302 The Ordinary Person’s Generation Part 1 of 2 (1/2)

As a lower-ranked academy under the super-large mage organization Mystical Blade, the Talenry Tower had very high standards for recruiting students. Most normal academies required acolytes to be able to cast one-circle magic spells before the age of twenty, but Talenry Tower required their acolytes to be able to cast two-circle magic spells before the age of eighteen.

Although it didn't seem like that much of a difference—there's only a difference in two years and one circle—those two years just happened to be a critical growth period for humans. Without those two years, plus a requirement of one more circle, made it akin to the difference between the Iron rank and Bronze rank—gigantic. It typically took four or five years of growth to make up such a gap.

It could be said that any student who managed to meet Talenry Tower's high student recruitment standards was top-level even when compared to the second or third-year students of other magic academies. However, even with such high standards for entry, there were far more applications than number of students accepted each year. Talenry Tower would only take the best of the best, and in the end, those able to enter had far surpassed the recruitment standards. They were basically all geniuses or abnormal talents.

Of course, with the Mystical Blade investing a huge amount on this academy to raise its students, it naturally reaped huge benefits as well. With such high recruitment standards and immense appeal to potential applicants, studying here had advantages far surpassing those of other magic academies.

It was only to be expected that plenty of teachers, magical ingredients, and magical books were available here. Even though there wasn't much of a difference in this compared to other academies, there still existed a great advantage—in Talenry Tower, not only would archmages occasionally come visit and choose disciples for themselves, but there would even be top-level mages from the Mystical Blade that would come over at fixed intervals to teach classes.

Top-level mages with an Emblem of Endless Truth would come over at fixed intervals to teach classes and actual top-level content? Not only did every student try to obtain a chance to attend this once-a-month course, but even the mage teachers of the academy would look for ways to attend and listen in on this class.

This was a type of reward for the excellent students at the academy. Only the students excellent in all areas would be allowed by the mage teachers to attend this class. As a consequence, this once-a-month class taught by an archmage with an Emblem of Endless Truth was just like a monthly festival for the Talenry Tower. If the class was a good one, the discussions about it were likely to last all the way until the next month's class.

Of course, since the archmages teaching this class all had top-level knowledge, their classes wouldn't be low-level in content. However, the problem was that some archmages felt that it was quite troublesome to teach so they would simply come over and talk about whatever their newest research product was or summarize what he or she learned through self-reflection. Only a few geniuses among geniuses would perhaps significantly benefit from this, while the other ninety-nine percent of students, who were still only novice level, wouldn't understand a thing.

So basically, the quality of the class and how much the listeners benefited from it didn't depend on the lecturer's level, nor did it depend on the power level difference between the lecturer and the listeners. It mostly depended on whether the lecturer specially prepared for this class or not, as well as whether or not the lecturer made things easier for the listeners to understand.

For me, this was quite a large amount of trouble.

The Mystical Blade ran things quite loosely to begin with, and it didn't lack top-level archmages at all. This monthly class shouldn't have been given to me for several years if I just waited for my turn. This was probably a certain Aloso's way of helping me out of kindness, giving me an opportunity to let others know more about me and get along better with the other Mystical Blade members.

That was indeed a good thing for me. However, the problem was that I didn't know what I should teach about in my class!

Although I was indeed one of the few mages who obtained the Emblem of Endless Truth in more than one magic type, and I definitely had the knowledge to back it up due to my vast experiences, I really didn't have much I could talk about.

Give a class on ice magic? If I followed the traditional way of increasing magic research one circle at a time, I probably only counted as a three-circle Bronze mage, tops. Not to mention, my ice magic mostly resembled natural talent magic similar to magical beasts, growing instinctively and through actual combat. I could talk about my fundamental magic of ice sculpting that I obtained in the snow mountain, but the problem with that was that no ordinary human would be able to learn it even if they understood, which meant that it would be a waste to talk about.

Then should I talk about the top-level research results of ice magic that I personally came up with? No matter if it was Frigidwinter Earth or Ice Aeon, even though both of those would be considered top-level ice magic breakthroughs for the past millennium, they were concepts far too difficult for ordinary people to learn. Nor did I intend to give others the opportunity to understand my aces.

Undead magic? I could talk about that, and I was willing to teach about it as well. The problem with that was that undead magic forever had dark undertones to it. Even the Sword of Order wouldn't dare to publicly teach such a taboo magic type in open. And if I still went ahead and taught these novices how to dissect bodies in order to assemble Abominations and zombies, perhaps everyone would be looking at me strangely in the future.

”Ahh! This is the frustration of someone like me who learned in a much different way from others. Even though I have so much knowledge, it's so hard for me to teach it.”

But, after some consideration, I came to a decision.

”Since a traditional class won't be meaningful, in that case, I'll just have a non-traditional class. Hah, that'll be perfect! There are so many things that need to be said now, anyways.”

If you looked at Talenry Tower's classroom from the outside, it didn't appear large at all. However, only when entering would one discover that this place was actually enchanted with spatial distortion magic. This classroom was, in actuality, a gigantic hall that could easily hold five or six hundred people. Magical lights hung down from the ceiling and illuminated the beautiful marble floor tiles, making the classroom quite beautiful. The staircase-style seats were already filled with people.

Just like always, the seats were filled ten minutes before the class was about to begin. However, what was different today was that not only were students present, there were actually many white-bearded elderly men as well as seemingly young professors of whom nobody knew the actual age. The first row was actually entirely filled with veteran mages.

The most inconceivable part was that there were even several mages with Emblems of Endless Truth among them. This was quite a rare sight.

After all, even though these top-level mages would easily be able to come listen in to the monthly archmage's class if they wanted, they were all already top-level experts in their own fields. It was only a class by a peer, so even if such an archmage deigned to come to such a class, it would be difficult for the archmage to learn much since this was supposed to be a class targeted at novices.

And even if the archmage in question was an expert in the same area as the lecturer, it was typically considered far more effective to simply contact the person in private to exchange information and magical knowledge. That meant there wouldn't be any favors owed.

”It would seem that this archmage Roland, whom I've never heard of, is someone incredible.”

Not a single acolyte capable of entering this school was an idiot. Simply by seeing all the top-level mages present, all the students realized that this archmage Roland that they had never heard of must be someone incredible. The few students who did know who Roland was from their elders or teachers looked forward even more to Roland's teachings… of course, since Roland's name also happened to overlap with the name of a certain demon king-like character told to scare disobedient children, all those students who knew Roland's identity chose to stay in the farthest rows away and the seats closest to the exit.

”Oh my. I'm lucky I wasn't preparing to simply ad-lib everything.”

The moment I entered the classroom, I, too, was shocked to see all the top-level mages here. It would seem that I underestimated the influence of my identity as ”Yongye” in the mages' minds.

As I looked around, I saw Kaid and his disciples, as well as Oslowen and Aloso. They were all people who I knew in the Mystical Blade.

”Even that old fart Angli has come? There's even someone glaring at me? Oh, the glarer is that little girl Cher. I bet she's learned my real identity by now. She even dares to glare at me? She's surprisingly brave.”

Yet, when I walked up and took my place at the lecturer's podium, all idle thoughts disappeared. After all, these were words that I wanted to tell everyone for so long already.

I picked up the magical highlighter pen on the podium and hesitated for a moment before I finally wrote some words for all to see.