Arcane Lord

"So Horn, you mean you're more inclined to cooperate?"

"At least until the other party doesn't express hostility clearly, I am indeed more inclined to cooperate. Behind the other party is a powerful foreign land. Cooperation is the best option, and it can even be said to be the only option."

However, Horn also pointed out, "If we want to cooperate, only seven towers may not be enough. The construction of cross-domain transmission links requires a lot of manpower and is incompetent. It is not suitable for us to bear it alone."

"Then do you mean in the name of Severton Council or the Northland Alliance?"

"Of course the Parliament!"

On this issue, Horn blurted out almost without any thought, even if he had to bear more costs for it. After all, once this matter was handed over to the Alliance, it would be beyond the control of the Seven Towers.

"I also think it's better to keep the partnership in Netheril."

…

Soon, the Seven Towers reached an agreement on cooperating with Plitatis to build a cross-domain transmission link. During the process, Shado was also asked some questions.

It's more about confirmation of what Plitatis said, such as the polygraph results, the feasibility of related magic theories, etc.

"Next, I will convene a meeting of parliamentarians. Horn, please talk to Plitatis about the details of cooperation. If others are interested, they can also come and take a look."

The "other people" Badigal mentioned here naturally included Shado. Even if Badigal didn't say it, Shado would not miss the opportunity to communicate with Pritatis.

When I was in Drak's Territory before, many issues were not explored in depth. Now that I'm in the Seven Towers, I think the other party will be able to talk better and reveal more things.

…

Next, the eight people divided into two waves and acted separately. Badigal went to convene a meeting of parliamentarians, and the remaining people rushed to the Morien Tower——

Prytatis' visit to the Seven Towers coincided with his visit to the Morien Tower.

A parlor room in Morien Tower.

Brundes brought Plitatis here and went out. Horn once again welcomed Plitatis on behalf of the Seven Towers, and then quickly got to the point:

"Seven Towers intends to build a mage tower for you in New Severington. If you don't mind, in the future, your cooperation projects with us will give priority to that mage tower."

Although Badigal is already convening a meeting of members, and others may not agree to cooperate with Plitatis, this does not affect the cooperation between Seven Towers and the other party, including of course Shado.

"No problem, all the costs of building the mage tower will be included in the cooperative project expenses." Plitatis readily agreed to the proposal.

He knew very well that Seven Towers could not place the cooperation project in a place where they could not see it, and even building the Mage Tower for him had the purpose of monitoring him.

But he doesn't care about these, as long as the project can proceed normally and he can contact this domain as soon as possible.

"As for manpower and material resources, I wonder how much it will cost to build a transmission link? I also hope that Master Plitatis will inform us in advance so that we can prepare in advance."

"This question is actually not easy to answer right now."

Plitatis also has his own explanation for this, “On the one hand, I am not engaged in transmission link research in this field. Although I have some understanding of it, it is still a bit difficult to estimate project consumption.

"In addition, the majority of the cost of transmission link construction is actually in determining the plane nodes. There are two key steps in this. One is to find a large number of backup planes, and the other is to find suitable node planes from these backup planes.

“Both these two key steps require a lot of manpower and material resources.

"As for the construction of the transmission link itself after everything is ready, I can tell you that the construction cost of a single node should not be higher than that of a mage tower. I am referring to the one in the Drak Territory.

"Of course, no matter how low it is, it won't be too low. I know that you have a permanent teleportation array here. The cross-domain transmission link node is similar to this permanent teleportation array, but it is more complicated.

"You can imagine how much it cost to build."

After Plitatis finished speaking, several people in the Seven Towers fell silent. Horn was better. When he was in the Drak Territory, he knew that the transmission link between Plitatis' home domain and a public domain was complete. More than five thousand plane nodes are shared.

Then the connection between the main plane and the domain of Plitatis plus is probably of the same order of magnitude.

In other words, even if everything is ready, simply building such a cross-domain transmission link may cost thousands of conventional mage towers.

Calculated in gold coins, it is about 5 billion. If you also consider some preparations in the early stage, such as exploring and discovering new planes and researching suitable node paths, it will be even more.

According to preliminary estimates, it will at least exceed 10 billion!

If this calculation is not intuitive enough, then compare it with the finished Mythra device that Cliff bid for at the Tower of Time. That Mythra only cost 20 million gold coins (settled in Mithril).

But not every great arcanist can get these 20 million. They need to borrow and raise them from their vassals and wings. Doing it once is enough to break your muscles and bones.

And now such a cross-domain transmission link project is equivalent to 500 Mithras, five hundred and twenty million!

…

Even Xia Duo couldn't help but take a breath when he heard this situation. Outsiders may not know it, but doesn't he himself? To build a floating city, even if all the internal facilities are completed (under the current technical level), it will not exceed 50 million.

He built two floating cities himself, not to mention Yongle City, which was built later. Except for the mysterious lock, which was just a light board, the internal infrastructure of the first Chang'an City was relatively complete, except for some standard laboratories.

And the total cost of building Chang'an City was less than 30 million.

In other words, building a cross-domain transmission link is equivalent to building hundreds of fully-equipped floating cities, which is completely beyond the capabilities of Netheril.

This is like building a Mars base on Earth. It is theoretically possible to build it, but the cost of building such a base may be 1% of the Earth's GDP. This ratio seems very low, but for a single country, it is Too much.

Generally speaking, as long as the investment is higher than 1% of the total output value, it is worthy of caution. As for the total output value of Netheril, Shado can actually roughly estimate it.

Taking himself as an example, the total income from the Tower of Time + Territory does not exceed 10 million per year. If expenses are deducted, the net income is even less.

Of course, the current revenue of the Tower of Time is not very stable for the time being. For example, the third-generation communication instrument was just released not long ago, and sales exceeded 10 million in the first week, but this cannot be sustained.

Taking into account Xia Duo's average income since he took over the Tower of Time, it may only be a few million, but this is already the best among the great arcanists.

Assuming that the income of all MPs (power) is based on Xia Duo, and the annual income is 10 million, the 51 MPs add up to 500 million, and the total income of these 51 MPs can actually be regarded as Netheril. GDP.

It is equivalent to one-twentieth of the cost of the cross-domain transmission link project! (End of chapter)