บท 8: The Magical Court
[Magical Court]
The Magical Court was isolated in an island, the island of Bones. There, you could encounter all kind of dangers, be it the wild weather which could destroy any normal boats which tried to reach it, or the terrifying beasts that existed on land.
In a way, the Magical Court was the place that inherited both the riches and curses of old magi.
They inherited part of their knowledge, before they suddenly withdrew from the plane Burion, as well as their failed experiments: monters like the fire ants whose queen had reached the magus-level on the island of bones and was contained by Magus Andrew Anderson, or the mystical [Dragons] that the Magi used as pets, but were now freed and ruled over the world. If not for their laziness, they would have already conquered the world by now.
Still, it was said that some of the oldest dragons had reached the rank 2 magus realm, a realm of strength that was unseen and unconceivable for regular magi in the past thousand year. In the current state of the arcane power contained in the plane, just reaching the magus realm was an extraordinary feat that could be achieved with a regent. To reach the magus realm, there were resource, talent and luck requirements at play.
However, the knowledge that Lewis had earned after decades of being a faction leader did not the current him for now. He needed to grow stronger, much stronger if he wanted to become part of this world-scale game.
For now, he needed to focus on growing stronger.
Acolytes were usually graded based on their talent. It was correlated with one's growth rate of spirit. Grade 1 talents were the least talented, but ironically, the most common. Still, not even 1 out of 10 000 humans were born with arcane talent. Hence, even if it was the lowest possible grade, it was still called arcane talent and revered by the common people. The Magical Court was under the direct jurisdiction of the Dalian Empire, but it was not loyal to it. In a way, the Dalian Empire was just the biggest investor of the Magical Court, and retained part of this loyalty by giving noble titles to these 'imperial mages', although the situation would slowly change over the next decades.
Lewis could be considered slightly more talented, as a grade 2 talent. In a way, Lewis was part of the 10% most talented acolyte in the Magical Court, but in order to reach the magus realm, it would take much more than that. He needed resources.
There were many ways to earn magic crystals in the Magical Court. You could volunteer for the Magical Court Missions given in the Mission Hall, but they were usually very tedious, unclear and unrewarding compared to the ones given through the networks of factions. Even the smallest faction would have much better conditions than those given in the mission hall, as the Magus Andrew Anderson took an 80% comission on those missions. He was not known for the [Greedy Magus] for no reason.
The Crimson Clan was no exception, and Janna Heartsteel had consolidated the Crimson Clan network for the past 10 years, earning a young but growing reputation within the Dalian Empire.
Missions were graded from 1 star to 6 stars. Basically, for missions of 5 stars and above, you needed to be an advanced-rank acolyte to even qualify for it. For missions of 3 stars and above, you needed to be an intermediate rank acolyte to be allowed to go for it. As for 1 and 2 stars missions, they were the most suited for beginner rank acolytes. Ironically, just because a mission was more dangerous did not mean that they paid better. In fact, the missions that paid the most were often related to territorial wars.
Because of this very reason, the stronger an acolyte was, the more likely it was that he was a mass murderer who killed hundreds, if not thousands of soldiers in those kind of missions.
The Crimson Clan was no exception. As long as the rewards were high enough, there would be a supply of acolytes to complete them, no matter how evil they could be to regular people. It was this mindset of growth at all cost that allowed the Crimson Clan to gain increasingly more reputation in the Dalian Empire, and increasingly more strength and influence.
A week passed since Lewis, Jorg and Orianna took the teleportation array to the Dalian Empire. For the measly price of one magic crystal, they could use the optimized rank 4 Teleportation array created thousands of years ago by ancient magi, allowing them to travel thousands of miles in a single second.
Unfortunately, the array could only teleport them from the Magical Court to the Dalian Empire, and from this point onwards, they could only travel on horses to reach their destination.
"At last...we reached our destination", Lewis said with anticipation
Lewis remembered missions that hid extraordinary treasures, naturally. However, he was nowhere near as strong as to uncover them at this point. Some of these treasures were not even created yet, and he would have to be patient to gather them all.
Hence, it was actually Janna Heartsteel who chose their first mission. It was actually the process in the Crimson Clan, which was very similar to a military structure. It allowed the faction to suffer less casualties in missions, and still challenge its members to strive for better. Janna's greatest quality was not her strength as a body refinement acolyte, or her ideals to create a faction of body refinement acolytes capable of rivalling one of the seven major factions. It was her eye for analysing people's strength and weakness, and allocating these resources in their most efficient post.
Even if she was not talented from an arcane perspective, she was an extraordinary individual who might have become one of the greatest strategist the world ever knew, though she had yet to express this talent completely.
The mission could only be considered 'easy', when you considered its members.
Jorg was a veteran beginner acolyte powerhouse with extreme strength. Even if a veteran knight tried to kill him, it was highly unlikely that Jorg would suffer a single wound. For this mission, him alone was more than enough.
But it was not just him that was above-average.
Orianna was a member of the Crimson clan for the past two years already. Part of the Longlost family, she possessed the Giant Green Alligator bloodline, who could already cast the famous [Acidic Breath] offensive spell, which was easily one of the most fearsome rank 0 spell in this category.
As for Lewis, although he had yet to prove his worth, he now possessed the strength of a regular newly-advanced knight, swordsmanship that was on par with grand knights from the imperial guard, and more importantly, versatility with his spells and cunning mind.
This was just a one-star mission, but the reason why Janna Heartsteel chose this team was quite simple.
Reputation and rewards.
This was a mission that the Crimson Clan could not afford to fail, a mission of high-responsibility. And it also happened that the only party available for such a long period of time of this standard was a newly created one.
It was a territorial war between the imperial army and barbarians who had united in the North of the Dalian Empire. The duration of the mission was set at 2 months, but Lewis knew that unprepared acolytes might take twice the amount of time or even fail to complete the missions if caught off-guard.
War was not just a matter of being strong physically. It involved a lot of other aspects, that acolytes needed to master. Strategy, logistics, stealth...All of these qualities could make the difference in such a large playground. Unless you were a Magus, taking a fortress could not be done by charging at the gate mindlessly.
And barbarians were not regular opponents either.
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