Chapter 186: The Mage Tower |
After Fulan was recognized by the gate guard, she was taken away by several mages who had rushed over, all under Dorian’s astonished gaze.
Faced with his questioning look, she merely scratched her head and said nothing.
She had never concealed her name or school from Dorian, and Dorian himself had never thought there was anything strange about Fulan also belonging to the Forge Furnace School.
He had only assumed that the Forge Furnace School was a relatively low-profile school, one that was simply not as widely known as the Elemental School.
He had never imagined that the Forge Furnace School had only been established not long ago, and that at present, Fulan was its only true Formal Mage member.
After this happened, Fulan felt that Dorian had probably guessed her identity. Otherwise, no one would have come specifically to receive her.
Looking at the mages leading the way ahead of her, she asked, “Where are we going?”
One of the mages in a black robe turned back and said, “Our society president ordered us to bring you to see him the moment we found you.”
“You arrived a little late. You should have reached here before this disturbance began.”
Ordinarily, Fulan’s arrival at the Northern Society should not have caused such a commotion, but her mentor had happened to do something truly enormous.
Just from that report alone, it was easy to see how major a thing her mentor had done.
At the very beginning of the report, its author had kept targeting the former First Seat of the Elemental School. It was practically adding fuel to the flames.
Then, in the middle of the piece, the report kept introducing the Northern Society. Although it never explicitly stated what the other societies were like, anyone who understood the situation could almost immediately reach the same conclusion after reading it: the report was mocking and condemning the monopolization of research results among the various societies, as well as the practice of privately setting up excessive barriers.
On top of that, Habos’s paper had been published in the Northern Society. Fulan did not know whether it had been published anywhere else, but she was certain that publishing it in the Northern Society alone was already a serious problem.
To begin with, the Northern Society was a society ostracized by many others within the Alliance, yet Habos had still submitted his paper there. That really was a direct provocation against those societies.
Moreover, the results presented in that paper quite clearly belonged to the Elemental School. Just from the name of those results alone, Fulan felt that the paper should have been considered an Elemental School paper.
Under those circumstances, Fulan could already imagine what an enormous storm that report would stir up.
It would not only be Habos. Fulan herself, Elan back in the Apprentice City, and those apprentices affiliated with the Forge Furnace School were probably all standing in the very center of the vortex.
Given that situation, it no longer seemed strange that the moment Fulan arrived at the Northern Society, those mages had immediately escorted her away.
After all, she had heard from Dorian that quite a few Alliance mages had come to the Northern Society after reading that report.
Once those mages who had objections to the paper reached the Northern Society, if they then heard that she was Habos’s disciple, would they not come looking for her for a round of “academic exchange”...?
So in a situation like this, it was only natural that the society president had specially arranged for someone to bring her to him as soon as she was found.
Presumably, Habos and this society president shared a rather deep friendship. Otherwise, Habos would not have sent her here.
Fulan followed those mages through the broad streets. The houses here seemed to owe their unusual appearance to the peculiar sand and clay used as building materials, giving their exteriors a distinctive dark red color.
The entire street looked much the same as the buildings Fulan had seen within the Alliance. Presumably, when the mages here built their houses, they had simply taken the Alliance’s architectural style as their model.
After the mages led Fulan across the street, she saw a giant tower about fifty meters tall standing in the center of a plaza.
Compared to the furnace that rose over a hundred meters high, the giant tower looked somewhat small, which was why Fulan had failed to notice it earlier.
The tower was grayish yellow. At its summit was the image of half a hand, with a pattern of flowing sand pouring down from the palm. Fulan recognized it. That was the emblem of the Alchemy School.
That meant the society president who had founded the Northern Society came from the Alchemy School. In fact, most of its earliest members might also have been mages from the Alchemy School.
Below the school emblem was a symbol formed from layered snowflakes. Fulan recognized that as well. It was the emblem of the Northern Society.
There were quite a few temporary huts set up around the plaza, wrapped in cloth, and from inside them, Fulan could sense all kinds of spell fluctuations.
Fulan looked curiously toward those cloth-wrapped huts, and one of the mages beside her explained, “Those are places temporarily requisitioned by some of the mages inside the Mage Tower to conduct experiments.”
The space inside the Mage Tower was limited, and many newly arrived mages had no way of obtaining space within the tower, so they could only come out to this plaza instead.
“The Mage Tower...” Fulan quietly turned the name of the giant tower over in her mind.
As a structure directly tied to mages, the functions it could provide were naturally all related to them.
In the ancient era before the Alliance had been established, Mage Towers had been the key sites where most magical activities were carried out.
Back then, Mage Towers not only handled the magical education of apprentices, but also gave mages the freedom to explore spells and to create or modify them.
At the same time, Mage Towers also had to possess powerful defensive functions in order to resist attacks from other Professionals or other mages.
However, after the Alliance was founded, the educational and defensive functions of Mage Towers were greatly weakened.
The magical education of apprentices could be moved to population centers, where education was easier to conduct.
As for external defense, the Alliance had battle mage corps under its command, as well as Floating Cities that could be mobilized at any time. Those were already enough to deal with attacks from other powers.
As a result, by the present day, the Mage Tower had been left with only a single function: allowing mages to explore spells.
Once its responsibilities were reduced, the cost of Mage Towers also fell, allowing more and more of them to be established throughout the Alliance.
In theory, as long as one was a mage, even a First-Tier Mage like Fulan could build a Mage Tower by pouring enough money into it.
After all, while the Alliance restricted knowledge, it did not restrict the circulation of various materials or the sale of magical devices of this kind.
But the standard for being “wealthy” was still quite high. Even someone like Fulan, who was already far richer than most First-Tier Mages, could only build a Mage Tower with roughly one-third of its functions relatively complete.
Only mages of the third tier and above possessed the financial strength needed to build Mage Towers with all kinds of specialized functions.