Lesson 1

A week passed, and although Daron wanted to earn money by restarting a new branch of his business here in the capital so that he can buy the 'herbs' needed by Rank 6 Novice Knights, he was a lot more interested in the Lesson on Magic and how to become a mage. Why would he waste time, and the possibility of the old man discarding his promise of teaching him because he slacked off on work.

Now, the time for the first lesson had finally arrived.

"Hey old man. It has been a week since you made the promise to me. Now teach me about magic! Quick, quick!"

"Alright. Come in a sit on the ground."

Daron just shrugged as he sat down cross-legged.

"Firstly, you need to understand that passing on knowledge of magic is a sacred tradition which means that only a master can pass on this knowledge to their disciple."

Instantly understanding what the old man meant, Daron bowed while sitting and said,

"Master"

'This brat… He is at least smart enough to survive.'

"Good, then you are my disciple from this moment forward."

…

After some more pleasantries, Traitorous spoke out again.

"Alright. Now the one-hour lesson begins."

"Before I explain about magic and mages, you should know about the history of the continent right?"

"Yes. First there were magical beasts, who were killed off by all the races combined, including the almighty dragons, and the elusive high elves, as well as the main races of the Maradona continent."

"However, after taking over the world, one by one, these races vanished, leaving their subsidiary races to control Maradona. The last to vanish were the high elves, and as soon as they vanished, mages appeared and helped humans take the entire continent for themselves, pushing out all the other races."

"Good, good! You know this much. However, let me tell you a few secrets. One of them is that the first to disappear were the high elves, however, their sub-race; the elves, had maintained their disappearance a complete secret for almost a thousand years."

"And during this time, Humans, who were treated as mere livestock began their rebellion. It was said that some of the humans had been experimented on by the high elves when they were living in Maradona, but later imprisoned for unknown reasons. After the disappearance of the high elves, while the elves were doing the biggest cover-up in the history of Maradona, those humans who had been experimented on managed to escape since there were no high elves to keep them in check, nor were any of their technological monstrosities present to threaten these experiments. These experiments later became known as the founding mages."

Daron pondered on this for a second before his eyes opened wide in shock.

'What sis this mean? It meant that the mages that humanity was so proud about were merely experiment subjects for the high elves?!?'

"Keke, yes. I know what you are thinking, and yes. The original mages were experiment subjects for the ancient high-elves. Haha, but that is not the case anymore. Although the high-elves were at a level that was far ahead anything humans currently possess, we have still grown in another direction."

"While the high-elves desired for greater control, and higher technology which can transcend the gods, us mages pursue individual strength. Over the course of time, we have developed in this, and have grown to a point where the strongest mages can even compare to the ancient Dragons in terms of individual strength, while our technology is at the level that the high-elves were at a few thousand years before the war with the Rank 9 magical beasts. At this level, we could possible reach the hight that the high-elves had in their peak while they were killing gods, in about a hundred thousand years."

Although a hundred thousand years was an incredible amount of years that humans on earth would not even dare to dream about, the very possibility of having enough power to threaten gods with death was something that unconditionally would make any mortal's heart skip a beat.

"Haha! Brat, you should know that even though I have said a hundred thousand years, humans trying to reach the peak of magical technology that the ancient high-elves had reached is still impossible."

"Why?"

"Because the amount of mana within Maradona has dropped to below 10% of what it was originally"

"Mana!"

"Keke, brat, I will talk about mana in the next lecture. For now, here, this is a book on the true history of Maradona, passed down form my master, who received it from his master, who received it from his, and so on."

Daron caught the thick book that was thrown at him, and nodded before leaving the study where the old man sent most of his time.