Wizard: Grinding to Lord of Truth

Chapter 199: Chapter 199: Huge Debt

"Did you find any treasure?"

Qiu Ze’Er asked Andre from inside his Star Realm Battleship.

"Treasure? You must have gone stir-crazy sitting in that War Mother Ship. What kind of treasure could possibly survive a blast from a War Witchcraft Artifact?"

Andre’s mouth twitched uncontrollably as he watched Qiu Ze’Er’s projection in the Central Control Room of the Morning Sky.

"Sigh, I was hoping some special treasures might have survived."

Qiu Ze’Er’s tone was full of regret. Andre looked at the guy, completely speechless.

Even now, he was still trying to be a clown and joke around.

"According to our First Expedition Squad’s survey, the most powerful being on this world is only equivalent to a Level 3 Wizard."

"With that level of Power, what kind of Magical Beasts do you think they could possibly hunt?"

Andre’s question made Qiu Ze’Er’s brain freeze.

"So you didn’t find any other treasures at all?"

Qiu Ze’Er looked at Andre, his eyes filled with fervent hope.

"The only treasures I found were Magic Plants. Are you sure you, a Caster, can even use those?"

Qiu Ze’Er fell silent at Andre’s words.

"Your squad has been on this world for almost six years. In all that time, you haven’t found any Metal Minerals?"

Qiu Ze’Er was now frantically pulling at his hair.

"Come on. Metal Minerals are usually buried deep underground. Surveying for them means going subterranean."

"To completely survey the underground of an entire continent... six years? Try ten times six years."

Andre watched Qiu Ze’Er keep pulling at his hair and couldn’t help but shake his head.

"By the way, are you short on cash lately?"

Andre thought for a moment before asking the tormented-looking Qiu Ze’Er,

"Duh, who isn’t short on cash?"

Qiu Ze’Er’s projection rolled its eyes at Andre.

"I mean, you seem even more broke than you were back at the academy. What did you do?"

Andre had Wei Xing adjust their course to fly parallel to Qiu Ze’Er’s Star Realm Battleship.

"Don’t even ask. After you all left the academy, I took on a job for a client and completely botched it."

"Botched it? How is that possible? Don’t you never take jobs you aren’t confident about?"

Andre looked at Qiu Ze’Er, a playful glint in his eye.

"Yes, I don’t take jobs I’m not confident about, but who could resist the price they offered! It was just too generous!"

"I couldn’t help myself and accepted. But I never expected an explosion while I was forging the Blood Patterned Demon Gold. It caused a fire in my shop and destroyed a lot of my clients’ materials."

Qiu Ze’Er’s voice was filled with remorse, but looking at his expression, Andre got the feeling he’d still want to try again.

"Your shop... you burned your clients’ materials... My shop is right next to yours. When your shop caught fire, don’t tell me it burned mine down too."

Andre’s eyes widened as he stared at Qiu Ze’Er.

"Your shop was empty. What was there to burn?"

Seeing that Andre was more concerned about his own shop than about his financial losses, Qiu Ze’Er couldn’t help but sigh.

"Then what burned? I remember that you Casters’ shops are all equipped with fireproof Demon Pattern Arrays, right? How could a fire even start?"

Andre now wore a look of utter astonishment, constantly sizing up Qiu Ze’Er.

"Of course I have one. But I never imagined a single spark would land right on a beast hide. I had all my hides piled together. One caught fire, and then they all went up."

"There were over a dozen hides in total, from all different kinds of Magical Beasts. Those hides still contained the residual Power of the beasts."

"Once they ignited, the flames became incredibly complex. On top of that, some Magical Beast bones also caught fire. You know how it is—white phosphorus and Erin—once they caught fire, the flames grew more intense and became much harder to extinguish."

"By the time the academy helped me put out the fire, more than half of my clients’ materials were completely unusable. To compensate them for their losses, I had to take out a massive loan from the academy. I’m counting on the spoils from this expedition to pay it back."

Qiu Ze’Er looked at Andre, his voice full of helplessness.

"This is a tough situation. Just paying back the debt is one thing, but the real problem now is your reputation. I’m afraid you’ll have a hard time getting any business forging Witchcraft Artifacts at the academy from now on."

Andre shook his head repeatedly as he listened to Qiu Ze’Er. Seeing Andre’s reaction, Qiu Ze’Er couldn’t help but sigh.

"That part isn’t so bad. People will forget about it after a while."

"But right now, the biggest problem is this debt! The academy’s interest rate is 30%, and it compounds annually."

"The interest rate also increases by a fixed 1% each year. It’s already been eight years since I traveled to this world on the War Mother Ship. Now, the total I have to repay is 138% of the original loan."

"If I can’t pay back this debt in time, I’ll have to work for the academy for free for the rest of my life, until my Soul collapses."

Qiu Ze’Er’s story was truly a tearjerker; even Andre was moved.

"How much did you borrow in total?" Andre asked cautiously, looking at Qiu Ze’Er.

Qiu Ze’Er held up five fingers.

"Five million Medium Magic Stones, or fifty million? If it was fifty million, you could pay it off in a hundred or two hundred years by crafting a few hundred Witchcraft Artifacts, right?"

Andre looked at Qiu Ze’Er’s outstretched fingers and threw out what he considered an astronomical figure.

"Wrong. It’s not fifty million Medium Magic Stones. It’s five million High Level Magic Stones!"

"What the hell?! Five million High Level Magic Stones?"

Andre’s eyes instantly flew wide, stretching as far as they could go.

"You’ve got some serious guts! Five million High Level Magic Stones? That’s 500 million Medium Magic Stones! Not even many Morning Star Wizard Clans have that much liquid capital!"

Hearing that number, Andre sucked in a sharp breath.

Even with his ancestral treasures and the Divine Remains and Divine Relic he had just acquired, making him incredibly wealthy, Andre couldn’t guarantee that his own net worth was definitively over 500 million Medium Magic Stones.

"Wait a minute. Where did you borrow that many Magic Stones from? Your losses couldn’t have been *that* great!"

Andre almost instantly caught the hole in Qiu Ze’Er’s story.

Hearing Andre’s doubt, a bitter smile appeared on Qiu Ze’Er’s face.

"You’re forgetting, the shop burned down. I needed funds to rebuild it."

"The materials alone wouldn’t have cost that much. The problem was the Witchcraft Array inside, which connects to the academy. To repair that Wizard Array, you have to hire someone from the academy, and that price..."

Qiu Ze’Er trailed off, closing his mouth with a look of resignation.

Andre understood what Qiu Ze’Er meant almost instantly. In a seller’s market, whatever price the academy quoted, Qiu Ze’Er had no choice but to accept.

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