The Impoverished Great Mage

An hour later, Xu Yi met Great Mage Camilla on the top floor of Camilla's Magic Tower.

After studying her for a while, Xu Yi could not help sighing to himself.

Nearly twenty days had passed since he last saw her. Yet in that short time, she had visibly aged.

Her face was weary and haggard, and most striking of all, gray now streaked her once dark-brown hair.

For a Great Mage who had always seemed so vigorous and full of life to look like this, she must have been under immense pressure lately.

When she saw Xu Yi, Great Mage Camilla seemed to have forgotten what had happened before. Just as she had when they first met, she nodded kindly and gestured for him to sit.

"Xu Yi, what brings you here this time?" Despite her fatigue, Great Mage Camilla looked stern. "I'll tell you now: if you've come to discuss another business deal, you can leave."

Xu Yi considered his words for a moment, then smiled. "I'm afraid I'll disappoint you, Great Mage. I originally came to ask you about some problems with magic that I haven't been able to solve. But I've changed my mind. Now I do want to discuss a business deal with you."

Great Mage Camilla's brows shot up. "Then get out! You people are all obsessed with money. What right do you have to call yourselves mages?"

Xu Yi kept smiling, his expression unchanged.

"Great Mage, I think you're mistaken. Being obsessed with money is certainly wrong, but what does that have to do with someone's qualifications as a mage?"

"Hmph! Does someone who only cares about making money and knows nothing of studying magic deserve to be called one?"

Xu Yi shook his head. "Great Mage, may I ask you something? Does studying magic require money?"

Great Mage Camilla faltered. Her expression shifted from anger to doubt, then finally to helplessness.

"Of course it requires money. And not just a little—a great deal of it..." Great Mage Camilla sighed, looking suddenly dispirited.

She glanced at Xu Yi and snorted. "Did you come here just to mock me?"

"No, Great Mage. You've misunderstood. I would never mock you. I only... heard that you've run into some difficulties, and I wanted to see if there was anything I could do to help."

Great Mage Camilla studied his face for a while. Finding nothing but sincerity there, she gave a quiet snort. "Stille told you?"

"Stille told me some of it. I also heard a little from my other colleagues." Xu Yi paused, then continued, "Great Mage, don't you think it might be time to reconsider your views and try combining magic with business?"

"I despise merchants. I despise even more the thought of their greed tainting pure magic," Great Mage Camilla said coldly.

"But you don't despise money itself, do you?" Xu Yi asked.

Great Mage Camilla snorted but did not argue.

Xu Yi seized the opening. "Exactly. Money is only a tool. What you despise are the people who use it in ways that disappoint you, not money itself. Money is neither good nor evil. Used well, it's an extremely useful tool; used poorly, it can cause enormous harm. Great Mage Camilla, if you had enough money, what would you spend it on?"

"Isn't it obvious? If I had enough gold coins, I'd put every last one into Magic Research," Great Mage Camilla answered without hesitation.

"But you don't have enough gold coins now, do you?"

Great Mage Camilla's expression changed at once. For a long while, she could say nothing.

Seeing her like this, Xu Yi shook his head slightly. I'm afraid her troubles are even worse than I thought.

Xu Yi had not been particularly surprised when he discovered that Camiro, Reno, and Vena had left Camilla's Magic Tower. But when he found that everyone else in the research lab was restless and hinting at leaving as well, he immediately sensed something was wrong.

After much indirect probing, he finally learned the last thing he had expected.

Great Mage Camilla had run out of money!

She had never been especially well-off, and the mages working in her Magic Tower sometimes complained about it in private. Still, she had always been able to keep the tower running.

Recently, however, many of the mages had noticed problems with even its day-to-day operations.

First, the magical materials needed for research began running short. Then some of the mages' perfectly reasonable requests were denied. Finally, and most importantly, Mage Camilla was late paying their wages for the first time!

The wages were only two days late, and everyone eventually received the full amount. Even so, that single delay put them all on alert.

Among mages, many secrets did not stay secret for long. The others soon heard that Great Mage Camilla was in serious trouble. Her funds would likely be much tighter than before, and she might not even be able to keep the Magic Tower open.

Shocked by the news, the mages in the tower naturally began looking for other options.

Camiro, Reno, and Vena had already left. The others in the research lab could hardly sit still either. That was why, when Xu Yi—whom they now regarded as a wealthy boss—appeared, his colleagues greeted him with unusual enthusiasm.

Xu Yi immediately sought out Stille, who had returned to the Magic Tower with him. After pressing her repeatedly, he finally got the truth from her.

What their colleagues had heard was true: Great Mage Camilla was indeed facing a serious funding problem.

Generally speaking, setting aside any other income a Great Mage might earn, mages of that rank had two stable sources of funding.

The first came from the Mages' Guild.

Once a mage crossed the threshold and reached the rank of Great Mage, they qualified for a special stipend from the Mages' Guild.

The stipend followed a strict scale based primarily on the Great Mage's rank, and secondarily on how long they had held it.

Great Mage Camilla was currently a Three-Star Great Mage, entitling her to a special stipend of two hundred gold coins a year from the Mages' Guild. Since she had held the rank of Great Mage for twenty-three years, she also received an additional fifty gold coins.

That came to two hundred and fifty gold coins in total.

The other source of funding came from the mage's own country.

Mages were an important force in every country, and Great Mages were especially valuable. Every country therefore provided them with special financial support.

Although the Lampari Kingdom was only a small country on the Sains Continent, Great Mage Camilla still received as much as two thousand gold coins a year from its Royal Family.

Unlike many other Great Mages, Camilla did not cooperate with merchant companies, accepting their gold in exchange for protection. Those two thousand two hundred and fifty gold coins therefore made up nearly all of her annual income.

If nothing changed, that sum was enough to cover the Magic Tower's day-to-day expenses in a small city like Bunta City.

But this year, something had changed.

The change concerned the funding from the Lampari Kingdom.

Every year before the autumn harvest, the Lampari Kingdom's Royal Family distributed funds to the Great Mages within its borders. But just over half a month ago, it had suddenly announced that, because the kingdom was short of funds, it had to reduce that support.

For Great Mage Camilla, that meant her annual funding fell from two thousand gold coins to one thousand. It had been cut in half!

She had already struggled to keep the Magic Tower running. Losing a thousand gold coins of support so suddenly brought it to the brink of collapse.

A thousand gold coins amounted to nearly half of Great Mage Camilla's annual income. With such a large sum gone, many Magic Research projects could no longer continue, and she could not even pay the wages of many mages under her.

"Grandmother even told me she might have to close the Magic Tower," Stille said to Xu Yi with a helpless smile. "From my perspective, that might actually be for the best. Without the tower to worry about, she'd have a much easier life. But I know how much effort she put into building it, and how much of her heart she's poured into it. If she were forced to close it now, I'm afraid she wouldn't be able to bear it."

After hearing Stille out, Xu Yi thought for only a moment before resolutely going to the top floor of the Magic Tower to see Great Mage Camilla.

And faced with this elder, who seemed stern and old-fashioned but was in fact remarkably wise, Xu Yi had no intention of hiding his thoughts or his purpose. He had stated the harsh truth to Great Mage Camilla plainly and directly.

Great Mage Camilla, you were out of money!