Chapter 49 Insecure hearts
“Xu Yi, you didn’t need to do anything for me, I’m fine.” Still revealed a relaxed smile to Xu Yi beside her.
The two had already finished eating lunch in the magic research lab. Still was planning on heading back to the Magic Tower and Xu Yi wanted to find Great Magician Camilla for something, so they took the road back to Great Magician Camilla’s Magic Tower together.
“You’re really alright?” Xu Yi looked at Still with a frown, with doubt all over his face, “Why did I think that your expression wasn’t that good just now.
“That is just……” Still thought about it before waving her hand in a slightly agitated manner, “This matter will make people unhappy no matter what. I just felt disgusted thinking about it.”
“As long as you don’t have any more feelings for that fellow.” Xu Yi said with a shrug.
“Could it be that I would still have feelings for that fellow who isn’t anything good!” Still angrily glared at Xu Yi, “Do you think I’m an idiot? I liked him before because I didn’t know his true face and was fooled by his outer appearance. Thinking about it now, I really was weak back then, actually liking a person because of his appearances. This…..Alright, I was indeed an idiot back then.”
Xu Yi laughed, “Being an idiot once is not a bad thing. At least after this matter, you’ll know that you can’t judge a book by its cover. Compared to one’s appearance, their heart is more important. After all, a person like me who is outstanding on the outside and inside is really rare.”
Still looked like she wanted to puke, “Can you act humble? I just finished eating, i don’t want to vomit everything out.”
Xu Yi gave a snort and revealed a look of disdain, “I’m just telling the truth and you won’t believe it, you really are a child who won’t learn. But forget it, an outstanding man like myself is like a moon in the sky, it can’t be hidden even if one wanted to. I’m not lacking a person with broken eyes like you to discover me.”
“Your eyes are broken.” Still glared at Xu Yi before suddenly breaking out in laughter.
This laughter was like a flood gate that couldn’t hold back the water and more and more kept pouring out. Still at first covered her mouth, but as her laughter became stronger and stronger, she held her stomach and couldn’t stand up straight as she laughed.
Xu Yi had a straight face at first, but he couldn’t help laughing with her in the end.
On this noon during the summer, these two fellows were wildly laughing on the street like this, naturally it attracted strange gazes from the people around them.
These two fellows were considered people with a decent amount of fame. After the people around them noticed them, they couldn’t help pointing at them.
Xu Yi quickly noticed this and quickly grabbed Still’s arm before he ran off.
Only when they reached the Camilla Magic Tower did Xu Yi finally let go of Still’s arm. He was panting as he pointed at the Magic Tower and said, “Alright, go and find your grandfather first. I should take a trip to the lab first. That’s right, tell Great Magician Camilla something for me. I have something to look for him later, I hope that he could give me a bit of time.”
“What are you suddenly being polite for?” Still looked at Xu Yi, “Didn’t grandfather already tell you that you could go see him whenever you wanted?”
Xu Yi shook his head with a bitter smile, “There was no problem before, but after being cursed out by him, I can’t dare say that if the old man still has a favourable impression of me anymore.”
Xu Yi gave a cold snort, “You deserved it.”
After saying this, Still suddenly knit her brows and gave a soft sigh. She turned to look at the Magic Tower standing proud and a somewhat regretful look appeared on her face.
“Xu Yi, actually…..Actually, I shouldn’t talk about you. I always wanted to urge grandfather against this. If he stays like this, I’m afraid this Magic Tower……”
“What’s wrong with the Magic Tower?” Xu Yi noticed the sadness in Still’s voice and couldn’t help asking in a surprised tone, “Could it be that there are problems with the Magic Tower? It shouldn’t be. Then again, Great Magician Camilla is a Great Magician and has status in the entire kingdom.”
Still shook her head, “It isn’t this problem, but I won’t talk about this to you for now. After I finish talking to grandfather, I’ll find the time to discuss this with you. Perhaps…..I’ll have to request for your help at that time.”
Hearing Still’s serious tone, Xu Yi tightly knit his brows.
Based on her tone, Great Magician Camilla seemed to have met some troubles.
“Don’t say request, just speak if there is anything I can help you with. Still, in the past, you were the one who made the exception that allowed me to work in the Magic Tower. If it wasn’t for this, I would be doing some other kind of work that probably wouldn’t have been related to magic, so there would be no need to mention me making this company. So the fact that I could have these things now, you played a decisive role. Since it’s like this, is there a need for you to be polite with me?”
Still revealed a faint smile, “Then do you know why I made an exception for you back then?”
“Oh? Why?”
“Because…...you held the door open for me back then.” Still paused for a second before throwing these words down and turning to leave.
“Just because of this?” Xu Yi rubbed his nose as he shook his head with a bitter smile.
When Xu Yi came to the lab, he raised quite a stir.
Since the Frestech Chamber of Commerce became bigger and bigger, Xu Yi asked for more and more days off. After a while, he would only come once every few days and he would only stay for an hour before leaving.
This made his coworkers in the lab even forget that he was still a member of this lab.
The stranger thing was that if it was anyone else, they would have already been chased out of the Magic Tower by Great Magician Camilla. But for this Xu Yi, Great Magician Camilla never said a thing, like he didn’t know what Xu Yi was doing at all.
So as time passed, the coworkers in the lab knew that Xu Yi held a special place in Great Magician Camilla’s heart.
Adding in the fact that the Frestech Chamber of Commerce had more and more products and the company became richer, Xu Yi’s position in the mind of his coworkers also grew.
Now that Xu Yi had appeared in the lab, naturally he wouldn’t be ignored like in the beginning. Also no one showed any hostilities towards him and he seemed to be met with the same warm welcome.
“Hey, Xu Yi, why did you have time to come here today?” Lotte was the first to jump out, welcoming Xu Yi with a full smile, “If you didn’t come back, we would have forgotten that we worked with you.”
“Lotte, what nonsense are you saying? We could forget others, but we would never forget Xu Yi. Then again, we worked together on the Magic Fan for such a long time in the past. Don’t you think so, Xu Yi?” This coworker was one of the ten who had worked on the Magic Fan Magic Array for Xu Yi before.
“That’s right, this will never be forgotten.” Another coworker came beside Xu Yi while laughing and he slapped Xu Yi’s shoulder. He suddenly asked in a low voice, “Hey, Xu Yi, do you have any work in your company? If there is, help find something for me, alright?”
Hearing this question, the lab suddenly became silent.
Xu Yi looked around and saw that other than a few people, the other coworkers were all looking at him with expectant gazes.
Even the coworkers that weren’t looking over were clearly attentively listening to them, not looking like they didn’t care at all.
Xu Yi was secretly shocked.
These coworkers used to look down on Magic Array drawing work before, why did they suddenly show such interest?
There was only one explanation, there was a change that he didn’t know about yet.
“There is this kind of work, but with your magical strength, I’m afraid it won’t match your skills?” Xu Yi replied with a smile, while seriously watching for everyone’s reactions.
While he was seriously looking over them, Xu Yi found something that had shocked him.
“Yi? Why don’t I see Cimirot, Rem, and Wella? Those three wouldn’t have taken a vacation like me, right?”
“You don’t know?” Lotte looked at Xu Yi with an astonished look before suddenly realizing something, “Oh, right, you haven’t come in several days, so you definitely don’t know. They already no longer work here. I’ve heard that they’ve ran off to a company in Saltan City, working for that company.”
“Working for a company?” Xu Yi was instantly stunned, “With their strength, they wouldn’t have run off to become a guard for a company, right? I won’t mention Cimirot, but with how proud Rem and Wella are, how could they have agreed?”
“No, of course they aren’t guards. How could they be willing to run off to a company to be a guard?” Lotte shook her head, “I’ve heard that they seem to be doing some kind of research…...That’s right, Xu Yi, it seems like it is related you your Frestech Chamber of Commerce.”
“What relations does it have to me company?” Xu Yi was even more stunned.
“I don’t know the specifics either. I only know that the company has given them a high salary. Anyway, before Cimirot left, he said that it was even higher than their salaries here.”
“Really?” Xu Yi knit his brows and sunk into deep thought.
Cimirot was the second strongest in this laboratory, so naturally he had one of the highest salaries, even higher than Rem. He received forty gold coins each month.
For a company to give him a salary that was even higher when he had just started out, that really was not a small number.
If they gave the same starting wage to Rem and Wella, it wouldn’t be strange if the two of them agreed at all.
“That’s right, since the three of them have been baited over by the company, what about you all? Why haven’t they tried taking you?” Xu Yi then asked.
He never thought that once he asked this question, the coworkers in the lab would all show the same strange look.
Xu Yi immediately understood. There wasn’t a single exception here, they had all been taken.
As for the reason why they were still here, there was only one answer. They hadn’t finished discussing the conditions yet.
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!