Free Web NovelChapter 6: 12-Hour Shifts: Even the Azure Lotus Sect Can’t Escape Capitalism
It only took half an hour to heal the injuries to his internal organs.
Rhys let out a slow, cautious breath, feeling the cold, soothing, numbing sensation left behind by the pale green medical rune fading from his chest.
The sharp, stabbing pain that had made him cough up a pint of blood was gone, replaced by a dull, manageable throb.
"Even though I fixed them from breaking apart for now, it’s not fully healed," Old Tia grumbled, dropping her hand as the light of the rune dissolved into nothingness.
She wiped her wrinkled, ink-stained fingers on her apron and shot him a pointed look. "Unfortunately, I am merely an Apprentice Mage."
In this world, the hierarchy of magic was absolute, enforced by a system that brooked no arguments.
When an Initiate Mage successfully mastered the structure of an E-rank spell and registered it directly into their Spell Book, the world’s system would automatically trigger an breakthrough.
That’s how one became an Apprentice Mage.
Their mana capacity would increase tremendously upon breakthrough, shifting their entire existence to a new plane.
But if the system analyzed their spell structure and deemed their comprehension to be even a fraction below the required benchmark, it would ruthlessly reject the breakthrough.
The difference in mana capacity between an Initiate Mage and an Apprentice Mage was like comparing a small bottle of water to a massive bathtub.
Technically, with the minuscule mana capacity of an Initiate Mage, it was mathematically impossible to draw an Apprentice-tier spell.
To become an Apprentice, you had to cast an Apprentice spell (E-rank spells), but you did not have the mana to do it.
To solve this bottleneck, aspiring mages needed outside materials to forcefully expand their capacities, specifically, Apprentice-tier monster cores.
But monster cores were a luxury item. Not many low-level servants or poor outer disciples could ever afford them. Those without backing were forced to rely on highly inconvenient, dangerous workarounds.
They would try to manipulate external factors like volatile environmental energy, or they would swallow cheap, toxic medicines that ruined their health just to get a temporary surge of power.
The most daring and desperate among them would pack up their meager belongings and go completely beyond the light shield, the massive protective boundary of the sect’s tamed lands, to hunt wild magical beasts themselves.
And even after risking life and limb to gather the resources, there was still absolutely no guarantee that the system would allow their breakthrough. It could simply scan their soul, issue a cold rejection, and leave them with shattered hopes.
Rhys felt an innate, burning hatred toward the system every single time he thought about this. It was not a natural law, but rather a corrupt bureaucracy that micromanaged human potential.
Old Tia was the living, breathing proof of that cruelty. She had been stuck at the Apprentice Mage rank for seventy long years.
A standard Apprentice Mage possessed roughly one hundred and fifty years of natural lifespan. Old Tia was currently one hundred and thirty years old. If she could not find a way to break through to the Adept Mage rank within the next two decades, her Mana heart would collapse, and she would die of old age.
Rhys had heard from the other servants that the old woman had tried to upgrade her rank multiple times throughout her long life.
Every single time, the system had coldly rejected her application, citing a lack of "structural perfection" in her runic drawings.
After so many failures, the old woman had already quietly accepted her fate, waiting out her remaining twenty years in this dim, medicine-scented infirmary.
Although Rhys desperately wanted to avoid unnecessary trouble and cosmic drama, that did not mean he was an ungrateful bastard.
Old Tia had treated his internal injuries for merely a few copper coins. The standard, mandated wage for an Apprentice Mage’s services in the sect was ten silver coins.
This old woman was literally treating him for free, disguising her charity under a gruff exterior.
Rhys looked at her weathered face, a deeply genuine, grateful expression softening his features. "Grandma Tia, thank you for healing me again."
Old Tia paused, her hand hovering over her mortar and pestle, before she shook her head with a sharp huff.
"No need for those useless ceremonies, boy. I am just treating you because I want to improve my runic spell control. If you didn’t keep blasting your own lungs to pieces with your foolish attempts, who else would come to a useless old bone like me to test their medical magic? Consider yourself my test subject," she laughed, a dry, wheezing sound.
Rhys smiled gently, but he kept his mouth shut. He knew her excuse was far from the truth.
Perhaps the number of her daily clients from the outer sect had lessened over the decades, but even if she did not accept a single patient, the monthly basic salary provided to an Apprentice Mage by the Azure Lotus Sect was more than enough for her to live comfortably and purchase resources to train.
She did not need his coppers, and she certainly did not need to practice E-rank healing on a lowly insect cleaner.
He did not say anything further to push the issue, knowing that any extra words of gratitude would just sound pretentious and make the proud old woman uncomfortable.
As he stood up to leave, an intrusive, calculating thought flashed through his mind. He roughly had an idea of how he might be able to help her bypass her upcoming bottleneck when the time came, but he knew he had to be incredibly careful.
He absolutely did not want her or anyone else to know it was a talentless insect cleaner who had helped the old woman become an Adept Mage.
After saying a polite goodbye to the elderly Runebound mage, Rhys walked out of the infirmary and navigated the winding stone paths toward the tool sheds to find Old Chen.
Old Chen was a sixty-year-old mortal who had spent his entire life within the sect’s outer courtyards. He was the supervisor of the manual labor forces, the man responsible for deploying menial workers and cleaners across the vast, sprawling estate.
Upon seeing Rhys walk up with a straightened back and no blood on his chin, Old Chen’s bushy gray eyebrows lifted slightly. "What is it, boy? Coming to borrow money to buy another useless blue rock?"
Rhys’s lips twitched in irritation. "When did I ever borrow money from you, old man? Don’t ruin my reputation."
"That’s true. You’re too stubborn to borrow," the old man admitted, looking Rhys up and down with a discerning eye. Though he tried to maintain a stern, managerial facade, a flicker of genuine worry lingered on his weathered face.
He sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. "But if you’re truly strapped for cash this week, I can lend you some silver from my personal pouch. However, the interest rates will be five percent by next month. I’m a businessman, after all."
Rhys rolled his eyes dramatically. "Come on, man. Look at me. I am a fully healthy, prime-age young man, okay? I can earn money on my own two feet. I’m not here for a handout. I’m here because I want to take on overtime starting from today onwards. Add five, no, make it six hours to my regular daily shift."
"What!" Old Chen exclaimed, nearly dropping his clipboard as his jaw went slack. "That’s twelve hours a day! Young man, although insect cleaning might seem like easy, mindless labor to the outer disciples, the sheer level of focus and mental alertness you need to avoid getting dissolved by an acid centipede or bitten by a needle-wasp is incredibly high.
That’s exactly why the sect management mandated a strict six-hour maximum duty shift, unless a worker specifically requests otherwise. They don’t want the staff getting overwhelmed by mental exhaustion and making fatal mistakes!"
Rhys knew that rule very well, and truth be told, it was one of the reasons he actually respected this place.
Unlike the brutal, bloodthirsty sects he had read about in webnovels back on Earth, where failing to show magical talent resulted in being instantly executed, exiled into a frozen wasteland, or turned into a literal slave, the Azure Lotus Sect was surprisingly compassionate toward its non-magical workforce.
Although the elders had promptly removed him from the list of outer disciples once his defective circuits were diagnosed, they did not throw him to the wolves.
They provided safe, manual jobs, strictly regulated working hours, and fair pay to ensure that none of the mortals or failed mages were ever ruthlessly exploited.
Furthermore, whenever the sect held a major festival or celebrated a grand breakthrough, the servants were always included in the feasts, treated with the exact same respect and given the same high-quality food as the low-tier disciples for that day.
Because of this, Rhys’s overall impression of the sect was incredibly good. He did not want to cause them problems, but he desperately needed access to more insects. ƒrēewebnovel.com
Old Chen noticed the unyielding, serious expression on the stubborn young man’s face. He let out a long, defeated sigh, realizing that no amount of lecturing was going to change Rhys’s mind.
Everyone in the outer courtyard generally liked the hardworking, polite young man, and most of the older staff spent half their time worrying about his dangerous obsession with drawing spells.
In fact, several elderly laundry workers and cooks had previously tried to change Rhys’s mind by subtly offering to introduce him to their beautiful daughters from the local mortal village.
They hoped that if he became a family man with a warm bed and a loving wife, he would finally drop the impossible fantasy of becoming a mage.
But Rhys had remained completely unmoving to the very end, politely declining every single matchmaker.
"Sure," Old Chen finally grumbled, shaking his head as he scribbled Rhys’s name into the overtime ledger.
"If you want to work yourself into an early grave, I won’t stop you. Twelve hours of clearing high-density zones will bring your monthly income up to ten silver coins, or two low-grade mana stones."
"Thanks, old man. I will start directly from this upcoming evening shift," Rhys said, a flash of absolute excitement lighting up his eyes.
He turned on his heel and walked briskly toward the designated northern greenhouse courtyard that Old Chen had dispatched him to. Two mana stones meant nothing to him now. freewebnovel.cσ๓
Rhys decided to take silver for next month. What’s important to him was the extra six hours of farming insects and extracting thousands of years of lifespan from them.
