufficient resources or extreme environments, fern magical plants become survivors by virtue of their low consumption and high efficiency.

Fern magical plants are like a backup system of nature. When the grasses and trees collapse, fern magical plants suddenly push through from between the cracks in the rock, attempting to restart this world.

"This is..." Locke examined the special fern plants in front of him. "These fern plants have undergone special evolution to cope with high temperatures. Their leaves have become smaller, and the leaves have developed multi-segmented water-storage structures. Both of these are very common energy-locking structures that emerge in response to drought resistance."

"I've read about many of these in Group 2's research materials as well."

"But..." Locke looked at an unfamiliar fern magical plant before him, thinking it closely resembled a lava fern from the wizard world. He snapped his fingers, and a flame appeared above the lava-fern-like plant. Immediately, the air vents on the surface of the leaves of this special stone fern began rapidly absorbing the high heat, extinguishing the flame.

Locke witnessed this miracle of life firsthand and couldn't help but exclaim, "This special fern has undergone an evolution similar to that of the lava fern. The two should have no connection whatsoever, and yet in order to combat high temperatures, they evolved in the same direction?"

Locke carefully used an ordinary grafting knife to dig out one of these special stone ferns, soil and roots together. "It must have evolved something similar to the lava fern's energy-locking leaf structure, the High-Temperature Breath Leaf."

"Fern magical plants are always the easiest to adapt to their environment. With a fern like this, one could harness the high heat and flame in the air, and help minimize the likelihood of fires breaking out."

"This is probably a plant that the ecosystem here spontaneously evolved on its own." Locke recalled an ecology article he had read before, which proposed a hypothesis called the Spontaneous Ecological Niche Filling Evolution Hypothesis.

The idea was that in order to maintain the existence of an ecosystem and respond to external threats that endanger it, specific species will spontaneously emerge within the ecosystem to fill the ecological role needed for the ecosystem's continuation.

Life will spontaneously evolve toward that ecological niche.

The hypothesis was not necessarily correct, merely a way of looking at things.

Within this hypothesis, the root of biological evolution was understood to lie in the supplementing of ecological niches and in the drive to preserve the continued existence of the ecosystem.

Locke said, "The magic tides here are still dense. That must be because of the magical plant communities. Magic tides are related to many elements and are extremely complex. I can't fully understand them."

"But at the very least, they are directly related to the strength of the plane's world-force and the total biomass present."

"The total biomass here has been maintained to a certain degree, so the magic tides still exist." Locke said, "These magical plants are working hard to adapt to the changing environment."

Locke furrowed his brow. "Only, when the Dune Plane was nearly pulled into the Solar Primal Plane, the entire plane's environment changed abruptly, and the speed of that change was simply too fast. It gave the ecology here no time to respond."

"The intervention of wizard civilization stabilized the Dune Plane's current state, and the ecology here has since undergone corresponding changes based on the present conditions."

"That may also be one of the reasons the Dune People are still able to exist in this plane."

Among these simple fern plants, Locke spotted a number of energy-locking structures that Group 2 was currently studying. He even noticed some sea buckthorn-type magical plants, which also clearly had some special abilities.

For example, they could collect moisture from the air, increasing the humidity of the surrounding environment.

It was quite evident that the evolution of magical plants might on its own be sufficient to resolve the Dune Plane's problems in time.

But the problem was that the evolution of magical plants was simply far too slow.

Without the participation of wizard civilization, they would not even have had the chance they currently did.

Locke looked at the underground river and caught a sharp, acrid smell. It was most likely wastewater discharged from those conversion plants, which had already contaminated the area here.

Those heavy-element particles were things that would not disappear even after tens of thousands of years.

Locke furrowed his brow. "Something's wrong. Didn't Wizard Zalan Bailey bring in environmental companies to help with the waste gas and wastewater processing? Why is the contamination still this severe?"

"Could it be that they've been discharging the wastewater directly into the desert, and the wastewater is seeping through the gaps in the sand and contaminating the entire desert floor?"

Locke heard the sound of footsteps and immediately rose to his feet.

...

Back in Group 2's facility, Wizard Zalan Bailey walked into the public laboratory, wearing a smile on his face. "Is Wizard Locke Augustine here?"

Witch Mason quickly stood up, bowed to him, and then said, "Lord Zalan Bailey, what unfortunate timing. Lord Locke is in the Dune Plane, but he has left the research facility base and gone into the depths of the Dune Plane."

Wizard Zalan Bailey's brow furrowed, and he said with a touch of dissatisfaction, "I've missed him again? What is he doing out in the deep desert?"

Witch Mason explained, "This... I'm not entirely sure. The team leader seemed curious about the Dune People who are still alive there."

Zalan Bailey clasped his hands behind his back and said, "They're merely clinging to existence. Their civilization has been lost, and their way of life is no different from that of cave-dwelling primitives. Group 2 completed an investigation on them long ago. They're only surviving temporarily by relying on some special underground glacial regions within the Dune Plane."

"Has he not read the relevant investigation reports?"

Witch Mason felt somewhat displeased by his lecturing tone, but since he was a Second Circle wizard, she could only swallow her irritation and endure it. "I wouldn't know. Perhaps the team leader has his own ideas."

Wizard Zalan Bailey turned to leave. "When Locke gets back, let me know. We still haven't managed to meet face to face."

Witch Mason watched his retreating figure and furrowed her brow slightly.

"What a nuisance."

"Because he's a Second Circle wizard, you can't openly refuse him either."

Witch Freya said, "Why bother dealing with him at all? Whenever he comes by, we just pretend we're really busy and working. He can't very well disrupt our work. Team Leader Cis would have something to say about that."

"And when he asks us something, we answer it, just a simple answer. As long as the surface pleasantries are maintained, that's enough. But why does he keep wanting to find the team leader? He seems very eager lately."

Witch Freya said, "From what I can tell, it seems like he views our team as a rival to his group. For him to be getting this close to us, that does seem strange."

Witch Mason shrugged. "Who knows."

...

Underground in the Dune Plane, Locke spotted two Dune People. He saw that the two were clothed in simple garments, and that their civilization appeared to have undergone severe regression, with their capacity for spoken language lost.

The two of them seemed deeply hungry and physically weak.

Yet they were still able to communicate through telepathy, relying on their innate psionic ability.

Locke furrowed his brow.

He attempted to use his virtual psionic organ to directly connect into the psionic resonance between the two. After quickly designing a simple apprentice-level spell model, Locke used the virtual psionic organ at the back of his head to forcibly insert himself into the exchange between the two Dune People.

"This race truly does possess powerful innate magical potential in the Mind School."

"They can form special psionic waves around themselves using just their physical bodies to produce telepathic communication?"

"Although it's only a very rudimentary application of the Mind School, this is a primitive thing, and yet it is the shared natural talent of this entire race."

Relying on the height of his magical attainment, Locke took a commanding view of the situation and forcibly made sense of the simple conversation between the two Dune People.

Locke found that these people had most likely not lost the capacity for language at all, since human thought depends on the structure of language.

The two Dune People were still communicating with each other.

"Life is getting harder and harder... the fish in the river have all died..."

"Will we make it through this year?"

"Cough cough cough... After I ate that fish yesterday, my stomach felt terrible... I've heard that in the past we used to live on the surface, and we had delicious cakes to eat."

"Cakes? What are those?"

"I don't know... I heard about it from my father. He told me through telepathy."

Locke looked at the contaminated river and immediately understood. It was Wizard Zalan Bailey's plan that had caused the underground rivers of the Dune Plane to become severely polluted.

The low-level plant communities could not sustain the activities of higher life forms, so these Dune People had been barely scraping by on the cold fish still alive in the underground rivers.

Yet Wizard Zalan Bailey's aggressive transformation plan had destroyed this fragile and temporary ecological balance, like the final straw that breaks a person's back, bringing a severe food shortage upon the Dune People tribe before him.

At that moment, one of the Dune People suddenly clutched his stomach, began foaming at the mouth, and collapsed to the ground in agony. His face was flushed red, and it appeared that consuming fish contaminated with heavy-element particles had caused multi-organ failure.

Locke, as a potion master, recognized the man's condition at a glance.

The other Dune Person was terrified, pushing the fallen man's body repeatedly, trying to confirm that his companion was still alive, but in all honesty, it was of no real use.

Locke furrowed his brow and instinctively moved to step forward, but he immediately thought of his own principle of minimum intervention.

"I came here to observe why these surviving Dune People can still live on, and to study their ecology. If I intervene now, I could of course solve their problem with ease. But is that truly the right thing to do?"

"From my perspective, I would lose the ability to clearly observe the ecology of the Dune People. And from the perspective of the Dune People, what would my presence mean to them? They have survived with such resilience for so long. Perhaps that state itself is extraordinarily precious."

"I cannot arbitrarily disrupt that state."

"Let me observe through other means first." Locke looked at a ray of moonlight filtering down into the underground space, opened a vial of Holy Spring Nectar potion, placed a trace of the potion into it, and then used that moonlight to channel it into the body of the fallen Dune Person, alleviating his symptoms.

"First, I must trust in the resilience of whatever ecology the Dune People have managed to preserve. If I intervene arbitrarily, I am no different from Wizard Zalan Bailey, casually altering this plane as I see fit."

Locke said, "That approach would maximize efficiency, but the act of observation itself would lose all meaning."

"Can efficiency and natural laws both be achieved?"