Wizards: Starting with Synthetic Gems

Chapter 264 A Grand Welcome Banquet

The next day, in the evening, after finishing several projects and meditating, Locke went to the place where the Hellfire Club was holding a gathering.

The gathering was not held in the port city, but in a common reception room belonging to the college next to the public plantation.

This appears to be specially prepared for celebrations and banquets within the academy, and the facilities are very complete.

The interior is extremely luxurious, so renting it for just one night costs five hundred magic stones.

In the center of the Hellfire Club's banquet hall, Locke held a glass of "Awakening Ice Brew," exchanging toasts with Harlan Vera's outstanding students.

The banquet offered a wide variety of wizard wines and delicacies prepared by spice masters, and more than a hundred wizards personally attended the banquet.

Many more powerful wizards who were no longer part of the school chose to participate in the banquet using magical projections, and toasted themselves remotely through these projections.

These wizards who used magical projection to attend the banquet were generally first-ring wizards.

They merely offered Locke a token toast, as a gesture of respect to the host of the banquet, before focusing their attention on interacting with the other formal wizards.

After all, they were all officially certified wizards who had graduated long ago. The fact that they came over and shared a drink with Locke was already a great honor.

The primary purpose of these first-ring wizards attending their sect gatherings is to continue exchanging information with other formal wizards in Harlan Vera's network, and even to conduct on-the-spot transactions of rare magical resources.

This is also one of the functions of the wizard mentor's network of relationships.

Harlan Vera, with a smile on his face, exchanged ideas with the outstanding wizards who had already graduated, sharing the achievements these students had recently told him about.

Harlan Vera sat at the head of the banquet, flanked by two senior first-circle wizards to his left and right, while Locke sat in the third seat to his right.

This position seems to be a habitually reserved for the nominal protagonist at such banquets.

Harlan Vera took a sip of demon blood champagne, then looked at a fully-fledged wizard, her eyes lighting up. "Really? Adriana, have you already been promoted from lecturer to full-fledged wizard instructor at the Fireweaver Academy in Essander, Sunshade Peninsula?"

Harlan Vera smiled and said, "The Fireweavers of Essander is the top wizarding organization in the Wizarding Lands of the Sunshadow Peninsula. Congratulations."

"You really do have potential in this area."

"The next step could be to develop in the direction of chief mentor."

Adriana smiled and raised a glass of wizard's wine in return to Harun Vera. "I still have to thank you, teacher. Without your letter of recommendation, I wouldn't have been able to join the [Esosander Fireweaver Academy] in the first place."

"The teacher's recommendation letter played a significant role at the beginning. It's just a pity that Dean Bazel has been very busy lately, but he still asked me to give my regards to the teacher and hope that the teacher wouldn't be angry."

Harlan Vera laughed and said, "It's alright. Bazel is already a second-circle wizard, so of course he's too busy to attend my banquet. You were able to join the Fireweaver Academy because he used his influence back then."

“Bazaar…” Harlan Vera’s lips curved slightly. “He is my proudest student. I still remember that no matter what kind of teaching plan I assigned him, he could complete it perfectly.”

“Rather than me teaching him, he’s testing the limits of my teaching abilities,” Harlan Vera said with a smile. “Teaching a student like this is a challenging thing, and also my favorite thing.”

The first-ring wizards present fell silent for a moment.

Clearly, everyone remembered Harun Villana's teaching style of constantly raising the bar for them, which even they now find daunting and frightening.

They are wizarding mentors themselves now, and they rarely make such demands on their students.

But they found it hard to believe that someone could render even Harlan Vera's teaching methods ineffective.

What kind of super genius must he be? Harun Vera looked at a formal wizard sitting across the round table and smiled, “Anthony, I remember you went to the Six Towers Wizarding Land to develop your career. I don’t know any formal wizards there. You are the first formal wizard in our sect to go to the Six Towers.”

"In the future, if any of my students need your help, you must help me, such as writing recommendation letters or something."

"I don't know what the Land of Six Towers is like; I haven't been there much."

Wizard Anthony smiled. He had only been a formal wizard for a few years, so hearing his once stern and authoritative teacher, Harlan Vera, speak to him in such a gentle and equal tone gave him immense satisfaction.

Wizard Anthony looked at Harlan Vera gratefully. “Of course, Teacher Harlan. Just as you helped me before, I will help my juniors.”

The wizard Anthony, somewhat boastful, launched into a long and detailed account of his experiences in the Land of the Six Towers.

"The Land of Six Towers is a place with six ancient wizard towers. These six ancient wizard towers form a barrier that covers the wizard land. The most important magical resources in that place come from these six wizard towers."

"The Land of Six Towers contains many wizard towers and possesses very rich wizard tower construction techniques, which is different from our Southeast Corner Region."

“Every wizarding faction has at least one wizard tower. I was quite startled when I first saw a wizard tower.”

"The wizarding tradition in the Land of Six Towers is family-based, with the master-disciple relationship being relatively weak. This is mainly because most of the magical resources in the Land of Six Towers are controlled by a few fixed forces."

Wizard Anthony spoke eloquently, and his fellow formal wizards at the banquet listened attentively; the banquet itself was a rare opportunity for them to exchange information.

"The wizards of the Six Towers are extremely conservative and refuse to make too much change. So, apart from the wizard towers, their magical techniques are basically behind those of our Southeast Corner Region. My impression is that they don't seem to want to improve and just want to maintain the status quo."

Wizard Anthony said, "If it weren't for the fact that the Six Towers Land has recently needed a large number of potion masters and offered enticing salaries, I wouldn't be going there. But for now, I'm just using the Six Towers Land as a stepping stone, a transit point to earn money before going to a larger wizarding land."

Harlan Vera nodded in agreement. "I also think that with your talent, you should go to a better wizarding land. While staying in the Six Towers isn't a terrible choice, it's not the best one."

"It's good that you think this way."

Locke listened silently the whole time. Although he was the nominal protagonist of the banquet, it was essentially a rare opportunity for Harun Vera's group of disciples to reunite.

The main focus of the communication remains with these first-ring wizards.

However, just listening from the sidelines provides a lot of useful information, which is much better than trying to interrupt and ending up hearing nothing at all.

Through conversations with these senior students, Locke gradually learned that the Southeast Corner Region was just an ordinary, remote little wizarding land among many wizarding lands.

However, the southeastern corner region is not the worst wizarding territory.

For example, the land of the Six Towers, although richer in resources and with a more intense magical tide than the Southeast Corner, is hampered by its ideology, causing its wizards to become stagnant and, apart from wizard tower technology, to fall far behind the outside world in other technologies.

As a result, those family wizards became even more afraid to step out of the wizarding territory of the Six Towers, which put them in a vicious cycle and one day something bad would happen to them.

Of course, Locke also unexpectedly learned that there was no Dark Wizard Alliance or Dark Wizards in the Land of the Six Towers.

That was a completely white wizarding land.

During the banquet, Harlan Vera suddenly changed the subject, pointing at Locke and saying, "Speaking of better wizarding lands, your new junior brother's former wizarding mentor, the witch Sophia, recently went to the Starfield Sea."

"The Starfield Sea, that's a huge place. It takes a lot of courage to go there."

(End of this chapter)