Chapter 1166 — Victoria's Recollection

Victoria began with a highly impressionistic, general account of how the Violet Kingdom selected its "gifted," enough to give Gao You a rough picture in his mind. Beside him, Hedy spoke up once she had finished listening: "I have heard of this 'selection,' and I have also heard that it has not always existed. In more ancient times the Violet Kingdom was even more closed off than it is now, and there was no such tradition of choosing gifted apprentices from the Loren Continent to instruct — it was only about six hundred years ago that a certain enlightened Archmage Prince established this precedent..."

"Yes, that was six hundred years ago," Victoria nodded. "That was already after Ansethad been founded and stabilized. The Violet Kingdom, once so rigidly sealed, suddenly announced that it would open its magical knowledge to the outside world — in their words, 'in the mages' own way.' Only afterward did Violet itinerant scholars and 'guides' begin to appear openly in the northern part of the continent.

"According to our family records, these masters, who commanded profound magical arts, caused considerable commotion in the northern regions at the time, especially among the supernaturals who pursued magical mysteries and ancient knowledge... As we know, when the Gondor Empire collapsed, human magical civilization suffered a grievous blow. The mage system that had depended so heavily on the Deep Blue Well vanished overnight, and the surviving casters desperately needed to rebuild a reliable magical system without the Deep Blue Well. Yet for traditional mages who advanced their learning through experience, trial and error, and accumulation, how difficult was it to construct such a system? So in the hundred years after Ansethad was founded, human mages were like men groping along a stone wall in the dark, at a loss at every turn..."

Indeed — Gao Yang thought to himself. Although all he had experienced in his mind was the brief memory of the first ten years after Ansethad's founding, what he had seen and heard in those ten years was enough to make him understand the scene Victoria described. In fact, the Cecil family's ancestral precept that "knights are more awesome than mages" had been uttered against exactly that historical backdrop — because back then knights really were more awesome than mages...

After all, in those years the mages, apart from a few freaks like Snow Wilder, were basically all half-crippled.

Victoria did not know what thoughts were turning in Gao Yang's mind; she simply continued: "...It was under such circumstances that the mages of the Violet Kingdom suddenly appeared in the north of the continent. Their arrival showed the human mages of six hundred years ago a certain entirely new possibility — new magical knowledge, the mysterious and ancient Violet esoteric system, various self-sustaining arrays that could operate without the Deep Blue Well... To the human magical system of that time, which after a century of patching and mending was still battered and broken, the knowledge the Violet mages brought was simply like some kind of... miracle.

"It was also from that time that the Violet Kingdom began its 'exchange' with the Loren Continent — in their words, a 'mage-style exchange,' obscure, secretive, following ancient rules and traditions, passing on knowledge like a trickling stream, shaping a new system of mage inheritance. They selected apprentices of outstanding talent from the north of the continent — mostly humans, but occasionally elves, dwarves, and other minority peoples — brought them back to the island to teach, let them leave with carefully chosen knowledge, and at the same time continually sent itinerant scholars into the human world. Some of these itinerant scholars became honored guests of the various mage organizations in the northern regions in later generations, while the rest were mostly recruited by royal houses and nobles, becoming 'foreign advisors' to the Ansethad Royal Mage Association...

"Whether one is willing to admit it or not, these envoys from the Violet Kingdom and the magical knowledge they brought greatly changed the landscape of casters in the northern regions, and exerted a long-term influence on the reconstruction of the magical systems of the Kingdom of Ansethad and the small northern states — over the following six centuries, that influence gradually spread to the entire human world, and to other realms more closely connected with the human nations.

"And this further consolidated the influence of the 'Esoteric Council' among casters, giving this mysterious mage organization — so far from the Loren Continent, and which almost never shows its true face before the nations of Loren — a status as exalted as that of the Silver Empire's Astromancer Association. Indeed, precisely because it is more mysterious, the Esoteric Council holds even greater 'charm' in the eyes of casters than the Astromancer Association. Your Majesty knows how mages are... they just love that mysterious feeling."

Here Victoria paused, as if to gather her thoughts, and only then continued: "To this day, the traces left by the 'Violet magical system' upon the modern magical system of Loren can still be seen everywhere — for example, the traditional communication spells, the anti-gravity spells before their improvement, the old-style self-charging arrays, and so on and so forth. Although most of these have now been improved by the Rune Research Institute and the Magitek Research Institute, their original forms are in fact all closely tied to the Violet Kingdom."

Listening to Victoria's account, Gao Yang unconsciously curled his fingers and rubbed his chin. He gathered this information in his mind, gradually abstracting it into a macroscopic picture, and his brows slowly drew together: "I always thought the Violet Kingdom was isolated from the world and had very little contact with the Loren Continent. I never expected them to have exerted such a profound influence on Loren... This even sounds like some kind of long-term, comprehensive infiltration. In theory the Violet Kingdom could even use this to build a force in the Loren Continent strong enough to contend with local powers — and even without doing so, they would be quite capable of seizing the lifeblood of many local mage organizations."

"You are right, and in fact you are not the only one to have worried about this. The royal house in the Ansethad era, the mage associations of Tifon, and certain scholars whose names survive in history have all expressed similar views. But that is exactly the problem: six hundred years have passed, and the Violet Kingdom has truly remained secluded and withdrawn to this very day. Apart from small-scale coastal trade and those itinerant mages, they have truly... not crossed the line even once."

Gao Song's eyebrows lifted instinctively. He did not speak, only listened as Victoria went on.

"Six hundred years of continuous activity — the northern states were certainly not blind. Many people watched the every move of those Violet mages, and that includes our family. But those mages seemed as though they truly came only to travel and to spread magic. Aside from academic exchange and accepting short-term employment, they took no part in politics on the Loren Continent, intermarried with no one, accepted no military commissions, established no organization affiliated with the Violet Kingdom, developed no personal power — and the moment a stipulated term of travel expired, they withdrew at once. Even when a certain royal house tried to recruit them with hereditary titles and vast fiefs, not a single one of them could be retained..."

"That... really is something..." Gao Yang could not help muttering. "Which only makes one more concerned..."