Chapter 3233: One in Ten Million, Lowest Cost

Although Xia Duo had expectations regarding the effectiveness of students' practical assignments in clearing the Decay Field before today, the actual results were so good that he still felt pleasantly surprised!

Of course, "effectiveness" here does not refer to the actual effect of clearing the Decay Field, but rather the effect of obtaining Divine Grace through this matter.

In terms of acquisition efficiency alone, it is not necessarily higher than deploying Old Magic Artifacts, but if one factors in the cost, the efficiency of deploying student assignments suddenly skyrockets.

One must know that this time, Yierlan invested over 100 million in value of Old Magic Artifacts for the experiment, yet even so, it only allowed Xia Duo to gain enough Divine Grace for two patent applications.

If one uses Yierlan's Old Magic Artifacts as a reference, wouldn't that mean the student assignments Xia Duo invested were worth over 50 million?

Setting aside the sentimental value, those five warehouses of Tower of Time student assignments are probably not even worth 10,000 Gold Coins!

And that is assuming there is some sucker willing to buy them! As for those Old Magic Artifacts from the Elves, many only have wear on their non-magical surface elements, while their actual functions remain intact.

If one wants to sell them, to say nothing else, there is definitely a market for them in Netheril.

Therefore, Xia Duo believes that even if the "over 100 million in value" specifically mentioned by Feilifa is exaggerated, such a large quantity of Old Magic Artifacts cannot be fake; their actual value is certainly at least over 10 million!

Yet these were completely blown out of the water by the Tower of Time's student assignments!

But if it can definitely be increased, I conservatively estimate that at most 100,000 student assignments can be obtained daily; if deployed into the Decay Field, that is roughly 1 million Magic Net Strings.

After all, the Tower of Time's Apprentice assignments were useless anyway; if they can be used to eliminate the Decay Field, it is instead turning waste into treasure and creating value out of nothing.

In that case, it would take roughly ten days to obtain the Divine Grace needed for one patent application, a speed that Xia Shao finds quite acceptable.

This is actually the point of contention regarding the Iolum proposal within Netheril. As for the proposal itself, it is undoubtedly beneficial to Netheril, especially for those in power; it almost only carries the risk of those supporting Mages being wiped out.

After finishing these things, Xia Shao arrived at Iolum's tent again. At this time, many Netherese Mages had gathered here, and when Xia Shao arrived, he happened to hear them discussing him.

Next, he sent a Sending to He Sai at the Tower of Time's Academic Affairs Office, asking the other party to discuss the pros and cons of increasing practical assignments among the teaching staff. At the same time, Xia Shao also mentioned that there might be a period of adjustment attempts coming up, asking the Academic Affairs Office to be well-prepared and ready to respond in all aspects.

Therefore, after reaching this conclusion, Xia Shao's first thought was that he must seize the time to farm Divine Grace while the Decay Field still exists, and the best way to farm Divine Grace is to invest student assignments.

But it only provided a foundation and did not ensure that all students received sufficient practice.

"I don't know what the Elves are deploying later, but the actual effect is much stronger than before!"

Hearing such an evaluation, Xia Shao smiled knowingly. Only Iolum knew that he had disguised himself as an Elf to participate in the Yierlan sacrifice experiment, and Iolum also knew that what he deployed were Tower of Time Apprentice assignments.

The benefits, however, were a huge pile.

Unless they are the very few with extremely firm Faith, I fear most Arcane Priests are unwilling to do such a losing business.

Therefore, even if practical assignments are fully maxed out, students still have time to attend classes and complete written assignments.

And it is not the proposal Iolum previously put forward to have Arcane Priests come to help.

At present, the student assignments accumulated by the Tower of Time in the past have been used up and cannot be obtained again in the short term, so what should be done?

This expenditure is likely not small, otherwise the internal disputes in Netheril might not be able to be quelled, but compared to the plan of deploying Magic Items, the cost of the Iolum proposal is undoubtedly still very low.

So Xia Shao speculates that if the Iolum proposal is truly used in the end, it will likely still require the Alliance to pay for it. Of course, the Tower of Time or the Seventon Council will also have to pay something.

However, from the conversations of these Netherese Mages, Xia Shao also saw that these people actually tend to favor eliminating the Decay Field by investing Magic Items to accelerate the Magic Net's self-healing.

It is very simple: if the assignments are not enough, then assign more!

A description like 10 million Magic Net Strings is not intuitive, but if converted into Mythals, it is roughly equivalent to investing ten Mythals, perhaps winning by quantity just like Yierlan's Old Magic Artifacts.

In addition, through his understanding of the Elven Old Magic Artifacts and the Tower of Time student assignments, Xia Shao also derived a more specific data point for obtaining Divine Grace, which is—

But this does not conform to the interests of the Tower of Time. Although the authority of the Tower of Time has diminished quite a bit since the New Covenant, it is still considered the actual ruler of Netheril.

And for Arcane Priests, which is to say some Arcanists, being able to obtain Divine Grace by repairing the Magic Net is of course a good thing, but according to Iolum's proposal, not only can they not obtain Divine Grace, they must instead consume their own Divine Grace.

The Tower of Time in the past had to consider costs; practical assignments were essentially the Tower of Time providing materials for students to practice. Under Xia Shao's instructions, it can be ensured that every student can equally obtain the opportunity to practice.

It takes roughly 10 million Magic Net Strings invested into the Decay Field to obtain enough Divine Grace to apply for a patent once.

But everyone else knows nothing; they still think it is Iolum who has come up with some new trick at the end!

It is just that Xia Shao is not sure whether such adjustments can improve students' learning efficiency. If not, he would not go to the trouble of messing with students just to obtain Divine Grace for himself.

But neither of the above two plans is as good as the Tower of Time student assignments.

Of course, if the countries of the Alliance are willing to wait, they can also wait for the Tower of Time to slowly accumulate enough student assignments. This should be considered a kind of bug-like plan, and the cost should be the lowest one.

Thinking this way, Xia Shao first sent a message to Dien, Sami, and others, asking them to first investigate among the students in the name of the Student Association to see what the students themselves think about increasing practical assignments.

What is called "spending big money to do big things"? Using student assignments to exchange for Divine Grace is exactly that!

As for other Mages besides Arcane Priests, the opinions of these people are not unified. First of all, the Iolum proposal requires other Mages; it is not enough to just have Priests, it also requires a large number of other Mages to cooperate.

Considering that Tower of Time students have already utilized all available time, increasing the proportion of practical assignments in actual operation is actually reducing written assignments.

In other words, practical assignments still have great potential to be tapped, and because everyone has a Spellcasting limit, it is actually impossible to cast spells non-stop 24 hours a day.

And this also involves an assessment of benefits and risks. Unless the Seventon Council provides money and safety guarantees, otherwise, I fear only the Mages of the Tower of Time would be willing!