"Camilla, do you think..." President Allen hesitated before continuing, "there's any scope for cooperation between our Mages' Guild and the Xinfei Merchant Guild?"
Great Mage Camilla looked at President Allen in surprise. "Cooperation between the guild and our Xinfei Merchant Guild? How would that work?"
President Allen frowned slightly. From Great Mage Camilla's use of "our Xinfei Merchant Guild," he could tell that she probably identified more with the Xinfei Merchant Guild than with the Mages' Guild now.
That was hardly a situation President Allen wanted to see. In his view, every mage in the Lampari Kingdom ought to put the Mages' Guild first.
Still, he had no right to criticize Great Mage Camilla for it. Quite apart from the fact that Xu Yi, the president of the Xinfei Merchant Guild, was her granddaughter's husband, Great Mage Camilla herself now served as Chief Special Researcher at the guild's Magic Research Institute. She reportedly received an astonishing minimum of ten thousand gold coins in funding from the Xinfei Merchant Guild every year.
That alone was far beyond what either the Lampari Kingdom or the Mages' Guild could offer.
At that thought, President Allen sighed inwardly, then smiled again. "Look, doesn't your Xinfei Merchant Guild need a great many mages to help with magic array research? And you just said that since you started focusing on magic arrays, even you, a Great Mage, have gained plenty of inspiration and new insights into magic, improving your abilities as a result. So I was thinking, if our Mages' Guild cooperated with your Xinfei Merchant Guild and had our members take part in researching the magic arrays used in magic machinery, wouldn't that help them improve their magical abilities quickly too?"
Great Mage Camilla considered it for a moment, then nodded gently. "I think that