“Thank you for waiting... Umm... Please give me a moment longer.”

  The spellcaster in gray, Lursk had just finished speaking when a brown-spotted owl flew in from the window.

  This particur owl was not as swift as its earlier terparts. It crash-nded into the desk headfirst and skidded to a halt, losing a few feathers in the process. After fpping its wings a few times, the oardly got to its feet and presented a letter to the spellcaster.

  He took the old weathered letter and found that rge parts of it were no longer readable. The words had blurred over time. The barely legible topic of discussion read “From a Remedial Approach, How to Use Ruo Dispel Souls of the Dead—The 12th Topic of Discussion by the Owl Penpal Society”.

  Lursk looked at the letter and then at the aging owl. As one of the co-founders of the Owl Penpal Society, he felt bitter about the dilemma.

  The penpal society was not an official one. He did not even have a full list of its members. If he wao start a topic of discussion, all he had to do was write the question down on a piece of paper a an owl pass it to his fellow members.

  The letter would make its rounds in the spellcaster unity, and ohe letter reached him again, there would be several replies waiting for him.

  It was impossible to achieve a proper academic discussion using that method, but he ehe freedom it afforded him.

  Sinunication was done anonymously, everyone could speak on equal ground and express their ideas openly.

  However, it took a very long time for the replies and ents to reach him. Usually, he would have to wait for at least two months before a letter would e ba.

  Those were the lucky ones. Sometimes, the letters never came back.

  If he remembered correctly, this particur letter was one of the first to be sent out. It was filled with replies from spellcasters from all over Nornd, but time had taken its toll and rendered most of the words unreizable.

  He sighed internally a heartbroken.

  “e on, old friend...”

  The old man untied a strip of cloth from the owl’s leg and allowed the old animal to retire from its duty.

  The bird cocked its head at him and hooted in mencholy.

  The gray-robed spellcaster ruffled the owl’s feathers and lifted it to the window. Only then did the owl fp its wings and leave.

  “Back to work, then. Sorry for the wait.”

  The old spellcaster cleared his desk and invited Joshua as well as Ciri to take a seat.

  “If I may ask, do those owls briers to you at random times?”

  Before they got down to business, Joshua expressed his i in the crude form of the spellcaster’s forum.

  “Of course, it’s random. The birds fly as they wish and do not follow a schedule. Why? Are you ied in joining the penpal society?”

  The old spellcaster roud of the society that he co-founded. With a thousand owls flying all over Nornd, thousands of spellcasters were brought together to engage academically. heless, the unity was only a small part of the Nornd popution.

  “No, I just feel like this borious way of unication be slightly improved,” said Joshua.

  “Improved?”

  The old spellcaster agreed that using owls to seers was a borious process indeed, but it was the only way they could pass the message from one person to another. If it was a face-to-face discussion instead... low-level spellcasters would never get a ce to speak.

  “You do it like this.”

  Joshua waved his hand, and immediately, a white windoeared before him. His words earlier appeared in the window.

  The old spellcaster looked fused, uo grasp the meaning of the window yet.

  To further illustrate his point, Joshua sent a message to Ciri.

  The tter quietly moved Pong away from her chat window and materialized the window taining Joshua’s message with magic.

  “This... This is...”

  Lursk was stunned beyond words. Besides being the co-founder of the Owl Penpal Society, he was also a founder of the patent office. In all the years of his career, he had seen his share of astonishing iions.

  Joshua’s demonstration was mediocre pared with the “magic-powered mae that could repce horse carriages”.

  However, as ahusiast of exgiers and a spellcaster who yearo eh like-minded people to learhings, Lursk reized the potential of Joshua’s white window instantly!

  “It’s something I programmed using the Runes of iven more time, I probably allow more people to join in the versation, and perhaps... store the versation history.”

  The old spellcaster nearly fell out of his seat when he heard Joshua’s eboration.

  “However, the maximum distance of travel will be around two hundred meters. Beyond this range, messages ot be received.”

  That st ent was like a spsh of cold water that extinguished the fire of excitement growing inside him.

  A few hundred meters... They may as well talk face-to-face.

  “Is... Is there a way to extend the range?” he asked with a sliver of hope.

  “Of course, but I will need a server.”

  The current version’s work rode on Joshua’s mental waves, with his brain ag as the terminal transceiver. Increasing the range would require something like the I.

  However, Joshua could not find any inium crystal that could hahe massive data flow of the I.

  A normal inium crystal could be inscribed with up to a hundred runes, while higher-grade inium could store up to tens of thousands.

  The I was more than that, though. The volume of I traffi Earth was massive, and while a forum would not gee that level of data traffic, Joshua would not be satisfied with building just a forum on his “new I”.

  A lousy server like Ubisoft’s would not suffice. He would have to look for something more reliable.

  “A server?”

  “Simply put, I will need inium that store a rge volume of runes.”

  inium of higher quality were sold more expensively. inium crystals that could store only a few runes were sold at a couple of gold s, but those that could store a few hundred runes could ore than a hundred.

  Besides, sed-hand inium already inscribed with runes were practically worthless, uhey harbored powerful magic.

  “How many are we talking about?”

  The old spellcaster had seen some top-grade inium before that could store up to a huhousand runes.

  “A hundred million would be nice, but we’ll start with a huhousand.”

  In fact, Joshua wao say a billion runes but then adjusted it down in the end. He remembered that the most impeccable inium crystal the Third Prince owned could only store up to thirty thousand runes.

  “That is quite excessive.” The old spellcaster pushed his gsses and said.

  The truth was, an inium crystal that could store up to ten thousand runes could practically serve as the base of a rge-scale teleportation circle for a huge try. Of course, the price would be staggering as well.

  “Is this what you want to apply a patent for?”

  “No, it’s actually something else.”

  The spellcaster did not seem eager to pursue the matter, so Joshua acceded. After all, they were only strao each other and it was merely something that caught his i.

  After Joshua pleted the pateration for the camera ahe room, the old spellcaster tapped on his desk in thought. A while ter, he picked up his quill and started a new letter.

  “To all members of the Owl Penpal Society: How to Acquire a Fwless inium Crystal—Lursk”

  Once he was done describing the problem in writing, he folded the letter ao the window.

  He knew how to acquire such a fwless inium. The letter was written only to invite ents from the other co-founders of the society.

  A bck owl nded on the windowsill, picked up the letter, and headed for the tallest building in all of Nornd, Sage Tower.

  Weebkun