It truly was an impressive sight.
Adam's eyes could not take in the whole of the port city at once, but the docks alone were staggering enough.
In practical application, magitech had utterly surpassed Earth. The existence of ether, mana, and "mystic-side" energy made turning a theory into a physical object a very simple matter.
Every "machine" working on the docks had left far behind the range of conventional power that Adam knew; in other words, his present knowledge gave him no way to understand their principles.
A mechanical arm, hovering in empty air, gripped the hull precisely and locked the ship firmly into a "slot" in the dock. Passages of some unknown substance appeared beneath everyone's feet; the Mages gestured for the apprentices to step onto them, and then the passages began to flow, carrying them all up onto the dockside.
Next came a silver torrent — with the naked eye one could not tell whether it was a single body or a swarm; only after Adam spread out his spiritual power did he dimly observe that it was a countless mass of alchemical products resembling "nanobots." They enveloped the Mordo Academy in an instant and vanished again at the same speed. Adam found that the grime and wear from the long voyage had been completely repaired, and the whole ship looked brand new.
Then the ship, by some unknown means, "merged" into the dock and disappeared.
The same thing kept happening elsewhere in the port. The apprentices even saw far larger and more wondrous ships appear, and not only on the sea — from time to time flying craft docked in the sky as well.
No runway needed, no noise, no jolting; the craft took off and landed as smoothly as that.
The Mages paid no attention to the apprentices' wonder. Such scenes had long since become commonplace to them. This was the first step by which all the "natives" from the little islands overseas came to know the advanced nature of the Mage World.
"So this is the Mage World? A world like this is simply... simply..." William murmured to himself. On the island where he was born, Southern Seaport City had been the most developed city, and yet it had still been bound by primitive productive forces; he could not imagine that on the other side of the sea, humans lived like this.
"Simply unbelievable. No wonder I'd never met a single Mage before, not even a Mage apprentice. If I had seen all this, I don't think I could ever go back to my old life." Ophelia sighed to herself. She had grown up in the Northland and had seen even less than William, so the shock struck her even harder.
Boundless contentment rose in Adam's heart. To come to a world like this, to touch a civilization this advanced, to have the chance to explore the unknown, and not to spend the rest of my life in loneliness — it is simply wonderful.
After they had waited quietly on the dock for a while, a "car" drove up. It was not a car in any form Adam knew: no wheels, no exhaust pipes. It came gliding along, hovering low, and stopped steadily before the Mages.
The door opened, and a driver in a black uniform bowed respectfully to the Mages. "Honored Mage lords, welcome back to the Mage Continent. Clearance to use the teleportation formation has already been applied for; it will activate on time in two hours."
Mage Blake nodded to him, then said to the apprentices, "Unfortunately there is no time this trip for you to tour Karachi Port. Apprentices of your intake have already reached the academy; we need to hurry."
The apprentices naturally did not dare object, and said in unison, "Your will, honored Mage Blake."
Everyone filed in. The space inside the car was far larger than it had looked from outside, and Adam could not help marveling — can even a branch of knowledge like space be extended to civilian use?
But in a world this developed, there could still be a barbaric way of fighting like academy war? Adam kept the question to himself; he would soon be setting out on his road, and the basic information about the Mage World would soon be within his grasp.
In the car, Cristel, bursting with curiosity, asked the driver, "Sir, may I ask, this thing we're riding in..." Her whole concept of transport consisted of animal-drawn carts and ships; she did not know what to call it.
The driver was easy to talk to; at her words he explained mildly, "Realm-Standard Hovercar. That is its name. It comes from the creation of a great Mage."
"That's amazing!" Cristel expressed her wonder plainly; she truly could not think of any other word.
The driver said nothing more. Facing these apprentices from a "backwater island," he felt a faint thread of superiority in his heart — something along the lines of, I may have no Mage aptitude, but I still get to enjoy what the Mages have built.
From outside, the Realm-Standard Hovercar looked sealed, but the people sitting inside could see the outside world clearly.
Adam studied everything along the road carefully. The buildings were high-rise structures, each an unbroken whole towering into the clouds, with flowing light playing across their surfaces, but they were not densely packed; between them lay great stretches of empty ground, and lane-like facilities were laid out in orderly fashion. Countless hovercars traveled through the lower and middle levels, while the higher levels were utterly empty. Adam guessed those were corridors reserved for transcendents to fly through.
There were not many pedestrians on the ground, but their way of walking was most unusual — after all, living in such an inconceivable, enormous city, getting anywhere by ordinary walking would take a very, very long time, so most of them traveled by blood-qi eruption. Now and then someone used a power Adam could not identify; those were probably Mage apprentices.
As expected, the ordinary people native to the Mage Continent all possessed the strength of knight rank.
Along the way Adam saw at least three fights — knights battling each other, even duels of magic — yet no one went to stop them, and enforcers or the like never appeared at all. Everyone took combat as a matter of course.
Pointing at the scene of a fight they had just passed, Adam asked the driver in puzzlement, "Does no one stop them?"
The driver said flatly, "Quite ordinary business. At least a dozen people die in duels in Karachi Port every day. So long as they apply in advance and promise to compensate for any public facilities destroyed in the duel, the Mage Council permits disputes to be settled that way."
Adam had a flash of understanding. The "Mage Council" was probably the ruling body of the Mage Plane. In a world where individual power so obviously transcended the norm, the kind of laws Earth had made for ordinary people clearly could not be easily enforced; and the Mages, it seemed, were unwilling to spend their time maintaining balance and dispensing justice. That something like the "judicial duel" the ancient Germanic peoples of Earth had invented should appear here was only natural, wasn't it?
What was this, then? Barbarism inside civilization? Or a civilization held up by barbarism?
The driver asked in surprise, "Don't they allow duels on the backwater island? Then how do you settle disputes?"
Quentin snorted with laughter. "Duels — only nobles can call for a duel—" He stopped there. Adam was a commoner, true, but so were Randy and Cristel; it would not do to keep going.
That was enough for the driver to understand, however. He said nothing about their commoner status; instead he said, "On the Mage Continent there are no nobles, only mortals and Mages. The only limit on dueling is that a Mage may not challenge a mortal." He paused, then went on: "Offending a Mage is a capital crime. Of course, no mortal is that stupid."
The rest of the ride passed in silence, and they soon reached their destination.
The teleportation formation stood inside a strange building full of both scientific and mystic-side character. Adam could find no words to describe its appearance, because it seemed to be changing at every moment.
A visual deception caused by spacetime interference? That was all Adam could deduce. Everything he had seen and heard since arriving had gone beyond his established understanding; the fragmentary knowledge he had brought from Earth seemed to have little use left.
The hovercar left on its own. Led by the Mages, Adam and the others walked into the building. It looked lively inside, people going in and out at every moment; their distinctive energy fields interwove with one another, making all the apprentices feel extreme discomfort.
It was a kind of helplessness in the face of higher-order life.
A Mage on his own could mostly restrain his own field perfectly — a means of avoiding wasteful energy expenditure, and no doubt also a protection for mortals. But when multiple Mages existed in one space, or a lower Mage faced a higher one, their fields would spread out on their own. This was probably something like a unique proof of identity and of rank.
After entering the building, the four Mages of Mordo Academy also seemed somewhat humble, stopping now and then to bow their heads in salute to high-ranking Mages passing by. The apprentices were even more trembling and careful, for fear that some action might offend a Mage lord and bring down utter ruin.
As they went deeper, Mage Blake lowered his voice and said, "All teleportation formations belong to the Second Elemental Spire; they are the holdings of the great True Spirit Archmage Randolph. You must remain sufficiently humble. Shortly we will meet a Spire Mage — remember, do not speak."
This was the first time Mage Blake had seriously demanded something, and no one dared object. The consequence of disrespect was certain death, and no one wanted to die.
After turning a corner and passing through a curtain of light, they finally saw the teleportation formation — a regular figure composed entirely of runes, each one holding intense mana. It seemed to float before their eyes, yet it appeared illusory and untouchable; ether from the void poured ceaselessly into the runes. Facing this magic formation, everyone's soul trembled, and Adam was quite certain that a burst from any single rune would be enough to destroy every apprentice present hundreds of times over.
The Mage presiding over the magic formation was one whose features could not be seen clearly; like the formation itself, he seemed to stand between reality and illusion. "The Mordo Elemental Tower, is that right?"
After the four Mages bowed, Mage Blake said respectfully, "Yes, honored Spire Mage," and produced a whole ether crystal from somewhere, handing it to the Spire Mage.