Chapter 50: Anti-investigation and Prophecy Formation
The Deep Sea Monster Fish.
The boarding cabin.
A developing alchemy formation had reached the final step of construction.
“Final inspection.” Cang Xu stood up from lying on the floor with his belly, whacked his old waist, then continued to kneel and carefully examine the formation.
The newly advanced bronze magician, Zi Di, was also inspecting to the side.
After a short time, the two raised their heads.
“No mistakes detected.”
Connect the magic power reservoir. Deep Sea Monster Fish, transmit the magic power!”
Turbulent magic power was instilled into many formation nodes.
A hundred candles seem to ignite in the boarding cabin.
Soon after, these nodes began to shine and connect with each other, starting from the floor, and spreading to the walls and even the ceiling.
Finally, the hundred silver-gray lights converged in the center of the room, transforming into a solid magic alchemy formation.
“Success.” Cang Xu and Zi Di were just about to celebrate when suddenly, their complexions changed.
The final few nodes were not lit, the flowing magic power seemed to have met with a dam, the obstructed power would soon overflow and damage other nodes.
“Not good!”
“What happened?”
Cang Xu and Zi Di were helpless to do anything.
They only had a superficial attainment in alchemy and couldn’t discern what the problem was, let alone know how to fix it.
“Tower spirit, take action!” Zi Di called for help.
The white crystal ball half a human tall had been on standby in the corner of the boarding cabin, upon hearing the command, it immediately floated up and glistened with white light.
The white light quickly grew bright, indicating that the tower spirit was using all of its strength.
In tandem with the tower spirit, the two yellow crab alchemy puppets suddenly seemed to be infused with souls as their crab claws became very nimble.
The yellow crab puppets rushed into the formation and launched out their crab claws into the key nodes.
The tower spirit seized that opportunity to take control of the nearly finished alchemy formation.
The magic power fluctuations were gradually alleviated.
“30175%288%3……”
The tower spirit’s voice transmitted, “The formation will collapse in an estimated 30 second. Please decide on a course of action immediately. Proposal one, disassembling the formation. A third of the formation can be saved and the boarding cabin will be seriously damaged, the success rate is 75%. Proposal two, destroy the formation entirely, the boarding cabin will be mildly damaged, the success rate is 88%. Proposal three…”
“Tower spirit, we must repair this magic formation!” Zi Di shouted, cutting off the tower spirit.
The tower spirit paused, then gave three repair plans.
Zi Di and Cang Xu looked at each other, then chose the same option independently.
After receiving their orders, the yellow crabs morphed their limbs simultaneously to become hollow and lankier.
Magic power flowed through the crab leg tubes and into a yellow crab alchemy puppet.
After being harmonized by the alchemy puppets, the magic power stabilized.
At the same time, the tower spirit and the other yellow crab alchemy puppet worked together to repair the nodes.
After stabilizing the flow, the magic power finally lit up the remaining nodes.
The nodes conformed with each other, and linked completely to form a refined whole.
At last, the formation took shape.
The Anti-investigation and Prophecy Formation!
The magnificent formation looked like the stary night sky interconnecting with each other. To Cang Xu, it looked like the Aquarius constellation. From Zi Di’s point of view, it looked like a six-armed crossbow.
As the flow of magic power ceased, the formation gradually faded away until it finally vanished.
The light turned back to normal, and the boarding cabin revered back to its original appearance.
“A close call, the magic formation nearly collapsed.” Zi Di coughed, the danger still palpable.
Cang Xu nodded, his face still startled from the unforeseen event, “If this failed, we wouldn’t have enough resources to construct a second formation.”
Building the Anti-investigation and Prophecy Formation was very expensive.
Most of the alchemy materials came from War Merchant’s treasury.
At the time, when the survivors took these resources, they planned to build the formation. However, upon searching War Merchant’s storehouse, they only found most of them.
Fortunately, the few materials they were missing were relatively common, and the survivors were able to gather them all on Snake Rat Island.
Ding.
A yellow crab alchemy puppet collapsed to the ground, motionless.
It was wrecked.
Because during the rushed repairs, it had used its own alchemy core to store the torrential magic power.
Cang Xu and Zi Di were unsurprised.
The tower spirit’s repair plan indicated that if they used this plan, a yellow crab alchemy puppet would be sacrificed.
“We cannot repair it at this time.” Zi Di sighed softly as she looked at the collapsed alchemy puppet.
“This was the best outcome.” Cang Xu consoled.
The other repair plans either had a low success rate, wound the soul of either Cang Xu or Zi Di, or damage the tower spirit.
These costs were unacceptable.
Without a yellow crab alchemy puppet, the survivors’ alchemy strength dropped by a third!
But compared to the gains, this loss was acceptable.
The survivors entered the formation in groups.
The last two were the dragonman youngster and Zong Ge. It was because they had to stay behind to take care of the ships and also because there were many eyes on them, it was hard for them to slip away.
After the formation’s radiance dissipated, Zong Ge walked out.
“Did you feel anything?” The dragonman youngster asked.
Zong Ge shook his head, “I don’t feel any different.”
“So, this Anti-investigation and Prophecy magic is outstanding.” Cang Xu praised, “It affects my body and protects us, yet we don’t sense any different.”
“This point proves that the alchemy grandmaster, War Merchant, also has remarkable accomplishments in the domain of magic too. He is worthy of being called a legend level magician!”
Zi Di agreed, “The most wonder point is that the Anti-investigation and Prophecy spell can be combined with the Deceptive Disguise Spell, each increasing the other’s power.”
“If we only had the Anti-investigation and Prophecy spell on us, others diving and predicting us would be greatly obstructed and eventually fail.”
“But now, when others try to divine and predict us, they won’t feel hindered, rather they will be misled. The outcome of the divination will appear as what the Deceptive Disguise spell shows them!”
“If we only had the Deceptive Disguise spell, any detection or divination magic aimed at us will rapidly consume the power of the magic.
“With just the Anti-investigation and Prophecy spell’s protection, external divination and detection will instead consume that spell’s power.”
“Thus, the cost of casting these spells is greatly reduced!”
The Deceptive Disguise and Anti-investigation and Prophecy formations could be regarded as a specially made combined magic spell.
The survivors had spent a huge price to build them, and would pay a costly fee every time they activated them.
Especially the Deceptive Disguise formation, for the main casting material it consumed was the Pearl Bubbles.
The only source of this divine artifact came from the master of the Mermaid Fairy Tale– the Charming Blue God’s divine power!
Therefore, the cost to cast Deceptive Disguise was extremely high.
It expended god level materials.
Despite the survivors having the divine artifact, Mermaid Fairy Tale, there was surely a limit to the amount of Charming Blue divine power it could store, thus the number of Pearl Bubbles it could produce was finite. Because they couldn’t replenish Charming Blue’s divine power, the amount they used was the amount they depleted.
When compared to each other, the cost of using the Anti-investigation and Prophecy formation was far smaller.
After it was build, the highest level sorcery material it used was gold level along with a large amount of magic power.
Zi Di carefully calculated, “According to the market exchange rate of crystals to gold, at present time, for every person that enters the formation, on average it will cost 6 gold.”
There were only ten of them, and in just this first round, they spent a hundred gold coins.
This was already very high.
Take Cang Xu, as a noble steward, he managed a noble’s territory and was only paid about 36 gold coins a year.
When Hei Fei invited over the priest to use a silver level divine spell to attempt to treat the beastmen slaves’ sickness, he was told it cost 12 silver coins.
Hei Fei couldn’t bear this price repeatedly.
If it was only him, he could have, but there were too many slaves that needed to be treated.
Zi Di’s words had two key points.
One was “at present time” and the other was “on average”.
The higher the life level the magic formation was casting on, the more it cost. The dragonman youngster and Zong Ge used the most magic power. It cost 25 gold to cast the spell on the dragonman youngster and 22 gold to cast on Zong Ge. In other words, every time they took a trip in, they paid the cost of an average silver level weapon.
As an iron level, the cost to cast on Cang Xu tumbled to 9 gold, while Tripleblade was 8 gold, and Zi Di was 7 gold.
Meanwhile, Lan Zao, a bronze level, only cost 70 silver to cast the spell on him.
Zi Di’s tone sank, “So, currently our biggest expense is the formations.”
“First was the production cost, it was equal to the cost of two and a half ordinary ships.”
“It will be difficult to do a second round for a short while.”
“We don’t have a steady income yet, but because of you Captain, we harvested a large amount of flame crystal clusters and tide snake eggs. Computing in these funds, if we use this formation three times within half a year, we will go bankrupt. At that time, we will be forced to sell off our industry, such as alchemy installations and even the Deep Sea Monster Fish.”
“Therefore, I suggest that we do our best to keep a low profile and solve our redemption as soon as possible!”
“The more people investigating us, the more money we will spend.”
When it concerned money, the ghost girl was very serious and earnest.
The Anti-investigation and Prophecy spell will be expended. The more investigation and prophecy spells that were used, the faster it would be expended.
Therefore, it was unknown how long this magic would last for.
These words rang in the heart of the young captain, Zong Ge, and Cang Xu.
They now thought of Zi Di differently.
Before, they were helpless against their lack of funds, however Zi Di had managed to solve this difficult problem.
Zong Ge had beastmen slaves to serve as fine soldiers and Cang Xu built the Anti-investigation and Prophecy Formation, the entire group benefited because of her actions.
Zi Di displayed her talent in business!
She clearly saw what all parties really needed. For instance, Tan Qiu wanted humans more than beastmen.
If there wasn’t a demand, she would create a demand. Like how she tricked Hei Fei into dumping the beastmen slaves at his own accord.
She could also move her resources efficiently. Such as when she helped the young captain absorb the magic beast bloodlines with the Bloodcore, allowing him to easily gather large a mounts of flame crystal clusters and tide snake eggs.
In the original plan, the young captain would use his transformations to lure out a gold level magic beast to create a magic beast calamity in the town outskirts.
But due to the Night Devil Hunting Group’s actions, a gold level tide snake leader was attracted to the surface, an unexpected delight.
After Zi Di’s plan had been implemented, the survivors would be the ones who benefited the most.
More wonderfully, their relationship with the other powers would not worsen as a result.
When one lacked the strength to tackle a problem head on, one needed Zi Di’s finesse.