Extreme Cold Era: Shelter Don't Keep Waste-Chapter 518 - 487: Mages’ Skills

The Victor Empire has mages, something Perfikot has always known, and the mages are fairly active within the Empire. In addition to maintaining the palace’s thermal barrier, the palace mages are responsible for security tasks in Langton City and the palace, dealing with matters that ordinary security measures cannot handle.

If we look back two hundred years, the palace mages of the Empire were undoubtedly powerful and noble entities, as they indeed possessed the strength to repel an entire army single-handedly.

But with the mysterious decline, the whole world has gradually become an environment of low magic or even no magic power. The widespread practice of alchemy and technological advancements have made mages outdated relics of the past.

Royal mages still uphold their ancient duties, and the distinguished among them still hold the noble title of palace mage, but that’s about all there is to it.

Magic has not become as widespread in the Empire as alchemy has, nor has it merged with modern technology.

Moreover, learning magic is far more difficult than alchemy. With such difficulty in passing on the craft, the decline of mages is understandable.

Yet, this group of mages clearly would not admit to this; they have been desperately maintaining their mystique and dignity, portraying magic as something unattainable by ordinary folks.

However, in reality, magic has become dispensable to the Empire.

Alchemy can accomplish most things magic can do, even if there are aspects that cannot be achieved; they belong to extremely advanced or powerful magic categories.

And this part of magic, let alone being replaced by alchemy, even the mages themselves can hardly perform anymore.

In such circumstances, the mages appear even more like a group of conservative old-timers, confined within their small circles, entertaining themselves while holding an inflated self-esteem as remnants of a bygone era.

As a result, Perfikot has had very little interaction with mages, almost to the point of having no contact.

After all, she is the Empire’s most renowned Alchemist, and while the relationship between mages and alchemists cannot be strictly described as indifferent to the point of never interacting, it can only be likened to strangers passing each other without recognizing.

In this context, although the Imperial Center had once extended invitations to these mages to join efforts against a looming crisis, they did not join for various reasons.

There definitely wasn’t any incident where mages tried to gain control of the project, nor did they attempt to expend vast resources on a large magic tower meant to house a few while abandoning most of the Empire’s citizens nor were they excluded by the imperial center or nobility.

In summary, despite their previous anguish and reflection, the mages eventually came to the church sheepishly after receiving an invitation from Perfikot to join her plan, indicating they could assist.

The church did not harbor much resentment towards the mages, although it once engaged in witch hunts; these were not initiated by the church itself but organized and executed by secular means.

Although later, the church did leverage witch hunts to genuinely purge hidden cults and witches, the mages were seldom caught up in it.

Overall, the relationship between the church and mages was fairly amicable, so after the mages expressed their willingness to cooperate, the church allowed them to experiment in a newly renovated chapel in Langton.

There isn’t much to say about the chapel itself; just an ordinary community chapel, after hollowing out the underground, reinforcing the structure, and constructing an energy tower, it became a small shelter housing around 3,000 residents from surrounding communities.

The mages sent by the Magic Association did not involve themselves in other matters but focused on understanding the workings of the energy tower and then attempted to use the energy released by the tower to power magic arrays and barriers, thereby creating a thermal barrier that could cover a certain range.

This counts as a significant research achievement for the Magic Association in recent years, an area once led by the association’s former chairman, Endymion.

However, back then, as they faced backlash, Chairman Endymion, like the other three, went missing, causing the association to languish, and this research was shelved for many years.

Until in recent years, upon learning of the impending apocalypse, the mages maintained an air of nonchalance outwardly but were frantically searching the association’s archives and libraries for ways to counteract the impending apocalypse.

Building a mage tower consuming vast resources was one of their out-of-touch with reality ideas, yet one must admit the mage tower can indeed resist the impact of the apocalyptic winter, although it demands extensive resources.

How expensive is it? One simply needs to look at the fact that the capital of the Victor Empire still lacks a single mage tower to understand the enormous amount of resources it requires.

Simply put, even without the matter of the apocalyptic winter, the empire would face bankruptcy even at its economic peak while attempting to build a mage tower.

So many of the mages’ ideas were dismissed, eventually leading them to revisit the previous chairman’s research and, after thorough sorting and study, finally refine the technology to support the operation of magic arrays and barriers with non-magic energy sources.

The only issue was they couldn’t find such large, sustainable energy sources capable of supporting the magic arrays and barriers.

Until, through cooperation with the church, they encountered the energy tower erected within the chapel.

Mages inscribed magical runes upon the energy tower, thereby constructing a magic array that sets up a thermal barrier, employing their technology to utilize the energy tower as the energy source for the magic array.

Thus, upon activation of a small energy tower, some of its released heat is converted into the magic array, resulting in a thermal barrier with a radius of 500 meters, ensuring temperatures within the barrier continuously remain above zero degrees.

The thermal barrier functions like a screen preventing heat exchange, keeping the heat emitted by the energy tower within this 500-meter radius without dispersing.

This technology undeniably piqued Perfikot’s interest, because if it could be widely adopted, construction for shelters could occur above ground as well as underground.

Furthermore, reducing the heat loss from energy towers contributes significantly to energy conservation.

Of course, the most crucial aspect is, if a thermal barrier can be processed this way, what about other magic arrays and barriers?