Chapter 435: Grand Elder’s Offer

The next morning, Karina was hit with another wave of disbelief.

She had fully expected Adrian to quickly leave for the new continent as soon as he woke up. But as she walked towards the hostel building, she saw Adrian walking out casually and heading straight towards the outer market square again.

All she did was quietly follow him, wondering if maybe he just had one last thing to buy. But this man had the audacity to set up his wooden tables again and put the fresh meat on display once more.

Unlike yesterday, there was already a much bigger line and this time, Karina didn’t just see the foruth, fifth and sixth-circle mages who were the only ones able to trade things of high value yesterday. While the third and second-circle mages did manage to bring some useful things, they didn’t get nearly as much meat in return.

But this time, she saw the actual Elders, most of them who were Seventh-circle mages were standing right there in line. They were obviously abusing a little bit of their power and status, and due to that, they were standing right at the very front of the line.

The moment Adrian had fully set up the tables, it only took around one minute for a line of over one hundred people to form. Adrian welcomed them all with a wide, business-like smile.

To Karina’s shock, as she watched everything happen right in front of her, one of the Elders standing right at the front looked back at the other Elders behind him, and then looked directly at Adrian.

"Hello," Adrian said casually. "We meet again."

The Elder chuckled warmly. "Yes, we meet again. And since fate has allowed us to meet once more, let me introduce myself properly this time."

The man bowed his head slightly.

"I am Percival, the Grand Elder of this Magic Academy, and a seventh-circle mage. While I may not look like it, I am seventy-nine years old at this moment. I have reached my limits as a mage, so I am permanently stuck at the seventh-circle."

Percival looked at Adrian, and then his eyes drifted to all of the marbled meat neatly stacked on the table.

"I would like to extend a formal offer to you."

Adrian nodded and smiled. "Well, I was waiting for that."

The Grand Elder chuckled again. "Well, you surely were. If you had actually planned on going to the continent tonight instead of coming out here, I would have stepped in to stop that from happening. And even now, I would like to ask you to reconsider going at all."

He leaned forward slightly.

"While that expedition is important, there are a few things that I must ask you. And while I do have a few wild guesses of my own which may or may not be right, I would just like to confirm them directly with you."

Adrian nodded. "Okay. Shoot your questions."

"Well, firstly. All of this meat." Percival gestured to the table. "I won’t ask you exactly where you get it from, but I am just assuming that it is somehow directly related to your Goddess. Or should I say... the Dragon of Prosperity?"

Adrian raised an eyebrow.

Percival smirked. "This Magic Tower has been standing here for centuries. It is much older than your empire. Well, much older than the Crestwall Empire, which is also centuries old itself. We have been here for slightly over a millennia. We know things."

Adrian nodded smoothly. "Okay then. So what is your question?"

"I just wanted to know whether you can actually get this meat consistently," Percival asked seriously. "And if yes, could you tell me exactly how much you can reliably produce?"

"Well, I can actually get it consistently as long as I am alive, at least," Adrian said. "Just tell me exactly how much you need, and then we can settle on a deal."

Percival’s eyes lit up.

"Well, we have a lot of high-ranking mages. If you can consistently provide us meat with the exact same amount of mana inside per kilogram that you provided yesterday, then we could actually settle for entire carcasses at a time. How much does one full carcass weigh?"

"One perfect carcass harvested at the perfect time for consumption would weigh around one ton. Roughly one thousand kilograms."

"Okay," Percival nodded slowly. "One thousand kilograms.... I will buy each carcass for one thousand mana crystals. So that’s one mana crystal for a kilogram."

Adrian raised an eyebrow. "How does that even make sense? You are not even profiting if you do that. Don’t you sell each cooked dish for one or two mana crystals inside the inner circle?"

Percival nodded with a sigh. "Well, yes. But it is mostly because by using all of our refinement methods to counteract the toxins, the costs go up exponentially. The refinement of normal monster meat is extremely hard, and even with all that effort, most of the meat doesn’t really taste good at all."

He pointed at the cuts on the table.

"I personally tasted your meat yesterday. It tasted really, really good... in fact, it was much juicier than the regular meat that I’m used to putting in my mouth."

Adrian smirked proudly. "Of course. I take immense pride in my meat."

"Well, yes," Percival said. "That is the thing. It is much more luxurious. While practicality is a big thing for lower circle mages, people like us in the seventh circle do not lack mana crystals compared to the others. What we do lack is time."

He folded his hands. "Others use meditation and various cultivation methods to actively absorb the mana from crystals. But we do not have the time for that anymore. The only effective way for us to passively get some benefits and increase our mana without meditation is by eating monster meat. We are basically paying a massive premium for convenience and to save time."

Adrian didn’t say anything and just listened normally.