"Ebraham, I heard that your proposal to further study Automata instead of Advanced Magic Engineering was approved?" said a teenager with a short hair-cut as he sat at the desk.
"Yes"
Inside the lecture hall of Royal Academy, a young Ebraham smiled and nodded at his best friend, Elijah.
"Then what about Advanced Magic Engineering? When will you take it?" asked the confused Elijah.
"Already learnt it. And passed" Ebraham concisely replied to him.
"Seriously?! Wow!"
Although Ebraham only said a few words, Elijah already understood what his friend meant. This Magic Engineering maniac must have personally studied Advanced Magic Engineering ahead of their syllabus and passed the examination set by the professors.
"Man, when did you have time to do that? You already obligated to finish all field courses and even the optional courses, right? Just how did you do that?" said Elijah.
"Because–" Ebraham only uttered a word.
But Elijah had already completed his sentence.
"Because you love Magic Engineering. Alright, alright. I know"
Ebraham smiled at his friend's antics of answering his own question. He already used to this behaviour.
Obviously, Elijah already knew the answer. He only habitually asked the question because his friend was too amazing. Ebraham's special ability 'Ardent Mind' had granted him ability to absorb anything he studied be it theoretical knowledge or practical knowledge. His ability could handle it. It was even ranked higher among the same 'Ardent Mind' holders as he could learn at faster pace.
As intellect-type ability holder, Ebraham was chosen as one of the Sage Candidates. And because of his higher rank ability, Ebraham was expected to achieve higher than Sage, the Great Sage, or even higher than that, the Supreme Sage and titled Venerable Supreme Sage. So, all Sages in the Sage Council were eager to pass him their knowledge and even obligate him finish all field courses in Royal Academy.
Natural Knowledge; botany, geography, astronomy etc. Elemental Magic; fire magic, water magic, wind magic, earth magic etc. Variant Magic; ice magic, creation magic, support magic etc. Professional Expertise; Art of war, metallurgy, pharmacology, clinical practice, agriculture, magic engineering, etc. Martial art; short-range: swordsmanship, mid-range: spearmanship, long-range: archery, and very-long-range: artillery.
Every branch of knowledge he studied was aligned with the purpose of Royal Academy: to end the war.
With people's expectation on his shoulder, Ebraham diligently studied all courses and he was not burdened by it thanks to his 'Ardent Mind'. Nonetheless, obligations are obligations. His passion was in Magic Engineering.
Currently, he is pursuing the field of Automata, a minor branch in Magic Engineering. Furthermore, with supplementations from other field like Metallurgy and anatomy from Clinal Practice, Ebraham felt that field of Automata could be elevated into major branch in Magic Engineering.
Which is why he proposed to further study Automata in exchange for his course of Advanced Magic Engineering that he already mastered.
"Aye. Just how far are you going to go?" Elijah said while feeling exhausted.
Then suddenly hyped himself and declared. "But you could never beat me in swordsmanship. In the future, I'll train my swordsmanship to the pinnacle and be an Overlord. Together, you as a Sage and me as an Overlord, we would be beat those damned Jinlan people back to their land."
Ebraham was surprised by his friend sudden mood swing, but did not refuted him.
"Alright"
Ring!!
The bell rang and the lecture started.
A white-haired old man slowly, but steadily strode to the podium.
"Everyone, remain seated"
A calm deep voice permeated the lecture hall causing the students to be silent.
Ebraham's eye shined when he saw the person. Merlin Raiss van Ur, The Venerable Supreme Sage. This person was also Ebraham's adopted father.
The first wave of war had claimed countless lives, including Ebraham's parents which were Merlin's trusted subordinates. When Ebraham was war-orphaned, Merlin had taken him into Raiss family and adopted him as his son. Merlin was devastated by the war and determined to make a change.
Merlin gathered Sages nation-wide and founded Sage Council which rivalled to Royal Court in authority. The Sage Council revamped the empire's education system and created the Royal Academy which had a heavy influence to the army. The Sage Council also nurtured Great Sages by exchanging notes among them and produced the Venerable Supreme Sage Merlin Raiss van Ur as their leader. Even the Emperor need to carefully consider the advices from them.
Ebraham deeply respected his adopted father. Many of his achievements were mainly because of Merlin's support and encouragement. And now, he had a chance to directly study under him.
Venerable Merlin stood straight at the podium with eye full of vigour.
"Students. First of all, I would like to congratulate every one of you for passing Intermediate Level and officially entered Advanced Level. We have many talented students this year. And have really high hope on you"
Venerable Merlin looked around the lecture hall and smiled at Ebraham and Elijah, the two partners and one of them was his adopted son. Both of them were Honours Students of the Royal Academy.
"My name is Merlin Raiss van Ur. My lecture is about Theory of Magic and Magic Creation, but I will be in-charged of you for the whole semester." Venerable Merlin introduced himself even though he was a very well-known person.
"Before we start the lecture, I want to ask you. Who is our enemy?" As per tradition, Venerable Merlin brought out the question to his students.
"The Jinlan Empire!" said a confident student.
But Venerable Merlin calmly shook his head. And explained.
"If the question is 'Who are we fighting against?' that's a right answer. However, our real enemy is the one behind those Jinlan people. That is the Spirits."
Every student gasped in surprise and Ebraham was also among them. He was not informed about this.
Venerable Merlin successfully attracted his students' attention and continued.
"Now that you're a low-tier Advanced Level student, you're obligated to know this information.
"We first need to know the origin of Spirit. Thousands of years ago, human and spirit live without interfering each other. At that time, human could strengthen their Martial Arts with magical energy but could not use magic. While spirit could naturally use magic but could not use martial arts.
"Human is short-lived but numerous and can grow stronger by absorbing magical energy. Spirit is long-lived to almost eternal but stagnant in growth and cannot absorb magical energy.
"However, one day, some human sought the spirits and begged them to do their biddings. They made a contract between them. Human will offer their magical energy to the spirit, and the spirit will do anything they wanted to as long as the price was paid. That was how ancient magic appeared.
"Then came the reign of terror. The destruction level of spirit magics were rivalled to natural disasters. Contracted human swept through the continent forcing other human to bow to their reign. Many ancient empires fell, but several new empires sprouted under the banner of contracted human.
"After other humans were forced to take a step back, they began to study about magic. Many Great Scholars came together and created the first Theory of Magic. And eventually humanity created their own magic technique, which we all know nowadays.
"Our ancestors fought back against contracted human and managed to force empires under contracted human to end their expeditions. They had reached a stalemate and won a few centuries of peace."
Venerable Merlin paused and made sure the students paid attention to his explanations.
"As time goes on, the subjects of contracted human change the way they call the spirit and worship the spirit as their guardian deity instead. They begged and prayed to the spirits to grant their wishes and live a good life.
"With constant worships from their followers, the spirits were bloated with arrogance. And somehow, their power also grew along their arrogance. There was one particular spirit that had gone beyond crazy. That was Jin, the King of Spirit. And also, the sole contractor to all Jinlan Emperors, from the founder until current emperor.
"His demand had become much more absurd; day-and-night worship, monetary offerings, live sacrifices. He demanded anything to his followers just to be stronger.
"Out of nowhere, Jin, made an outrageous statement to the world. Since he could produce clouds with one turn of hand and rain with another, he was above others. He is special. Since there was no one stronger than him, then he is the god.
"15 years ago, he demanded our empire to recognize and worship him as god. Or he would flatten our land from the surface of earth. Same thing was also said to other empires. Obviously, we would never do that and fought back against him.
"This was the spark that caused our and other neighbouring empires to be at war with Jinlan Empire. As you all know, the war was still going and would not come an end any time soon. That is why we come together and established the Royal Academy. So that we could achieve technological breakthrough, magic technique breakthrough and martial art breakthrough, and prevail against Jin and Jinlan Empire.
"Now here is a question for you to ponder. Why didn't we just accept Jin as god? Undeniably Jin is strong, maybe the strongest under heaven. Instead of fighting bitter war, why not just accept him as god?
"The answer lays in our first instinctual gut reaction. We strongly deny even hate the idea of worshiping him as god. We hate his arrogance; we hate his wonton behaviours. And why is that so?
"The reason is it is our nature, an innate ability deeply ingrained during our creation, that is to recognize our true Creator. We may not know who our Creator is, but surely it is not Jin. By seeking knowledge, we could train our instinct to be sharper.
"Seek knowledge, verify its accuracy, embrace it with certainty, and clean your heart with pure knowledge. Not only you get sharper instinct, you also become stronger. Clean heart will produce accurate judgement. And accurate judgement will push you one step closer to become stronger."
Venerable Merlin ended his explanation with a valuable advice.
Thus, the young Ebraham put his adopted father's advice closely to heart. And used it as principle of his life that is to always seek knowledge, clean his heart and trust his instinct.