Wizard: Starting With Synthesized Gems-Chapter 133: Zack's Procurement Feedback

Witch's Kitchen.
In private room number 3, Zack ordered two servings of tri-color salt grain steaks, one chilled sea cow liver, two servings of molten lava liquor, and one dish made from potato-type magical plants.
Locke discovered that Zack actually had a gourmet badge issued by the Witch's Kitchen, similar to the Platinum Star membership badge from Lijin Secret Language.
The badge was shaped like a coiled tongue.
With the gourmet badge, all consumption at the Witch's Kitchen could be halved. But it seemed that one needed massive consumption at the Witch's Kitchen to obtain this membership badge.
Locke guessed that Zack, as one of the academy's procurement department heads, obviously often brought his collaborators to patronize the Witch's Kitchen.
Zack was clearly very familiar with the flavor masters in the Witch's Kitchen. As soon as he arrived, the most skilled flavor masters from the Witch's Kitchen would personally come out to prepare food for them.
At the dining table, Zack was even more enthusiastic toward Locke. "Locke, to be honest, at the beginning, purchasing your magical plants put a lot of pressure on me."
"Because it was a gamble."
Locke raised his eyebrows curiously. "But I had my teacher's certification."
Zack explained, "Yes, magical plants are much more lenient than potions. They don't need human testing, just simple tests to issue a certification. But performance testing is often limited to just a few aspects, very restrictive."
"Many magical plants only expose their weaknesses when used in large quantities. Many breeders want their works included in academy bulk procurement partly for money, and partly to better test their magical plants."
Zack explained, "For example, I once purchased a slightly improved Bellflower magical plant from a breeder. From the paper data, its performance looked slightly better than traditional Bellflowers, but problems arose when I distributed them to the academy's combat wizards."
Zack raised his index finger, gesturing in the air, "That variety of Bellflower magical plant was very unstable. Its performance in stable conditions looked very good, so it ranked highly in advanced breeder certification tests. But in combat, once it entered unstable conditions, its power would even drastically weaken."
Zack's expression didn't look good. "That mistake almost bankrupted me."
"But it was unavoidable. After all, potions have to be consumed, so the review process is very strict. But magical plants are external items, so the review definitely won't be as strict."
"There's no need for that either. After all, these things can only reveal problems through large-scale combat testing. Pure testing is very limited."
Zack raised a glass of molten lava liquor toward Locke, "So when I was purchasing your Crystal Palm Fire Lotus, although I saw the excellent performance on the certification, I still felt somewhat uneasy."
"It's just that your Palm Fire Lotus had double the power, and I really couldn't see what problems it could have, so I took the risk of signing that 20,000 magic stone order with you."
"But the results were unexpected." Zack smiled, "Just three days ago, a group of academy combat wizards engaged in fierce battle with people from the Blood Curse Court outside Lilith's Cottage territory, in a mortal country's capital."
"That country was a vassal state of the Blood Curse Court. In that country's capital, there was a Blood Curse Court curse technique research institute where many evil curses were developed and used in wars against us."
"As a response, our side decided to implement a [Scorched Earth Bomb] bombardment strategy against that curse technique research institute, to destroy that place until nothing could grow. At that time, because Palm Fire Lotus inventory was insufficient, they unexpectedly used your Crystal Palm Fire Lotus."
"Originally, according to existing unspoken rules, new varieties of magical plants like yours couldn't possibly be prioritized in important battles. So this was a coincidence."
Zack said, "But the combat test results were very good. Using this new variety of Palm Fire Lotus could boost the actual power of Scorched Earth Bombs to between 0.6 and 0.7 circle levels."
"Just one thousand Scorched Earth Bombs achieved at least the effect of two thousand Scorched Earth Bombs, and the individual bomb explosion power was more powerful, making it much harder for those Blood Curse Court vampires to survive such explosions."
"Not only that, it actually produced a special effect in actual combat."
Zack handed Locke a document containing a set of pictures rapidly drawn using magical technology, almost identical to the real scene.
This was the work of a speed artist, a branch of the Illusion School.
Locke flipped through these photos and found that the enemy capital's land bombed by Scorched Earth Bombs wasn't the scorched black color recorded in books, but rolling magma.
In other words, parts of the enemy capital had been directly bombed into a small-scale lava sea.
The scalding magma was still flowing on the ground, continuing to cause secondary damage to the surviving ground defense facility techniques of the Blood Curse Court, and conducting concentrated destruction of various cursed magical trap runic arrays hidden underground.
Locke's expression became serious because this was an effect that individual Crystal Palm Fire Lotus combined with Scorched Earth Bombs couldn't achieve.
"After Scorched Earth Bomb explosions, the standard change to land is turning it scorched black. Even large-scale concentrated explosions would at most make the land completely scorched. This kind of spell result couldn't possibly be the designed effect of the Scorched Earth Bomb spell model."
Locke, being both a life magical botany wizard and a breeder and potion master, immediately thought of another possibility.
"Wait, the biggest difference between Crystal Palm Fire Lotus and ordinary Palm Fire Lotus is that Crystal Palm Fire Lotus exhibits [wood element fiber crystallization] phenomena."
"Ordinary Palm Fire Lotus only has wood element fibers. Crystallized wood element fibers can contain more individual mass fire elements, and crystallized wood element fibers are very hard. Even when explosions occur, they aren't ignited instantly but are shattered into countless small fragments scattered in mid-air."
"So during large-scale concentrated explosions..." Locke suddenly realized he had overlooked something very important.
"You can't just consider the eruption of flame elements stored inside individual Palm Fire Lotus, plus the energy conversion from wood elements being ignited by fire elements."
"You also have to consider the crystallized wood element fibers inside those thousand Palm Fire Lotus. If those wood element crystal fibers are torn apart by explosions..."
"But because the concentration is too high in a short time, if they still try to converge flame energy with each other, it would form a [compression effect], causing flame energy to be gathered after the first explosion time while maintaining explosive power, forming molten lava."
Locke's eyes brightened slightly. "That magma isn't ordinary magma, but concentrated results of high-concentration spell flames, causing secondary fatal damage to enemy territories."
"At least it has great advantages in sweeping survivors and destroying enemy magical traps hidden underground."
Locke pondered, "However, if that's the case, Scorched Earth Bombs can't fully utilize the Crystal Palm Fire Lotus's capabilities. The academy needs to develop a new spell model to use as a supporting spell for Crystal Palm Fire Lotus."
"I think now that the direction is clear, development should be quite simple."
Zack couldn't help but applaud, "Worthy of being the developer of Crystal Palm Fire Lotus. As soon as I explained, you figured it out. Afterward, the academy sent first-class wizard apprentices from the Evocation School's flame magic and plant magic to analyze together, and they gave similar opinions."
"They called this phenomenon the [Lava Conduit] phenomenon. Around the special structure you developed for Crystal Palm Fire Lotus, the wood element fiber crystallization structure, a series of follow-up supporting spell development plans were also arranged."
Zack said briefly, "Basically treating your work as a cantrip model development platform."
"In the future, the academy will develop a series of follow-up cantrip models around this work, just like how magical vines have Vine Hand, Vine Surge, and other series spells."
"It's just unfortunate that this is something those breeding competition committees couldn't know about, otherwise you might not have been fifth in the preliminaries. You might have been first."
Locke said modestly, "It was just luck."
He really hadn't expected this to happen.
It seemed that sometimes it was indeed necessary to provide magical plants in large quantities to war department wizards. They might discover many things that couldn't be found during individual spell use.
Zack thought for a moment, "By the way, the academy higher-ups also want you to participate in this development group. Of course, the choice is yours."
"After all, with your help, our work should progress quickly. What do you think?"