Volume 1 Chapter 50 - Poor Great Magician

Volume 1 Chapter 50 Poor Great Magician

After an hour, Xu Yi met Great Magician Camilla in the top layer of the Magic Tower.
After observing his excellency Great Magician for a while, Xu Yi couldn’t help giving a secret sigh.
Since the last time he saw his excellency Great Magician, it had already been twenty days. However, even though a short twenty days had passed, his excellency Great Magician had clearly gotten much older.
Other than being thinner and more tired, the most prominent thing was that his excellency Great Magician’s head of brown hair now had several gray hairs that appeared.
For a Great Magician that always seemed to be bursting with life and filled with energy to look like this, he must have encountered quite a bit of pressure in the past few days.
After seeing Xu Yi, Great Magician Camilla seemed to have forgotten something. He was like he was in the beginning, nodding at Xu Yi with a kind look, signaling him to sit down.
“Xu Yi, what did you come looking for me for this time?” Although he looked tired, Great Magician Camilla still had a serious expression, “Let me tell you first, if you are here to discuss a business cooperation, you can leave right now.”
Xu Yi was silent for a bit before saying with a smile, “Your excellency Great Magician, I’m afraid I have to disappoint you. I came this time because I wanted some help with a problem in magic because I’ve met some difficulty that I can’t solve for now. But now I’ve changed my mind and want to talk to you about a business cooperation.”
Great Magician Camilla knit his brows and angrily said, “Then scram for me! You fellows, all of you are falling into traps of money, how are you qualified to be magicians? Ah?”
Xu Yi still had his smile and his expression didn’t change.
“Your excellency Great Magician, I think your words are a bit mistaken. Falling into a trap of money is not right, but that seems to be unrelated to whether one is qualified to a magician or not, right?”
“Humph! A fellow that only knows how to make money and doesn’t know how to study magic, are they qualified?”
Xu Yi shook his head, “Your excellency Great Magician, I have a question for you. Tell me, do you think magic research needs money?”
Great Magician Camilla’s expression froze and his expression changed. It went from anger to doubt before finally reaching helplessness.
“Magic research of course needs money and not only does it need it, it needs a lot of money…..” Great Magician Camilla gave a sigh as a dull look appeared on his face.
“So that means that not only should a magician not be opposed to making money, they should combine the two. Your excellency Great Magician, do you think this is correct?”
Great Magician Camilla glared at Xu Yi and said with a cold snort, “Did you specially come to ridicule me?”
“No, your excellency Great Magician, you are mistaken. I definitely didn’t have the meaning of ridiculing you. I only…..heard that you met some problems and wanted to see if there was anything I could help you with.”
Great Magician Camilla stared at Xu Yi for a while and only saw sincerity from his face, so he said with a soft snort, “Did Still tell you?”
“Still indeed told me a bit, the rest I heard from the other coworkers.” Xu Yi paused before continuing, “Your excellency Great Magician, I feel that you should change your ideas right now. How about attempting to combine magic and business?”
“I hate businessmen and hate the spirit of merchants polluting the pure magic.” Great Magician Camilla said with a cold snort.
“But you don’t hate gold coins, right?” Xu Yi asked.
Great Magician Camilla gave a cold snort, but he didn’t refute him.
Xu Yi used this chance to say, “That’s right, gold coins are only a tool. What you hate are those people who use this tool to hurt you and not gold coins itself. Money does is not classified into good and evil, if it is used well, it is a very useful tool. If it isn’t used well, it can also bring great disaster. Great Magician Camilla, if you had enough money, what would you use it for?”
“Nonsense. If I had enough gold coins, I would definitely invest it all into magic research.” Great Magician Camilla replied in an exceptionally simple manner.
“But you don’t have enough gold coins right now, isn’t that right?”
Great Magician Camilla’s expression changed and he didn’t speak for a long time.
Seeing his appearance, Xu Yi gently shook his head. It seemed like the difficulties Great Magician Camilla had met now was even more serious than he had thought.
When he noticed that Cimirot, Rem, and Wella had actually left the Magic Tower in the lab, Xu Yi wasn’t that surprised. But after he found that everyone else in the lab had their hearts swayed and had the idea of leaving the Magic Tower, Xu Yi knew that this situation was not right.
After he kept using a veiled attack, Xu Yi finally received an answer that he didn’t expect.
Great Magician Camilla was out of money!
Although Great Magician Camilla had never been well off and the magicians in the Magic Tower were filled with complaints, there had been no problem in maintaining the normal operation of the Magic Tower.
But during this time, many magicians have found that there were problems in the normal operation of the Magic Tower.
The first was that there were shortages in the materials they needed. Then some of the reasonable requests the magicians had made had actually been rejected. The final and most important thing was that Great Magician Camilla had actually failed to pay their salaries for the first time!
Although he had fully paid everyone after two days, this period of time made everyone vigilant.
In the magicians’ circle, there were many things that weren’t considered a secret. So every soon, everyone had learned that Great Magician Camilla had met with some big problems. His funds would become less than before and he might not even be able to support the Magic Tower.
After hearing this information, the magicians of the Magic Tower had been shocked and naturally looked for different paths.
Once Cimirot, Rem, and Wella left first, the workers in the lab naturally couldn’t sit still. Now that a big boss like Xu Yi had appeared in front of everyone, they all revealed the same enthusiasm.
Xu Yi who had asked around looked for Still who came to the Magic Tower with him and after pressing her for the answer, he finally received the truth from Still.
The coworkers had heard the truth, there really had been a large problem with Great Magician Camilla’s fundings.
Normally speaking, if not calculating the other sources of incomes for Great Magicians, there were two sources of stable income for magicians of the Great Magician level.
One was from the Magicians Guild.
When a magician broke through and reached the Great Magician Rank, they were entitled to a special subsidiary from the Magicians Guild.
This subsidiary was strictly determined by one’s rank, mainly taking into account a Great Magician’s power rank and secondly taking into account when one reached the Great Magician Rank.
Great Magician Camilla was currently a Three Star Great Magician and according to normal standards, he was entitled to a special subsidiary of two hundred gold coins from the Magicians Guild each year. Other than that, since he had already reached the Great Magician Rank twenty three years ago, he also received a special fifty gold coin subsidiary.
Adding this together, it was two hundred gold coins.
The other source of income was from the country the magician was from.
This was because magicians were an important part of the country’s strength and magicians of the Great Magician Rank were very precious, so every country would give special financial support to Great Magicians.
Although the Lampuri Kingdom was only a small country on the Sines Continent, Great Magician Camilla received a high financial support of up to two thousand gold coins from the Lampuri Royal Family each year.
Because Great Magician Camilla was not like other Great Magicians who worked with companies, promising to protect those companies while receiving support from them in terms of gold coins, this two thousand two hundred and fifty gold coins was Great Magician Camilla’s yearly income.
If there were no changes, this two thousand two hundred and fifty gold coins was enough to support the daily expenses of a Magic Tower in a small town in Banta City.
But there were changes this year.
The main change was with the financial support from the Lampuri Kingdom.
In the past, with each year’s fall harvest, the Lampuri Royal Family would give money to the Great Magicians of the kingdom. However, half a month ago, the Lampuri Royal Family suddenly announced that because their finances were tight, the Royal Family had to lower the financial support they were giving to Great Magicians.
When it came to Great Magician Camilla, they had cut his previous year’s two thousand down to a thousand! They actually cut it by a half!
Great Magician Camilla already had many problems when it came to maintaining the Magic Tower, but suddenly losing the support of a thousand gold coins, it could be considered an instantaneous collapse.
A thousand gold coins was equal to half a year of Great Magician Camilla’s income. Suddenly losing all of this, not only did it mean he didn’t have enough gold coins to support his magic research, he didn’t even have enough to pay the salaries of the magicians working for him.
“Grandfather even said to me that it is very likely he will close the Magic Tower.” When Still said this to Xu Yi, she revealed a very helpless smile, “Although from my angle, this is indeed a good thing because without the Magic Tower to worry about, grandfather will have much less to worry about, I know that grandfather has spent quite a bit of effort to build this Magic Tower. This contains the hard work he has invested and if he was to close it now, he might not be able to accept it.”
After hearing Still’s thoughts, Xu Yi considered it a bit before resolutely coming to the top layer of the Magic Tower and asking for an audience with Great Magician Camilla.
In the face of this serious and old fashioned old man who was actually very wise, Xu Yi didn’t hide his ideas and goals at all. He very cleanly and directly pointed out this brutal fact to Great Magician Camilla.
Great Magician Camilla, you have no money!