331 331 Peach's Other Requests
Peach looked around the room. “Alright, I think we’re done here. It might not have gone as smoothly as expected, but nobody did anything out of line. I will make sure that Christa makes it back to her room safely, and there will be an announcement after lunch about whatever deal the Academy has come to with Wolfe to repair the damage from the gas.”
One of the cleaners gave the Headmistress a hopeful look. “And what about the rest of us? I don’t suppose you can work in some awakenings, maybe a potential improvement or two?”
Peach sighed and rubbed her temples. Of course, everyone would want something from him. The real question was how they were going to pay for it all.
“I will see what we can do and then include it in the announcement.” The Headmistress sighed.
Wolfe remained behind after passing the sleeping form of Christa to one of the departing staff members, and everyone else filed out in a jubilant mood. He might as well start his meeting with the Headmistress now so they had time to make the announcement early.
“Alright, Wolfe, spit it out. What do you want for what I’m sure everyone is going to ask of you.” Peach asked, getting right down to business.
“I came here for one simple thing. More magical plants for the gardens in Forest Grove. Well, two things, but I’ve already gotten a bunch of utility amulets for the new students to study from.
If you can give us one new plant for each student and staff member I treat, that would be perfect.” Wolfe suggested.
The price was entirely reasonable for the service being offered, but at the same time completely impossible.
“I would like to point out that there are thousands of students and staff here. That many magical plants don’t exist, even if we duplicated the hundreds that you were already growing in the underground gardens.” Peach informed him.
Wolfe thought about the situation for a moment, then gave Peach a smile that reminded her that he was, in fact, raised by a crime Family.
“Well, if there aren’t enough resources, perhaps you can pay in people? The only thing that we are short on other than reagents is teachers. If the Academy can agree to provide us with teachers every year, on an ongoing basis, we can come to an agreement where I come by every year.
If I can’t come myself, I will send someone else who is competent at the procedure and perform these services for the new staff, starting with a whole faculty enhancement process this year.”
“You want Professors? That’s not an easy thing to ask for.” She stammered.
“I don’t mean as slaves or servants. I want you to hire or train Professors for us and pay their wages while they work from our location for the school year.” Wolfe elaborated.
That might be easier. There weren’t a lot of qualified witches who wanted to go into teaching. But if they were stationed in a magical forest, with incredibly dense mana and all the luxuries of a magical city? That might be easier to accomplish.
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The extra witches and magical power they would gain every year, especially now that they were recovering from a rebellion that so significantly thinned the ranks of powerful witches within the Fortress City to the point that the city’s power grid was in danger, was worth the tradeoff.
“Alright, I can agree to that. But I have one more request.” Peach agreed, thinking of the power issues in the city.
“Sure, just ask, and we can negotiate.” Wolfe agreed.
“The city’s power grid is on the verge of failing due to the number of witches who were killed or fled the city. They’re barely keeping the lights on, and there has been increased power rationing all over the city, especially in the lower levels. I want you to solve their power problem.”
Wolfe considered that for a few seconds. At his power level, keeping the lights on in the city wasn’t a big deal. He could make a layered array over a power generator, and it would gather its own mana and create as much lightning magic as it needed to feed the power grid.
The Witches didn’t put much of their power into the grid to begin with, so updated arrays on the power plants would work.
“Just the electrical grid?” Wolfe asked, to be sure.
“That should be enough. If they have power, the mundane population can live their lives as usual, and the flow of mana crystals for money is still intact, so anything that they were powering directly should continue to work as intended.” Peach agreed.
“In that case, I will make array talismans. Place them on an input point to the power grid that can take a lot of power, like the Transformer Switches for the magical generators, and they will dump a tremendous amount of electricity into the system without any user input.
They contain a mana-gathering formation like the one in the Den but were designed to focus the spell and draw mana to the spell itself.
“Is it really that easy?” Peach asked.
“Well, yes and no. It is a rather complex array, but it will be fine if I make it on a thick metal disc that won’t melt with the energy flow.” Wolfe shrugged.
He couldn’t really go into the city to place the arrays himself, so he would have to do it that way and hope that it worked out for the best.
Peach created a set of four copper discs, roughly a meter in diameter and ten centimetres thick, sitting on the floor.
“You can use those. They’re the same size as the current distribution blocks for the magical crystal converters.” She explained.
They were indeed large enough, so Wolfe started on the Arrays right away. Once they were created, it would be much easier to argue in favour of the value of his work. If the mana vein repair process on the staff was worth the wages of the professors they needed, these could be traded for the magical plants, and he would have everything that the Witches at home could want.