End of the Magic Era

“Yes, I just advanced.”

“…” Solon stood there in a daze for a long time before he could recover from the shock.

For some time, his mood was quite complicated. Thinking about it, when this young mage called Merlin came to the Sage Tower, he had just formed his Mana Whirlpool. He could barely be called a 1st Rank Mage at that point. But it hadn’t been a few months yet and he was already ready to engrave a Magic Conducting Rune, ready to step into the ranks of the Great Mages.

‘When I worked to become a Great Mage, I spent ten years!’

It wasn’t bad, but compared to him, Solon wanted to curse…

As he stood there, Solon very much wanted to ask whether he was a human or something else…

“Mage Solon, Mage Solon…” Seeing Solon being silent for such a long time while just staring, Lin Yun couldn’t help calling his name twice.

“Ah, nothing, nothing…” After being brought back to his senses, Solon hid the grief and indignation, and in order to cover up the fact that he had forgotten himself, he promptly looked for the two books that Lin Yun had asked about.

He was Solomon’s disciple. If another mage saw such a situation, a shadow might be cast over their heart, influencing their future on the path of magic.

From 1st Rank Mage to Great Mage in a few months, this wasn’t something a human could do…

The two books Lin Yun was looking for weren’t very rare, and after some time, Solon found them and handed them over, reminding him, “I heard Teacher say that this Magic Conducting Rune Creation Paradigm recently stirred quite a controversy…”

“Yes, I know.” Lin Yun nodded, not going into any more detail.

– Magic Conducting Rune Creation Paradigm – was a very controversial book. Lin Yun already knew that, in fact, some ten thousand years later, this book would be mentioned by those mages at the pinnacle, and as a textbook on what not to do, because it had way too many mistakes.

But in this era, the research of the Magic Conducting Runes was far from mature enough, so the controversy could only be felt by the mages at the top.

Moreover, even they could only feel it, nothing more…

No one could point out what exactly was wrong.

In this era, the only one able to raise an issue was Lin Yun.

Lin Yun closed his eyes and estimated the number of errors that would appear in this book. Lin Yun clearly knew why such errors would appear and how they would be corrected from his time in the decaying library.

But Lin Yun didn’t come to play “find the differences” today.

The matter of finding out the mistakes would be left for the mages of the future.

Lin Yun came today to find a typical Magic Conducting Rune that had been repeatedly mentioned by those powerful mages in this book.

The name of that Magic Conducting Rune was Magic Array.

Of course, this was a name that would only be attributed to this Magic Conducting Rune ten thousand years later. In this era, people knew of that Magic Conducting Rune as the Discarded Rune, or the Worthless Rune.

The first time it was called this was in – Magic Conducting Rune Creation Paradigm –, where the Magic Array was used as a teaching example to show various negative things. The author pointed to the Magic Array and emphasized how important it was to build the Magic Array properly. If not carefully created, it would become a Discarded Rune later.

This was also the only method for Lin Yun to build the correct Magic Array.

Just building a Magic Array wasn’t difficult, but managing to create a complete Magic Array was a whole different story. Let alone now, even at the peak of the magic civilization, there were no more than five mages that had a complete Magic Array. Moreover, these five mages never passed down the Magic Array as their inheritance.

This led to Noscent’s people being unable to build the Magic Array after these five mages fell at the end of the Magic Era like everyone else. In other words, in the decaying library, the records of the Magic Array were only limited to a few descriptions without giving any real method for someone to build it.

Lin Yun thought for a very long time before he managed to recall a book mentioning that the Magic Array was once called the Discarded Rune, and that the first time the name Discarded Rune was used was in a magic book called – Magic Conducting Rune Creation Paradigm –. The author was apparently a High Mage from the 3rd Dynasty who wasn’t famous, but ten thousand years later, he was recorded in history thanks to this book.

Naturally, the way he got into the pages of history was a bit strange…

After Lin Yun thanked Solon, he took the two books and found a seat before starting to flip through the pages one by one.

Lin Yun had read quite quickly, and it only took him half an hour to read – Magic Conducting Rune Creation Paradigm –, and sure enough, it was full of mistakes. Lin Yun read through it once and found at least twenty major errors, unimaginable for a magic book.

After all, magic was a strict art, and any mistake would lead to an entirely different result. For twenty mistakes to go undiscovered… In all that Lin Yun had seen in his lifetime, only – Magic Conducting Rune Creation Paradigm – was like this.

Fortunately, Lin Yun wasn’t interested in those mistakes, so he immediately disregarded them after noticing. The only thing Lin Yun was looking for was the way to build the Magic Array. Amusingly enough, the book’s only valuable information was the one thing the author spent the whole book ridiculing and exhorting the readers not to do. Some of his words were even very rude, saying that the Great Mages that built this Discarded Rune would have very limited accomplishments in their lifetimes.

Unfortunately, this author wasn’t aware that ten thousand years later, the research on Magic Conducting Runes would slowly mature, and after a complete system was set up, the Discarded Rune he spoke of would start to shine and be referred to as one of the most powerful runes, even giving Great Mages the ability to contend against High Mages…

But now, the Magic Array was truly called the Discarded Rune.

Because the research of Magic Runes was too poor in this era, it was far from having grown enough and many High Mages and Archmages would rely on their experiences to explain Magic Conducting Runes to their disciples. The Magic Conducting Runes they talked about each existed on their own, and although there were some relations drawn between them, they were unable to form a complete system.

In this situation, the Magic Array was truly no different from being a Discarded Rune. In order to display the might of the Magic Array, one needed at least six Magic Conducting Runes. With the Magic Array at the core of these six Magic Conducting Runes, a Great Mage would be able to contend against a High Mage.

There was no need for external power, as one’s mana itself would be enough to surpass the limitations of a rank and directly match up against a High Mage.

Because it was like that, the Magic Array was known as one of the most powerful Magic Conducting Runes.

And what Lin Yun wanted to build right now was exactly this Magic Array system.

Lin Yun took out his own magic book and copied every line of the complete Magic Array, line after line. After he was done, Lin Yun put down his quill and closed – Magic Conducting Rune Creation Paradigm – as he was digesting the knowledge it contained. Half an hour later, Lin Yun opened the other book.

The other book was called – Explanations of the Max Formula –…

This book came from the end of the 3rd Dynasty. Although from the name, it seemed to have been written by the Archmage known as the Flame Tyrant, in reality, this book had been written by one of his disciples. From the point of view of a disciple, he analyzed Max’s entire magic system and conducted a large amount of battle analysis. It could be said that the analysis of this Archmage’s Fire Magic was thorough to the extreme.

This book was quite popular in this era, as many Great Mages and High Mages hoped to be able to gain insight from the Flame Tyrant’s magic system.

It was also the case for Lin Yun.

For Lin Yun, – Explanations of the Max Formula – could be said to be one of the rare good books of this era. In that spacious decaying library, Lin Yun had seen many books mentioning this book, but he hadn’t had the chance to see it in person until he found about it from the management of the Sage Tower’s library.

Naturally, what Lin Yun wanted wasn’t insight on control over fire magic.

There were many such opportunities in the decaying library. Max was the name of the Flame Tyrant, who was only an Archmage. In the decaying library, many books had been left by Heaven Mages, or mages above even that rank.

What Lin Yun really wanted was among the fight descriptions.

If Lin Yun wasn’t wrong, Flame Tyrant Max was born near Ghost City, which was known as the paradise of the undead. That place was even more frightening than the Bone Plane. Although the undead of the Bone Plane might rampage around, the strongest one was only a Bone Dragon. But Ghost City wasn’t inferior to the Bone Plane. The Century Undead Tide was a great disaster that all of Noscent faced.

Max was born in such a place, so it was inevitable that he would spend his life fighting the undead. Because of this, he was able to get high accomplishment in Fire Magic. Apart from Holy Magic, what the undead feared the most were flames.

Lin Yun wanted to read the descriptions of Max’s battles against the undead, and it would be even better if he had fought a Bone Devil when he was young…