When A Mage Revolts

Three years?

Benjamin suddenly felt like his head hurt.

They definitely did not want to stay within the border of Icor too long. The Queen was acting as if she intended to forcefully recruit them. Despite how polite and respectful the Mage Guild treated him now, it would be hard to judge what would happen in the future. Moreover, the whole situation in Icor seemed a bit strange. So, he would rather not stay in this place for long.

Things became tricky once again...

"Stop messing around with me. Whether it was Her Majesty the Queen or the ban? What are your intentions? Just be straightforward to me." He shot the question after giving some thought.

Hawk then flashed a smile upon hearing this and said, "That’s right. Getting out of the Icor now presents difficulty. But, our Guild Master has the authorization to sign the document needed to leave this country. Now that Her Majesty the Queen has not returned to the Capital City, signing the document for you guys won’t be difficult. But, if Her Majesty the Queen return... Even if I don’t mention what will happen, I am sure you would understand what I meant."

Benjamin took a deep breath and said, "So, in the end, your objective is wanting me to take a trip to Regina."

Hawk simply smiled without saying anything and nodded.

However, the purposeful smile on his face became stiff very quickly because Benjamin also flashed him the exact same smile. Then, he shook his head firmly.

"From what I know, the border between Icor and the two other countries had no mountains or dangerous places. There is only a fortification line made up of the armies. We will only need to pick a time and location unknown to all of you to fly over the line. There is no way you will be able to stop us."

At that moment, Hawk’s smile was a little stiff.

"This is... not very nice."

"What is wrong with doing that? We had broken through the Crusader Gateway before. We can easily fly over this fortification line of yours." Benjamin smiled as he answered.

"..."

As if he had been stunned by Benjamin’s forthright statement, Hawk was silent for a long time. He could not find a better reasoning to convince Benjamin.

"Sir.... Your, your action, will cause the relationship between you and us to go sour. For your... Your future, this would put you at a disadvantage. This is not a very good idea."

Benjamin’s reply was really cold.

"Oh."

At last, Hawk lost the argument and gave up trying to convince Benjamin. He could only helplessly turn around and, to Benjamin’s delight, left the room.

Right after Hawk left, Benjamin immediately gathered the twenty and more mages to have a small, secretive meeting. During the meeting, he told everyone else to leave Icor as soon as possible and head for Ferelden. Everyone had various reactions, but no one disagreed with this plan as well. Thus, they had decided to go on with this plan.

He also emphasized that everyone should be on alert at all times. They should not go out very often as there might be trouble happening in Icor soon.

He had no choice. He was afraid that if the Mage Guild was not convinced of his words, they would employ extreme methods like kidnapping one of them. They might forcefully kidnap Benjamin and bring him to Regina. If this would truly happen, he really had no solution to this.

After all these events, it was already getting late. Benjamin originally intended to look for the old man to trade the latter’s two books with the Magic Beast Materials. However, the old man’s store was already closed. So Benjamin could only return to his room and rest. After meditating for a while, he fell asleep.

The next morning after he woke up, he came to that store named "Mor’s Magic Store" and successfully traded the books "Introduction to Magic Potion" and "Probability of Magic" with the old man.

When he was exchanging the items, the old man’s expression remained as impatient as ever. The old man did not comment on the duel between Benjamin and the Mage Guild that happened yesterday. It was as if he had no idea such an event took place. Thus, Benjamin did not speak much of it. He took the books, then returned to the hotel.

He sat in bed. Whilst looking at the books, he could not help but exclaimed that knowledge was not easily attained.

After thinking for a bit, he first flipped open the book "Introduction to Magic Potion".

Benjamin understood quite a lot about magic. Exchanging the book "Probability of Magic" was only for the purpose of learning the different magic theory learned abroad. He would like to see if there was anything for him to absorb and learn from. Thus, in comparison, this whole new ‘Study of Magic Potion’ was much more appealing to him.

Thus, he could not wait to begin reading this book.

What he did not expect was that the first sentence in this book shocked him quite a bit.

"Magic Potion is superior to Magic."

Upon seeing this sentence, Benjamin disagreed a little with this statement. To him, Magic Potion was just another branch of skills for a mage. It had a distinctive difference in its nature as compared to Magic. Magic was the key to the reason why a mage was called a mage. Instead, Magic Potion was only Magic Potion.

This was probably a displeased statement made by a certain potion mage who was not good at Magic.

Of course, even if he did not agree with this statement, Benjamin still went on reading it. In the next part, the content of the book explained this theory in a more detailed way.

"Magic is not something innately possessed by any human. Instead, it is a skill developed through the imitation of Magic Beast in the long duration of the fight between human and Magic Beast. The final objective of Magic is to allow human to possess the strength that Magic Beast has. However, unfortunately, learning Magic requires a great deal of talent. Not everyone can possess such an inconceivable strength. Therefore, Magic has a large limitation placed on it."

...I see, was this how mages abroad perceive Magic?

Although was Benjamin more inclined to believe that Magic was an innate ability instead of imitation, what was written in the book had been passed down many years ago. Perhaps Magic really began from imitating Magic Beast since it was truly hard to examine the credibility of this statement.

In short, this theory was still much better than those theories that said ‘Magic is the power of devil’ or ‘Magic is the power left behind by Cain’.

But obviously, the last sentence of this paragraph was used to foreshadow the introduction to Magic Potion.

"But Magic Potion is different. From its nature, Magic Potion is the complete duplication and imitation of the power of the Magic Beast. We can make a human being possess an ability of not fearing flames in a short amount of time by collecting the blood of Fire Python and making it into Magic Potion. This is something Magic cannot achieve. For a human to possess the ability of Magic Beast, Magic can only do little in this sense. It simply stops at the stage of imitating. And Magic Potion can do much more. By directly taking the flesh and blood of Magic Beast and extract the energy from within, the Magic Potion can be given to any normal human beings. This is the greatness of Magic Potion. Therefore, from this point of view, Magic Potion is superior to Magic."

Upon reading this, Benjamin finally understood where that previous ‘declaration’ came from.

Well, this could not be helped. The most basic world view in this book was already so different, the understanding that evolved from this view would also be very different. Judging from the author’s point of view, it would not be surprising that the book would share that would be an extreme view.

But...

Undoubtedly, Benjamin would not agree to this view.

He could accept that Magic Potion was the human’s plunder of the Magic Beast. But from his perspective, Magic was definitely not a human’s simple imitation of the power of Magic Beast. Magic was a talent, a desire, just like eating and drinking. It was the most innate ability of the human.

Those who possess a talent for Magic sometimes could freely feel the summoning of the particles without even the need to practice. How could being able to summon a weak flame on his palm get related to the Magic Beast? The existence of Magic Beast might increase the growth and development of Magic, but using the power of Magic Beast to describe Magic was rather narrow-minded.

When he thought about this, Benjamin shook his head.

For some reason, he who was really excited to learn about the Study of Magic Potion suddenly lost his passion at this moment.

However, since he already had the book, he still patiently spent approximately more than two hours to finish this book. The latter parts of the book talked about the basics of making Magic Potion and some formulas for some simple Magic Potion. It also slightly talked about the right line of thought in making Magic Potion. It encouraged the people learning the Study of Magic Potion to be creative in order to create their very own original formulas.

Due to differences of views, Benjamin did not dare to agree on the theoretical part of the book. But the examples of Magic Potion that were introduced in this book were still new and interesting to Benjamin.

Like Magic Ability Increasing Potion, Spiritual Energy Recovery Potion, Agility Strengthening Potion... These were the normal Magic Potion, but, of course, there were also strange ones. Like what the book had mentioned, there was a Magic Potion that could greatly enhance the sexual performance of a person. Doing it seven times a night would not be a dream. Benjamin thought he was watching those midnight TV ads.

So he finished the whole book. Benjamin had a more systemic understanding of the so-called ‘Magic Potion’ now. It was not too bad. In fact, it was a rather useful thing to learn. However, undoubtedly, Magic was still the right way to do things.

Therefore, he did not plan to learn how to make Magic Potion. Firstly, he lost his interest by half. It would be hard to carry on learning it. Next, he did not agree to the underlying concept, so the learning would be in vain even if he tried to learn. At most, he could only learn the surface of this study and could not learn in depth.

It was rather unfortunate, but he also had limited energy. The mystery of the Space of Consciousness was enough for him to spend his whole life studying it. How would he have any energy left to learn the Study of Magic Potion which was according to another different theory?

But...

Even though he did not want to learn, he could let the others learn!

After having this thought, Benjamin once again called all the mages together for a secret meeting this afternoon.