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“I should just toss these bastards into Gnome Cannons and have them shot to the ends of the world! No, that’s still not enough! Their ability to survive surpasses even cockroaches! Even if I toss them into the Trench of Amu, they’ll surely still survive and return—”

“Um, sir?”

“—I knew I should have tied them all up and tossed them into the sea. No, that still wouldn’t be safe enough! Hehehe! I should just send them into my Frigidwinter Earth and have them hibernate there forever—”

“Sir!!”

An angry roar right next to me finally snapped me back to my senses. The next moment, a female face appeared in front of me and almost scared me witless.

“Sir, although you’re an archmage from Mystical Blade, as well as our teacher, the most basic laws of our society need to be followed. Please take the law seriously!”

Alright then, looking at the young and angry woman before me, even though we were both wearing the light-blue robes of Mystical Blade, her emblem on her sleeve, which represented she was responsible for maintaining social order, stood out incredibly so. As I was the person bailing out the criminals, I could only obediently apologize and make promises on those bastards’ behalf.

“I’m so sorry. I shall properly lecture them. I definitely won’t give them an opportunity to commit such crimes again.”

In the Mage Country, those who broke the law would naturally be punished by the mages. Since the Mystical Blade consisted of mages skilled in practical combat, many of their members chose to join law enforcement and social order jobs in society.

Although this woman before me seemed young, she had already been working at her job for more than ten years judging by the emblem on her chest. And, as was common of a member of the powerful Mystical Blade, she was the type who really liked to lecture others.

“Sir! Please make absolutely certain to rein them in. I can barely even believe that someone would do such a thing...”

Her lecture was getting longer and longer and was giving me a headache. However, I felt just like an unlucky parent summoned to a parent-teacher meeting because my child hadn’t received a passing grade, as I could only smile and apologize continuously as I accepted the endless lecturing.

“Yep, yep, I’ll definitely put a tighter leash on them.”

I finally managed to finish the process of bailing them out. Right when we left the Mage Country’s version of a police station together, all the bastards behind me started jumping up and down in excitement at having regained their freedom.

“Eaglestorm—”

“Milord, relax. In the future, when I’m spreading the teachings of my Wild Bull Alliance, I’ll definitely remember to wear some pants.”

“Does that mean you won’t be wearing a shirt?”

Alright then, let’s stop caring about that sly old fox. The very first day he arrived, Eaglestorm started spreading his Wild Bull Alliance’s teachings. It was only to be expected that he would be captured and arrested by a mage in charge of maintaining social order, and it was only a matter of time before he was jailed again. If it had been only him, I wouldn’t have even bothered coming here to bail him out. However...

“Yawen, you’ve greatly disappointed me. A Town Security Officer like you, an enforcer of the law, was jailed as well? This isn’t Sulfur Mountain City or Diffindor. Don’t make trouble for me.”

“Milord, I’m so sorry. I really didn’t think that those hooligans would be so weak against my beating. Still, they were such cowards. Although they were breaking the law themselves, they actually requested assistance from a law enforcer!”

“...So would they be brave if they let you beat them up as you pleased? Stop reading strange books and start thinking with your brain instead of your muscles. After all, a successful Town Security Officer needs to have some intelligence.”

Next, I glanced over at the youngest criminal amongst the bunch.

“Little Timlad.”

“I apologize, Big Brother Roland. I’ll be more careful in the future. Next time, I won’t let them find any evidence and I won’t personally go to pick up the goods. I’ll find an adult to do the work on my behalf when I need black market merchants.”

Alright then, what he was actually saying was that he still intended to continue and that the only mistake he made was letting others find evidence of his crime. Little Timlad was the most excited person out of all of us to arrive at the Cloud Tower. He was quite curious about all the magical secrets available here. In just a few days, he already spent every last cent of the money he had saved up over the past few years on all sorts of various strange things. He had been arrested for going to the black market to purchase stolen goods.

“Yingou?”

“It really wasn’t my fault. How would I know that the mage was idiotic enough to test the barbeque rack right after I sold it to him? Heh heh, he was unlucky to be caught in such an explosion.”

This old and young engineer pair... sigh. One sold fake products and injured someone else, while the other went to the black market to purchase stolen products and ended up getting reported because he looked too young. While there was, indeed, a saying that birds of a feather flocked together, the two of them stuck together due to their bad habits and kept negatively influencing each other. As time passed, they were becoming worse and worse and more and more dangerous.

What? I’m still missing one person? It would seem incredibly improbable that a certain individual whose name had become forbidden would actually manage to escape being jailed here, right? Hah! Are you talking about a certain individual currently under suspicion of magical pet kidnapping and desecrating a summoned creature? At the moment, a certain dracon was still in a jail cell and was trying his utmost to attract my attention by rapidly blinking. Hmm? I don’t know who that is! I didn’t see anything, and none of you saw anything either, right?

As I expected, everyone shook their heads. Nobody knew who this individual could possibly be.

Yep, I didn’t know him one bit so of course I didn’t intend to bail him out. I definitely didn’t want to become known as a pervert through association, so that bastard may as well obediently stay in jail until he rots.

And it wasn’t only me. All the other criminals I bailed out were in mutual accord and managed to forget about that person. After all, not a single one of them wanted to be treated as that person’s companion. He had managed to become headline news on his very first day here, making it beyond difficult for any of them to dare to claim to know who he was.

“I’m not going to care about all of your private affairs. But what about the tasks I gave you all to do? How are they going?”

The reason I took them along with me wasn’t to give myself more trouble. In fact, it was the opposite. I would need many helpers for what I was planning, and most of the things could only be accomplished by them.

“With you personally signing the forms and archmage Kaid’s letter of recommendation, the registration process has been completed. The newly-born mage organization ‘Great Industrial Party’ has been successfully established. It shall be registered as an organization under the Mystical Blade, and you are listed as the Great Industrial Party’s leader. Since you and Kaid, two top-level archmages, are backing this organization up, nobody should be stupid enough to come looking for trouble.”

As a great alchemist, Jinya Beyar was quite popular in the Mage Country. That was why I sent him to run some errands and do some paperwork for me. And it was probably the only reason why he wasn’t also locked up for selling fake products.

“What about the store? Have the renovations started?”

“...There’s been a tiny little problem with that. But have trust in old Jinya; it’ll soon be taken care of.”

Jinya’s gnome eyes were darting left and right at a quick pace. Based on my understanding of him, he was obviously lying to me.

“Yep, we’ll probably need only one week to clear away all the rubble. Then, we can begin on the renovation work for the new shop.”

Timlad smiled and immediately sold Jinya out.

“Rubble!? You damned gnome, you caused an explosion again? Ah, I knew I shouldn’t have left things up to you all! Amelia will kill me!”

Jinya’s rushed escape was the best evidence that I had been on my mark. It was now my turn to be in a terrible mood.

Originally, due to certain reasons, as Amelia’s only disciple as well as “lover?”, I successfully managed to take over several properties under Amelia’s name on Stonecrystal Street. I intended to use these properties as a base of sorts to do some things here.

However, I regretted it immediately on the second day after taking over those properties. Countless debtors swarmed upon me upon seeing that someone had moved into Amelia’s properties. All sorts of IOUs and debt agreements piled up with enough money owed to purchase the entire Stonecrystal Street. Not to mention, I had legally taken over her properties using faked documents and my real status as her student, so it was only natural that the debts were taken over by me as well.

“...I think it’s far more than just one street? There’s probably enough debt to purchase three whole streets. Amelia, were you actually out traveling to escape your debts? Fine then, I suppose I owe it to you to pay your debts off. Besides, I’ll also benefit from this in the end.”

From a certain standpoint, it would be quite difficult for a foreign visitor to speedily integrate himself into a relatively closed-off society. However, even if Amelia’s reputation was somewhat seedy, people still knew about her, as evidenced by all the debtors waiting for her to resurface. No matter what, her storefront had over a hundred years of reputation to back it up. As long as I paid off her debts, I would be able to utilize her connections, which would be far faster than if I tried to establish connections of my own. And, right now, what I lacked the most was time.

Amelia’s store? The Great Industrial Party? You see, even though I was once again intending on improving my Reputation, the devious tricks I pulled off in Karo would be useless for a repeat performance here. In the Mage Country’s society, nothing would compare to research achievements and academic accomplishments. This was similar to my previous world’s academic society in its theoretical purest form.

“I’m an elemental magic specialist who won the Martin Scholar Award twice before.”

“...I’m the unknown mage who invented the ‘Ice Aeon’ spell.”

“I’m the vice dean of the Kaso magic school. My disciples are all over the world.”

“Ice Aeon, thank you very much.”

“I... I’m a core member of the Sword of Order! Could you stop talking about that ‘Ice Aeon’ of yours?”

“...I’m the creator of undead construction. Since you’re a member of the Sword of Order, you should have read my thesis collection before on the might of undead construction. Or perhaps you’re not even at the level where you’re allowed to look at such top-secret theses?”

“Let us talk a bit more about Ice Aeon!”

When research results could turn into actual power and wealth, the phrase “knowledge is power” would no longer be simply an empty platitude. The status of mages was basically determined by their academic accomplishments.

As for why this ice mage former teacher of mine treated me so well? That would be because of the magic information I had given him. Not only would it assist his own personal research as a reference, it would also massively increase the status of ice magic within the Mystical Blade.

“Us ice mages in the Mystical Blade finally have a forbidden spell.”

This sounded rather cool, and it would even help as an advertisement to attract young ice mages into Mystical Blade. Of course, the truth that “ninety-nine percent of people would be unable to reach the level required to cast this spell” would be left unsaid.

This wasn’t even an attempt to fool people. It was simply common sense that didn’t need to be said. After all, forbidden spells were far too difficult. And besides, even if it was left unused, it would still benefit many ice mages as they researched and analyzed the components of the forbidden spell.

Of course, I didn’t do it for nothing. There was a rule of equivalent exchange in mage society, and since I provided such a rare and precious magical spell to the Mystical Blade, they rewarded me with an astronomical number of their “Contribution Points” that I could exchange for other magical knowledge and secrets. This was the most basic function of any mage organization: to gather a group of mages with similar interests to exchange information and magical ingredients so that everyone involved may benefit and grow stronger together.

But if I joined the conference using the status of Roland from the Mystical Blade, I would immediately face endless challenges from the Eye of Truth and other such mage organizations. It would be much better for me to join the conference as simply myself.

The “Great Industrial Party” would be a theoretical-type organization. Amelia’s stores and workshops would be how I would turn theories into actual products and money. With that completed, a persistent virtuous cycle would be created, and this new mage organization would truly be established.

The goal I had given myself was to be able to appear at the conference with the status of “inventor of a new technology.” And I, indeed, had plenty of technologies and toys on hand that I could use.

No matter if it was magical engineering, the Four Elemental Swordcasters, undead magic, ice magic, or wood spirits, there were plenty of things I could bring to the table. Obtaining the Mage Country’s support was something on my to-do list for quite a long time already. It would be quite convenient to show and give them all these things in order to improve my standing here.

I already had the technology, and as for stores and workshops, I could make use of Amelia’s “Thorn Garden” as well. Stonecrystal Street was a rather flourishing and bustling street. But due to the fact that the store had been completely destroyed by Jinya’s explosion, I now needed to consider how to reconstruct it... and also how to explain to Amelia just why her garden and experimental laboratory needed to undergo such extensive reconstruction.

But, in order to overturn Amelia’s past reputation, make the Cloud Tower’s various mage organizations take note of my “Great Industrial Party” and even give me the right to attend the Truth Symposium meeting as the leader of the Great Industrial Party, I would need to show them a sufficient amount of strength and achievements. From a certain standpoint, the little gift of Ice Aeon that I gave to the Mystical Blade helped me out greatly: I could avoid the most troublesome part of accumulating everything from scratch.

“Teacher, good morning.”

“The weather’s quite nice today, isn’t it, sir?”

“Hello! Would you happen to have time to eat lunch together with me?”

“Senior, please go ahead of me.”

As I walked around, there were quite a few that came up to me and politely greeted me. These people included white-bearded elderly mages as well as passionate and beautiful young female mages. The friendly attitudes they had towards me filled the bastards following behind me with nothing but disbelief.

“Brother Roland, could it be that you were unpopular for so long that you finally couldn’t stand it anymore and finally purchased a Potion of Alluring as seen in the advertisements? But that’s obviously just a fake and useless product.”

Reyne was a bit hesitant but finally said what she was thinking out loud. Although the implied meaning behind her words made me quite displeased, making me want to retort, I decided against it when I thought about how she was one of the few people that came with me who I didn’t have to bail out of jail.

“Hmph. This is the charisma of a scholar. Little girls like you wouldn’t understand!”

Alright then, if you ignored all those ridiculous abilities attached to me that I couldn’t get rid of, in a way, I actually had quite a high Charisma stat. However, it was obviously impossible for me to suddenly become so popular through my Charisma stat alone. The true reason was because of the Mystical Blade robe I was wearing.

This was a deep blue mage robe. Although it wasn’t really eye-catching, the robe was made of starsand and tigermoth silk, the highest quality materials. Of course, most normal mages wouldn’t be able to notice such a tiny detail. What they saw were the emblems on my chest as well as the special color of my robe.

The Mystical Blade’s mage robes were all light blue. However, deep blue was a color reserved only for mage teachers. Well, that wasn’t much on its own. After all, there were countless professors and lecturers within the Cloud Tower to begin with. The most critical part was still the three emblems on my mage robe.

The first was an emblem of a blue book that said “443”. This represented that I was part of the 443rd batch of students to graduate from the Cloud Tower after the Cloud Tower overhauled and unified the education system several centuries ago, with one batch of students graduating every year. The current new graduates already had emblems numbering over six hundred, and that young female policewoman mage also had an emblem numbering over six hundred. That meant that despite how young I appeared, I was a “Senior” to them who had graduated about two hundred years before they did or would.

The other two emblems I possessed were two very similar crown emblems with wings on the crowns. One was a black crown with bone wings, while the other was a white crown with ice wings. This was the greatest honor in the Mage Country: the Emblem of Endless Truth.

This emblem by itself wasn’t that meaningful; it was simply the symbol of one’s academic achievements. However, the fact that mine were crowns represented that I had reached the peak of my fields. The black crown with bone wings represented undead magic, while the white one with ice wings represented ice magic.

And the only basic requirement for one to be able to join the Truth Symposium was to have one of these tiny crown emblems. However, since knowledge was power to mages, pretty much only Myth- and SemiGod-ranked mages would be able to obtain this emblem.

This seemingly ordinary mage robe was, in reality, broadcasting my status to everyone. What the mages passing by saw was an old artifact at least two hundred years old still pretending to be young, not to mention I was at the peak in two different magic types. It seemed quite likely that I was a Truth Overseer as well, so of course all the mages would be polite to me.

These emblems were also the reason why I was able to so easily bail out those damned bastards from jail. Apart from the emblems I had, there were many more emblems that represented all sorts of achievements and personal status. However, I had no more emblems other than these three. I saw a random mage passing me by who had more than twenty emblems attached to his mage robe, including even two dragonslaying emblems, which indicated that he had slain two dragons. However, he didn’t particularly seem to have a proud expression on his face. Well, it might have been because that it was forbidden to remove or not wear these emblems, so he might have felt that his emblems were attracting too much attention.

As for why the Mage Country made such a law, forcing mages to wear these emblems? That was in order to save everyone’s time and prevent fights. After all, there were too many old artifacts here. Perhaps that little girl right in front of you, hopping up and down while waiting in line at the cafeteria, was actually a thousand-plus-year-old elder, and if you cut in line right in front of her, she might casually flick her hand and kill you without breaking a sweat.

In the distant past, there were all sorts of mages that loved to “pretend to act weak before revealing their true strength” or “pretentious mages that loved to act strong but ended up getting slapped in the face” which gave the law enforcing and public order mages far too many headaches. But ever since this law about the emblems was passed in the Mage Country, a mage only had to take a look at the emblems on another mage’s robe to roughly know whether they could take that person on in a fight. This helped drastically reduce the number of conflicts in the Mage Country.

As I walked, I gave the orders for my plans for the upcoming period of time to the bastards following behind me. Soon, we returned to Stonecrystal Street, but what greeted my eyes was a little store that was utterly different to how it was the day before.