Chapter 690: Harloys’ Secret

Harloys, the “All-knowing”. In mage society, where knowledge was powerful, this nickname would not only attract a great deal of attention, it would also attract a great deal of hate.

All-knowing? Didn’t this mean that she knew more than any other mage? Since mages were also scholars, this was like a mega taunt to all other mages. However, not only had Harloys solidly retained her nickname for thousands of years, she even had great personal success at the Cloud Tower, where archmages were plentiful. She successfully taught many outstanding students.

But if she really tried to intentionally teach wrong things and guide students down the wrong path in magic, she would quickly lose her reputation and even be exiled from the Mage Country.

So, what she said about misleading her students would need to be understood through a filter. What she really meant was that she didn’t impart her true magical knowledge to her students, instead teaching them only the common knowledge in the magical textbooks.

Basic magical studies in the Mage Country were supported by the various magic schools. Since there were schools, there were naturally textbooks and classes to choose from. The learnable content would all be classics with thousands of years of history, which would be quite suitable for establishing one’s knowledge foundation. But if you wanted to progress further, you would soon experience another truth of mage society: knowledge came at a cost.

Basic knowledge wasn’t that difficult to obtain. However, the search for magical knowledge would be endless. After a mage student graduated, unless they were satisfied with remaining an acolyte mage for the rest of their entire life, they would have to think about how to join a mage organization, how to find a personal teacher, or perhaps do both at the same time… That would also mean they would need to pay something. The relationship between a mage teacher and disciple would typically be stronger than even the relationship between a parent and child. The advantages were also all held by the teacher. Thus, many disciples would naturally follow the teacher and also inherit the teacher’s worldview, goodness or evilness, research field, social connections, and so on. Some disciples would even become their teacher’s personal property.

The majority of disciples would sign a contract with their teacher first before the teacher would agree to take them in. The disciple would have to serve the teacher for X years, or would have to come up with X amount of gold and magical resources to purchase their freedom from the contract. While there were sometimes free grandpa mages who would drop out of the sky and teach you for free like in the stories, the probability of that actually happening would be equal to the realism rate of such stories.

For veteran teachers, it was only natural to keep teaching old classics that should have actually been tossed into the trash heaps of history long ago while intentionally leading their students onto longer paths in order to profit more from the students.

In mage society, knowledge equaled strength. Knowledge could only come at a price. Free or cheap knowledge would only mean that this knowledge was commonly available everywhere. If you wanted more, you would need to pay the price.

In a way, Harloys truly was an outstanding and generous teacher. Over the countless millennia, she had successfully taught countless powerful mages. Not only was she not miserly with her magical knowledge, she would even base her classes and teaching on her student’s ability and talents, choosing the most appropriate methods and magical spells for them. Her endless magical knowledge was the source of her nickname of “All-knowing”.

And unlike other “miserly” mage teachers, Harloys had very low requirements for accepting new students. She was even willing to accept promises to pay her back in return for her teaching services in the future. Since these promises would be enforced by powerful magical contracts, Harloys wasn’t one bit worried that her students would break their word. What she asked for was also much less than what other archmages would request.

But in another way, Harloys was one of the most irresponsible mage teachers around. Unlike how other teachers would constantly test their students, or maybe take in only one or two disciples in their life and focus fully on those few disciples, and also unlike how dark cult mages would have their disciples fight each other to the death to select the most skilled disciple, Harloys didn’t care at all about her disciples’ growth. It really didn’t matter to her one bit. Although she gave her disciples incredibly valuable magical knowledge, she didn’t care about being repaid one bit.

“…My disciples must take revenge on the Superior Elves and Elven Gods at any chance that they get.”

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Harloys’ contract that she required all of her disciples to sign had only this one clause in it. So, in a way, human mages’ enmity towards the elves was truly related to Harloys herself. There were plenty of her students who improved to become archmages themselves in the future. With such power and authority, it would be quite easy for them to give the elves a difficult time. Even though Harloys’ contract was quite loose and relaxed, it would still be magically enforced.

The Gold Elf Princess more than 10,000 years old had used her own method to take as much revenge as possible on the elves over the years, yet she had now become the Elven Empress. I could only sigh over the inscrutable workings of fate.

Harloys’ overly obvious exchange of benefits and taking advantage of each other with her disciples made it so that her disciples weren’t all that close to or loving of her. Even though she had probably taught more disciples than any other mage out there, she had voluntarily chosen more evil and dark disciples because they would be more willing to help her with her revenge against the elves…

Actually, whenever I thought about this, I would feel that Harloys had honestly set her sights too low. If she truly used all that time to truly teach a disciple with all she had rather than using such a simple magical contract which stated the benefits exactly, with her teaching ability, lifespan, and accumulated knowledge, and with the mage society’s typical teacher-disciple relationships passing down an inheritance generation after generation, Harloys might have even been recognized as the #1 authority in the entire Mage Country had she done this instead.

Right now, for the Truth Symposium archmages of the Mage Country, the factions were mostly split up by mage organizations, and the most stable relationships in any mage organization would be that of teacher and disciple, and their inheritance. From a certain standpoint, the entire Mage Country was an academic organization (or school), so the leaders would obviously be the principal and professors.

Just the thought of Harloys having that many loyal disciples at her command had she actually bonded with them was quite scary to think about. At that time, if she wanted to take her revenge on the elves and Elven Gods, all she had to do was to issue a simple command as the mages would never be afraid of the Elven Gods.

“…Tsk, thankfully, the silly cat has more hair than sense. Harloys, the ruler of the Mage Country? Just imagining it is so frightening.”

All-knowing would be considered such a glorious nickname by any mage. All mages would be jealous. Most people would probably be under the impression that Harloys had obtained her nickname through her countless years of experience and teaching so many students. However, only those who truly knew her would know that her nickname was actually because she knew about far too many different magical fields, having an incredibly vast amount of knowledge that would be far beyond a normal mage’s ability to understand.

Harloys was skilled in undead, fire, ice, lightning, illusion, alchemy, energy, and all sorts of other magic. In fact, I had never seen a single type of magic that she wasn’t skilled in. It was impossible to understand just how she had managed to accumulate so much knowledge, because any single type of magic would require a lifetime to research and truly understand. Rather than being a jack of all trades, it would be far more efficient in this world to be an expert in only one type of magic and reach the peak in that field.

In mage society, a jack of all trades mage would be considered nothing more than a joke since anyone’s time and concentration would be limited. Once you reached a high level of understanding in some magical field, that would naturally take up a large majority of your thinking time. Your own personal knowledge system would be reconstructed around your understanding, your way of thinking would form, and researching this topic would become your life’s work. Even if you had extra energy, it would be difficult to focus on other topics.

More than 70% of mages would specialize in only one magical field. For the rest, having one main magical expertise and one sub-expertise would already be the limit. As for genius archmages who managed to simultaneously be experts in three different magical fields, there were less than 100 such archmages in the entire Mage Country. Meanwhile, for a mage with four different fields of expertise, I knew only one example in the entire world, which was, ahem, myself as I had a rather unique situation as well… Yet, Harloys had managed to reach the peak in every single magical field there was, which was incredibly inconceivable.

“…Even if she has the time and sufficient concentration, just where did she go to obtain all that magical knowledge and historical magical inheritances? Besides, magic isn’t something easily understandable just by reading books. You also need to experiment, practice, train, and fight. A mage who only knows theory but has zero practical combat experience is pure garbage. Just how did she accumulate so much practical experience in combat?”

Today, Harloys showed me her greatest secret of all, the foundational source of her power.

“This is my Soul World, Temple of the All-knowing…”