Chapter 1: The Moral Test of Mr. Debt Mage
8 o'clock in the morning, it's time for Mr. Master to get up.
It was just getting light outside, but if nothing unexpected happened, the sky would still not be completely bright today.
The wasteland outside the tower is always like this, from the sky to the endless wasteland, it seems to have been washed by coal ash and is always shrouded in a haze.
The room was surrounded by heavy curtains and bed curtains, and Darien could only sleep peacefully in a dark enough environment.
"Dear master, you should get up. Breakfast is ready..." Seville lifted the curtain and stopped talking.
The soft quilt collapsed, and there was no one on the bed.
"You're late today, Seville." Darien's voice came from outside.
When the morning air is strong, injustices against Mr. Crow often occur.
Mr. Crow is very understanding of such little temper.
After all, they are currently in a financially tight situation, and Mr. Wizard has not had a good night's sleep for several days due to the heavy bills.
"Forgive me, my lord." He pulled open the heavy curtains.
Darien sat on the edge of the terrace, the morning breeze ruffling his soft sandy golden hair. The young mage had a pair of emerald green eyes, the most vibrant color in the entire wasteland.
But now there was great unhappiness in those beautiful green eyes.
Sewell smiled, pretending not to notice the dark cloud hanging over Darien's head, and stepped forward conscientiously to perform his duties as a butler.
A kiss as light as a feather fell down, and Darien turned his face to the side, and the kiss lightly touched the ends of the curly hair.
"No good morning kiss today," Darien said.
"Okay, master." Seville still kept smiling.
But for some reason, Darien felt even more unhappy.
He kept his face stern until breakfast was served.
There was steaming hot oatmeal porridge on the table, with raisins and sugar added in, which smelled delicious.
Bacon fried eggs are served with boiled beans in salt water. The bacon is fried until crispy on the edges, and the fried eggs are runny and yolky. The boiled chickpeas in salt water are peeled and the portion is not too large.
But what really brought a smile to Darian's face was a smooth and soft milk pudding.
Mr. Master's taste is similar to that of a child. He likes desserts and always lacks patience for food that does not look good.
Sewell sat down on his left and enjoyed the same breakfast.
After eating half a bowl of warm and sweet oatmeal porridge, Darien felt much better and was finally willing to speak.
"How was our business yesterday?" he asked.
"We lost 27 gold coins." Sewell swallowed the boiled beans in his mouth. "We purchased a batch of new ore materials, but we didn't sell a single bottle of the new potion we made. The herbs in the medicine garden were infected with corruption..."
"Is there no better news?" Darien suddenly found the food in his mouth a little difficult to swallow. "Like, maybe our current financial situation is relatively comfortable."
"Yes," said Sewell, "although we have a huge pile of bills now, so many that we can bind it into a dictionary...but as long as we sell the souls we just received according to the contract to the devil, we can pay off all our debts."
Bills, bills, bills... nothing but bills and more bills. Mr. Wizard is heavily in debt and has reached the point where he is about to collude with the devil.
"This is immoral and depraved." But Darien's heart was shamefully moved.
"Our moral standards should be flexible according to our financial situation," said Sewell.
"Let's cut unnecessary expenses first. We should be able to hold out for a while." Darien's almost non-existent conscience briefly emerged to maintain his rationality.
"Apparel orders for this season can be canceled," Sewell said.
Darien nodded. He had hundreds of exquisitely crafted wizard robes in his wardrobe, so it didn't matter if he made a few fewer.
"The tea for the guests can be replaced with the more economical Morris black tea. You can buy two large cans for just one silver coin."
I totally agree. Many customers will drink his tea when they are nervous, and their tea expenses are also very high.
Sewell then listed seven or eight ways to save money, and Darien nodded until he heard this one.
"You can also cut back on your daily desserts. By simply adding more staple foods to fill your stomach, you can save a lot of money on dining expenses."
Darien paused, Darien hesitated, Darien was furious!
"Can you repeat that?" The fire in Darien's eyes was about to burn Seville to charcoal!
Mr. Wizard can't be without his pastry, just like a donut can't be without its frosting!
Seville certainly wouldn't try to drizzle olive oil on such a raging fire. "Dear master, I understand... Could you help me eat this milk pudding as well?"
He pushed his share of pudding over and added back the cuts in the dessert bill to his notebook.
That's the right thing to do.
Darien gave Sewell a gentle smile. "Of course, no problem. Where were we just now?"
The wizard, who was comforted by the dessert, was very easy to talk to, and all subsequent proposals were accepted peacefully.
Breakfast time was over, and Mr. Wizard and Mr. Crow went their separate ways, one to the herb garden and the other to the kitchen.
*
"Financial crisis? Oh, don't worry. The tower has experienced five financial crises so far, and it has survived each one safely," said Mrs. Fitch.
"Yes, that's right, thanks to the first fiscal crisis we were able to get the good job in the kitchen," said Fitch.
As Sewell washed dishes, he listened to the story of how the Fitches got the kitchen job.
A long time ago, there was a mouse couple who lived in a mouse hole in the palace kitchen. There they learned many cooking skills and put them into practice in the middle of the night.
Although the next morning there would always be the chef jumping up and down and the apprentices screaming, this also indirectly reflected that their learning results were outstanding.
There were many competitors for the kitchen job at that time, and the Mouse couple won the job with their superb cooking skills and the smallest stature. Mrs. Furway still clearly remembers what Darien said at the time.
"Your desserts are delicious, and I can save a ton of money on meals if I hire you. So, you're the one."
Sewell uttered an exclamation, as his dearest master insisted on promoting the virtue of stinginess in every aspect.
At the same time, Darien, who was digging potatoes with a small shovel in the herb garden, sneezed violently.
"Who scolded me?" He rubbed the tip of his nose lightly. He had done too many unscrupulous business recently, so it was hard to say who scolded him.
After working in the herb garden for a while, digging up a small amount of potatoes and udon roots, Sewell appeared at the fence with tea.
Darien took off his gloves and casually draped them over a bush of gorse, then slid smoothly into the garden chair. He picked up a cup of steaming hot tea and drank it while admiring Mr. Crow's work.
"Prune off all the dead branches. Uproot all the herbs where the rot has eaten into the roots. The dewdrop flowers haven't been watered yet, and the starlight grass needs a light charm... Did you bring me roses today?"
A series of words came out of the Master's mouth, and there was only one key point in them.
The roses in the vase upstairs were replaced every day, but now, he wanted to be able to hold them in his hands.
Sewell rose from the thorn bush, took off his gloves and draped them over the other side of the gorse bush.
Darien held the teacup in his hand and did not put it down. The final destination of the remaining half cup of tea would depend on how angry and humiliated the wizard was.
Mr. Crow always gets full marks in this regard.
"My dear master, the first rose that blooms in the morning is dedicated to you. Its dewdrops are as sincere as my heart."
As if by magic, Sewell pulled out a gorgeous red rose from his sleeve, with crystal dewdrops dotted on it trembling.
Kah.
Darien put down the teacup in his hand, the corners of his mouth raised in joy but restrained. The rose spun in his hand, the petals were not wrinkled, and there was not a single protruding thorn on the stem.
"It's beautiful," he said. "But next time, please give me the rose before I even ask. Making amends later will wear down my patience with you."
Although he was obviously very satisfied, he still had to find fault. It was a miracle that Mr. Wizard was not drenched from head to toe by a pot of hot tea.
But then again, it was Mr. Crow's indulgence that made his temper become more and more cunning and weird, and Mr. Crow was fully responsible.
"Okay, my dear master." Sewell smiled and leaned over to refill Darien's cup with hot black tea.
Mr. Mage won a great victory.
The gardening work in the medicine garden did not last long. There were not many herbs to be harvested. It was still early, so they could go to the alchemy room to extract some basic medicinal liquids.
Udon root, mandrake, orris root, and cattail were sent to the kitchen, and potatoes, celery, and onions to the alchemy room.
Darien fiddled with flasks and glass tubes, while Sewell, wearing an apron and rolled up his sleeves, was chopping potatoes.
If you ignore the alchemical equipment placed around and the bookshelves reaching the ceiling, this place is simply another kitchen.
A magic book with a red cover and gold-embossed text slid off the bookshelf, and after flipping through the pages, it floated in the air. A thick golden tassel was stuck between its pages, like a swinging tail.
"Pluto, come here and let me see the bill you wrote down yesterday," Darien said.
The magic book flew over and quickly turned the pages in front of him, finally stopping at a page with crooked handwriting.
"There are 237 gold coins in the account. Yesterday, I spent 231 gold coins on mineral materials. So why are there only 700 gold coins left?" Darien hoped this note would come true. "You'd better be able to make this money come true for me, otherwise..."
Pluto snapped the pages shut, clamped the tassels, and shoved himself back into the bookshelf, pretending to be just an ordinary paper book.
"Haha." Darien sneered, grabbed the tassel and pulled Pluto out of the bookshelf.
The magic book that often made mistakes in accounting was lying on the table pretending to be dead. Darian opened the drawer and took out a paper cutter from it.
Sewell spoke up in time to save Pluto: "The potatoes are cut, we can start extracting the solution now. I've recorded the bill in my notebook, and Pluto's bill will be adjusted."
Darien placed the paper cutter on the cover of Pluto's letter. "You should give it a math lesson. These messed-up bills often give me a lot of fun."
Pluto's tassels reached up stealthily and moved the paper cutter away from himself bit by bit.
Darien had no time to pay attention to it. He took out a special flint from the shelf next to him and struck it, lighting the topaz inlaid under the base.
Purple flames shot up from the bottom of the flask. A pile of potatoes were added to a transparent and colorless base liquid for extraction. The liquid surged, and the flask looked like a big pot of potato soup.
It smells like it too.
After the potato soup, celery soup and onion soup were stewed in the flask. The whole alchemy room was filled with the aroma of vegetable soup. If the great magician saw it, he would definitely hold his heart and fight back to repeat the basic alchemist course.
Darian doesn't care about all that. His shop has been running for hundreds of years without a license, so what if the raw materials are a little strange.
Seville cleaned up the vegetable residue in the flask. The base liquid used for extraction was harmless to the herbs, and the medicinal properties were extracted to almost nothing. These residues could be put into the compost bin to ferment for a period of time as base fertilizer.
The stingy wizard was unwilling to pay an extra copper coin for fertilizer.
Just as Darien was thinking about what potion to make to make a fortune, two little birds popped out from the clock above his head.
"Cuckoo—there are guests—cuckoo—"
Darien immediately cheered up. There was a sucker so early... Ah, since you are a distinguished guest, you can't run away without paying a hundred or eighty gold coins.
He smoothed his wizard robe and rushed to the elevator in the corner of the alchemy room. Of course, he did not forget to bring his handsome assistant to increase the success rate of his business.
The door opened, and Darien was about to raise the corner of his mouth to make a friendly but not flattering smile, but a roar reached his eardrums first.
"Pay me money! Pay me money now! How dare you sell me fake medicine!"
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
