City of Sin (Yanyu Jiangnan)

An Efficient Charger

With hundreds of mana crystals put in front of him, Richard smiled helplessly and picked one of them up. Even though he didn’t have Sharon’s power yet, his output was much more stable; in a few minutes, he was done. The magic crystal started glowing a pale blue, motes of starlight leaking out from within.

Sharon immediately cheered, snatching the starlit crystal and fondling it with admiration. At the same time, she didn’t forget to shove a brand new blank crystal over to him; there would be no breaks. Starlit crystals were a specialty of the Deepblue, made from ordinary magic crystals with the power of the Deepblue Aria. This added astral power to the crystals, giving them a large array of uses related to spatial magic. Many mages without much experience in spatial magic relied on them for experiments related to the void.

However, the problem with starlit crystals was their scarcity. The legendary mage was lazy as always, only producing a few batches whenever she felt like it, leaving this item in short supply around the year. Outside of her, Richard himself and maybe Ensio were the only ones able to produce these things.

Sharon normally needed to make six or seven attempts for every success, but Richard went through a full dozen crystals without a single failure. Her eyes glimmered with the joy of a dragon having found a new treasure, only to be replaced by shock when she saw him pause, “Why did you stop? Ah, don’t worry, I have many more crystals; this is only a small portion!”

Richard broke out into a cold sweat; she was making it seem like he had to become a charging machine for the next month. He held his forehead in one hand, trying to push away the oncoming headache, “I need to meditate, my mana’s gone.”

“Huh? You’ve only done… twenty! I can go to two hundred before I get sick of it.”

“Get sick, not tired? You know what, never mind,” Richard chose not to follow that route. He already had a vast mana pool for an ordinary legendary mage, but he would grow tired ten times over before she got bored! He finally decided to clarify a suspicion that he’d had for a long time, “Master, your legendary ability was Manaforge too, right?”

“One of the bunch, why?”

“One of… the bunch?” This was even more shocking than her mana pool. It was extremely rare to meet people with even two legendary abilities, but Sharon was clearly indicating she had way more.

“Of course, what kind of person do you think I am?” she laughed arrogantly.

“… Sigh, okay. How many forges do you have in your array? Nine?”

“Oh? There are arrays with nine forges?” she asked with surprise, but her next words almost left him crumbling, “Why so few?”

This time, he didn’t even make a sound in response. He decided he would never ask about any of Sharon’s other abilities again; knowing too much would be a huge blow to his confidence.

Sharon grumbled, her face growing dull, “I have eighteen, but it’s so little! Do you know how many levels there are in the abyss where I can’t recharge at all? I can never have enough… Grr!”

Astonishment was never a new thing when Sharon was the topic. Regardless, this meant she had more than ten times the mana of an ordinary mage with four times the recovery speed. Given the boost from the Deepblue Aria, that meant something like seven or eight times that of other legendary mages… no big deal at all, right? Of course, there was no need to wonder why she had eighteen forges; anything was possible with her.

Beye had once told him that Sharon could kill someone with brute force, but he had dismissed it off-hand. At the very least, she had to actually cast powerful spells and that took study and research. However, now he realised just how true those words were; with that much mana, he could just send a barrage of even grade 3 curses endlessly until the opponent was drowned out.

He decided to focus back on his task, adjusting his posture and beginning to meditate. Everything went quiet for a moment, but then he suddenly heard a thunk from Sharon’s direction, “Damn it, how did I forget? Wait right here!”

He opened his eyes just in time to see her jump into a portal, coming back out a few seconds later and stretching out her palm, “Drink this!”

In her palm was a small vial made of golden crystal, containing a few drops of liquid that radiated an aura of pure mana. Richard’s expression immediately grew animated, “Is this mana extract?”

Mana extract was at the pinnacle of potioneering for mages, able to completely replenish even a legendary mage’s mana in one go while doubling their recovery over the next hour. This was a legendary elixir that could save one’s life in crucial moments. It wasn’t strange for someone with Sharon’s wealth to have it, but why was she going to waste it on something so trivial?

He took the extract from her, but he wasn’t about to be wasteful enough to drink it. Pocketing it quickly, he smiled before her eyebrows could stand up completely, “Right, I brought you a gift!”

“A gift?” Sharon jumped up like a little girl, saying with excitement, “What is it, a bag of spider crystals?”

He fetched a small case from within his robes, opening it up and showing it to the legendary mage.

“Godsblood!” Sharon moaned, snatching it immediately and starting to inspect it, “Complete law energy… some time laws… Oh, space… but only a little, tch…”

After a few minutes of mumbling to herself, she suddenly opened her mouth and just threw the godsblood in, crushing it with a few bites before swallowing it.

“Ah, this is some good stuff. I’m going to go teach that bitch a lesson later!”

Richard stared at Sharon’s mouth in shock, taking a long time to recover. Godsblood was tougher than lafite steel, requiring weapons at the legendary realm to even cut through it. However, she had just bitten through it like it was a piece of candy. Those snow-white teeth were as strong as a legendary weapon!

Once high on the godsblood, Sharon forgot about squeezing more work out of Richard and dragged him into a feast on her fruits while they talked. After a few minutes, he had an understanding about her grudge against the Blackmist Witch. The Blackmist Witch was a special being that was a cross between human and nightmare creature, producing great magical powers that allowed her name to ring louder than even the Celestial Sage Ruben. A different legend had chanced upon a meteorite with powerful spatial laws during his exploration and decided to sell it; after a bidding war between a dozen different races, it was now a toss between the Witch and Sharon. Neither party was willing to back down, and the legendary mage’s wealth eventually edged out a little.

However, the agreement had been for payment in starlit crystals. This meant Sharon wouldn’t just have to pay a higher price, but also work bitterly for some time to finish the transaction. This left her with bitter hatred for the Blackmist Witch. To her, such dry and repetitive workloads were the most annoying thing ever; three thousand charges to make 200 starlit crystals would drain her of the will to live.

After cursing for half an hour, Sharon suddenly sized Richard up from head to toe and exclaimed, “Don’t you have a demiplane yet? Just get a random one, you only ascended recently and don’t need one that’s too big.”

Richard kept his mouth sealed shut, having no plans to respond. She acted like getting a demiplane was a breeze, but reality was anything but. He would need to find a stable position in the void, find and somehow transport a landmass to the location, and construct a mana pool, portal, and defensive arrays all around it. Every step consumed a great volume of resources, and most people ended up having to turn to specialised spatial legends who sold related services like coordinates and transport. A demiplane also required investments for over a century before it became a stable source of energy. The costs often reached several top-tier offerings, and even if Richard didn’t consider that an exorbitant amount it was still a drain on resources.

Although Sharon didn’t completely understand his expression, she took it as acceptance that he didn’t have a demiplane and jumped out through a portal, “Wait here!”

A minute later, the legendary mage returned and dragged him back out with her.