Chapter 135

Chapter 135 Zach’s Procurement Feedback

Witch Kitchen.

In private room No. 3, Zack ordered two tri-color salt-grain steaks, one serving of chilled manatee liver, two servings of lava liquor, and one dish made with potato-based magical plants.

Locke discovered that Zack actually had a membership badge of the Witch Kitchen similar to the Platinum Star of the Li Jin Secret Language Member, which was a gourmet badge awarded by the Witch Kitchen.

The badge is shaped like a curled tongue.

The Gourmet Badge gives you half off all purchases at the Witch Kitchen. However, it seems you need to spend a lot of money at the Witch Kitchen to get this membership badge.

Locke guessed that Zack, as one of the purchasing managers of the academy, obviously often brought his partners to the Witch Kitchen.

Zack was obviously very familiar with the seasoning chefs in the Witch Kitchen. As soon as he arrived, the most powerful seasoning chefs in the Witch Kitchen would come out personally to prepare delicious food for them.

At the dinner table, Zach was even more enthusiastic about Locke. “Locke, to be honest, purchasing your magic plants was very stressful for me at first.”

“Because it’s a gamble.”

Locke raised his eyebrows in surprise. “It has my teacher’s certification.”

Zach explained, “Yes, magical plants are much more relaxed than potions. They don’t require human trials. Simple testing is all that’s needed to issue a certification. However, performance testing is often limited to a few specific aspects, which is very restrictive.”

“Many magical plants only reveal their weaknesses when used extensively. Many breeders want their creations to be included in the academy’s collection, partly to make money and partly to better test their magical plants.”

Zach explained, “For example, I once purchased a slightly modified version of a bellflower magic plant from a breeder. On paper, its performance seemed slightly better than the traditional bellflower, but when I assigned it to the academy’s combat wizards, problems arose.”

Zach raised his index finger and gestured in mid-air, saying, “That species of bellflower demon plant is very unstable. Its performance in a stable state appears to be very good, which is why it ranked among the best in the certification tests conducted by senior breeders. However, in combat, once it enters an unstable state, its power will be greatly reduced.”

Zach’s expression wasn’t very pleasant. “That mistake nearly cost me everything I had.”

“But there’s nothing we can do about it. After all, potions are meant to be consumed, so the review process is very strict. But for external objects like magical plants, the review process is definitely not that strict.”

“That’s not necessary. After all, only through large-scale actual combat testing can problems with this kind of thing be discovered. Simple testing is very limited.”

Zach raised a glass of lava liquor and said to Locke, “So when I purchased your Crystal Palm Fire Lotus, even though I saw the excellent performance on the certification, I was still a little nervous.”

“It’s just that the power of your Palm Fire Lotus has doubled, and I really can’t see any problem with it, so I took the risk and signed the order with you for 20,000 magic stones.”

“But the result was unexpected.” Zach laughed. “Just three days ago, a group of combat wizards from the academy engaged in a fierce battle with members of the Blood Curse Tribunal in the capital of a mortal nation outside the territory of Lilith’s Hut.”

“That country is a vassal state of the Blood Curse Tribunal. In that country’s capital, there is a Blood Curse Tribunal Curse Research Institute. Many evil curses were developed there and used in the war against us.”

“In response, we decided to implement a [Scorched Earth Bombing] strategy against the Curse Warlock’s research institute, aiming to completely destroy the place. However, due to a low stock of Palm Fire Lotuses, they accidentally used your Crystal Palm Fire Lotus.”

“According to existing unspoken rules, a new species of magical plant like yours wouldn’t be used first in a major battle. So this is just a coincidence.”

Zach said, “But the combat test results are very good. Using this new type of palm fire lotus can increase the actual power of the scorched earth bomb to between 0.6 and 0.7 rings.”

“It’s only a thousand scorched earth bombs, but they have the same effect as two thousand scorched earth bombs. Moreover, the explosion of a single scorched earth bomb is even more powerful, making it even more difficult for the vampires of the Blood Curse Tribunal to survive such an explosion.”

“Not only that, it actually produced a special effect in actual combat.”

Zack handed a document to Locke. It was a set of pictures quickly drawn using magic technology, and they were almost exactly the same as the real scene.

This is the work of a quick painter, a branch of the illusion school.

Locke flipped through the photos one after another and found that the land of the enemy’s capital that had been bombed by scorched earth bombs was not the charred black as recorded in the book, but boiling magma.

In other words, part of the enemy’s capital was directly bombed into a small-scale lava sea.

The boiling magma was still flowing on the ground, continuing to cause secondary damage to the surviving Blood Curse Court’s ground defense facilities, and carrying out concentrated destruction of the rune arrays of various curse magic traps hidden in the ground.

Locke’s eyes became serious, because this was an effect that a single crystal palm fire lotus could not achieve when combined with a scorched earth bomb.

“After a scorched earth bomb explodes, the standard change to the land is a charred black. Even a large-scale concentrated explosion would at most leave the land scorched black. This kind of spell result cannot be the designed effect of the scorched earth bomb spell model.”

Locke is also a wizard specializing in life magic botany, a breeder, and a potion master, which immediately made him think of another possibility.

“Wait a minute, the biggest difference between the Crystal Palm Fire Lotus and the ordinary Palm Fire Lotus is that the Crystal Palm Fire Lotus has experienced the phenomenon of [Wood Element Fiber Crystallization].”

“Ordinary Palm Fire Lotus only has wood element fibers. Crystallized wood element fibers can hold more fire elemental mass. Moreover, crystallized wood element fibers are extremely hard. Even if an explosion occurs, they will not ignite instantly, but will be shattered into countless small fragments, scattering in the air.”

“So during the large-scale concentrated explosion…” Locke then realized that he had overlooked a very important thing.

“We can’t just consider the explosion of the flame element stored in a single palm fire lotus, but also the energy conversion generated by the wood element being ignited by the fire element.”

“We also have to consider the crystallized wood fibers inside the thousand palm fire lotuses. If those wood crystal fibers were torn apart by the explosion…”

“But because the concentration was so high in such a short period of time, if they continued to try to converge the flame energy, a compression effect would occur. This caused the flame energy to be concentrated after the initial explosion while maintaining its explosive power, forming molten lava.”

Locke’s eyes lit up. “That magma isn’t ordinary magma, but a concentrated form of highly concentrated magical flames. It will inflict a second, fatal damage to the enemy’s territory.”

“At least it’s very advantageous in clearing out survivors and destroying the enemy’s magic traps hidden underground.”

Locke pondered. “But if that’s the case, the scorched earth bomb won’t be able to fully utilize the power of the Crystal Palm Fire Lotus. The academy needs to develop a new spell model to complement the Crystal Palm Fire Lotus.”

“I think now that the direction is clear, development should be easy.”

Zach couldn’t help but applaud. “As expected of the developer of the Crystal Palm Fire Lotus, you figured it out as soon as I mentioned it. Afterwards, a first-class wizard apprentice in fire magic and a first-class wizard apprentice in plant magic from the Academy’s Shaping School came together to analyze the matter and came up with similar opinions.”

“They call this phenomenon the [Lava Duct] phenomenon. A series of subsequent supporting spell development plans have also been arranged around the unique structure of the Crystal Palm Fire Lotus you developed, the crystallized structure of wood element fibers.”

Zach said briefly, “I think of your work as a platform for developing magic models.”

“In the future, the academy will develop a series of subsequent trick models based on this work, just like the magic vines have vine hands, vine frenzy, and other series of spells.”

“It’s a pity that the breeding competition committees couldn’t know this. Otherwise, you might not have placed fifth in the preliminaries, but first.”

Locke said modestly: “It’s just luck.”

I really didn’t expect that something like this would happen.

It seems that sometimes, it is indeed necessary to provide a large number of magic plants to the wizards in the war department for use. Perhaps they can discover many things that cannot be discovered when a single person uses spells.

Zach thought for a moment and said, “Oh, by the way, the academy’s management wants you to join the development team. Of course, the freedom is yours.”

“After all, with your help, our work here should progress quickly. What do you think?”

(End of this chapter)