The elder magician exuded a tenacious spirit characteristic of a warrior, along with a menacing air only gained through surviving the very brink of life and death. At this moment, the rookies who had never experienced collective violence of the cognition species, their favorite activity - wars, couldn't even secrete saliva to moisten their throats.
"Elderly grandpa, even though you've degraded to become a hired assassin, a running dog for the black-market merchants, do you still reminiscence about your past glory?"
A response that felt like an accusation, a mockery, and a provocation all at once subtly cut through the tense atmosphere, continuing its nearly rude trajectory while dissecting appearances to reveal their underlying truths.
"To showcase the combat spirit of a fair duel? To display the magnanimity of a nobleman? For those who kill for money, these are just unnecessary burdens, right? Perhaps you have unique thoughts as an individual, but once you step onto the career path of taking lives for sustenance, insisting on a half-baked ideology will make you a complete hypocrite."
The arms he'd kept crossed till now broke their leisurely stance. His red iris and pupils contrasted the motionless bodies of the two magicians, while the corners of his mouth, curved in disdain, cast ominous shadows on their visages.
"A magician of the cross plus triangular level going full force against a gaggle of country kids armed with hunting knives and bows? No matter how you look at it, this is quite an 'ambitious' move. Sigh… let's drop it. Even if it's reluctant combat against low-class fellows, the result will only lead to own degradation. But it's already like this, I can't not fight."
The absolute silence turned the tables on Sade's formidable aura punctuated by the explosive sound of ground splitting and agile figure rebounding into the air. The fight, without any warning, had abruptly escalated to the boiling point.
As if they'd rehearsed innumerable times before, as soon as Li Lin sprang up, sharply conical rock pillars tore through the ground, ripping apart the tiny patch of land where the young man once stood. The sneaky weapon of assault, which failed to pierce its target, didn't halt there. It grew swiftly, spouting spikes on all sides like a prickly cactus, extending an open invitation to its prey to be skewered.
The young man, surrendered to gravity, stopped his ascent. As if adhering to a pre-set script, he hurtled towards the thorny forest of rock spikes under gravitational acceleration. The bloody scene seemed to be gaining momentum towards becoming reality.
"Has some combat experience indeed. Also, he thought well before the fight."
In response to the harsh words, a brutally honest praise left all magicians feeling a cold prickling sensation. The next moment, the air behind the young man split open in response to the intertwining silver light. The deadly extensions created to kill the prey far outpaced the rock spikes' growth and stuck close to Li Lin. And with the sharpness, hardness and momentum falling short of the [Blade Wing], the sharp, rock solid sword wing silently cut the rocks like a knife does through cheese.
The spell embodied by [Restoration] and [Configuration] rapidly turned the inorganic clay into cruel shapes for a counterattack. But before the new structure could operate, the end of the metal wing constricted, and like a thrown spear or a brandished whip, it coiled around the rock pillar. The plummeting young man smartly swerved his body, and the figure that was once entrapped in mid-air avoiding sharp rocks was out in the open again.
"Damn it! Hopping about like a damn monkey!!"
George Dieyeli, who was busy preparing spell formations to control the rock spikes for radial attacks at the new angles, couldn't help but yell. Li Lin's bizarre tentacle-like extension from his back shattered the rock spikes with a speed much higher than their growth. Meanwhile, Dieri,an iron-wing piercing the thin, flexible, silvery metal, was quickly fixed at the new coordinates. His body was swaying like a heavy object hanging by a rope or suddenly shifting sideways. The carefully planned attack fell through due to unexpected dodges.
No matter who it is, if hard work doesn't pay off, it's bound to make one cranky. Venting out the frustration with a few shouts isn't wrong at all.
It's just... the content of Dieri's outburst simply reflected his lack of self-awareness, making the elves watching the battle from the distance burst out laughing.
"Even Li Lin would be bothered if said so, right?"
"Shut it, Baldy."
"You don't have a say in this, do you?"
"...You shut up."
In the end, even Sade from his camp joined the ridicule, and Dieri felt something in his chest shatter, scattering all over the place.
"Damn it, bald heads have no rights ahhhhhhhhhh!!"
His emotional scar reopened triggering him to blare out a howl in the open daylight that would make even a wild beast appreciate its gravitas and bolt.
"How much does this guy actually care about him going bald..."
"Shut up!"
Unable to stand the ear-shattering noise disrupting his equilibrium, Sade had no choice but to execute the action of shutting down his emotional trauma circuit once again.
Dieri, who had been hit on the back of his head again, finally ceased his wailing like he was on a battlefield, bringing some momentary quiet to the place.
"It seems we have some common ground when it comes to dealing with troublesome subordinates."
"…"
Sade's facial muscles twitched involuntarily, and only the omnipotent goddess and he himself knew how much effort it took to refrain from showing agreement.
These were trivial matters, not worth attention. There were more important things to focus on.
The unidentified boy, strange magic, unknown alchemical synthesis—the secrets that interconnected all these, and the knowledge that supported it all. Sade wanted that.
The casting of magic, at its core, is an amplified phenomenon of a spellcaster's understanding of various worldly matters via the high density of mana. Not only the scale and precision of the magic formula and mental concentration, but also the level of understanding of various worldly phenomena is equally important, if not more so.
A magician who has never been close to the ocean can't recreate waves; a magician who has never ventured deeply into the jungle can't make trees grow out of nowhere. Only with sufficient cognition can one construct the corresponding magic formula to manifest phenomena. Conversely, distorted wings can't even support the weight of a body, let alone fly. A moment's sketch based on vague or biased imagining will be denied and return from existence to nothingness.
The black-haired boy knew areas that they had never touched, hence he could construct phenomena that no one had ever seen before.
From the scenes described by Monet and Needle and from the fragments of the recovered corpses, Sade could not find a corresponding situation or solution from his known magic formulas and experiences. The only conclusion he could draw was the seemingly absurd one he had inferred earlier.
After witnessing his barely-believable "fallacy" in person, his heart pounded with an indescribable immense joy.
An area unknown, knowledge unheard by others.
The tremendous temptation was teasing Sade's patience. As soon as the sweetness was lightly touched, his greedy instinct was awakened fully.
Mages—who clearly understood the true value of "knowledge"—knew how sweet and tempting it was. The deeper the understanding, the harder to resist, they succumbed to the passionate Faustian impulse to seek knowledge and explore everything.
Knowledge is the accumulation of experience and cognition. Magic-users of long-standing families tend to be nobility, particularly of the upper echelons. The fundamental reason for their monopoly on knowledge is that their family systems perpetually surpass others in accumulation and circulation, thus their quantity and quality of spells far outweigh those of commoners and lesser nobles. Through their exclusivity of this particular talent resource, the upper-class nobles enjoy uncontestable power, and in turn, use this power to further guard their knowledge monopoly, disclosing it only to members of their clans.
Even if the progeny of commoners and lesser nobles possess outstanding talent, the education gap between them and the offspring of upper-class nobility is substantial. Knowledge about spells, phenomena records, chanting efficiency, austerities for focusing, and so forth, held by the upper-class nobility has never been exposed to the public, including institutions like the National Magical Academy. Non-upper-class magic users are mostly of the cross-class, while those from the upper-class clan are of at least the triangular or the quadrilateral level.
Teachers who ridiculed his inferior lineage, shameless classmates who fawned upon the offspring of the upper-class nobles, those who boasted of their family ties through low-rank magic, those who shamelessly pursued the upper-class nobles, shallow women who fell prey to venereal diseases or were discarded after being toyed with.
Amidst an atmosphere at the academy that was as haunting as with venomous miasma and crawling insects, Sade had familiarized himself with unwritten rules that remained unchanged. The ambitious lowerclassmen of the National Magic Academy had no plans to surrender to fate, and their knowledge-thirsty hands reached out towards the barriers erected by the upper-class nobles with violence and power.
The price to interfere with monopolized intellectual property—which couldn't even be mentioned—was heavy enough to virtually grind Sade to dust. His title was stripped away, and he lost his reputation, wealth, land, and servants, fleeing hurriedly from the capital. The name Alphonse de Sade no longer existed in the Charlemagne Kingdom National Magic Academy, and all records relating to him were thoroughly eradicated.
The obliteration of his social status was nowhere near enough to quench the nobles' fury at the interference with their fundamental wealth. Order to entirely erase the "mouse" named Sade physically, they dispatched assassins to finish the job and to send a powerful warning to other rumbling trash which lacked courage. However, Sade's intelligence, strength, and luck were above average. The upper-class nobles, gritting their teeth in exasperation, hadn't been able to hang his head as a trophy by their fireplaces, like other hunting trophies, as a decoration to their grandeur.
Strong desire for knowledge and irresistible curiosity about unknown areas could make Sade do things that seemed utterly crazy to others, but could also become his major rationale for accepting a task from despised black-market merchants. Compared with the ineffable treasures like the unidentified spell formula and the reconstitution and conversion of phenomena and mana, the reward Monet offered was but a small pebble on the roadside—so insignificant that there was not even interest enough to kick it away.
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Martial Arts Theater Commentary
Nidhogg: Mr. Li Lin, could you tell me what is the "Faustian impulse"?
Li Lin: Hoo, Faust is the protagonist of Goethe's famous work "Faust." To gain all knowledge in the world, Dr. Faust made a bet with the devil, Mephistopheles. The series of stories revolving around this wager constitute the plot of this great work. Because of his pact with the devil, Faust can never be satisfied with anything; if he should utter words like "stay a while," he would fall into Hell. It was this very spirit that kept pushing Faust to continually break his own limits, to seek love, beauty, etiquette, practice, a journey of spiritual growth encapsulated within Faust. Hence, this never-satisfying spirit is regarded as the spirit of Faust. But is such a never-satisfying spirit always the basis of faith and truth? The answer is no. Without restraint, the spirit of Faust develops into an uncontrollable desire.
Nidhogg: What a terrifying thirst for knowledge! Thank you for the explanation!