Harbos led Furan into a small windowless room. He locked the door and cast a Spell on it to ensure their conversation wouldn't be overheard by others before speaking.
"First, I want to clarify... You should have heard it from Elan, right? Our Furnace Casting School's current promotion method is not yet perfect."
Furan had some questions and asked, "Then how can we make this promotion method perfect?"
Harbos placed his hands on the table and said,
"Actually, before the Schools were even established, the promotion methods of that time were public. However, they were extremely difficult to achieve, resulting in very few mages."
"It was because certain people noticed how to lower the promotion requirements for Formal Mages but wanted to profit from it that the various Schools came into being."
"I myself was promoted through the method of the Elemental School, but that method cannot be used by anyone who isn't part of the Elemental School."
"Therefore, you must develop a promotion method based on what I tell you in order to be promoted to a Formal Mage."
"But don't worry, it'll be simple for you; it won't be very hard."
As he spoke, Harbos pulled out a piece of golden paper from under the table and handed it to Furan.
"This is the original apprentice promotion method. I only obtained it after I established the School."
Furan had long wanted to see how a Formal Mage was promoted. After taking the paper, she carefully read the contents.
[Ancient Formal Mage Promotion Method: Fulfill the following three requirements to be promoted.
1. Your Spiritual Power far exceeds that of ordinary people.
2. Create or modify a Spell.
3. Prove that your spellcasting level surpasses your peers.]
While Furan looked at the contents on the paper, Harbos began to explain:
"A long time ago, the first requirement filtered out many people because the Spiritual Power requirement was extremely high and very difficult to reach."
"So back then, the number of apprentices was only one percent of what it is now. Only those with extremely high Spiritual Power were chosen, and even then, they had to take special potions to temporarily boost their Spiritual Power to meet the requirements."
"The second requirement was the hardest. It required you to create or modify a Spell. But what kind of deep understanding of Spells could an apprentice possibly have?"
"So this single requirement blocked many apprentices for their entire lives."
"The third requirement, on the other hand, was the easiest. It says you must surpass your peers in spellcasting. You might find it familiar—yes, it's the Apprentice Assessment."
"This requirement must be met through combat. It's not something you can achieve just through hard practice; it must be demonstrated."
At the same time, a prompt popped up on Furan's panel.
[Class: Mage (One Star)
Description: A class that utilizes Spells. They can cast powerful Spells as well as Spells that repair the broken... Completion Condition: Complete three trials.]
Furan was excited yet somewhat concerned. She had finally found the method to promote to a Formal Mage, but there were still problems to overcome.
Furan suppressed her emotions and continued listening to Harbos's explanation.
"Your situation is a bit different. Your Spiritual Power is the highest I've seen in an apprentice. Even in ancient times, your Spiritual Power would be very prominent among apprentices."
"But your Spiritual Power is still a bit short of the standard, and it might be difficult for you to increase it further now."
"And those special potions were banned by the Alliance because their side effects were too high, so don't count on completing the first requirement that way."
"As long as you rank in the assessment, there's a chance to complete the third requirement, though the higher ranks have a better chance."
"Once you complete a requirement, you'll naturally be able to feel if it's done. It's very easy to judge."
Furan was deep in thought. Her current Spiritual Power was still a bit short—but by how much? It wasn't impossible for her to add two more classes to supplement her Spiritual Power and meet the first trial.
Then, if she dominated the assessment like a shark in a goldfish pond, wouldn't she be able to clear the third trial as well?
Put that way, she really wasn't far from becoming a mage. She could almost promote with just a little bit of effort.
Harbos continued,
"The methods of the various Schools involve keeping the third requirement while replacing the first two with alternative methods. This allows them to bypass the difficulty of the first two."
"I'll first tell you the method to replace the first requirement. The methods of the various Schools differ, but they are all replaced by knowledge unique to that School."
"I can tell you that the Elemental School's method involves their unique understanding of elemental characteristics—for example, how to most quickly accelerate the condensation of fire elements or how to increase the density of fire element gathering. These are all unique pieces of knowledge."
"You already possess knowledge of the mechanical field, which can be used to fill in our apprentice-level knowledge. If you write this knowledge into a book, you can be considered to have completed it."
"If there's anything you don't understand about this, you can come and ask me."
Harbos felt very lucky to have met Furan. In his view, the steam engine Furan made could serve as the content for the apprentice stage. It could be said to directly solve the difficulty of his School lacking apprentice-level knowledge.
Furan thought of the items in the Point Exchange Hall. Many types of knowledge could be exchanged there as well.
"Is the knowledge in that Point Exchange Hall from the various Schools?"
"Yes. There's some relatively basic knowledge from each School there. Since they've been established for a long time, they naturally put those things out there. Besides, the knowledge you truly need isn't necessarily in there."
Furan understood. The various Schools had been established for so long that naturally many people had written books for them. This resulted in many books that didn't hit the key points. Since it wasn't necessary for the Schools to keep them, they just put them outside.
"The second requirement is the Spell system established by each School. Generally, they only open up the truly important things to apprentices after they've achieved a rank."
"The number of Spells under each School's Spell system varies. Some require only two Spells, while others might require four."
Harbos paused for a moment before continuing,
"You just need to create one Spell based on the steam engine you made. We'll leave the development of the Furnace Casting School's Spell system to future generations."
He knew Furan could easily create a Spell based on the steam engine, which would complete the second trial. There was no need to create a complete Spell system.
At the same time, Harbos was very confident. He believed that once this first step from zero to one was taken, the rest would be much simpler.
"However, if you don't have a complete Spell system, you likely won't be able to obtain the related Specialty when you promote to a Formal Mage."
"This Specialty is the key to learning higher-tier Spells and further promotion. Of course, since you don't have any higher-tier Spells right now, it doesn't matter much whether you get this Specialty or not."
Furan listened to all this and fell into thought.
As someone with a panel, she still wanted to establish a Spell system. That way, she might be able to obtain a Trait on her panel.
Besides, didn't she have knowledge from Earth as inspiration? Why should she fear being unable to create Spells?
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