Synthesis Wizard

After searching carefully and finding nothing of value, Su Nan went straight to the next level.

The third level was an area divided into several halls, mainly various leisure and entertainment venues.

“Leisure area, huh?”

Such an area typically wouldn’t yield any treasures. After a quick search, Su Nan proceeded to the next level.

From the third level upwards, there were the training area (including meditation rooms and spell practice rooms), the workshop area (including magic item workshops and puppet factories), the experiment area, and the storage area.

The workshop area housed hundreds of clay golems and stone golems. However, they looked like they hadn’t been activated for a long time, likely due to energy shortages.

The experiment area was also empty, with no valuable items like experimental notes.

The storage area was the same.

“This place’s layout is similar to my base. With a little renovation, it could be used as Base 3.” Su Nan nodded in agreement, continuing to explore upwards.

The twelfth level appeared to be an incredibly spacious laboratory, equipped with numerous workbenches. What set it apart was a dedicated section housing dozens of large, transparent glass tanks. Each tank was filled with green or blue liquid, containing bizarre creatures—some were sub-dragons, others were different species. Su Nan even saw what appeared to be limbs and skulls of pureblood dragons.

Overjoyed, he opened one of the glass tanks and pulled out a dragon head. But after careful examination, he was greatly disappointed.

Perhaps due to improper long-term preservation, the essence within the dragon head had completely dissipated, becoming worthless waste.

Su Nan unwillingly opened each glass tank one by one, only to find the same results.

“Right, after all, it’s been thousands of years. Even if these facilities had powerful preservation capabilities, it’s impossible for these biological specimens to last this long.”

With a sigh, Su Nan gathered his thoughts and moved on to the next level.

The thirteenth and fourteenth levels were the same, both equipped with numerous workbenches and glass tanks. Clearly, like the twelfth level, they were both modification areas. The creatures and biological specimens in the glass tanks had also lost their effectiveness long ago.

“It seems the builder of the ecological garden placed a lot of emphasis on biological modification.” Su Nan mused.

He had encountered many previously unseen sub-dragons in Ecological Garden Zone 1. At the time, he thought it was just him, after all, sub-dragons are countless in variety; it’s natural for anyone to encounter unfamiliar ones occasionally. But now it seemed that was not the case.

Those unfamiliar sub-dragons might not have been existing species, but rather new sub-dragon species bred and modified by this ecological garden.

Having explored the first fourteen levels, only the final level remained.

Su Nan already had a guess in mind. Taking a deep breath, he stepped onto the teleportation array.

After a flash before his eyes, he arrived at a vast platform. The platform was entirely constructed of white stone, with dense engravings on its surface, exuding an arcane beauty.

“Hanyu white marble!” Su Nan’s eyes narrowed slightly.

Hanyu white marble is a kind of fine-grained white marble, characterized by its hardness and suitability as a top-notch building and sculpting material.

Many wizards would choose Hanyu white marble as the main material when constructing their wizard towers.

Looking around the platform, he found himself surrounded by a vast starry sky. Countless stars dotted the expanse, with a dazzling Milky Way stretching across it, causing an involuntary feeling of self-diminishment.

After admiring the view for a while, Su Nan retracted his gaze and looked towards the deepest part of the platform.

There, a square pool, ten meters long and ten meters wide, was paved with pure white marble. Its surface was covered with a silver coating, adorned with dense patterns, actually a large-scale energy gathering magic array.

“Elemental pool!” Su Nan’s eyes lit up. He hadn’t expected this ecological garden to have built an elemental pool.

Although it didn’t seem very large, not even qualifying as a small elemental pool, at most it could only be considered a miniature elemental pool, it was still quite good.

After all, the elemental pool is a standard configuration for the energy supply system of a wizard tower.

“It seems that besides the ecological garden’s energy circulation system, the minimal energy required to sustain its operation comes from this elemental pool.”

The elemental pool’s operating principle is to open a channel to the elemental plane, drawing elemental energy from it, providing an endless and stable supply of energy.

It’s a high-level energy supply device, far more efficient than setting up mana transmission pipelines on ley lines.

Many large-scale facilities use elemental pools as their energy supply devices, the most common being wizard towers.

A small elemental pool is enough to meet the basic needs of a wizard tower.

However, building an elemental pool requires a large amount of gems, special metals, and various rare materials, making it extremely expensive. It also requires a certain level of proficiency in 【Magic Item Crafting】.

Even among official wizards, not everyone could afford to build an elemental pool.

When the energy particle density of the Starlight Continent dropped thousands of years ago, some wizards considered using the method of building elemental pools to open channels to the elemental plane and introduce elemental energy to increase the energy particle density. However, they ultimately failed.

With a small number of channels, the elemental energy introduced from the elemental plane couldn’t keep up with the rate of energy loss.

With a large number of channels, it was equivalent to drilling numerous holes in the Starlight Continent’s dimensional barrier, greatly reducing its isolating and protective functions, allowing large numbers of otherworldly creatures to cross the barrier and enter the Starlight Continent, leading to many disasters.

Even many elemental deities took advantage of the situation and extended their tentacles into the Starlight Continent.

Ultimately, the wizards had to abandon this approach, which had more drawbacks than benefits, a desperate solution.

“It’s a pity that the elemental pool has been abandoned.”

After checking it, Su Nan reached a conclusion. It made sense; if the elemental pool could still operate, the ecological garden wouldn’t have fallen into an energy shortage.

“If I can repair and activate this elemental pool, the ecological garden’s energy supply will be secured.”

A smile appeared on Su Nan’s face.

Although repairing the elemental pool wouldn’t be easy, it was still simpler than building one from scratch, and he had some confidence.

Snapping out of his elation, Su Nan looked at the crystal ball next to the elemental pool.

The crystal ball was perfectly round, purple-blue in color, with a radius of about half a meter, floating about six or seven centimeters above the ground, emitting a faint glow.

Based on his experience, this crystal ball was most likely the control hub of the ecological garden.

Approaching the crystal ball, Su Nan thought for a moment and placed the key on its surface.

“Activation source detected. Management system officially activated.”

“Scanning user status. Meets criteria. Do you want to log in?”

“Log in.” Su Nan said without hesitation.

“Logged in.”

“Manager rank is currently blank. User permission level has been elevated to the highest.”

“Welcome to the Longlin Ecological Garden, Master. Butler 1 at your service.”

Butler? Su Nan’s eyes flickered slightly.

When he heard the voice coming from the Dragon Bone Tower, he suspected that the ecological garden might have an intelligent auxiliary life like a tower spirit. It seemed he was right.

However, this thing’s capabilities were probably far inferior to a tower spirit, at most only slightly higher than a puppet life like a mithril golem.

If it were a real tower spirit, even without a controller’s orders for thousands of years, it could have chosen the optimal way to operate the ecological garden, and wouldn’t have reduced it to its current state.

“1, scan the ecological garden’s status.” Su Nan issued the first command.

“Self-scan initiated!”

“Scanning in progress.”

“Constructing 3D model.”

“Scan complete.”

A faint glow emerged, countless rays of light spilling from the crystal ball, intertwining above to form a 3D model, a miniature 3D panorama of the ecological garden.

Numerous text labels were also displayed alongside it.

【Ecological Garden: Longlin】

【Level: Large (Damage Level: 69.34%)】

【Current Remaining Energy: 38.79%】

【Intelligent Auxiliary Life: Butler 1】

【Areas: Zone 1, Zone 2, Zone 3】

【Facilities (Dragon Bone Tower): Living Area, Storage Area, Experiment Area, Training Area, Workshop Area, Modification Area, Control Center, Elemental Pool (Miniature)】

【Servants: Clay Golem × 182】

【Protective Devices: Large Spatial Barrier (Damage Level: 3.48%)】

【Combat Devices: Golem Legion (Stone Golem × 145)】

“Only 39% energy remaining?”

Su Nan opened each of the three zones one by one.

【Zone 1: Operational, minimum energy required to maintain operation: 24.28%, optimal energy: 35.12%】

【Zone 2: Suspended, minimum energy required to maintain operation: 53.66%, optimal energy: 73.41%】

【Zone 3: Operational, minimum energy required to maintain operation: 3.06%】

“Zone 2 requires over 50% of the energy at minimum!”

Su Nan couldn’t help but gasp. No wonder Zone 2 was abandoned and left to ruin. After all, it was the area where dragons were kept. The amount of energy it consumed was truly astonishing.

“It seems the first step is to restore the energy to over 81%.”

The minimum energy required for the three zones added up to over 81%.

As long as the ecological garden’s energy was restored to this level, Zone 1 and the Dragon Bone Tower could be kept running while gradually restoring Zone 2’s ecological environment.

Once Zone 2’s ecological environment was restored, he could consider how to restore the dragon population.

“Open the energy slot.” Su Nan gave the command.

With a click, the ground next to the crystal ball slowly opened, extending a hollow stone pillar from within.

Su Nan took out all the magic stones from his spatial ring and poured them into the stone pillar.

After a while, the data next to the 3D model suddenly changed. The remaining energy jumped from 38.79% to 38.81%, an increase of 0.02%.

“Two hundred and thirty-five lower-grade magic stones only increased the energy by 0.02%!”

Su Nan couldn’t help but gasp.

Based on this calculation, to restore the energy to 81%, he would need to invest at least 500,000 lower-grade magic stones!

That would cost roughly 900,000 gold coins!

Even if he didn’t spend a single gold coin from now on and accumulated all of it, it would take him four or five years to gather enough.

This was still considering that he could manufacture magic stones at a ridiculously low cost.

For other wizard apprentices, if they wanted to use magic stones to increase energy, they wouldn’t be able to restore Zone 2’s ecological environment in their lifetime.

The ecological garden’s energy consumption was truly astonishing!

“81% of the energy requires so many magic stones, and who knows how many it would take to restore it to 100%. This method won’t work. I have to figure out how to repair the elemental pool.”

After pondering for a while, Su Nan made up his mind and issued a new command.

“1, how much energy is required to repair the spatial barrier?”

The priority was to patch up the ecological garden’s breach, preventing the sub-dragons from escaping from Zone 1 and attracting more wizard apprentices or other intelligent creatures.

“It requires 6.23% energy.”

Su Nan quickly estimated that after repairing the spatial barrier, the remaining energy would still be enough to meet the minimum energy needs for Zone 1 and Zone 3.

He could always invest some magic stones later to increase the energy level.

Thinking of this, Su Nan immediately issued the repair command.

“Repair initiated. Estimated time: 18 hours, 35 minutes, 32 seconds.”

Watching the 3D model slowly disappear, Su Nan let out a long sigh of relief, feeling extremely happy.

Although he didn’t find any valuable treasures in the Dragon Bone Tower, the Longlin itself was already the biggest treasure.

With Longlin as his foundation, he could establish a base with more comprehensive functions and better security.

Moreover, the tens of thousands of sub-dragons and countless rare magic plants within Longlin were also a vast fortune.

Once he repaired the elemental pool, it would be equivalent to having an inexhaustible material treasure trove.

Before his advancement to wizard and construction of a wizard tower, Longlin could serve as his base, upon which he could develop and expand his power.

“Once the elemental pool is repaired, I can move Base 1 here.”

Longlin was a semi-dimensional space, without a fixed location in the material world. As long as Su Nan, the controller, opened the passage in the material world, he could enter Longlin.

At the same time, outside the Dragon Bone Tower.

The Traveler kept his gaze fixed on the Dragon Bone Tower, his eyes filled with undisguised envy.

As a wizard apprentice, he knew very well the immense benefits of getting his hands on a large ecological garden.

It would provide significant benefits for his personal strength improvement and power development.

However, he also knew that this ecological garden was not something he could covet.

Not being able to beat the player was one thing, but another was that even if he got the ecological garden, he wouldn’t have the resources to provide it with sufficient energy.

The player was different.

From what Night Owl said, the player had vast resources far exceeding those of ordinary third-rank wizard apprentices. Perhaps he had a way to solve the ecological garden’s energy shortage.

“On the bright side, if Su Nan really can solve the ecological garden’s problems, I can buy sub-dragon blood from him in the future.”

The Traveler pondered to himself.

Just then, the Dragon Bone Tower’s door suddenly creaked open, and Su Nan walked out.

The Traveler hesitated for a moment, but couldn’t help but be curious and stepped forward to ask, “How did it go?”

“Lots of problems.” Su Nan shrugged, “But the ecological garden’s breach is being repaired. It won’t be long before it’s fully restored. What are your plans next?”

The Traveler was slightly taken aback.

What else could he do?

The ecological garden is now yours. Can I still hang around here like a leech?

But to his surprise, Su Nan then extended an invitation.

“Interested in being a guest at my place?”

(End)