They gazed at him with astonishment, unable to understand why he hadn't come to harbor a profound fascination for magic as a child and why he hadn't taken a magic aptitude test earlier at the age of sixteen.
"Pursuing magic…" A soft murmur escaped him, "…felt like trying to chase a distant different world altogether. It felt as ridiculous as trying to reach for the Sun."
That was how far people from the slums were from magic. They were even disconnected from the magigrid, living a life without magitechnology. They didn't even understand exactly what it was that they were missing; it was entirely out of their cognizance.
The three of them didn't look like they understood what he meant.
"I see…" Natana murmured with uncertainty. "That sounds tough. But then, how did you come about to develop an interest in magic at this point, if I might inquire?"
It was a reasonable question.
One generally did not develop such a grand ambition of mastering magic well after entering adulthood, after all. Especially not before getting one's magic aptitude checked. The goal of mastering magic was something that only opened up after one had a very good magic aptitude.
"…the reason is very personal to me," Cæ replied calmly. "I require mastering magic to fulfill an even greater goal."
For a moment, the three of them were silent.
"Ah… I'm sorry for probing into your personal circumstances," she apologized frantically.
"It's alright." Cæ's smile was perfunctory. "Now then, I should be getting to my dorm room already. I have yet to get there, you see. I have already been delayed earlier with the matter regarding Silian."
"Ah… we're sorry for delaying you then."
He bade them goodbye, leaving them goodbye as he headed over to his assigned dorm room.
He wasn't particularly interested in making friends. But he especially wasn't interested in making friends with a bunch of kids six years his junior.
His goal was simple with the magicademy was especially simple.
'To master as much magic as possible as quickly as possible.' He narrowed his eyes. 'Secondarily, I need to continue my research on tapping into untapped consumer demand for safe and stable housing in the slums in this magicademy.'
Having reaffirmed his goals for having joined the Elendir Institute of Magic, he quickly reached his dorm room amid the crowd of excited freshmen students in the magicademy.
"Woah…" Cæ's eyes lit up as he entered his dorm room, appreciating the luxury.
It was vastly more luxurious than living in a shabby hut in the slums. In fact, Cæ realized that it was actually the single most luxurious housing unit that he had ever resided in his entire life.
The best living conditions he had previously lived in was in his old apartment at the edge of District sixty-six, the same district as the Selvigs home and restaurant. And they paled in comparison to the dorm rooms of the Elendir Institute of Magic.
He already had a good understanding of the kind of luxury that awaited him in the Institute thanks to the brochures they had on the maginet that offered rather precise details into the housing units and amenities that freshmen of the Apprentice Program would receive.
His dorm room featured a rather lavish bedroom, a separate study, a toilet featuring a shower and a bathtub, and a kitchen, and even a spacious living room and a balcony.
"This feels excessive now that I'm actually looking at how big the dorm room is…" Cæ muttered. "It's closer to a luxury suite than a freshman dormitory…"
Additionally, each dorm room was allocated to a single person; the very concept of roommates, which was ubiquitous in most magicademies, was a foreign concept in the Elendir Institute of Magic.
This is what set the institute apart from its competitors. As a joint venture between all the power blocks and interest groups in the nation, the institute was absolutely loaded to the very brim with funds.
It probably didn't spend more on housing as a part of its budget than other magicademies. However, its total budget was so enormous that the same proportion was still more than an order of magnitude greater than many other magicademies.
He just shrugged lightly, closing the door behind him as he shut the door behind him setting his suitcase in his bedroom while he familiarized himself with his new home.
The rest of the day was spent simply adjusting, physically and psychologically. The academic year of the Elendir Institute of Magic wouldn't commence until three days after the transfers were complete.
Because there were only thirteen institutes in the entire nation that selected the most gifted students across the entire nation, many of them transferred would be traveling across the entire nation.
There were even some immigrants from poorer nations surrounding Elendir like the Clementine Kingdom and the Raylouen Federation. The more ambitious magical talents would often aim to enter the Elendir Institute of Magic if they were good enough, entering the Elendir Institute of Magic on a student visa.
Elendir, of course, welcomed foreign talents with open arms. Each talent was a precious resource that could go on to become a powerful asset for the country. This was especially the case when the scholarship contracts that they were thrust with were much more demanding than those that natives like himself would have to bear.
Regardless, he appreciated the time.
It allowed him to feel better in his new environment.
He felt the itch to practice his pure magic, but he was not foolish enough to do so within the campus, right under the nose of so many powerful people. Privacy was promised according to the registration form and contract that he had signed, however he simply didn't trust the people of the Institute to actually honor that promise.
There was a good chance that they actually had a discrete means of spying on the students.
His eyes lit up as he spotted the textbooks that he would need for the Apprentice Program on a shelf in the study as he explored his dorm.
"Finally…" he muttered. "Proper textbooks."
While he appreciated the Foundations of Magic book that he had gotten from Mr. Selvig, it ultimately only brushed over the surface of the topics that it delved into. These textbooks, on the other hand, were meant to help him become a certified apprentice mage.
"It's unfortunate that there are no electives in the apprentice program as his eyes skimmed across the various books neatly arranged on the shelf. The order of their arrangement was even in accordance with his academic curriculum as a part of the apprentice program. He immediately scrutinized the books for his first semester, books that he would begin studying very soon.
[Introduction to Eidos Theory]
[Introduction to Mana Mechanics]
[Introduction to Conjuration]
[Introduction to the Magical Supernatural]
…
Not a single one of them didn't begin with 'introduction to…'
It made sense, of course. The apprentice program was mean to produce a mage, even if only that of the apprentice rank, from a complete stranger to magic.
One book of the first semester caught his eye more than others.
[History of Magic]
It was perhaps the least relevant to his goals and agendas or his newfound passion for magic as a hobby he never had, yet he found himself growing profoundly curious about it nonetheless. He realized that despite living in this world for twenty-two years, he was still entirely in the dark about the extensive history of magic.
Of course, it was lightly touched upon in school, which he certainly paid attention to, but in hindsight, it was clearly a watered-down and diluted recounting of history.
He plucked the book from the bookshelf before sitting at his study, immediately burying himself in the introduction.
[Magic, as a phenomenon, predates modern civilization. The earliest records of magic are dated to six thousand years ago in the ancient Illisvilia Kingdom, modern Lenea, when Queen Sirraria quelled an apocalyptic storm said to have been conjured by the ancient god of calamities, Arroj. A storm that threatened to destroy the Illisvilia Kingdom.
This historical event is detailed not just in the records found in the ruins of the Illisvilia Kingdom but also in personal accounts and reports of its citizens found in the ancient library thought to be a part of the nation. It is even mentioned in records found in ruins of ancient kingdoms surrounding the Illisvilia Kingdom.
Additionally, the topographical and climatic effects of her magic are also found in the geography of the modern Lenea Empire.
Additionally, the claim of her performing such a grand feat is credible as Queen Sirraria was then the absolute monarch of the Illisvilia Kingdom, owning the entire ancient nation and bestowing upon her tremendous mana.
It is the earliest credible occurrence of magic.
Since then, magic has appeared more frequently in history. They were exceedingly scant in the millennia that followed, with extremely few mages appearing each century in the entire world who would often go on to be worshiped as a god or feared as demons.
These mages were what we now know today as pure mages.]
Cæ's eyes lit up with intrigue and wonder. It was fascinating and exhilarating to know that for many millennia, magic was exclusively limited to pure mages like himself. It reaffirmed just how significant the blood-stained blessing he had gained with his accident was.
[For a long time, magic was seen as a divine power that very few human beings were blessed with. It was viewed as something that only one person in the entire world was blessed with every generation or two.
This all changed a thousand years ago when Magus Merlin sparked the Awakening of Magic.
Merlin formulated what is now known as the Memory Model of Eidos, which allowed many ordinary human beings to cast magic as long as they persevered with great effort for many years.
While this wasn't attainable for the entirety of the population, it still opened up a power that was viewed as divine and exclusive to a significant proportion of the population. The Memory Model of Eidos eventually led to the birth of many mages across the entire world, giving birth to the Age of Magic.
In the past thousand years, the world has changed drastically compared to all the eons before it, as magic has only grown increasingly pervasive and ubiquitous across human civilization.
Magic began developing as a field as magical knowledge, skill, and growth resources only continued growing exponentially over the span of nine hundred years after the Awakening of Magic.
And then, a hundred years ago, came an explosive development that allowed for magic to spread from a limited minority of human beings to most of human civilization.
The Magindustrial Revolution.
The ability to engage in the mass production of magical goods and services and distribute them over great distances changed the world forever and is still changing the world with each passing year.
Although even today, magic as a field is still limited to a small minority of people, magitechnology has spread to an overwhelming majority of human civilization, drastically improving quality of life and the sophistication of humanity as a species.
In this course, History of Magic, we will explore the three broad phases of magic, the Pure Ages, the Age of Magic, and the Magindustrial Revolution, across this entire book and study the many events that have defined human civilization as it is today.]
Cæ's eyes lit up with deep interest and wonder as he continued learning about the history of magic and its impact on the world. The book explored both macro and micro perspectives of history, giving Cæ a better insight than he possessed before.
Although he was aware that magic had been around for quite some time in the world, he understood the broader picture of how magic had slowly integrated itself into the history of the world. Although it wasn't directly relevant to his goal, he still found the information to be quite informative and enriching for his perspective of the world and the place that magic occupied in it.
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