Chapter 130. Adventurer Guild and World Level Up!
When Cedric feels he has nearly achieved a breakthrough in his magic studies, he begins planning to bolster the Magic Association so it can stand on equal footing with other forces.
His first step is straightforward; he aims to provide them with top-tier combat power at Level 4, similar to the other two forces led by Lacius and Elisa.
Holding a [Divine Intervention: Urge] he just purchased, Cedric looked for Catherina.
It didn't take long before he spotted a giant dragon nesting inside her grand tree house, or rather, tree mansion, in Grey Coal City.
After the dwarf team leader declined the opportunity to become the council representative of the rebuilt Grey Coal City, Catherina, who then lacked a home, looked at the recently destroyed city and used her payment from defeating the demon king to purchase a large amount of land.
The city gladly accepted her money to expedite the repair work, while Catherina also waited patiently for the city to be restored.
After several years, the reconstruction was complete. Thanks to her investment, Catherina held a quarter of the city’s land deed. She then sold some highly valued land, paid dwarves and elves to build her a mansion on half of it, and developed a shopping district with the other half.
Thanks to her otherworldly marketing strategy, hero status, and personal strength, Catherina successfully attracted many merchants to her shopping district, transforming it into the hub where items from across the continent are available.
Thanks to her agreement with the Magic Association, the organization controlling several safe routes between the northern and southern regions of the continent. Even specialty items from the human territory can be found here.
The shopping district also helped Grey Coal City’s economy swiftly recover to pre-evacuation levels, with signs of growth beyond its previous state.
With income from her shopping district venture, occasional land and real estate transactions, and a few other barely legal activities, Catherina finally achieved her dream of a leisurely, luxurious life surrounded by many handsome butlers from various races.
Honestly, Cedric is amazed at how effortlessly Catherina ends up controlling a city’s economy.
Anyway, with Catherina in sight, Cedric activated the [Divine Intervention: Urge], giving Catherina the idea of joining the Magic Association.
Shortly after, the [Divine Intervention: Urge] activated, and Catherina, who had been browsing the elf’s internet, suddenly called her head butler to summon a representative from the Magic Association.
During the long trade deals between Catherina and the Magic Association, the latter has actually sent an invitation to Catherina. They wanted to make her one of their council members.
After all, for them, exchanging a council member position for inviting a rich Level 4 blessed is definitely worth it.
But Catherina hasn’t been answering their invitation until Cedric used the [Divine Intervention: Urge] just now.
Once the Magic Association received Catherina’s message, they immediately sent a council member as their representative to meet with Catherina.
After a discussion that lasted for a whole day and night, they finally achieved a satisfying conclusion for both sides, with Catherina joining the Magic Association with a lot of special perks given.
A few of the perks include the right to dispatch a certain percentage of the Magic Association members to do her bidding as long as she pays sufficient salaries for them, access to any magic material processing and activation methods that the Magic Association has, the right to purchase magical materials cheaply, and other special perks.
All she needs to do is invest a certain amount of money in the Magic Association every month and lend a helping hand no more than thrice a year. Even then, they’ll still pay her for her help.
Both sides are incredibly satisfied with the deal.
Catherina is happy because she found many high-level workers for her upcoming plans, while the Magic Association is pleased to finally have a strong thug.
As both sides collaborate, Cedric refocuses on studying his world's magic system. Over several years, he finally makes an unprecedented breakthrough. He discovered how to combine two elements into one spell.
This process took years of research, aided by his godhood's rapid calculations and the infinite materials he can conjure in the Divine Space. Actually, most of the time is spent taking a few detours after realizing his research has gone off course. This demonstrates just how challenging it is to develop a magic system.
To clarify, creating a magic that combines two elements is different from simply casting two different spells or blessed powers simultaneously. It's like the difference between carbon, oxygen, and carbon monoxide.
This represents a significant leap in the existence of the spell itself.
With this new knowledge, Cedric prepared to send the theory on how to create dual-element magic to Catherina, so she could pass it to the Magic Association.
Sending his mental power to check the Crystal Cube world, Cedric soon saw Catherina’s location.
Currently, she’s swimming in an artificial lake she built in front of her new mansion, which is a few kilometers away from the Grey Coal City.
Unlike her city mansion, this one is almost as big as half the Grey Coal City itself, which is why she built it a few kilometers away from the Grey Coal City.
Cedric got a bit curious about how Catherina got the money to build such a massive mansion, so before he gave his theory on dual-element magic, Cedric used his Past Observation on Catherina to check what she’s been doing over the past few years.
Based on what he seen from Past Observation, Cedric noticed that after Catherina agreed to join the Magic Association, she expanded her real estate investments to other cities. She also treated city development like a real-life city management game by creating a new city that is still under construction.
However, these are not her primary income sources. While they generate significant income for Catherina, they also incur substantial expenses.
What make hear riches soar to high heaven is that she used her right to hire some Magic Association members to open a fantasy-esque adventurers guild where blessed could take missions like procuring magical materials, gathering materials for alchemy, killing demons, or other things.
Although there’s some resistance, Catherina has thrown enough money to finally spread her adventurer guild throughout the elven, dwarven, and even the human territory.
Thanks to it, her Adventurer Guild rose quickly in strength until it almost rivalled the Magic Association.
The Adventurer Guild, acting as the platform for those requests, took a small percentage of each commission. Over time, this accumulated into a substantial sum. Enough for Catherina to build a mansion the size of a city within a few years.
After observing this, Cedric can only praise Catherina for her ingenuity. She not only established the Adventurer Guild, a staple in fantasy stories, but also turned it into a lucrative enterprise that generated significant profits.
Because the Adventurer Guild helped the researcher type blessed to collect magical materials for their experiment, it indirectly advanced the world’s magic at the same time. So, Cedric honestly has no complaints about it.
Well, except for the fact that one of the top three forces he planned has changed from the Temple, the Elves and Dwarf Alliance, and the Magic Association. into the Temple, Elves and Dwarf Alliance, and Magic Association plus the Adventurer Guild.
After learning how Catherina acquired her riches, Cedric turned off the Past Observation and greeted her.
[Long time no see.]
Seeing the familiar screen that hadn’t appeared in a few years, Catherina opened her eyes wide. “Is there a new demon king?”
[No.]
“I don’t think you’re the type of person, or god, who will greet someone unnecessarily.” As someone who’ve talked the most with Cedric in the past century, Catherina knew that Cedric would usually only sent message whenever there’s something pretty important going on.
[Well. I actually came here to share a knowledge with you.]
“What knowledge?” Catherina curiously asked.
[Theory on how to create a magic spell with mixed elements.]
“What?” Catherina opened her eyes wide.
As a Level 4 blessed with Divine Strength blessing, she needs to use magic to cast supernatural powers.
Although her knowledge isn't as extensive as that of those who specialize in magic research, she understands that the theory behind creating a mixed-element magic spell is groundbreaking.
Then, Catherina remembered she was essentially speaking to the god and creator of the world, and her shock quickly faded.
Seeing that Catherina had calmed down, Cedric told her to pick some paper and pens to write down the theory he was going to share.
Cedric never planned to immediately tell the full method. He just gave the theory, partially because the world’s balance is still on the edge of falling after he sent several divine items during the battle against the demon king. But there's also the fact that Cedric wants the creature to work hard on its own as much as possible.
If the Magic Association still fails to raise even after he gave them this groundbreaking research, then Cedric will give up on the plan to create three top forces to balance each other.
After Catherina’s butler collected a stack of papers and pens, Cedric sent her the theory on creating a magic that combines two elements. Once he finished, Cedric left a message for Catherina.
[You can use it as you see fit, but please spread it to the Magic Association first.]
Seeing the stack of papers filled with theory, Catherina briefly read through them before instructing her butler to send a letter to the Magic Association’s council. In her message, she mentioned receiving a revelation from the creator, who instructed her to share a gift with the Magic Association.
Upon receiving Catherina’s letter, the council of the Magic Association promptly paid her a visit.
Without much nonsense, Catherina gave a copy of the theory on creating mixed-element magic.
After reading the theory, some of the council members even cried from happiness, “This is one of the most beautiful knowledge I’ve ever read in my life. I even recalled the moment when I first learned magic under teacher Hellion’s guidance.”
One of the few who still have their reason asked Catherina, “Lady Catherina, may I ask if you’ve shared this theory with others?”
When Catherina heard that question, she immediately guessed what that person wanted, “I have just received the revelation from the creator. So, all of you here are the only ones who’ve known about this.”
The councillor nodding at Catherina said, “Could you please refrain from sharing this with other forces? We're willing to offer some benefits in exchange for Lady Catherina not revealing this theory elsewhere. I can’t speak for others, but I believe they’d agree.”
For a moment, the councillor even briefly considered killing Catherina to keep the secret, but he immediately dismissed the idea. The gap between them is just too vast. Even if all the council members at Catherina’s mansion joined the fight, they wouldn’t be able to stop her from leaving.
In that case, they would turn their greatest supporter into their worst enemy.
Catherina didn’t immediately nod, and instead wore a thoughtful look.
The councillor feels a bit nervous until Catherina seemingly reluctantly says, “Let me hear your offer first.”
After a series of negotiations, both parties agreed that Catherina would refrain from sharing the knowledge of magic theory in exchange for additional special rights.
Although the Magic Association essentially sacrificed part of its influence in the deal with Catherina, it ensured its future stability. With the theory now in their possession, the council members of the Magic Association started studying it together with a select few trusted subordinates.
They kept extremely tight guard against leaks of the mixed-element magic theory. The chance to ask for Catherina’s move was mostly spent on killing anyone stupid enough to try to leak the method.
After two years, the Magic Association successfully created a two-element magic called magma magic, combining earth and fire magic. At the same time, they also created tree magic, which combined the elements of earth and nature.
The magma magic, as the name implies, allows the user to create a field of magma. While tree magic is a branch of nature magic that specializes in growing strong, massive trees.
Having achieved initial success with the two magic, the Magic Association eagerly invests all its resources into researching the two-element spell, while tightly guarding against any leaks.
After two hundred years and several generations passing away within the Magic Council, the knowledge of mixed-element magic was accidentally leaked from the Magic Association and fell into Lacius’s hands.
When Lacius got his hand on that knowledge, he unpetrified himself and studied it seriously.
Leveraging the Temple’s knowledge-gathering ability, Lacius effortlessly crafted several dual-element magics.
As the foremost expert on the earth element, he pioneered same-element mixed magic, combining two earth magic spells to enhance their power, which led to the development of metal magic, born of two combined earth spells.
Perhaps feeling pressure from the Temple’s massive advancement in magic, the Magic Association finally achieved a new breakthrough.
With centuries of accumulation, they successfully created a three-element magic involving fire, wind, and earth. The creator of that magic, a Magic Association council member at the Peak of Level 3, named it the meteor summoning spell. A spell that can create a flaming boulder that shoots at insane speed.
It's an unprecedented three-element spell that requires someone at Level 4 to trigger the mana inside the processed magic materials.
Actually, those at Level 3 could trigger it, but it requires a few special processes and the help of some potions to temporarily raise the user’s mana quality and quantity to barely be comparable to a Level 4 blessed. Even then, there’ll be a danger of being sucked dry after casting the spell.
At the same time as the official creation of the meteor summoning spell, inside the Divine Space, Cedric received a notification from the System.
[Congratulations, your world has fulfilled the requirements to level up!]