James, Joyce, and Riley heard Nick's instructions from within the storage area and looked at each other before James made the first move towards the exit of the storage area. Joyce and Riley followed closely behind James thereafter. The three of them arrived at the broken-down front entrance and were surprised to see Monty's body lying on the ground, lifeless as it was. James inquired aloud with a tone and expression of disbelief:
"Did you really kill that man yourself? From the way he talked, I assumed that he was at least a rank 3 Magician like you. Was he weak?"
Nick became a little unsure of how to answer James' question because he really did not know whether the tan-robed magician was weak or not; Nick knew that he was stronger, but that didn't mean that the other party was weak. The man was indeed a rank 3 Magician, after all. Nick ended up shrugging his shoulders while his three managers stared at him. Nick said:
"The man was a rank 3 Magician, but I won out in the end. That's all that happened, so don't put too much thought into it."
Nick was not used to boasting about his strength and didn't plan to start now. Although his subordinates were curious about what had happened, Nick didn't care about what they wanted:
(Read the results! That's my biography.)
Nick instructed further:
"James, deal with the police when they get here. Using the security tapes, everything should be easily concluded. I don't want to be bothered over these little details just because the intruder was a rank 3 Magician."
All three managers were disappointed that Nick did not want to talk about the battle between Monty and himself. James silently nodded his head in acceptance of Nick's request. Nick then took a few steps backward and canceled Tyrant Domain. Nick used the effects of Saturn to raise himself into the air until he got to the altitude of the fourth floor, where he cast Neptune to appear within the first conference room that could be seen from outside the building where Nick had hovered.
Nick sat on the side of the oval table farthest from the door and made a call to Dewy. When Dewy accepted the call, he did not wait for Nick to say anything and asked first:
"Sir, I heard about what happened from James and Joyce. Are you okay?"
Nick put on a weird expression in response to being asked that, and so replied:
"Okay? Why wouldn't I be? I wouldn't have started this company if I couldn't protect my own property. That wouldn't make much sense, Dewy."
Dewy was at a loss after he heard Nick's response. He did not expect Nick to be very emotional, but the young man was pretty much an iceberg after the incident. Dewy sighed and asked:
"What do you need, sir?"
Nick made himself clear at this time:
"Is Hank inside the building right now? I need to visit Great Appraisals with him to get some business done."
Dewy replied:
"Hank went out for lunch minutes before the incident happened and has not returned as yet."
Nick instructed Dewy in response to hearing that:
"Tell him to meet me at Richter Order Academy's branch of Great Appraisals immediately, then. I will fill him in on the details when he gets there."
Dewy asked:
"Do you need a ride to Richter Order Academy?"
Nick denied the help:
"No, I'll find my own way there. I want you to get someone from Real Moguls to have the ground floor and property gates repaired. We had insurance for the sort of incident that happened today, right? Make use of it. The corporate bank account is low right now, so be careful with how we spend, Dewy."
Dewy was not satisfied with Nick's refusal to really talk about the incident, but he could not force Nick to speak about what he wasn't interested in. Dewy faithfully replied like always:
"Understood, sir."
Nick hung up the phone and cast Neptune to instantly disappear and then reappear in midair, about one kilometer from where he was. Nick made use of Saturn to keep himself airborne, and although Nick was now hovering above a heavily populated area within London, right now, he did not care. Nick cast Neptune again until and a few more times after, when he appeared at Richter Order Academy's front gate amidst a flash of blue magic power.
Nick attracted the male security guard's attention before saying to him:
"I need access to the academy so that I can visit Great Appraisals."
Nick showed the security guard his license, and the security guard opened the gate so that Nick could enter in response. Things had changed since he was a student. While Nick could easily get past the gate with his magic, he did not want certain people to use that as a pretense to pester him. As soon as the gates opened, Nick floated two feet off the ground and flew towards Great Appraisals rapidly, keeping himself low to the ground to keep a low profile.
Nick reached Great Appraisal's large building within ten minutes, and as soon as he opened the door, a familiar man made an appearance. Nick muttered the grey-haired man's name as if to jog his memory:
"Chester Drexel."
Chester recognized the man in front of him and pleasantly spoke:
"Nick Capitol, it's great to see you. Because you have always been sending your machete man in your place, I was beginning to think that our paths would never cross again."
Nick openly mocked the rank 4 Magician in front of him in response to the latter's words:
"Machete man? Do you think that Great Appraisals is Jianghu?"
Chester's right eyelid twitched after he heard Nick's questions, but he ultimately stopped himself from giving Nick a few tight slaps. The latter was now an important customer of Great Appraisals due to the appraisal fees that the appraisal house earned from The Realm Exploration Company. Chester asked Nick:
"What do you want, Nick?"
Nick canceled Saturn and replied:
"I want your appraisal services like usual. My employee is running late, so he'll join us after he gets here."
Chester was not surprised by Nick's intention and simply led him to one of their appraisal rooms. In the meantime, Chester discreetly sent a message to one of his own subordinates to have Nick's man join them when he arrived.
A few minutes later, Nick and Chester sat at a table in the corner of an appraisal room, and Chester asked Nick:
"What do you have for me?"
Nick immediately summoned the Compact Garden Formation from his newer space band before summoning a pile of dirt along with one of the pale-gold flowers and a few pieces of pale-gold feces onto the table from the magic formation. When Chester realized that Nick actually presented him with shit, he was about to really let him have a piece of his mind, whether he was a good customer or not, but then he sensed the signature of luck path using his magic sense. Chester was then forced to squint his eyes in interest; he asked:
"What is this?"
Nick uncharacteristically laughed heartily, replying:
"If I knew, I wouldn't bother employing an appraisal house."
Chester snorted in response to Nick's attitude before flicking his right index finger at the items on the table. The dirt, flower, and feces were then enveloped within a harsh, orange light for a few seconds before the orange light dissipated, and Chester said:
"Rank 2 luck path material, calamity mongrel feces. This is a material that is produced directly by calamity mongrels and has little value by themself other than in nurturing a few luck path plants, but continued exposure tends to negatively influence luck. Rank 2 luck path material, calamity lily. This is a luck path material that is mostly used in certain luck-recovery potions. They have a high market price despite being rank 2 materials because of their rarity and bizarre conditions for growth, which include being nurtured by very intelligent luck path magic beasts. The dirt is just ordinary dirt that has been slightly influenced by the luck materials. Don't bother asking what the calamity mongrel feces is worth; it isn't worth anything in my eyes. The calamity lily is different, though..."
Nick waited for Chester to quote a suitable price, not willing to rush in handling this matter. Chester's heart sank when he observed Nick's reaction to his words. He had purposely played down the calamity lily's value using an ordinary tone so that Nick would not easily catch on to what he had, but Chester had apparently failed; Nick was remaining as hard as a stone. Chester felt bitter:
(...Whatever.)
Chester spoke the truth plainly:
"The calamity lily is a precious resource with basically no supply and has life-saving luck path properties. Its minimum price can amount to £1,000,000,000 easily. Don't bother asking for a discount on our appraisal services; I am not willing to give you any. Just tell me, how many of these calamity lilies do you have?"
Nick's indifferent expression broke into a smile in response to Chester's apparent bitterness. When he heard the price at which the calamity lily could be sold, he could not help but be pleased with himself. Nick answered plainly:
"I have about three thousand of them."
When Chester heard the quantity, even though he had braced himself for the strong likelihood that Nick had scored another jackpot, his expression still became uncontrollably bitter. Nick internally chuckled; he had actually lied to lessen Chester's envy; he had actually collected about twelve thousand of the calamity lilies from the calamity mongrels' trench habitat.
(I cannot believe that I hit it so big on something that I had almost no clue about.)
Before Nick could fully revel in his win, Chester's bitter expression turned into one of suspicion when he asked:
"How did you neutralize the calamity lily's associated bad luck? Just handling one calamity lily could have a rank 2 Magician suffering from bad luck for years, not to mention three thousand of them. Either you neutralized its negative influence, or I'd have to ask how a rank 3 Magician like yourself hasn't been stripped naked in public after obtaining so many of them?"
Nick's expression froze, and he obliviously muttered:
"Huh?"
Seeing Nick's expression, it was now Chester's turn to laugh heartily as he declared:
"I'm not joking. If you do not have the proper method of handling this magic material, terrible luck will likely befall you. Collecting three thousand calamity lilies personally should have turned your luck into a representation of a pile of shit. Why are you still so chipper?"
Hearing those words, Nick remembered the uncalled-for attack on his company this afternoon, and an eerie feeling filled his heart:
(Was that loser's sudden and unprovoked attack due to the effect of these calamity lilies? Could that really have been bad luck if I ended up killing the intruding Magician? Hmmm...I always heard it said that luck was a part of strength. If a person is strong enough, how much can bad luck really affect them? Those calamity lilies are only rank 2 materials. If the best they can do is lure a rank 3 initial stage Magician to attack me, then the bad luck is manageable since I am no ordinary rank 3 Magician myself.)
Nick replied to Chester:
"Never you mind any of that. Does your appraisal house have a method of dealing with bad luck?"
Chester nodded his head once, saying:
"We have a method to neutralize the spreading of the flower's bad luck upon appraisal, but doing so will cost you extra. Aren't we the best appraisal house in the city?"
Nick snorted in response to Chester's apparent greed. Great Appraisals, working with The Realm Exploration Company to appraise the calamity lilies would net them a few hundred billion pounds in pure profit. Chester was directly going after Nick's wealth, but Nick could do nothing but comply if he wanted to save his company. Nick sounded a loud sigh, and Chester's expression no longer became bitter throughout the entire meeting. Soon, Hank, Nick's sales manager, opened the door to the appraisal room, and once Nick filled him in on the business that was occurring, Hank almost ripped off his shirt in excitement.
Nick then had to make some things clear with Chester:
"The Realm Exploration Company is running a little low on cash, so I will need to request that the combat lilies be sold before your fees are paid."
Nick picked up the calamity lily using his right index finger and thumb to check on its state after leaving the Compact Garden Formation. While Nick checked on the calamity lily, Chester squinted his eyes and repeated Nick's request from his own mouth as it sounded to him:
"You mean that Great Appraisals should wait indefinitely for you to sell those flowers before we can expect to be paid. I'll be frank with you, only in your dreams would that be possible."
Hank grew nervous in response to those words. Because of his need to often reserve a portion of the company's cash to pay for sales expenses, he was already aware of their company's nearly dried-up bank account. If they had to pay appraisal fees up front, they would be dead in the water. Nick smiled shamelessly and said:
"What if I told you that I actually just remembered that the number of calamity lilies that I possess numbers over twelve thousand and not three thousand?"
When Chester heard such a ridiculous number, he spoke solemnly:
"Nick, don't play with me, or I might have to kill you. Is that number accurate?"
Nick's indifferent expression returned, and he nodded his head once in confirmation, his eyes revealing his deathly seriousness. Both Hank's eyes opened wide when he heard that number because he simultaneously calculated the amount of money that could be made by selling that many calamity lilies, a product with high demand but basically no supply.
Chester stared at Nick expressionlessly for about two minutes, thinking:
(Hmph! That's potentially 120 vatas. If I were to be ruthless and demand a fee of ten percent, considering that he is asking us to wait for payment, then a deal would become possible. 12 vatas is not a small sum, and such fees would make The Realm Exploration Company one of our biggest single customers. The boss will demand that I grant them credit if he finds out.)
Chester solemnly gave a reply:
"...Fine, we will do the appraisals and collect the fees later. Have your lawyer talk to ours to finalize a written agreement, and then we can proceed."
Nick spoke in response:
"It is always a pleasure to do business with a smart person like you, Chester."
Chester snorted before replying:
"Just leave, have your lawyer and Hank be here tomorrow at midday, so that we can finalize an agreement, that is, if you do not plan to be here."
Nick thought for a while and then said:
"I will be there personally to finalize the contract and oversee all the appraisals because apparently, these calamity lilies only last a little over thirty minutes outside the safety of my magic formation."
Nick held up the wilted calamity flower that he had taken out of the Compact Garden Formation over thirty minutes ago. The flower soon turned to dust as Nick held it up, and the dust scattered within the appraisal room. Hnak's heart bled as he saw £1,000,000,000 ruined needlessly. Chester spoke after witnessing the death of the calamity lily:
"I was wondering how it was that you preserved these flowers, as they are notoriously difficult to handle. So, you have such a magic formation?"
Chester eyed the Compact Garden Formation and soon asked:
"How much do you sell such a magic formation for?"
Nick replied coldly:
"My magic formations are not for sale."
Chester took note that Nick said, 'my magic formations', and moved on:
"We're finished here, then. I'll see you tomorrow."
Nick stored his Compact Garden Formation into his newer space band, following which, Nick and Hank were led out of the Great Appraisals branch. Once Chester returned inside to continue with his day, Nick said to Hank:
"I'll find my way back to the office. Chances are that I will have to personally develop the packaging method for each of the calamity lilies to get the highest prices possible for them. Just focus on finding the best people to sell them to. Meet me here tomorrow at midday to have the contract signed and the appraisals done. Bring Sai up to speed and bring him here with you."
Hank silently nodded his head in approval, but did not immediately leave. Nick noticed that Hank did not move and asked:
"What?"
Hank replied:
"I heard about what happened at the office today. Do you want to say anything about it?"
Nick wore a weird expression before replying:
"Why would I want to talk about a dead man while my company is hanging on the edge of financial turmoil? Hank, get your head in the game! We can't make it if we spend our time thinking about bullshit."
Nick's frank and overly rational words left Hank speechless, and so he said no more. Nick cast Neptune and disappeared from his position amidst a flash of blue magic power. Hank walked to his pick-up truck so that he could get back to the company office.
****************************************************************
As soon as Nick returned to his office on the fifth floor, he called Dewy and asked:
"What did Real Moguls say that they were going to do about the hole in my wall?"
Dewy replied:
"I told them of the incident, and after hearing that you ruthlessly killed the offending Magician, as well as having been sent tapes of the confrontation, Ann Smart was able to get her supervisor to sign off on having the ground floor and the property gates repaired. They are waving payment for thirty days in light of our current cash crunch, while the insurance company processes our request for a payout."
Nick replied:
"...Of course, they are being pleasant to us. My display of power must have frightened or enticed them."
Dewy openly sighed into the phone and said:
"I think that it is the latter, sir."
Nick instructed indifferently:
"Make sure that the construction is done properly, and have Carl and his teams help out as a method of training. They aren't doing anything during this period, anyway."
Dewy accepted Nick's instructions and hung up the phone. Nick then returned to his third basement floor workspace. He began creating a sub-formation to integrate into his Compact Garden Formation that would allow it to package every calamity lily that leaves the magic formation's special space. Later that day, Nick also looked up the calamity mongrel and realized that he had escaped Forgotten Peril by the skin of his ass.
The two pale-gold dog magic beasts that he encountered were calamity mongrels, and they were evidently far beyond Nick's abilities to handle. The information that Nick gathered indicated that calamity mongrels that had matured to the equivalent of rank 3 late stage lived in pairs and cultivated together frequently by going into a kind of hibernation simultaneously. Despite their clean appearance, the calamity mongrels are one of the most violent species of luck path magic beasts to have ever been documented.
(I walked out of a lions' den without even realizing it. I thought that the calamity lilies were supposed to have ruined my luck. How did I escape? Hmmm...now that I think about it, I have a talent called Fateful Luck. Is that a luck path talent? Maybe it is, but its description is weird. It said that my circumstances are not entirely of my own choosing. What exactly does that even imply?)
Nick did not want to think too much about his latter thoughts because if there were implications that he could not control or influence, he would have a hard time coping with the information.
Nick worked on his sub-formation until near midday of the next day, at which point, Nick didn't even shower before flying to Richter Order Academy's campus and gaining access like he had done the day before. Nick made his way to Great Appraisals and met up with Chester, Hank, and Sai on the inside. Hank and Sai had apparently been there an hour before Nick arrived.
Nick didn't waste any time in getting down to business, and after Sai and Great Appraisals' own lawyer worked out an iron-clad agreement, Chester began appraising each calamity lily. As a result of the agreement reached, Chester used Great Appraisals' method to suppress the infectious bad luck of the calamity lilies after each appraisal. As soon as each calamity lily was appraised, Nick stored it into the Compact Space Formation once again.
Over the course of a day, twelve thousand six hundred calamity lilies were appraised, which entitled Great Appraisals to at least 12.6 vatas by virtue of the contact that they had made with The Realm Exploration Company; this was a huge sum to be paid out, and Nick did not dare to withhold it from them. After having all the calamity lilies appraised, Nick left Hank and Sai to find their own way back to the office.
When Nick got back to his company's building, he continued to work on his sub-formation within his workspace on the third basement floor until one week later, when he completed a space path and earth path sub-formation that could be integrated into the Compact Garden Formation and used to package each calamity lily into a fitting space bubble that could indefinitely preserve the calamity lily so long as it was not ever released from the space bubble. If it were released from the fitting space bubble that also had earth path laws incorporated into it, the calamity lily would not be able to be preserved again using the same method.
Nick then spent a few hours explaining his plan to Hank and Carl, his operations manager. Nick spent the next two weeks packaging the calamity lilies using the Compact Garden Formation along with its sub-formation. Hank found a few large medical companies to sell the calamity lilies to for £1,250,000,000 a piece and even after all the calamity lilies were sold, more of them were requested from The Realm Exploration Company and Hank had to perform several rounds of apologies to appease the angry medical company supply managers, who did not believe that Nick's company had actually ran out of the calamity lilies.
After paying the appraisal fees and other selling and administrative expenses, Nick and his team secured 144.3 vatas in revenue. Hank was so happy with the results achieved that he tore his shirt off in the middle of the conference room and ran around in joy. He only stopped after Joyce threatened to suspend him for indecency. Everyone except the recently hired operations team members sat in the conference room at this time, and Nick gave a heartfelt thank you to his team of managers and administrators:
"You have all done well, and I will make sure to reward you adequately. I ask that you all continue to bear with me because I still have big plans for this company that will require most of our gains and your skills. Please, continue to work hard, and I will not forget it."
Nick authorized the payment of everyone within the company an early bonus within two days of paying all their bills, and so he still had 144 vatas remaining at his disposal after that, which he could use to push the company forward. Following the large injection of cash, Nick did not immediately go exploring for additional resources and dismantled the Compact Garden Formation to empty it of the calamity mongrel's feces.
Nick spent some time using Saturn's red magic power to disintegrate the soil that emerged from the dismantled magic formation. After doing that, Nick was left with a large pile of feces that he stored in a makeshift space bubble on his third basement floor. Nick reasoned:
(DNA can be found in feces, so I don't need to look for the two calamity mongrels to get a hold of their DNA. I have enough of their feces to refine gallons of their blood using my soul path methods if I please. All this means is that I have a period of research ahead of me.)
Nick summoned ten packaged calamity lilies from within his newer space band and inspected them before storing them again.
"I figure that the calamity mongrels somehow know how to cultivate the calamity lilies, and I won't stop until I can also do the same. They are too profitable to let go of."
To that end, Nick began refining calamity mongrel blood en masse by using DNA that he found in their feces. Obtaining a full set of DNA from feces was apparently not easy since Nick required about twenty pounds of feces to do so. By the end of one month, Nick was able to refine a few thousand liters of rank 3 calamity mongrel blood. Nick did not dare to further refine the calamity mongrel blood to gain their ancestors' blood because that was not likely to get him what he wanted, which was the method of cultivating the calamity lilies.
Nick's latter assumption was based on the fact that rank 6 magic beasts and above did not usually have the same living habits as their lower-ranked counterparts; the higher the difference in rank, the truer that statement was. Nick stored the liters of blood within a special magic bottle that he had instructed Riley to buy from the Magicians Association, which could hold thousands of liters of a uniform liquid. After spending so much time doing nothing but refining blood using his soul path methods, Nick reclined into his office chair and placed the bottle of calamity mongrel blood onto his work desk.
Nick then dipped his right index finger far enough into the bottle's mouth to cover his right index fingertip in the calamity mongrel's blood. Following that, Nick cast Manifest Soul on the blood now coating his fingertip, and after that, the blood began to glow white and was lifted away from Nick's fingertip, becoming a marble-sized orb that floated in front of him. Moments after, Nick cast Read Soul on the pseudo-soul produced by the effects of Manifest Soul, and so memories flooded Nick's mind, but the memories were so incoherent and piecemeal that they meant nothing to Nick. The pseudo-soul soon popped like a bubble in response to Nick reading what was left of its memories.
Nick mused about this result:
(Once again, the pseudo-soul seemed unstable for a lower-ranked magic beast, but unlike the case of pseudo-souls generated using rank 2 magic beast blood, rank 3 magic beasts' scattered memories could at least be obtained while using this method.)
Nick proceeded to repeat the process of casting Manifest Soul on samples of the calamity mongrels' blood, then Read Soul to try and obtain more memories. After obtaining seemingly random and scattered memories, Nick repeated the process and kept doing so for half a month until the calamity mongrel's blood ran out. The reason that Nick took so long was that as he obtained more of the calamity mongrels' memories, he became able to piece them together coherently within his own mind, which gave Nick insight into how these magic beasts lived. It took time for him to piece memories together coherently.
He soon realized that not all the memories were in fact about their lives, but some of the memories appeared fabricated. Nick was able to realize this because they involved circumstances that were too illogical to be true. Although Nick's luck path attainment did rise, it was nowhere near enough to make him a luck path master.
Nick, however, did gain a better understanding of the calamity lilies as well as the calamity mongrels:
(The method of farming the calamity lilies seems to be a part of the calamity mongrel's instincts, and they eat the magic materials as a form of cultivation. To farm the calamity lilies, I need two things: a few calamity lilies to start with and a great deal of luck path magic. In the absence of the latter, I can replace that requirement by using earth path and land that is well suited for growing magic materials.)
Nick already had a few calamity lilies to start with. Since he did not have any luck path magic, he could substitute that requirement using an earth path magic formation and a decent piece of land for growing magical crops. Nick had the perfect piece of land for growing the calamity lilies in mind, but he would need some help in securing it for the long term.
(No...I don't need outside help in securing the land. I can use a magic formation to do that too, but it will have to be a rank 3 magic formation.)
Nick spent the next few days developing a plan that in the end required several magic formations to complete. Nick's plan involved planting calamity lilies over a large area in the long term to satisfy the demand for the troublesome luck path material on Grand Earth.
(To complete my plan, I would need an earth path magic formation that will help me grow the plants in the absence of my own luck path magic, a magic formation to secure the area where the plants will be produced and a magic formation that can process the plants by suppressing their adverse luck path effects and packaging them so that they can be stored for a long time. I have already developed the Compact Garden Formation that can harvest the calamity lilies and safely transport them between realms.)
Nick left his workspace to go to his fifth-floor office, where he called Joyce on his smartphone, instructing her:
"Joyce, I need you to hire four rank 2 Magicians. Two of them need to have a deep interest in earth path, and the other two need to have a deep interest in soul path. I'll give you one week to do the relevant hiring. During that week, I will be in Forgotten Peril. Don't disturb me if it isn't necessary."
Joyce replied:
"No problem, Nick. I will call you if anything that needs your attention comes up."
Nick hung up the phone and called Dewy to inform him of his week-long absence from the office. Dewy accepted the information, and so Nick hung up his smartphone. Nick called Hank, Carl, and Riley into his office and gave them instructions when they all arrived in front of him:
"Hank and Carl, after having experienced success in selling the calamity lilies, I plan to cultivate them en masse, and so I will need them to be processed, packaged, and sold for the long term. Carl, I will hand over to your teams a few magic formations to do the processing and packaging about a month from now, and Hank, you need to set up long-term relationships with the companies that need the magic material."
Carl and Hank accepted the instructions without anything to say in return. They had begun to trust Nick's decisions implicitly. Nick then turned his attention to Riley, saying:
"Riley, I will need all these rank 3 magic materials as well as rank 2 magic materials as soon as possible..."
Nick used his smartphone to email Riley a long list of rank 3 and rank 2 magic materials, and after Riley looked it over, she said:
"All these materials are likely to require over 30 vatas to secure."
Nick replied to her:
"Probably...anyway, they are necessary to develop the operations that I am interested in. Get them to me as soon as possible."
After giving his managers instructions, Nick dismissed them and immediately used the space path magic formation within his workspace to head to his house in Sidon. Nick began designing new magic formations and improving a few of his existing magic formations using his tablet computer. The house in Sidon was relatively empty, so Nick simply summoned a bag of butter bread and stuffed a piece into his mouth while he sat on a folding chair, working on the magic formations.
Over the course of the next year, Nick developed two new magic formations within Forgotten Peril that he named: Calamity Cultivation Formation and Calamity Processing Formation. Nick mused:
(The Calamity Cultivation Formation is rank 3, intermediate grade, earth path, and rule path magic formation that uses the rule path principle of 'Derive' to produce soil suited to cultivate a given sample of plants. Now, I don't know much about plant path or farming, but I know that earth path is an essential element of both, because soil can be made suitable to cultivate almost any plant, given the right support. The earth path aspect of this magic formation will manipulate the soil under its influence to help cultivate a given plant material.
The Calamity Processing Formation is a rank 3, intermediate grade, earth path, rule path, and space path magic formation that theoretically uses the rule path principles of 'Dominate', 'System', and 'Preserve' to suppress the adverse luck path effects of the calamity lilies. The magic formation also infuses the flowers' space path packaging with an intense earth magic that aims to do the same thing while maintaining the flowers' freshness indefinitely and cheaply.
I also improved the Absorb Life Battle Formation to produce a wide spreading barrier that will guard the flowers' cultivation area. The magic formation will now be maniplatable by rank 2 Magicians even though it is a rank 3, basic grade magic formation.
I will have to be the one to harvest the calamity lilies using the Compact Garden Formation, which I improved to rank 3, because I don't have a way of suppressing the calamity lilys' adverse luck path effects while they are still in the ground, not without the use of luck magic and I don't have the qualifications to make such a spell that can influence the flowers while they are being cultivated using the Calamity Cultivation Formation. The adverse effects of the calamity lilies might kill others if they are not strong enough to endure the bad luck.)
Nick considered using just a year to develop two rank 3, intermediate grade magic formations a big success on his part, but that success had a lot to do with his existing experience using rule path and his understanding of the calamity lilies gained from reading the pseudo-souls that he produced from the calamity mongrels' blood samples. Nick had described the two new magic formations in general terms, but the truth is, he doesn't know if they could be used to cultivate and package magic plants of another variety.
Nick then called Joyce and asked her:
"Have you hired the four rank 2 Magicians as yet?"
Joycce replied in the affirmative:
"Yes, I have. They are recently licensed rank 2 Magicians from decent academies. Two specialize in soul path, and the other two specialize in earth path as you requested. I have been waiting for you to return from Forgotten Peril for a few days now so that I could introduce them to you."
Nick replied:
"Have them head to the fourth floor's first conference room. I will be returning shortly."
After giving those instructions, Nick used his space path magic formation within his house to return to his workspace. He had designed the new magic formations within Forgotten Peril to take advantage of the time difference involved with that realm. As soon as he returned, he called Riley and asked her:
"Riley, do you have my magic materials?"
Riley answered:
"Yes, I have procured the entire list at a cost of about 50 vatas. The price is so high because I needed to be a little indulgent when building a few relationships with supplying companies, and I needed a space band to hold the goods personally. Is that okay?"
Nick indifferently replied:
"I won't tell you how to do your job so long as you don't give me a reason to doubt you. What's important is that you have the magic materials. Bring them to me within the fourth floor's first conference room immediately."
Nick hung up the call and made his way to the fourth floor using the elevator. When Nick walked into the conference room, he saw Joyce, Riley, and four other people that he did not recognize sitting at the oval table. The four new hires were all male and all wore a white magician's robe for some reason. They all had white complexions, short, well-maintained hair, and had either brown or dark eyes. Joyce immediately got up to greet Nick and introduce the four rank 2 Magicians to him:
"Nick, this is Shawn Martin, Tony Gillies, Ben Facey, and Jordan Kelvin. They are our new rank 2 hires. Shawn and Tony specialize in soul magic, and Ben and Jordan specialize in earth magic. Gentlemen, this is Nick Capitol, CEO of The Realm Exploration Company."
Nick wasn't going to waste time asking them to introduce themselves to him. Instead, Nick said:
"Let me make myself clear, I don't care who any of you are. I only care that you are willing and eager to do your jobs. Do well and you will be rewarded more than adequately. Fail me and I will get rid of you with a quickness that you will never forget. Do you understand?"
The four men, who each seemed to be in their twenties, creased their brows in response to Nick's words. Nick did not try to seem the least bit warm, but they wanted their jobs, so they all answered one after the other:
"Yes, sir."
"Yes, sir."
"Yes, sir."
"Yes, sir."
Nick then said:
"It is good that you understand. You four will be coming along with me to Forgotten Peril within the next hour."
The four men seemed a little bothered by the sudden notice, but when faced with Nick's palpable indifference, they had no choice but to keep their mouths shut and listen. Nick turned to Riley and told her:
"Just dump the magic materials here so that I can check them and be on my way, Riley."
Riley did just that and summoned the materials from her company-issued space band. Riley held the black and silver device on her right wrist like a treasure. It had cost over £1,000,000,000, which she would have never been able to afford on her own; the status it gave her among her family and friends was immense.
The materials were mostly rank 2, and there were enough of them to fill half the conference room. Everyone else in the room watched as Nick cast his Tyrant Domain and Tyrant Sense spells and used their effects to examine all the materials in less than one hour. Shawn, Tony, Ben, and Jordan were all awed by Nick's rank 3 power. They had all graduated from their academies with hopes of one day getting to rank 3. They thought that Nick might eventually be able to help them get there, seeing that he was a successful rank 3 Magician.
After checking the magic materials, Nick canceled his spells and stored them in his newer space band. Following that, Nick dismissed Joyce and Riley. He then silently led the four rank 2 Magicians to his workspace and used one of his space path magic formations to transport them all to his house within Sidon. Nick then led the four men out of the settlement. Once they were outside the settlement, Nick cast Saturn to raise them all two feet off the ground before having them fly five hundred meters away from the settlement's walls.
The four rank 2 Magicians were uncomfortable at first with having their movements controlled by Nick, but when they thought about their discomfort further, they realized that if Nick wanted to harm them, they could not resist anyway, so it was best to let Nick guide them in doing what they needed to do. At five hundred meters away from the settlement's walls, Nick raised all five of them to fifty meters above ground before flying them all towards Beast Land.
The journey was very uncomfortable for the four rank 2 Magicians and frustrating for Nick because he had to frequently stop flying to allow the men to relieve themselves, eat, and sleep. The four men were dissatisfied with Nick's sense of urgency and his unwillingness to speak to them unnecessarily, but they could not deny that Nick seemed like a powerful Magician.
Nick and the four other men arrived at Beast Land's borders after seven days of travel, and Nick then spent a few more hours bringing them to the heart of Beast Land, where he had killed the green dog magic beast in the past. Nick placed the four men onto the ground before casting Tyrant Domain and then proceeded to clear a large area of the woodland surrounding them, about four kilometers in radius, using his space path magic powers.
The four rank 2 Magicians were once again awed by Nick's apparent might and efficiency. He ripped away the surrounding trees and vegetation like they were nothing and turned them to dust that mixed into the soil. During that time, hundreds of rank 2 and rank 1 Magicians and magic beasts fled from the area as a result of Nick's magic power. Nick then revealed his plan to the four rank 2 Magicians:
"I will be using this area to cultivate a kind of magic plant due to this land's very good soil. Ben and Jordan, you will be in charge of overseeing the earth path magic formation that I will leave here to grow the crops. It is called the Calamity Cultivation Formation, and due to the sensitivity of the matter, you will only act as supervisors of the magic formation's automatic processes. Shawn and Tony, you two will be in charge of manipulating a soul path magic formation to keep people and magic beasts away from the area, as well as inform me if anyone interferes with the operations. The magic formation is called the Absorb Life Battle Formation and is not as automatic as the Calamity Cultivation Formation, so you will be required to be vigilant."
All four men were surprised that their jobs would be to oversee magic formations. Tony asked nervously:
"Nick, sir. I don't know anything about magic formations. What rank are they?"
Nick replied indifferently:
"You don't need to know anything about magic formation to make use of them; most people who drive cars don't know how the combustion engine works. You mostly need to persistently supply some of your magic energy to the magic formation and let it do its work; most of their fuel will originate from the magic materials that will be used to lay them. As for their ranks, both soul and earth path magic formations are rank 3 but have been outfitted for rank 2 Magicians to use them well, don't worry."
Although Nick said not to worry, the four men became even more worried, and within seconds, Ben asked:
"Ahhh...Nick, sir. How long will we have to remain here to man the magic formations? We all have families to get back to on Grand Earth..."
Nick's indifferent gaze focused on Ben in response to his question and remained on Ben for one full minute. Ben felt awkward that Nick had been silently staring at him for so long, but Nick soon spoke, breaking the awkwardness:
"Family? If you want a place at my table, you're either all in or you can get lost. You will stay here as long as it takes for us to succeed, and you will roll around in the mud along with me during that time. If you can't handle that, then go find a comfortable position elsewhere!"