He had to admit that even though Landes's diary was rather trivial, it was rather interesting to him. It allowed him to learn more about magic.
For example, the crystal ball used to test one's talent and elemental affinity were things he didn't know about, so he didn't fall asleep until very late.
So magic has an elemental affinity? What elemental affinity do I have the highest?
Claude was still thinking about that question before he fell asleep. It was a pity that he didn't have the crystal ball to test his talent.
As he slept rather late, he wasn't in a good mood the next day and kept yawning. He was even nagged by his father during dinner for wasting too much lamp oil.
However, he used the excuse that he was learning ancient Hez too late to gloss over it.
After dinner, he played with his siblings and the snowhound for the better part of the day. Soon, it was nine in the morning and his siblings went to sleep. Claude returned to his attic with the lamp oil flask.
He read more than 40 pages of the diary the night before and decided to see what Landes wrote tonight to see if it was about his life as an apprentice in Egret's magic tower.
He flipped to the diary page that he read last night and continued reading. As expected, Landes described in great detail the helplessness, disappointment, and reluctance he felt when he left home. He followed the black-faced, bearded mage on an uncertain journey.
However, he didn't think that the place he was going would be so close to home. He only had to cross Lake Balinga to reach his destination, the magic tower on Egret.
Landes spent another three pages describing how he felt when he first saw the magic tower. Words like astonishment, majesty, and colossal kept appearing in the diary.
The youth who had just left home quickly turned his disappointment into boundless admiration for the master of the magic tower. He even felt immeasurably proud that he was able to live in such a miraculous structure.
There was nothing that could make a youth who hadn't seen the world feel fear and admiration more than a towering tower that stood at the peak of a mountain.
He was like a laborer who had never left his village and came to the modern metropolis of Magic City for the first time. Everything he saw and heard was something he had never seen before.
In his diary, Wizard Landes even wrote that he was willing to be a servant to live in this great Miracle Tower …
The young Landes' life as a Magus Apprentice thus began. However, he ran into a huge problem. Even though he was the most talented of the seventeen Magus Apprentices, he was illiterate and couldn't read or write.
However, there were still six apprentices in the same batch who were illiterate, just like him. The Mage Tower had long anticipated such a situation, and had arranged for a two-ring rune mage to teach them how to read ancient Hertz as soon as possible.
The magic knowledge was in ancient Hez. It was said that this language was adapted from the ancient dragon language and was suitable for human pronunciation.
Words were the foundation of runes and the key to setting up runic magic arrays. The pronunciation of magic spells also had to be recited in the purest and most standard ancient Hez language in order to achieve satisfactory magic effects.
Landes and the other apprentices were being taught by a low-ranked female magus. She was so beautiful that Landes was taken aback by her beauty. In his heart, she was his goddess.
For this reason, he didn't hesitate to spend two pages of his diary praising her graceful figure and beauty.
It was a pity that the female magus didn't pay much attention to the seven illiterate students she was in charge of. Most of her lessons were forced indoctrination, and the entire classroom was filled with memory-enhancing runic magic arrays. In just three months, the seven illiterate Magus Apprentices had grasped the basics of ancient Hez language.
After completing her mission, the female magus disappeared from the Mage Tower. It wasn't until Landes officially became a one-ring rune mage that he heard from his senior, Tawari, that the female magus was given as a gift by the master of the Mage Tower, Archmagus Loenk, to another seventh-ring Archmagus to be his concubine.
It was said that the seventh-ring Archmagus was extremely lecherous and couldn't forget the female magus when he saw her. He asked Loenk for her many times, and in the end, he took out a batch of precious magic materials in exchange for her.
The news of the female magus left Landes feeling a sense of loss. Perhaps it was the first time the young magus had fallen in love with someone, but there was nothing he could do about it. The decisions made by the master of the Mage Tower, the seventh-ring Archmagus Loenk, were inviolable in the southwest.
He was an existence that Landes could only look up to. The difference in status between the two was like the distance between the sky and the earth.
Having grasped the basics of ancient Hez language, Landes officially became an apprentice magus. He and his classmates were arranged to go through magical training.
Before that, they had to be assigned jobs.
Job assignment?
That's rather novel. Claude had read quite a number of fantasy novels in his past life. Many of them depicted apprentices learning magic, but most of them chose different types of magic, such as darkness, shadow, wind, fire, or water. The most famous of them all was necromancy.
Even those who went to magic academies would choose based on their attributes and talents. But job assignment was something he had never seen before.
It wasn't Azureflight, after all.
However, Landes did explain the class distribution in detail in the next part of his diary. Tawari, the black-faced, bearded magus who brought him out of Whitestag Village, had told him about it behind his back after he became a rune magus.
Faslan had been under the rule of magi for more than three thousand years. Even though many magi still saw the age of magic as prosperous as ever, that had nothing to do with most mortals.
Instead, the scarcity of magical resources had become an impending crisis. There were even quite a few magi and scholars who prophesied the end of the world.
They claimed that the light of magic would be extinguished in the next thousand years and the world would return to its primitive and barbaric state.
As the highest authority in the world of magic, the Council of the Nine Rings and the Magic Executive Board did not ignore the lack of magic resources in Faslan. They had built a huge teleportation array in the holy land of magic, St. Barney, which was said to be able to transport a magus to a new plane.
They hoped to bring the rich magical resources of that plane back to Faslan to ensure the continuation of magic.
Landes, who had just become an apprentice magus, didn't understand the current state of the world of magic. He didn't know how it would affect his future either.
It was only later that his senior, Tawari, told him that he had asked the master of the magic tower, Loenk, to become a combat magus like him.
However, Loenk rejected his suggestion and told him to become a rune magus.
Three thousand years of magic civilization and the dwindling magic resources had caused two obvious changes in the world of Faslan's magi. Apart from the silver noble magi who held the power to distribute magic resources, the rest of the magi could only reach the fifth circle at most.
Advancing from the fifth to the sixth circle not only required a large amount of precious magical resources, but also advanced meditation techniques and some key magical knowledge. However, all of this was in the hands of the magi families. They had basically cut off the path of ordinary magi.
The second change was that the ordinary magi were beginning to split into two groups. A portion of them became battlemages, and they were the most powerful people in the world of magic — the Council of the Nine Rings and the Magistrate of Magic. They were the most powerful people in the world of magic.
Just like the bearded Tawari, he was ordered by the master of the magic tower, Archmagus Loenk, to roam the southwest region and ensure his control over it, suppressing any possible rebellion against the magic tower.
Even more low-ranked magi were trained to become rune magi. They studied magic research and alchemy, becoming the assistants and researchers of the magi.
Some of the more talented rune magi were given important tasks by the magi, such as leading their own alchemy lab and doing research on magic or making repetitive magical items.
Tawari later told Landes that he recommended him to become a combat magus mainly because of his talent in magic.
Back then, his fire elemental affinity had reached eight and his spiritual force had reached six. As a result, he was highly regarded by Loenk as a combat magus.
When he saw Landes' fire elemental affinity of nine and spiritual force of eight, he felt that he was the best candidate to become a combat magus. It was a pity that Loenk rejected his suggestion.
Landes didn't understand the difference between a combat magus and a rune magus. In fact, he was very satisfied with his current situation. There was nothing more attractive than being able to learn new magic knowledge in the lab every day.
Tawari told Landes that only a combat magus would have the freedom to go out. If there was an opportunity outside, he might be able to earn some extra income and save some rare magic materials for himself.
Even though the chances of advancing to the fifth circle were slim, it was better than no hope at all.
On the other hand, a rune magus would have to stay in the magic tower's lab and do research for the master of the tower. Not only would there be no extra income, there would also be no freedom.
Landes wrote in his diary that after he successfully became a first-rank rune magus and became the assistant of a five-ring rune magus, he became obsessed with the study and research of alchemy. He didn't have the slightest interest in going out and fighting. He felt that the world of magic was mysterious and vast. He didn't have time to waste on the road and would rather stay in the lab to study the mysteries of magic.
Only after becoming an apprentice magus did the young Landes learn that there were more than 130 low-ranked rune magi and apprentices like him living in this grand magic tower. There were also more than 200 slaves serving the magi.
However, while the low-ranked rune magi and apprentices lived in the magic tower, the slaves lived in a row of stone houses not far from the tower. Without permission, they weren't allowed to enter the magic tower.
As an apprentice magus, Landes could only live in the first floor of the magic tower, which was the largest entrance at the center of the tower. He lived in a room for six apprentices. Apart from a bed for each apprentice, there was only a wooden box under the bed for them to store their clothes and personal belongings. There was nothing else.