“There is no civilization that lasts forever, Saleen… Master,” Heinreiz said.
Saleen was only able to hang his head low and accept the lesson. That was a notable saying among mages, and one that he should not have forgotten.
He lifted his head moments later and said, “There is no civilization that will last forever, but we mages keep striving for eternity, nonetheless. There wouldn’t be the likes of Holy Rock City and Alchemy City otherwise. Master, well… Regardless, I’m rich now, so just take it as me wanting to help fulfill Lex’s ideals.”
“Ideals?” Heinreiz asked.
“Yeah, aren’t there bards singing about utopias?” Saleen asked. “I want to help make the Bitterwater Prefecture into a utopia.”
Heinreiz laughed.
“I don’t find it funny,” Saleen said in a serious tone.
“It is funny, but it’d be interesting to do them precisely because such things are funny,” Heinreiz said. “Alright, Lex isn’t around, and she told me to watch over the city. I only ask of you of one thing: don’t wreck the city walls at the north. That is Lex’s favorite place.”
Saleen slightly blushed in embarrassment. He knew that he had always been heavy-handed when it came to modifying cities, like some upstart who had just gotten rich overnight.
The front walls of Bitterwater Prefecture was one of the most beautiful architectures that Saleen had ever seen. The buildings within the city were also stunningly beautiful. The city did not look like one that mages would have lived in at all. It looked like some kind of center of art.
Saleen nodded in agreement. Building a city was not something that could be done within days. The lightning puppets’ combat capacity was enhanced by over 100 times when they were remade into lightning warriors. However, that came at a cost of losing their construction abilities. The original puppets were capable of being used for large-scale labor.
All the parts on those puppets had been able to be used for construction. The lightning warriors, on the other hand, were made specifically for killing and nothing else.
Saleen organized a massive lecture event right before Heinreiz’s tower. It was not a speech event of the nobles but one of mages imparting knowledge. All the mages who joined the Bitterwater Prefecture’s viscount’s office had the right to participate in the lecture.
His lecture went on for one day. Most of it involved answering questions from the mages. The lecture became something the people of the prefecture remembered for ages to come because there were over 100 mages who advanced right there and then. Those mages had gathered enough magic chords. All they lacked was a chance of gaining higher understanding of magical powers.
Saleen gave them that opportunity and laid out advancement magic arrays on the fly, supplying them with huge amounts of magic nuclei. That made the mages extremely grateful.
Most mages found it difficult to accumulate enough magic nuclei for advancement. While mages were generally rich, with the mainland being at war everywhere, the prices of magic nucleus skyrocketed. Even the wealthy mages were unable to get through the situation without struggles.
Saleen made his speech for real after imparting magic knowledge. The topic of the speech was none other than “Utopia.” He did not get very long-winded. Instead, he gave the mages an interesting lesson using matters happening around them.
Alchemy City was no longer the heaven that mages sought. Metatrin City was being put to the test by a constant state of war. Mages did not exist to fight wars, yet they were now compelled to research day and night ways to kill people just to survive. The notion of a mage unable to fight was worthless was wrong.
Saleen illustrated his vision of a utopia. In one such nation, a mage’s mission was to make the lives of everyone more comfortable. Mages would no longer need to fight for a living. They were to return to their very nature as mages, learning about the truth of the world.
During his speech, he said, “That was the first saying I learned when I first formed my magic chords, and I knew right there and then that it was the truth. Our world requires exploration. The mission of a mage is not to fight wars!”
Saleen’s words evoked massive responses among the mages. Most mages did not get into magic-learning to fight wars. They chose to walk the path of a mage because they had personally witnessed the mystical side of magic.
However, a mage’s journey was an unusually arduous one. One needed immense persistence to continue walking on that path. Persistence alone was not enough. One needed to form magic chords before one could truly be called a mage. Magic chords were not something achievable by everyone.
The nation illustrated by Saleen was one in which most people could learn magical knowledge. Even if they were unable to become mages, they could experience the beauty of magic. He did not deny the significance of mages in fighting wars.
He came to a conclusion through his analysis that it was war that fueled magic’s progress. For example, the Cleaning spell. It was originally just a spell for wiping off dirt and was low level. In war scenarios, it could be used to help the injured, maintain large-scale equipment, and so on.
The Cleaning spell developed due to being specific needs for it. Thus, a level zero magic became a spell that could be advanced to level one. Before anyone realized it, a level one Cleaning spell became something that could clean huge rooms within moments, creating magic arrays that enabled those rooms to be kept clean forever.
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Mages could make life better, as long as one had money. The Bitterwater Prefecture was one such example. The city had a beautiful environment. Before the mages came, the place was unable to even sustain peasants who labored in the fields.
Magic turned a place like Bitterwater Prefecture into something like a paradise. Mages created transparent rooms, enabling vegetables to be planted in huge rooms without any regard for seasons.
The cycle of sunlight and darkness was mimicked in the rooms, allowing them to produce harvest over a dozen times throughout the year.
That was only the side of things. All other facets of life with magic had seeped into life in Bitterwater Prefecture. There was simply no corner that magic was unable to reach, no status quo that magic was unable to change.
The mages of Bitterwater Prefecture had two roles: living and combat, the latter of which was a smaller role. Mages did not take up combat because they liked fighting. Most were simply thrust into the role without a choice.
Saleen was not there simply to prattle. The reason for him to be at Bitterwater Prefecture was to make the place like a hedgehog one could not simply touch. He had to do so in a way that would not significantly change the appearance of the city. It was very difficult for someone else but easy for him.
His method of doing so was to build a magic net. Magic nets had no effect on true mages. If there were to be any effects worth mentioning, it was that it made it easier for mages to accumulate elemental powers while being inside the magic net’s vicinity.
It was equal to taking a bit of power from the magic net. It differed from the magic tower since the magic net was unable to refuse power being taken.
Saleen was not doing it to please anyone in particular. Other than to fulfill Lex’s ideals, he had other reasons for doing so. Things across the mainland were getting increasingly shaky. All manners of portals leading to other planes were being opened, and peculiar creatures were invading the mainland. Humans needed a safe place.
That psychological need was incredibly massive. If Saleen were to only build a place meant to be for pure defense, it would have attracted countless people seeking refuge. It was not to say that those people were useless It was just that they were tired of all of the fighting.
If those people were to be left to their own devices, many would have been forced by fate to go into battlefields. Some might have ended up as Saleen’s enemies. The way Saleen did it was akin to having a safe haven in the middle of the mainland, allowing humanity as a whole to recuperate.
There would have been many exceptionally talented people emerging from that place, and Saleen would have no need for them to do battle. He needed only their minds to build a powerful magic civilization.
In Saleen’s perspective, he did not need those mages to research killing weapons. Crafting essential items for everyday living would have sufficed. He was naturally able to find valuable things from the thought patterns that fueled the creations those items.
He would have gained ample enchanters for deduction work and develop new magic spells, as well as new weapons. Those enchanters would not have been capable of creation themselves, yet they would be given the chance to learn by analogy. In a certain sense, the utopia could provide Saleen with immense combat capacity.
The construction project was massive, yet Saleen hardly affected everyday life in Bitterwater Prefecture. He had Nailisi summon demons and the Winged Skull summon spirits. All of the construction began underground.
Saleen was targeted for assassination in Daliang City, which left a lasting impression on him. As such, the underground side of the prefecture was re-laid with layers of defensive magic arrays. He learned how Alchemy City did it.
All underground magic arrays were being constructed between the layers of thick, heavy rock materials. Those magic arrays were connected to the city’s magic net. The construction of the magic net was different from how he did it in the past. Saleen gathered the center of the magic net together and built them into a tower. The tower’s materials were gained from the treasures left behind by the goddess.
A section of thundercloud wood was over 320 feet long. Thundercloud wood was a high-level material from the giant plane, which was capable of reaching heights up to 3,200 feet. If they were not cut down, those trees could even shoot out of the clouds. They were also immune to lightning.
Tall thundercloud wood was naturally thick. Saleen simply took to burying part of the section underground and melded it with the magic net using Water Flame. The part that was sticking out of the ground was being fashioned into a tower bit by bit.
The tower was made completely out of wood materials but was as strong as steel. The tower was over 390 feet tall and had 18 floors. That place served as the center of the Bitterwater Prefecture’s magic net.
The first spell Saleen loaded into the magic net was his own Icicle spell. While the spell was incapable of casting electrical charge, it was unusually sharp due to having lightning magic patterns. That also made the spell immune to temperatures from fire type magic.
The spell Saleen loaded into the magic net was a compound magic. A powerful enchanter could have conjured 1,200 icicles for attack at the same time.
There were no decorations made to the tower. Saleen left that to those who would inherit the place. Externally, that tower looked to be little more than a place for recreation among the group of palaces, yet the thundercloud wood Saleen had processed enabled it to withstand high level magic attacks. He did so without having to put up any magic shields.
The expenditure on materials for constructing that tower alone would have bankrupted most mages in their world. Saleen also made a self-deprecating joke about him being an upstart. No one else would have been so extravagant with their construction just so to conceal the violent nature of the tower. He could have simply used metals to build it, which would have been just as sturdy and cheaper.
Then again, doing so lacked artistic flair to it.