Coral Mana Pools (please keep reading)

When Kroya returned to the castle with his shell magic tool filled to the brim, his steward, Rob, was pacing anxiously.

"What's wrong?"

He thought something had happened, but the moment Rob saw him, his face lit up. "Master Mage, that shark... it-it had a Magic Core!"

By the end, the steward's voice was trembling with excitement.

Magic Cores were special treasures that only high-level Magical Beasts-those above level six-could produce.

If a low-level Magical Beast produced a Magic Core, it meant it could reach at least level seven or even level eight in the future.

Magic Cores had many uses, the most important being to nurture Magical Beasts and serve as the cores of magic arrays. Kroya had always wanted one.

He had never expected one to practically fall into his lap.

At the same time, something clicked.

No wonder a level-four Magic Shark had come seeking revenge right after he killed it. That shark might well have been the future of their entire group!

Without the Merfolk's power, it would have been quite difficult to deal with the aftermath.

No, the aftermath was already difficult enough.

Looks like I'll have to find a way to eliminate them all. Otherwise, they'll be a huge threat whenever I head out to sea.

After a brief moment of distraction, Kroya said calmly, "Bring it to my laboratory."

Then he walked toward the castle at an unhurried pace.

He seemed utterly unsurprised by the discovery of a Magic Core.

Rob bowed behind him, then hurried away. To prevent anyone foolish enough from stealing the Magic Core, he had stationed four Knights to guard it.

He returned to his laboratory.

The Woodstar Curving Vine King immediately greeted him respectfully. "Welcome back, Master."

Its increasingly lush vines moved like nimble tentacles, picking up a cotton handkerchief prepared nearby and offering it to him.

Having grown accustomed to this care, Kroya accepted it with practiced ease, wiped his face and hands, and settled into his reclining chair, leaning back slightly.

"Master, please try this."

The Curving Vine then handed him a glass of slightly chilled coconut juice.

"Mm, not bad."

He took a small sip of the coconut juice.

Although it had not come from that Magical Plant coconut tree, it was still rich in magic, cool and sweet.

Most of the heat and fatigue in his body immediately melted away.

This really is a pleasure.

"Phew..."

Kroya let out a long breath and rested in the chair with his eyes closed, meditating for a while. Only when the Woodstar Curving Vine King brought over the Magic Core Rob had delivered did he open his eyes.

What greeted him was a peculiar Hexagram Crystal.

Each of its points was perfectly formed, like a painstakingly crafted work of art. A deep blue glow flickered within, and he could faintly see the phantom of a shark swimming inside.

"Oh? This Magic Core even contains the shark's soul?"

He narrowed his eyes and ran his fingers over the Magic Core, sensing the abundant magic within and the presence of a living soul.

Clearly, he had stumbled upon a treasure. Magic Cores containing the souls of Magical Beasts were always of exceptionally high quality, and those souls could be put to various uses.

They could be used to brew soul-related magic potions, craft magic tools with rudimentary intelligence, or nurture a Mage Tower's tower spirit...

That last possibility was particularly tempting. He was planning to make a Mana Pool out of coral. Could he use the soul inside this Magic Core to nurture a tower spirit?

"It should be possible..."

He carefully recalled the knowledge the body's original owner had learned at the Mage Association. There was a shortcut to creating a tower spirit.

It involved using the Magical Beast's soul inside a Magic Core as a culture medium, erasing its consciousness and memories, then creating a brand-new tower spirit that obeyed the mage's commands.

This method was only suitable for low-level mages, because true high-level mages... could even create souls. The Puppet Golems they made were almost indistinguishable from ordinary people.

After thinking it over, he instructed the Curving Vine King to bring him parchment and a pen, intending to calculate roughly how much it would cost.

"One high-grade piece of soul-calming crystal, one bottle of solution that allows a soul's consciousness to extend outward... and, most importantly, Underworld River water from the River of the Underworld Crossing in the Lower Plane."

Once he finished writing, he took out the Sacred Spring Trade Guild's Crystal Card, fed the parchment into it, and asked approximately how many magic crystals he would need.

The answer immediately left him speechless.

"The estimated cost is three thousand level-one magic crystals. If you require materials with a higher concentration of magic, the price will be..."

The gentle, cultured female voice quoted an enormous figure that made his heart tremble. That amount would be enough to buy an entire city!

And this was only the lowest-grade culture medium for a tower spirit. It covered merely the materials, without accounting for wastage while drawing the magic array or whether he could succeed on his first attempt.

Never mind the subsequent investment.

But how many magic crystals did he have right now?

The answer was a dozen or so.

As though a bucket of cold water had been dumped over his head, Kroya immediately sobered up.

I've really gotten carried away, daring to dream of a Mage Tower's spirit already.

He silently put away the Crystal Card. This truly was beyond his means right now. Even if the Merfolk refined waterlight crystal for him, honestly, there was no real need to do it.

His immediate priority should be developing his basic industries, transforming the castle and surrounding land into Magic Fields, then planting Magical Plants and setting up magic arrays.

Only when his territory began producing a steady stream of income could he entertain the thought of a tower spirit.

Ultimately, a tower spirit... was still far too extravagant.

He would keep it as a long-term goal. His short-term goal was to develop his territory.

After setting aside the matter of the tower spirit, he carefully stored the Magic Core and tasted the shark fin soup delivered by the kitchen.

The fins of a level-three Magic Shark were indeed unimaginably delicious. Their texture was excellent and their flavor extraordinarily rich, silky yet pleasantly chewy. Eating them felt as though a shark were charging around inside his mouth.

After finishing the meal, his magic had increased considerably.

Once he had enjoyed the delicacy, he got to work-making Pearl Cores and using coral to build Mana Pools.

The former was easy enough and took only a short while. The latter, however, took him a full ten days and exhausted his remaining dozen or so magic crystals.

There was no helping it. A Mana Pool could not be made from coral alone; it also required some basic magical building materials.

The Mana-Conducting Pipes and Magic-Stabilizing Crystal Bricks needed to construct the Mana Pools were relatively cheap. Both were made from the most basic crystal ore, and the Sacred Spring Trade Guild sold them in bulk.

One magic crystal could buy ten Mana-Conducting Pipes or five Magic-Stabilizing Crystal Bricks.

After more than ten days of effort, his laboratory contained three assembled coral trees and three pools measuring roughly three meters across.

Kroya had assembled the coral trees from the most magically abundant sections of the specimens he had obtained, using completely transparent crystal to connect their branches.

The clear crystal combined with the vividly colored coral added a touch of mysterious, orderly beauty born of a mage's craftsmanship to their original natural beauty.

According to what he had learned at the Mage Association, these corals could not only store magic but also allow it to circulate within them, ensuring it remained active.

They had been placed in three pools of exactly the same size, and the castle's floor tiles had also been replaced with Mana-Conducting Pipes.

Different types of magic flowed through the three pools: pure magic, the most basic and common kind, along with water magic and fire magic.

There was only a shallow layer in each.

By Kroya's calculations, these Mana Pools could hold roughly the equivalent of five hundred level-one magic crystals.

In theory, a complete Elemental Pool should be able to contain every element, allowing them to coexist harmoniously in a single pool, ready to be drawn upon at any time.

But Kroya could not manage that yet.

With his current abilities, he could only make a bare-bones version. Even the magic he could supply was limited to the water and fire magic he used most often.

Still, at least he had succeeded.

Even a bare-bones version was enough if it let him draw upon magic whenever he needed it. After all, he was only a Second-Level Mage.

He let out a long breath, admired his handiwork for a while, then left the laboratory, intending to head to the sunflower field.

The Mana Pools were complete, and the pipes leading up to the sunflower field had already been laid. It was time to transfer the magic absorbed by the sunflowers into the pools.

And that newly grown sunflower...

Had also given him quite a surprise.