The cool brilliance shines on the many flowers blooming in the small garden, giving them a hazy beauty.
Lucian walked side by side with Rhine on the garden path, and after a short silence, he asked directly: "Mr. Rhine, can you tell me where the headquarters of the Magic Council is?"
"Where do you think it will be?" Rhine, who had been smiling faintly, asked Lucian rhetorically.
Lucian thought for a moment and replied, "I think it's deep in the dark mountains or on the other side of the mountains, because the church's westward march ended early."
Rhine chuckled: "If you go to the dark mountains, you can only find those gloomy and crazy ancient magicians. Although they are powerful, many of them are high-level, and even archmages and legendary magicians, but if you don't like them a little, you will become their experimental subject, and then you will either gain uncontrollable power, or your whole body will collapse and die. Moreover, the creatures of the Dark Mountains are not comparable to the beasts and low-level magical creatures of the Melzer Black Forest.
Sure enough, there are remnants of ancient magicians in the dark mountains.
Lucian affirmed one of his guesses: "Mr. Rhine, is the headquarters of the Continental Magic Council in a certain country? Do you believe in the northern sect or other gods?
"Wrong, in a country that believes in the Doctrine of Truth in the south." Rhein seemed to remember something funny, and shook his head repeatedly, "You should have heard of its name, Holm Kingdom. The specific location is the floating city 'Alinge' near Rentat, the capital of the Kingdom of Hall."
"Alinge, the meaning of 'sky' in the ancient Sylvanas language." Lucian first habitually interpreted the words, and then looked at Rhein in surprise: "The Kingdom of Holm? Rentat? What country is Natasha's mother from?"
And this country still believes in the God of truth! How could Grand Duke Vaurit visit this country back then?
"Haven't the love of Grand Duke Valiat become a story recited throughout the continent? I have sung and said several different things." Rhine laughed very interestingly, "But there is not a single poem, no story that can clearly tell what evil forces are standing in their way."
Lucian asked suspiciously: "Is it the Continental Magic Council? Why is there such a strange situation?"
Rhine smiled and looked at Lucian: "If you have learned about governance, you will understand that this is a political issue of the situation on the mainland. Everything is in balance, the balance that aristocrats need."
"Balance?" Lucian pretended to be puzzled and asked, but he was thinking in his heart, "Actually, I have a lot of textbooks on international politics, do you need to take a look?"
Knowing that the headquarters of the Magic Council was not in a scary and sinister place, Lucian relaxed a lot.
Rhine surpassed Lucian by half his body and walked slowly forward: "When the Dawn War entered two hundred years ago, the strength and authority of the church reached its peak. During that time, the church was able to abolish earls, marquises and dukes, and even the emperors of the Holy Helz Empire at will. Therefore, no one dares to offend the majesty of the Church."
"So the split of the church into north and south factions at the Supreme Council of Religion has the support of the nobility?" Lucian came to his senses and wondered why those cardinals were able to be followed by almost all the nobles in the north.
Rhine turned his head to look at Lucian: "Very keen. Lucian, you're right, when some cardinals plotted to overthrow the Pope for some reason that no one knew, the nobles of their country joined the conspiracy without hesitation. However, these nobles deliberately leaked some of the news in advance, so that the pope was prepared and was not overthrown, so it developed into a situation of division between the north and south. After all, for the nobles in the north, if these cardinals overthrow the pope and take control of the church, their situation will not change fundamentally from before."
"When the north and south are divided and the strength of the two sides is not much different, the strength of the nobles has become the most important weight on the scale, and they will no longer be deprived of life and death." Lucian followed Rhine's words and spoke.
Rhein smiled and shook his head: "No, the strength of the Northern Church is very different from that of the Southern Church, but how can the elven countries, dwarf countries, and countries that believe in other gods in the northwest of the Dark Mountains watch the magical creatures and remnant magicians in the Dark Mountains watch the Northern Church be defeated. After they joined this game, they formed a situation where the south attacked strongly and the north barely supported it."
"But this is different from the current situation? It seems that there is a balance of power now, and the northern fortresses have fallen." Lucian thought seriously, "So at that time, the church split again? The Kingdom of Holm supports the Magic Council?"
Rhine was slightly surprised: "To be able to associate this, Lucian, you are really good at learning and thinking. Yes, after seeing that the status and identity of the northern nobles have been greatly improved, the southern nobles also have ideas about their own situation, most of them choose to negotiate with the church, while a small part has secretly embarked on the road of cultivating magical forces, using their strength to fight against the church forces in their own kingdom, and they are balancing in the middle to fight for the right to speak."
"This small part is the nobles of the four kingdoms across the Stormstorm Strait, but they made a mistake, that is, they did not expect that an archmage named Douglas would actually make changes to the ancient magic system at this time, from simply imitating magical creatures to studying the laws of the operation of all things in nature. Under the leadership of Douglas, the strength of the Magic Council has grown geometrically, with powerful magicians and legendary magicians appearing in a steady stream. After integrating several major hidden magic organizations more than a hundred years ago, the Continental Magic Council has expanded into the second largest force in the entire world."
"This is a change that the nobles of Holm and other four kingdoms did not expect when they began to support them."
Lucian heard the familiar name: "Mr. Douglas? I know him." Lucian didn't ask if Douglas was still alive, because a magician as powerful as him must have countless ways to extend his life, and it is not a problem to live for thousands of years, such as Lucian's "Book of Astrology and Elements" recorded in the "Lich Transformation Ceremony" can be carried out after becoming a high-level magician, and once successful, the lifespan will be extended to at least 1,500 years.
"Mr. Douglas is one of the top ten powerhouses in this world, the first great arcanist, the chairman of the Continental Magic Council, and the founder of the "Arcane" journal." Even Rhine, a man who is extremely mysterious, has a faint awe when he mentions Douglas, "So now is a situation where several parties are balanced and the nobility benefits from it. Hehe, in the Kingdom of Holm, magicians are already a semi-public identity, and although a large part of the church's strength is concentrated there, it has also been suppressed very badly, and if it weren't for the help of the nobles, it would have been uprooted by the Magic Council."
Lucian roughly understood the current situation: "That's why the church allowed nobles of the rank of Grand Duke Vaorit to visit the Holm Kingdom, apparently hoping to completely pull the aristocratic power of the Holm Kingdom over. Hehe, Grand Duke Vaorit 'finished' well."
"The Grand Duke himself did not think this would happen, and the nobles of the western and southern countries of the mainland and the Holy Helz Empire were known as the most extreme and conservative pro-church sects, and you can imagine the sensation of marriage at that time. Although most of the nobles of the Kingdom of Holm understand the situation on the continent, they will definitely choose to be loyal to their lords, not because they have noble character, but because if the nobles cannot unite according to the most basic rules of allegiance to their lords, they will have long been swallowed up by the two huge forces of the Magic Council and the Church. Rhein laughed slightly sarcastically.
Then he made a downward gesture: "Okay, there is no need to know about complicated things with your strength, what you need to think about now is how to get to the Holm Kingdom. The Storm Channel has always been blocked by the church, and only nobles and merchants with permission can go there, and the inspections are extremely strict. Of course, you can also cross the area of the confrontation between the North and the South, and then cross the Shahran Empire to the Northland, and from the Northland to the north of the Kingdom of Holm, the only problem is that the area of the Church Confrontation is more tightly sealed than the Storm Strait, and even nobles and big merchants cannot pass through."
"The Magic Council should have its own path, right?" Lucian thought of the gentleman from the Magic Council headquarters.
Lucian didn't dare to help Natasha with this kind of thing, even if her grandfather was the king of the Holm Kingdom. Because it was the power of the Magic Council that hindered her parents back then, and she was a devout believer in the Truth Religion, telling her her identity as a magic apprentice, coupled with her previous deception, she was likely to be killed directly.
Rhine nodded: "There is a liaison of the Magic Council in the Pearl of the Sea 'Sturk', but I don't know who it is, you need to find it yourself, and even so, it is dangerous to steal the blockade, so I said that you can only go there after you become an official magician and have good self-protection skills. Of course, if you can become an intermediate sorcerer and learn flying, don't worry about that. The sea is so wide that the Church can block ships but cannot completely block the sky."
"Becoming an official magician...... Lucian didn't know if the church continued to observe him, but he would definitely not use his status as a "professor" to contact people in the magic circle again. Therefore, to become an official magician as soon as possible, the best way is to go to the ruins and understand the time difference between the magic lock of the "Grand Cross Rack" and enter first, but could that be a trap for the church?
Rhine put his hands behind his back: "You can become a high-level magic apprentice in two days at most, and with your talent, as long as you have the cooperation of ordinary silver moon potions, you have a great hope of becoming a formal magician. So, weigh the danger for yourself, and I'll tell you at most that the church has been struggling to divide its manpower lately."
"Really?" Lucian looked at Rhein with a slight surprise, as if he knew something. If what he said is true, then he should really take a certain risk to try the ruins, "By the way, Mr. Rhine, I don't know what your identity is?"
Rhein laughed: "I'm just an observer, a person who likes to observe interesting things. Of course, the possibility of ending up in person cannot be ruled out, as long as the matter is interesting enough."
After answering Lucian vaguely, Rhine glanced at him meaningfully, then quickened his pace and melted directly into the darkness.
Lucian stood there and watched Rhine's back disappear, his heart was calm, and after knowing the news of the Magic Council headquarters, his whole person suddenly felt a lot more relaxed, as if the boulder that had been weighing on his heart for a long time had been removed.
In this indescribable ease, Lucian suddenly felt that his soul swelled a little and began to impact that boundary.
(End of this chapter)