Server

"Sorry to keep you two waiting... uh... please wait a little longer."

Gray Robe Mage Lu'ersike had barely lifted his gaze from the letters when another owl, brown spots scattered across its back, flew in.

This owl was nowhere near as dashing as the last. It crash-landed face-first onto the desk in a miserable heap, shedding several feathers. After flapping its wings a few times, it barely managed to stand on the tabletop and placed a letter before the Gray Robe Mage.

He picked up the ancient envelope. Much of the letter had already been damaged, and the writing was blurred beyond recognition. He could only vaguely make out its title: "How Can Inscriptions Centered on Healing Dispel the Undead—The Twelfth Topic of the Owl Pal Correspondence Society."

Looking at the letter and the aged owl, Gray Robe Mage Lu'ersike felt a knot in his chest. He was one of the founders of the Owl Pal Correspondence Society.

The correspondence society had no official standing; he did not even know who its members were. Whenever he had a question, he only needed to write it down on a piece of paper and have an owl deliver it to the other members.

After the letters went back and forth several times, when one finally returned to his hands, he would always find many replies written within.

But if one wanted truly academic answers, this method was unreliable. Still, he loved this freeform style of discussion.

No one knew one another's identities, and so they could converse as true equals and voice their own opinions.

Yet the wait for a reply was far, far too long. Usually, it took over two months for a question he had written to be carried back to him by an owl.

That was only if he was lucky. If he was unlucky, he might never receive a reply for the rest of his life.

If he remembered correctly, this letter could be considered one of the earliest. It had once recorded responses from mages all across Nolan, but now it had become tattered beyond repair—a sheet of waste paper.

Beyond his sighs of regret, there was also heartache.

"Go on, old friend..."

The Gray Robe Mage untied the ribbon fastened around the old owl's leg, officially letting the aged bird retire.

It tilted its head up at him and suddenly gave a cry, as though reluctant to part.

The Gray Robe Mage rubbed the owl's feathers and carried it to the window. Only then did it spread its wings and fly away.

"Now I can finally get to work. Sorry to have kept you waiting."

The Gray Robe Mage tidied the items on his desk, while Joshua and Ciri also took seats before it.

"Were the letters those owls brought just now delivered at random?"

Before registering the camera patent, Joshua was deeply interested in this rudimentary mage forum.

"Of course they were random. They do not deliberately travel back and forth between any particular locations. Are you interested in the correspondence society too?"

The Gray Robe Mage was proud of the correspondence society he had founded. Through thousands of owls, it had drawn nearly ten thousand Spellcasters in the city of Nolan into one academic discussion after another, though that number was negligible compared with Nolan's total population.

"No. I just think this cumbersome form of discussion could be improved a little," Joshua said.

"Improved?"

The Gray Robe Mage admitted that delivering letters by owl was indeed extremely cumbersome. But only this method could place an envelope into someone else's hands. If discussions were held face-to-face... then low-level mages would not even have the right to speak.

"Something like this."

With a gentle wave of Joshua's hand, a white window appeared before him. A short passage surfaced within it.

The Gray Robe Mage wore a puzzled expression, seemingly unable to understand the purpose of the window.

To explain it further, Joshua sent another message to Ciri.

Having received the message, Ciri silently moved the Tennis for Two interface aside from the Chat Window, then directly materialized the Chat Window interface with magic power.

"Th-this... this... this..."

Gray Robe Mage Lu'ersike could not speak at all as he watched the scene unfold. Besides being one of the founders of the Owl Pal Correspondence Society, he was also a founder of the Patent Council. Over the years, he had seen all manner of astonishing inventions.

Compared to those "Magic Mechanical Devices capable of replacing carriages," Joshua's demonstration seemed rather ordinary.

But as someone who loved communicating through letters—as a Spellcaster who yearned to discuss his ideas with more people and thereby gain more knowledge—Lu'ersike understood in an instant the value of the white window before Joshua!

"A little thing edited with Order Inscriptions. Given a little time, I can let more people participate in a single discussion, and... preserve the discussion's data perfectly."

Joshua's further explanation left the Gray Robe Mage so excited that he could barely remain seated.

"But at present, its maximum communication range is only around two hundred meters. Messages sent beyond that distance cannot be received."

Joshua's words seemed to dump a bucket of cold water over the Gray Robe Mage, wiping away all his excitement.

A few hundred meters... such a tiny distance was worse than discussing things face-to-face.

"Is... is there any way to expand it?" he asked Joshua, clinging to a shred of hope.

"Of course. I need a server."

What Joshua currently used was a Local Network, with his own spiritual power serving as network cables and his brain as the data terminal. To achieve transmission across vast distances, establishing the Internet was indispensable.

But Joshua simply could not find any Source Crystal Stone capable of bearing the Internet's volume of data.

A Source Crystal Stone could only be inscribed with several hundred inscriptions at most. Better ones could hold thousands, or even tens of thousands.

But what did the Internet's data volume mean? On Earth, Internet data was described as a raging torrent. Although a forum server did not need to be quite that large, Joshua was not content with merely building a forum on the Internet.

A potato server like Ubisoft's definitely would not do. At the very least, Joshua had to find a higher-grade leek server.

"A server?"

"Simply put, a 'Source Crystal Stone' capable of storing a huge number of inscriptions."

The higher a Source Crystal Stone's quality, the more its price rose geometrically. A Source Crystal Stone that could only store a few inscriptions might cost one or two gold coins, while one capable of storing hundreds would start at over a hundred.

Most Source Crystal Stones inscribed with Runes were worthless, save for a select few that stored powerful magical Runes.

"How large a quantity?"

Over the course of his life, Gray Robe Mage had seen quite a few high-quality Source Crystal Stones. Some could bear tens of thousands of Runes; some could even hold hundreds of thousands or millions.

"One hundred million. Of course, if it's only temporary, Source Crystal Stones with a capacity of a hundred thousand will do as well."

Joshua had actually wanted to say a trillion, but after thinking it over, he lowered his requirements. He remembered that the finest Source Crystal Stone in Third Prince's possession could hold only some twenty or thirty thousand Runes.

"That truly is an excessive demand."

Gray Robe Mage pushed up his glasses. If a capacity on the scale of one hundred million was impossible, then a Source Crystal Stone capable of holding roughly a hundred thousand Runes could practically serve as the foundation of a large Teleportation Array for a major nation. Its value went without saying.

"Is this what you wish to patent?"

"No, I want to patent something else."

The other party apparently did not wish to continue discussing this subject, and Joshua did not deliberately press on. After all, he and this Gray Robe Mage were strangers who had never met before. Joshua had only brought it up on a whim.

After Joshua registered the patent for the Camera and left the room, Gray Robe Mage tapped on the table and pondered for a while. At last, he picked up a quill pen and found a fresh sheet of letter paper.

To: All Members of the Owl Pal Correspondence Society

"On How to Obtain a Source Crystal Stone of Nearly Infinite Quality"

—Personally written by Gray Robe Lu'ersike.

After writing those lines, he rolled up the letter and walked to the window.

He knew exactly how to obtain that "infinite"-quality Source Crystal Stone. This letter was merely meant to ask the other founders of the correspondence society.

A pitch-black owl flapped over to the window. After clutching the letter in its talons, it flew toward Nolan's tallest building—a structure known as the Sage's Tower.