Chapter 3227: The Best Destination for Student Practical Assignments

After a detailed discussion with Iolum, a conclusion was finally reached: if one only pursues efficiency, sacrificing a Mythallar is the best choice; if one also needs to consider cost, sacrificing Magic Scrolls is the best choice.

Because the essence of this so-called sacrifice is to inject more Magic Net Strings into that Magic Net Decay Area; any Magic Item, regardless of the design scheme adopted, must necessarily have a large number of Magic Net Strings condensed upon it.

Only the Magic Net Strings condensed on the Magic Item actually take effect; the carrier is not necessary. The reason why sacrificing a Mythallar is the most efficient is because a single Mythallar condenses over a million Magic Net Strings.

As for an ordinary Magic Item, the number of Magic Net Strings condensed upon it is basically under one hundred.

Of course, the more complex and powerful the item's function, the more Magic Net Strings will be condensed upon it, but it usually will not exceed ten thousand, which shows the massive scale of a Mythallar.

Injecting one Mythallar is equivalent to tens of thousands of ordinary Magic Items, and a Mythallar has another advantage: the carrier materials that bear the Magic are mostly man-made, renewable materials like Arcane Strings.

If the actual process did not require a Great Arcanist, considering only material costs, the Mythallar would actually become the optimal solution, but once labor costs are added, the cost-effectiveness is no longer suitable.

The cost-optimal Magic Scroll is based on such considerations; the production of Magic Scrolls does not require precious metals like Mithril, and the most precious materials among them are merely some Gemstone powder, and Gemstone powder has almost no higher value-added applications other than being used to make Magic Scrolls.

As for paper, while the cost of Parchment is relatively high, some well-made plant-based paper can also serve as the body of a Magic Scroll, and in this way, the cost is greatly reduced.

As for labor, that is even simpler; the Tower of Time has so many Apprentices that the in-class assignments produced every day are countless, and many exist in the form of Magic Scrolls. Students do these to practice Spellcasting, not to sell the scrolls.

This is also the main reason why Xia had not made up his mind to return the practical assignments to the students; of course, now he has a better way to handle them, and using them to repair the Magic Net can be considered a decent destination.

Even if the practical assignments include many parts that have not condensed any Magic Net Strings at all, the remainder is still a very huge number, conservatively estimated to be over 1 million copies.

Not to mention, there are also workers' night schools and the like, where full-time Teachers from the Academic Affairs Office of the Tower of Time are often arranged to teach; as long as they can self-study to become new Mages, they can still join the Tower of Time.

Of course, the analogy here only applies to injecting them into the Decay Region to support the self-repair of the Magic Net; outside of this occasion, even the value of 2 million assignments cannot compare to one Mythallar.

Moreover, there are so many assignments from the Tower of Time Apprentices that no one would deliberately collect those still-intact assignments; in fact, just a while ago, He Sai from the Academic Affairs Office of the Tower of Time had told him that they needed to find a way to deal with the practical assignments discarded by the students.

……

Xia originally could not make up his mind and was thinking about whether to return those practical assignments to the students; after all, when he was in school, he kept all kinds of assignments himself, and in the future, looking back at those childhood assignments, he would also show a knowing smile.

Their effect may not necessarily be a specific Spell, but could just be partial Spell Elements, so those discarded practical assignments do not even have the possibility of being sold cheaply, and thus they piled up more and more within the Tower of Time.

And 200,000 assignments seem like a huge number, but one must know that the current Tower of Time is no longer what it used to be; even excluding the 600-plus new Mages from just now, the number of Apprentices has already reached over 3,000, and this is not the limit of the Territory.

After making up his mind, Xia discussed the details of the sacrifice with Iolum again, before sending the other party to a tent nearby.

As for the future, at worst, he could specifically prepare a few Semi-Plane Warehouses for the Academic Affairs Office to store student assignments or other items, or let the Material Management Office help store them; there is no shortage of warehouses there.

The Tower of Time recruits new students twice a year, and even though the quota keeps rising, it still cannot reach the total number of school-age residents at present; Xia is also very helpless about this, and until teaching resources catch up, it is destined that some people will miss the best enrollment opportunity every year.

In fact, the time during which the Tower of Time had over a thousand Apprentices has long exceeded three years, and it is impossible for Apprentices to only do one such practical assignment every day; even in the lowest grade, there would be at least two to three.

If people over 16 want to go to school, I am afraid they will have to wait until all school-age children have had a chance to attend; of course, Xia has not blocked their opportunity to advance, and relevant textbooks are also circulating within the Territory.

Assuming one practical assignment only involves 5 Spell Elements, the Magic Net Strings condensed upon it are also around 5, but in reality, most of the Spell Elements involved in a practical assignment are over ten.

Xia had Laidun do a statistic; currently, the school-age children in the Territory, which are residents 16 years old (inclusive) and under, number over 150,000; in other words, these are 150,000 potential new Mages.

Only the assignments of new students will be over ten; just calculating with an average of 5 Spell Elements, 200,000 assignments can equal one Mythallar.

200,000 practical assignments, calculating with only 1,000 Apprentices, if each Apprentice only completes one such assignment per day, it would only take 200 days.

And after he calculated the time himself, it happened to be in time for the Sleep Ceremony, so he returned his consciousness to his main body, then called Niya to go to the Territory to preside over the ceremony.

The higher the grade, the more practical assignments there are; this is related to the Spellcasting limit of each Apprentice, and practical assignments are just like that, there is an upper limit.

It was also because the Magic Technician Office really could not stand it anymore and urged the Academic Affairs Office to deal with it as soon as possible, and He Sai could not make up his mind, so he reported the problem to Xia.

Because Magic Scrolls involve the Application of Arcane Geometry on a large scale, and Arcane Geometry is a compulsory subject for advanced Arcanists, many of the Apprentices' assignments are produced in the form of Magic Scrolls.

Of course, the number of people who are truly at the enrollment age, which is 16, is much fewer, less than ten thousand.

He Sai could not even accurately count the specific number, only using a rather general description—it occupied five large warehouses of the Magic Technician Office.

However, practical Magic assignments are different from others; if Apprentices are allowed to take them back, they still pose a certain threat to ordinary people. At present, the Great Xia Territory has not achieved universal Spellcasting, and the families of most Apprentices are still ordinary people.

Now is a good time to handle it!

As for paper-based assignments, there are not many restrictions; lower grades and higher grades are about the same, so I will skip that here.

……