Chapter 90
Hearing Rimuru's words, the commoner students, who had been staring bitterly at their desks, suddenly froze. They snapped their heads up, eyes wide with disbelief. Across the aisle, the aristocratic heirs arched their collective eyebrows, leaning forward in their seats.
They thought the Professor had just politely dodged a landmine. Instead, he had grabbed a red marker and circled it. He actually had an answer.
Whether they viewed his upcoming speech as a profound revelation or just entertaining heresy to gossip about later, the entire hall was hooked.
"I won't bore you by reciting the benefits of inheriting a Magic Crest. You all know them," Rimuru began, pacing slowly across the stage. "But I wonder if anyone has ever bothered to teach you its fatal flaw. A Crest is stabilized Mystery. And because it is stabilized... it locks your path in stone."
He tapped his own chest.
"Take my lineage, for example. The Tempest Crest is loaded with centuries of data on hydro-mancy, fluid manipulation, and techniques for animating liquids. It's incredibly potent. But honestly? Aside from the raw knowledge and the muscle memory it provides for basic water spells... I find the rest of the system incredibly unappetizing."
Rimuru paused, offering a wry, self-deprecating smile. "It just lacks a certain... artistic flair, you know?"
A few students let out hesitant chuckles. The majority, however, just stared at him with burning, unadulterated envy. To complain that a legendary Lord-tier Crest wasn't artistic enough was the ultimate first-world magus problem.
Rimuru knew exactly how privileged he sounded, but that was the point.
"To be perfectly blunt, the greatest benefit my Crest ever gave me was the exact thing that makes so many of you so angry. Status." Rimuru met the eyes of the commoner students. "Because of this Crest, the elite families acknowledge me. People respect me. And you look at me... with that burning envy."
"But if you strip away the politics and the prestige? If we look purely at the essence of a magus, the pursuit of Mystery and the Root? I vastly prefer using the spells and systems I created myself."
"Of course, I plan to engrave my own original formulas into the Crest so my eventual heir has more options."
Rimuru casually glanced toward the back row. Erol was slumped over her desk, fast asleep.
As if sensing her name being invoked, the little silver ahoge on top of her head snapped to attention. Erol jerked awake, blinking groggily and wiping a line of drool from her chin.
Eh? Did Teacher call me?!
"But let's be real," Rimuru laughed helplessly. "Erol's entire personality revolves around blowing things up. She's probably going to hate my delicate fluid dynamics."
Erol looked frantically left and right, saw everyone staring at her, and puffed out her little chest. "I love anything Teacher gives me!" she declared loudly, completely missing the context.
The class chuckled, the suffocating tension breaking.
"I'm getting off track," Rimuru smiled, waving a hand. "I'm not telling you that Magic Crests are useless. Even if you don't care about politics, the generational accumulation of knowledge is an undeniable advantage."
"What I am saying is this: the Crest's single greatest flaw, the locking of a magus's path, is precisely where you 'stray' magi hold the advantage. Your paths aren't calcified by centuries of tradition."
He stopped pacing. He planted his hands on the podium and leaned in, his golden eyes sweeping across the hall.
"Why does that matter? Because the era is shifting, kids. And it is shifting violently."
"The explosion of mundane science is accelerating the decay of Mystery. Anyone who has taken a basic Law & Policies elective knows the timeline. Human civilization used to advance in steps of millennia. Then it became centuries. Now? It's decades."
"The harnessing of steam. The mastery of electricity. Telegraphs, telephones, automobiles... Every single day, the 'miracles' of yesterday are mass-produced into the mundane tools of today. The supernatural is becoming normal."
Rimuru's voice dropped, carrying a chilling, heretical weight.
"To speak a bit of treason... tradition carries the very real risk of obsolescence."
Rimuru looked directly into Christina's wide eyes. "Right now, the divide between Modern Magecraft and Traditional Magecraft is just a philosophical debate. But what happens tomorrow?"
"What happens when human technology advances to the point where it is simply... more efficient than Magecraft?"
"That's... that's impossible," a noble student muttered from the front row, shaking his head.
Rimuru caught it immediately. He countered without missing a beat.
"We use mana to record text and transmit information. Why shouldn't electricity be able to do the same? Why not light?"
The student opened his mouth, then closed it, utterly stumped.
"We'll end the technological debate there," Rimuru smiled gently, dialing back the intensity. "My point is this: use your freedom. An unwritten path can lead to any domain. If you hit a brick wall in one field of Magecraft, you have the absolute liberty to pivot and invent another."
"The times forge the hero, and the hero shapes the times. You don't have a past to lean on. You only have the future."
"And I believe... that future belongs to you."
Silence.
Rimuru had expected arguments. He expected the aristocratic purists to stand up and shout him down for spouting anti-tradition blasphemy.
Instead, there was absolute, stunned silence. The sheer gravity of his words had completely paralyzed the lecture hall.
"So. Does that answer your question, Christina?"
Rimuru didn't wait for her to stammer out a reply. He casually held up a single finger, wagging it back and forth.
"Actually, hold on. I have one more thing to say. Consider this an airing of grievances regarding the overall attitude of this classroom lately."
"I've noticed a prevailing assumption here. There seems to be a consensus that first-generation magi, those who attempt to create their own lineages from scratch, are automatically classified as 'strays,' 'failures,' or 'trash.' That is fundamentally incorrect."
"I acknowledge that inheriting a Crest gives a magus a monumental head start. I acknowledge that the transfer of Crests is what keeps the magus world alive. But we cannot erase the contributions of self-taught, founding magi. We cannot deny their potential for success."
"I firmly believe that a hundred schools of thought contending with one another is the hallmark of a golden age. Therefore, I hold founders and innovators in the highest possible regard. Carving a new path out of the bedrock is excruciatingly difficult. But it is precisely becauseit is so difficult that those who dare to walk it are great."
Rimuru's gaze swept over the commoner side of the room. He saw dozens of students sitting with hunched shoulders, carrying the invisible, crushing weight of their inferior bloodlines.
"Many of you sitting in this room are effectively founders. A magus who inherits a single-generation Crest is, practically speaking, no different from someone starting from scratch."
"I've noticed the divide in this room for a while now. I'll say it plainly: you do not need to feel inferior. And you certainly do not need to aggressively reject the help of your peers just out of misplaced pride."
"In my classroom, I consider you all exceptional. You are fighting tooth and nail against a learning curve the rest of the world cannot even fathom."
Rimuru offered a warm, blindingly charismatic smile.
"This has nothing to do with raw power or pedigree. If you hit a wall in your research, I genuinely hope you will think of me, and allow me to help you."
"Because one day, when you are famous and wildly successful, I want you to be able to proudly say... 'Professor Rimuru taught me.'"
He gathered his notes, tapping the stack against the desk to straighten the edges.
"My apologies for turning today's lesson into a TED Talk. But look at the time."
Rimuru grabbed his coat.
"Class dismissed."
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