Ahead stood
To the left of the small plaza was a cluster of white stone buildings, originally a city defense outpost, which now served as the base for the Academy Enforcement Department and the Academy Administration Office. To the right was a sparse woodland, a prized spot for morning exercisers and, when the twin moons hung high, a romantic haven for couples pouring out their hearts to one another.
For
As a comprehensive academy established one hundred and fifty-three years ago, Dawn Academy was not particularly strong in the fields of
Dawn Academy was most renowned for accounting, relic studies and archaeology, linguistics, pharmacology, and magical beast knowledge. Additionally, the emerging arts of painting and musical composition were also widely celebrated.
To cultivate knowledgeable and refined talents, Dawn Academy always required its students, in addition to mastering Combat Force and swordsmanship, to systematically study two specialized subjects and appreciate one form of art before they could graduate. As for when a student met the graduation requirements, the academy was indifferent — as long as tuition was paid, studying for ten or even eight years was perfectly acceptable.
Furthermore, Dawn Academy offered dozens of other specialized subjects, including architecture, decorative sculpture, urban administration, business management, knight training, equestrian instruction, shipbuilding technology, forging crafts, and leather tanning. As long as there were students enrolled, classes could be opened. They even specifically offered elegant flower appreciation classes and gourmet tasting classes for the children of nobility.
Although these subjects were not Dawn Academy's strong suit, the professors teaching them were still highly competent. Even though these courses taught very common and basic knowledge, if a student believed that merely learning the basics and mastering simple operations would allow them to graduate, they were mistaken. Without putting in the effort to study diligently and delve deeply, one could not obtain the certification for the specialized subject, making graduation extremely difficult.
Lorist's two specialized subjects were accounting and knight training. These had been chosen by his uncle's family trading company's steward, who had brought him to Dawn Academy a decade ago. His uncle believed that the benefit of learning accounting was that even if the family's heir was not young Locke, he could, by mastering accounting, take over the family trading business, thus ensuring the lineage continued.
As for knight training, it was because the
Leaving home meant he could not receive the family's traditional knight training. At the time, Lorist's uncle believed young Locke should not miss out on this aspect of education, so he had specified this specialized course in knight training.
What Lorist's uncle hadn't anticipated was that less than a month after he and young Locke parted ways, his dear nephew, due to his arrogant attitude and disdainful gaze, had clashed with other students, sustaining severe injuries that left him bedridden and barely clinging to life — until a soul from another world seized his body.
Consequently, accounting, originally deemed incredibly difficult, was completed with ease, earning sufficient credits in just a single year. This was because in the eyes of the current Lorist, accounting was merely a crude method of calculation, equivalent to elementary school math from fourth or fifth grade in his previous life — very simple.
Knight training, on the other hand, gave Lorist a taste of real suffering. If not for the original body's good foundation, the three-year knight training program would have been truly hard to endure. Starting from learning to be a squire, the multitude of trivial tasks of serving a knight occupied most of each day, in addition to maintaining armor and caring for horses. Furthermore, he had to complete his own physical conditioning and knight skill training. It was only after much perseverance that he finally got through the three years and obtained his certification.
Unlike other students who completed the training to become a Knight Aspirant, Lorist could only become a Squire. The reason was Combat Force — at the
It was all due to the original body's inherited high-tier Blazing Combat Force. Inheriting the memories, he discovered that the original owner of the body, Norton Lorist, nicknamed young Locke, had a handwritten copy of the Blazing Combat Force manual right beside him. However, this manual only detailed Combat Force cultivation up to the three-star Black Iron stage, lacking the subsequent cultivation methods for the Silver and Gold tiers. At that time, this body's Combat Force had just awakened, with a strength of one-star Bronze, so it would still take several years to cultivate to three-star Black Iron, hence there was no immediate rush.
Combat Force cultivation was vastly different from the qigong practice of his previous life. The ancestral Golden Water Technique of his previous life had been forced upon him by his grandfather when he was seven or eight to lay a foundation. In contrast, Combat Force cultivation focused on the bloodline, typically beginning with Combat Force enlightenment and awakening around the age of fifteen or sixteen. One was too young, underdeveloped, and their vital energy insufficient to sense the magical beast factors in the blood.
They lacked reliable close-quarters defense and the armed forces to suppress the natives of the sub-plane worlds. Thus, the mages returned to Galentea to contemplate how to solve this problem.
Initially, the solution devised by the mages was to tame magical beasts. However, they quickly realized this was not a good choice, as the intelligence of magical beasts made it difficult for them to understand the mages' intentions. Using magical beasts to solve problems ultimately resulted in nothing but bloody chaos.
At this time, a genius mage drew inspiration from the berserker talents of the half-orcs. He injected the blood of some powerful magical beasts into the blood of humans who could not cultivate magic, causing them to merge. Then, utilizing a magic array for activation, Combat Force appeared.
The appearance of Combat Force changed the human world. Mastering the methods of Combat Force cultivation allowed those without magical talent, previously considered burdens, to face fierce magical beasts independently without a mage's protection and achieve victory. This not only lessened the mages' responsibilities, granting them more time to research their interests, but also provided the mages with a reliable close-guard fighting force.
Subsequently, the blood of all manner of magical beasts was injected into human bodies, and Combat Force of various attributes and characteristics appeared in the human world. At that time, the activation and cultivation of Combat Force were conducted within magic arrays. The mages established the classifications for the various tiers of Combat Force strength. With their research and assistance, various magic arrays capable of accelerating Combat Force cultivation advanced practitioners by leaps and bounds, with incredibly rapid progress. For a time, Sword Gods were commonplace, and Sword Saints were not even worth mentioning.
That was humanity's most brilliant and glorious millennium. Countless resources and treasures from plane after plane were transported back to Galentea in an endless stream. At that time, elves played harps and sang for humanity, halflings cooked gourmet feasts for humanity, dwarves constructed palaces for humanity, dragon races became humanity's mounts, minotaurs farmed for humanity, and half-orcs herded for humanity. All the alien races bowed in submission beneath humanity's feet.
All the beauty came to an end at that moment, which was both the cause and the endpoint. Some mages exploring sub-plane worlds within the Void discovered an abandoned divine kingdom plane. The mages then realized that the combined resources of countless sub-plane worlds were not as abundant as a single abandoned divine kingdom plane. Here, there were higher-grade magical materials, the purest mineral resources, and the legendary secret of immortality.
All mages turned their gaze toward the divine kingdoms. They assembled the most powerful mage corps and mobilized the colossal Sword God Legion, launching an invasion into the realm of the gods.
The mages waged war against the deities — a war that lasted a thousand years. Countless divine kingdoms were annihilated, and innumerable mages and Sword Gods and Sword Saints fell on blood-soaked battlefields. This brutal war had no victors — only two losers who perished together. Just as the epic "Lament of the Gods" sang, blood and fire dyed the horizon red, stars fell like meteors, human greed triggered cataclysmic upheavals between heaven and earth, and darkness ruled the entire world…
In truth, the real upheaval was that the magical elements once omnipresent throughout the world were gradually fading, and the mighty mages were losing the very source of their power. No one could clearly understand what was happening — only that the Day of the End of Magic was fast approaching.
When the mages lost the last vestiges of their power, the Sword Gods and Sword Saints, long suppressed beneath them, believed their era had finally arrived. The Galentea that followed would be a world ruled by Combat Force. Driven by ambition, they turned upon one another. Without the mages to restrain them, they slaughtered, plundered, and destroyed without inhibition. They loathed the mages who had once ruled over them, and every magnificent structure built during the age of magical civilization became a target for their fury. They tore it down, set it ablaze, and were not satisfied until everything lay in ruins.
They established their own kingdoms and territories, ruling from on high and basking in earthly reverence. Yet they forgot that without the aid of mages and magical formations, they had no right to possess any of it. So when they grew old and death drew near, they discovered that their descendants lacked the ability to inherit their legacy — they could not awaken the latent power hidden in their bloodline to cultivate Combat Force. Their children and grandchildren remained ordinary humans.
When the last Sword Saint drew his final breath, the darkest millennium in the history of Galentea's humanity began. Stripped of their ultimate martial force, humans stood no chance against savage magical beasts and could only serve as tender morsels in their jaws. They could do nothing but flee from place to place, clinging to wretched survival.
Legend holds that during that dark millennium, humanity's population was reduced by a full two-thirds.
One day, a human warrior encountered a ferocious magical beast while out hunting. At the moment between life and death, he suddenly awakened the dormant power within his bloodline and activated Combat Force. With that freshly awakened Combat Force alone, he slew the beast. Most fortuitously, the tribe he belonged to still preserved the secret manual of Combat Force cultivation passed down from their ancestors.
Just as no night, no matter how long, can last forever before dawn, this warrior's Combat Force awakening shone like a ray of morning light, bringing new hope to the humans of Galentea. The surviving humans banded together, gathering every Combat Force cultivation manual they could find, and began researching the methods of awakening Combat Force.
During the long days of fighting magical beasts in a struggle for survival, humanity gradually came to understand Combat Force and began mastering its initiation and awakening. There were no more mages or magical formations to help humans learn Combat Force, and most of the secret manuals left by their ancestors were no longer usable. Humans could only learn through combat, gleaning lessons from every defeat. On the path of studying Combat Force, humanity groped forward step by step, each stride made with extraordinary firmness.
Threats, ironically, became the very objects of humanity's hunt.
With external dangers removed, the once-unified humans fractured once again. Tribes, beliefs, and the pursuit of profit drove them into endless wars. Flames of conflict spread for centuries and ultimately gave rise to the present state of the Galentea Continent.
Historical scholars believe that the arrival of the End of Magic marked the point at which the once-great magical civilization had lost any foundation for revival. The magical elements had not vanished — they had been replaced by another form of primordial qi. And this qi could resonate with the magical beast factors inherited through the blood of human ancestors from generations past, thereby awakening Combat Force.
The more ancestors in a family line who had once become Sword Gods or Sword Saints, the easier it was for their descendants to awaken Combat Force — because those ancestors had fused with the blood of powerful magical beasts. Even after thousands of years, those magical beast factors hidden within the bloodstream remained the key that made their descendants more likely to awaken Combat Force than others.
Thus, many nobles began placing great importance on the inheritance of their family bloodlines, and in some cases, to ensure the purity of their lineage, they even forced their own children to marry one another.