“So the wand is for amplifying as well as controlling magic at a distance? ” Robert asked.

“Yes, the wand helps to increase your elemental affinity and gives you control over magic over a distance,” Sophy replied. She had gotten used to the queries of Robert. He was like a kid seeing new things but he was more interested in knowing how everything works rather than what it is.

“How much does it cost?” Robert was curious about the price as he wanted to buy one and experiment with it.But the reply of sophy instantly killed his hope.

“money can’t buy it!”

Sophy went ahead and explained what she meant in detail. The wands were made of the core wood of trees that have at least reached 500 years of age, and the heartstrings of at least medium level spirit animals. Both were rare and only large families or guilds were able to get their hands on these. The range was based on the power level of the spirit animal while the amplification property was based on the age of the tree core used.

These trees as they grow old develop the core, just like the mysticle in humans, in order to absorb the energy of the world. And this was a reversible process, if you put a concentrated energy into this core, it will uncompress the energy to amplify its prowess. This was a blessing to light mages, as it allowed them to enter into combat.

The heart string of spirit animals was the appendage next to their mysticle and made it possible for them to use ranged magic. Humans who were a species lacking this organ couldn’t control their magic at a distance.

Then Sophy described her wand, she had a slight smile on her face when she explained to him how her father bought it for her on her 20th birthday.

It was made of a 1000 year rock barked oak’s core and heartstring of a rock golem. She went ahead and told in detail about how her father fought with many other clan leaders in the auction house in a bidding war for acquiring this wand for her.

Robert understood the amount of love this girl had to her father, she was truly filial. It must have been hard on her for accepting the current state of her father.

“How much is that in gold?” Robert didn’t understand what she meant by blue spirit stone. He had only seen white spirit stones which cost 10 gold.

“You don’t even know this?”, Sophy asked jokingly.

He truly is a country bumpkin. But an intelligent, smart, curious, studious country bumpkin. She said to herself and smiled.

Then she explained the conversion rate. One white spirit stone was 10 golds, one blue spirit stone was 1000 white spirit stones, and a purple spirit stone fetched 1000 blue spirit stones. There existed legends of black spirit stones, but even her father hasn’t seen one of it!

Robert wanted to try this wand out, but he didn’t want the world to know that he could also do earth magic. As he was not yet powerful, it would only bring disaster upon him.

He wanted to get a wand, but was not sure where he will get the materials from. Buying one was out of the question. Even after his big profits from the cannons, he couldn’t afford to get even one blue spirit stone, let alone 100.

The work of factory was going smoothly, the molds for cannons were prepared, and raw black iron was being brought over. A mill for powdering the raw materials of gunpowder was built, also a mixing mechanism was made. The only problem was acquiring raw materials without tipping off the recipe to spies.

Sophy said that she can take care of secrecy and acquire raw materials if he would tell her the formulae. Robert finally decided to give it up, it's her that does all the work anyways.

Sophy wouldn’t have pressed him for the information if he had enough resources to secretly acquire all the materials required. She was not someone who pried into others secrets. But he truly was incapable of doing the logistics operations and this was the only way the production could go on the full scale.

Robert spent the next two days in bed, trying to increase the velocity of energy tornadoes within his mysticle. Although he has substantially increased the angular velocity, it was still nowhere near the required speed.

He spent the rest of the day studying Sophy’s magic wand. Although she was reluctant to give it to him at first, after he offered her the recipe for gunpowder, she had no choice but to give it to him to study. But she stayed with him to see what he was intending to do.

Taking the thin but heavy wand in his hand, he slowly studied it. The brown wood had many carvings of runes in it, A black-brown string with the thickness of a few hair strands was wound upon the screw like a channel that was carved on the wood, it was then covered with transparent crystal.

As soon as he took the wand in his hand, he could feel that the earth element within him was throbbing for something. The wand didn’t feel like a piece of stick, but as a part of his body, he had the feeling that it was his own appendage. After gazing upon it for a few more minutes, he smiled and returned it to Sophy.

But from Sophy’s perspective, Robert was like a kid looking at his new toy in joy. And she was glad when he finally returned it to her, from his expression she thought that she would have to take it away from him forcefully.

In the last two days, 40 more men had disappeared from the city. The guards were alarmed by this, having a person or two disappearing was considered normal, but twenty men each for three days was a lot, the issue had even been raised to the two large families. And they had ordered their people to be on the lookout for anything suspicious.

“get me 500 men for tests Yugimi, I am expecting some guests,” Lord Yuuma said in high spirits.

500 men? What the hell is this guy thinking? Getting 20 a day without anyone noticing was already hard, now he wants 500?

“I am sorry milord, the city guards and two families are on high alert. I doubt it will be possible to even get 10 people today, at least not secretly,” Yugimi said in a sad tone.

“If they are onto us, why should you worry about being secretive, just drag all those men in, I’ll pay double. And don’t worry, the two families won’t dare to touch you, I’ll deal with them” Yuuma said in an emotionless voice.

Yugimi considered it for a moment, he had already made one years income of snake skull in a month working with this man. If he can keep it up for one more month, he will have enough capital to go to some large city and start again there. At that time who cares about what he had done here. And he trusted this man Yuuma, he had paid good money for the men till now, although he was a little weird, he kept his words till now. And this was a one time opportunity.

“I’ll make the arrangements”, Yugimi withdrew from the secret chamber after telling this.

He didn’t summon the masked men but instead ordered the normal thugs to abduct some men, for each he had offered 100 golds. This was a really easy money, they could get ten times their normal pay by doing half the work. And there were no restrictions, they could take anyone to get the payment!

It was just another normal day in the city, streets filled with bustling crowd bargaining to get the best price. But inside the city hall, it was chaos. The news that Snake skull issued a buying order for men had shaken up everyone. Goldfair city had no slaves or slave market, thanks to the effort of the ancestors of these two families. But now it seemed like this madman Yugimi is going head-on against the two families.

They had no doubts that they will be able to win in such a war, but why is Yugimi doing this? And why now? There was also the question of how he was able to pay such an exorbitant price for these men. Even in slave markets, the price was only 10 golds for a slave. He most certainly has a hidden card.

The big families were in a dilemma on what to do.