Chapter 524 |
As Adam and Nehem left the Mage World to search for the most mysterious of the Void-born dragon species that had emerged and multiplied within the Dark Realm, an upheaval quietly took place on the Mage World’s Academy Continent.
Three hundred years might be nothing to a mage, but to ordinary mortals, it marked several generations of historical change.
When the Council decided to establish the Academy Continent and promote universal education—and when Adam proposed the tiered system of Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced Academies—the intent had been noble. And indeed, the results had been remarkable.
Over the three centuries, the apprentice generation and promotion rates reached the highest point since the Great Mage Revolution. These numbers continued to climb. With a structured education system and increasingly refined foundational textbooks, the overall quality of apprentices greatly improved compared to the uneven standards of the old tower-based education. The benchmark for “elite” had risen repeatedly. Apprentices who once qualified for war trials would now, at best, be considered merely “excellent.”
With individual quality and numbers both increasing, even though the Academy system raised the recruitment costs for Free Towers, a few rounds of coordination resolved those tensions with little resistance.
After all, each person has their own aspirations. Even if the education system instilled the Holy Tower’s ideology, within such a vast population base, it was inevitable that some would reject Tower doctrines altogether.
Both sides chose to let things take their natural course—especially after Nehem’s ascension and his joining of the Holy Tower Faction, and after the Cataclysm Zone yielded a massive trove of Third Epoch data. Since then, the Free Faction had kept an unusually low profile.
Those were issues of grand strategy, concerns occupying the minds of mages. But beneath their lofty gaze—on the lower strata they rarely cared to see—turbulent undercurrents were forming.
Graduates of the Basic Academies, educated in advanced knowledge and modern thought, were nothing like the ignorant masses of the past. They possessed ability and intellect—but not power. Meanwhile, apprentices who failed to become mages could only graduate from the Intermediate Academies in frustration, barred from rising higher. Aside from taking employment in industries run by senior mages to earn resources, they could only seek advantage by looking downward. As for the old nobility—after the crushing blows of earlier centuries—they realized the mages had ceased paying them any attention. Quietly licking their wounds for over a hundred years, they leveraged their deep-rooted heritage to rebuild their power at astonishing speed.
The ordinary graduates resented seeing noble heirs and former apprentices monopolize the upper echelons, parasitically feeding on society. They believed they had the true skills and intellect to represent the interests of the Continent’s vast mortal majority, and thus deserved greater—even absolute—political power.
The failed apprentices viewed mortals as ignorant cattle, believing it only natural that they, being touched by the arcane, should govern mortals and rule absolutely over both commoners and nobles.
The old nobles, meanwhile, sought to reclaim their lost glory—to restore the old kingdoms and duchies, and to once again stand as the highest authority beneath the mages.
When representatives of these three groups repeatedly petitioned the Academy City and received no clear response, tensions hardened and hostility grew. Bloody clashes began to erupt. Yet the true rulers of the Academy Continent—the Academy City and the great academies that functioned as its political, educational, and cultural centers—remained silent.
Even with mortals’ social standing improving, an unbridgeable gap still separated them from mages. The long-lived could never truly befriend the short-lived. It was simple reality: what mortals valued so desperately seemed like fleeting illusions—ants fighting over crumbs—to those who lived for millennia.
Whatever mortals fought over was meaningless to mages. And by the time a mage bothered to look down, the mortal struggles would already be over.
Moreover, mages had long avoided directly ruling mortals. With their far-reaching vision and immortal patience, if they did choose to begin another reform among mortals—one that might yield great benefit in the distant future but cause immediate suffering—mortals would never understand. Especially when mages could not grant them the lifespan to see the outcome for themselves.
Thus, as long as mortal conflicts did not interfere with education, mages turned a blind eye—indifferent, even apathetic.
This aloof attitude—seen by mortals as ambiguous but in truth sheer neglect—became fertile ground for manipulation. Under the subtle instigation of unseen hands, the first all-encompassing Mortal War was about to erupt.
———
Nicholas V was a dropout of the Golden Palm Intermediate Academy—a man with the physical strength of a peak Grand Knight and magical power on par with a low-level apprentice. He had withdrawn because, despite assistance from his personal chip and the full backing of the former Kingdom of Nicholas, he had no hope of ever advancing to the rank of mage.
After several failed attempts, he decisively left the academy and returned home to inherit the family estate.
Officially, he was the patriarch of House Nicholas. In truth, everyone among the old nobility and the lower classes of the Mage World knew him as the new King of the Nicholas Kingdom—the restorer of its glory. Secretly, he had already reached out to many ancient noble families that had survived the “Mage’s Calamity” three centuries ago, with plans to unite them into a new empire. Nicholas himself was one of the most prominent contenders for the imperial throne.
Such a figure carried immense significance among mortals.
On October 30th, Year 329 of the New Academy Calendar, Nicholas V set out from Golden Palm City with his wife, the royal knights, and the court mage corps, bound for Dove City—fifty thousand kilometers away—to meet another noble who had secretly crowned himself, Spencer VII.
The journey was not particularly long; with current Academy Continent technology, they could have reached their destination within a day. But Nicholas and his advisors saw this as a perfect opportunity—to demonstrate military strength and to test the mages’ true attitude. So they abandoned the modern means of transport and, in a show of pomp and defiance, traveled by horseback in full procession toward Dove City.
What they didn’t know was that they were already being watched.
A common graduate from Golden Palm City named Colin had decided to assassinate Nicholas V.
Their personal enmity didn’t matter. During his studies at the Basic Academy, Colin had amassed a modest fortune, trading for a set of decent magi-tools. Then, at the most critical moment, a mysterious figure approached him—granting him several powerful, malevolent artifacts and a meticulous plan that cleared all obstacles in his path.
Colin instinctively sensed something wrong, but by then, the arrow was nocked and could not be withdrawn. The mysterious figure’s threats and promises cut off all retreat, while tempting him with leadership of a grand cause if he succeeded.
Thus, Colin made his fateful decision—to risk everything on one desperate strike.