Chapter 229 : Chapter 229
Chapter 229. Changing His Mind (Part 1)
As for the paper on the new method for refining White Star Sand, the words written in its upper-right corner were:
【With the exception of one featured publication that did not place it on the cover, every featured publication gave it a major recommendation.】
Vernon also knew that papers that received only a single recommendation slot were probably no more valuable than the trash produced inside their Ocean Society.
So he lifted his eyes and directly picked up that paper, “On the Modification of a New White Star Sand Refining Device.”
He spread the loose pages out across the desk before him. With the mental power of a Fourth-Tier Mage, he could scan through almost an entire page in a single instant.
After giving it a rough read, he could very easily tell that the result presented in this paper was both simple and weighty.
The modification to the magical device described in the paper amounted to nothing more than adding a layer of Spirit-Repelling Copper casing to the device and sealing it properly.
And as for Spirit-Repelling Copper, Vernon had once been a member of the Necromancy School, so he naturally knew just how cheap the material was.
With only a rough estimate, he could already calculate that even if Spirit-Repelling Copper were added to ten magical devices, the total cost would probably still be less than one gold coin.
And for a magical device used to refine White Star Sand—something even apprentices could operate—it would cost at least more than a dozen gold coins.
It could be said that the result presented in this paper was outstanding, enough to qualify as next year’s winner of the Silver Alchemy Award.
“But this paper also comes from the Northern Society,” Vernon thought with amusement.
Although the principle behind this paper was extremely simple—so simple that even an apprentice who had only just learned spells could probably understand it—Vernon still saw another layer of value in it.
That value lay in the other party’s line of thought.
Within the paper’s own discussion, it explicitly stated that it was because the first author had learned a little necromantic magic at the Northern Society and had therefore sensed the existence of spirit forms during the experiment.
This could practically be described as the Necromancy School supplying the final missing link in the refinement of White Star Sand, while they had merely been the ones to notice it.
That set Vernon’s thoughts wandering. He knew that the knowledge of each school was guarded behind heavy barriers, and his own Modification School was no exception.
But if one used the knowledge of one school to investigate the problems of another school, could that perhaps become a new line of thinking?
He himself had come out of the Necromancy School. When he established the Modification School, he had borrowed no small amount from the Necromancy School’s contents.
And not only did he himself know that, even the people within the Necromancy School knew it perfectly well.
It was only that he had deliberately repackaged those things and expressed them in another form.
“Perhaps other schools can give me new inspiration and let me glimpse a path toward the Fifth Tier.” A bold idea surfaced in Vernon’s mind.
He was currently standing at the peak of the Fourth Tier. In terms of the rank system, he had almost nowhere left to advance. The next, and best, improvement available to him was to rise to the Fifth Tier.
But how could the Fifth Tier possibly be so easy to attain?
He had long been called the mage closest to becoming a Fifth-Tier Legend, yet he remained stuck at the very first stage, unable to move forward.
The Necromancy School, the school he had broken away from, once had a method for advancing to the Fifth Tier. But for various reasons, that method had ceased to work, and now the Necromancy School no longer had any path to the Fifth Tier at all.
As a result, after 【Soul of Death】 departed fifty years ago, the entire Necromancy School, lacking a Fifth-Tier figure to uphold it, saw its voice within the Alliance steadily weakened.
At the same time, that also created the soil in which his Modification School could grow, and was what allowed it to develop so smoothly.
“What am I thinking? Isn’t the Northern Society already the one place that enables knowledge to circulate among the different schools? But even if I joined it, it would only have low-tier content. They don’t even have the content of the various schools at the Third Tier.”
Vernon shook his head, dismissing the thought. He set the paper down and began looking through the others.
Just as Vernon had expected, although the other papers had some value, taken as a whole, they were merely passable. They were only worth a look, not even interesting enough to count as entertaining.
Still, being able to see the academic trash from other schools was, in itself, quite amusing to him.
In the past, aside from the Elemental School’s habit of regularly churning out worthless papers, when had he ever had the chance to see such fresh academic trash from other schools?
Not long after, he glanced over the trash in his hand and let out a light sigh, tossing the paper directly onto the floor.
The novelty of seeing that sort of garbage from other schools had already worn off. Now all he felt was mounting irritation.
The moment he skimmed the opening and saw a pile of empty, repetitive language, he already knew it was another one of those papers with only a minor result.
At this point, he could almost deliver a final judgment on the papers of the Northern Society: they were roughly the same as the papers produced within their own Society.
But overall, the papers of the Northern Society were still far superior to those of their Ocean Society.
This was not because that White Star Sand paper had raised the overall evaluation, nor because these papers seemed more “advanced” simply for belonging to other schools.
They were genuinely much better than the papers produced by their Ocean Society.
That was because, when writing papers at the Northern Society, one could continuously draw upon the content of other schools and analyze things through the perspective of a different school. That point alone was enough to place it above the Ocean Society.
Even though Vernon stood on the opposite side of the Northern Society, he still had to admit that allowing the contents of the various schools to fully circulate really was the correct approach.
Within the Ocean Society, whenever a mage submitted a paper, they had to strictly screen it to ensure there was no content from other schools mixed into it. Even hearsay content had to be removed.
There were even dedicated reviewers who examined them with magnifying glasses.
Many times, a result was clearly valid, yet simply because it “involved” content from another school, those reviewers would refuse to approve it.
Vernon himself knew all this, but he had no motivation to challenge the system laid down from the very founding of the Alliance. The price to be paid was simply too great.
Vernon continued reading through those papers, and before long, he reached Fulan’s paper, “A Mathematical Analysis of Fireball.”
When he saw that title, even his rapidly turning mind paused for a moment.
Fireball? That was far too old. What era was this? And someone was still researching it?
Still, that did pique his interest a little, because for a paper on Fireball to make it onto a featured publication, there had to be something unusual about it.
And then there was the phrase “mathematical analysis” in the title. He recognized the term. It seemed that over on the Alchemy School side, they often had to use something called mathematics.
“Could it be analyzing Fireball through an alchemical method?” With curiosity and anticipation, his gaze swept downward.