She continued with an uncertain tone. "There aren't really any direct institutions that can elevate you to the master mage rank. All senior mages must find their own path to the master realm, and it takes a decade to reach the master rank. There is so much I could do that I'm not entirely sure what I can do."
Cæ understood her dilemmas.
The Elendir Institute of Magic provided a very concrete path to the apprentice rank and the senior rank with streamlined resources, guidance, testing mechanisms, and virtually everything that one needed to get to these two respective ranks.
But above those ranks, the sheer difficulty of institutionalizing and systemizing growth was too difficult because people were extremely qualified at the senior stage, and only an archmage was qualified to guide seniors.
Naturally, no nation would waste the power of an archmage on simply tutoring seniors.
"That's why the path to the master rank and above is considered to be a path that one must forge," Cæ remarked with a knowing tone. "However, the parameters they test for qualifications for the master rank are the same as those of the previous ranks, aren't they?"
She nodded. "Mana-motive force and eidos mastery are measures of the two fundamental aspects of all magic, and their measure affects all forms of magic. There are certain thresholds you need to meet in both parameters for each rank, and they tend to be an order of magnitude higher than the previous rank, as I'm sure you know. It means you will have to be around ten times stronger than you were previously to get to each rank."
Cæ's eyes lit up with excitement, unlike anything Seliphaz had seen from him.
Even as she watched his otherwise impassive and intense expression grow illuminated with a profound sense of passion, she couldn't help but smile at his reactions.
"So, how do you plan to reach this stage of mastery, hm?" Cæ raised an eyebrow as his attention returned to Seliphaz with a pointed hint of interest. "I have heard that just grinding the Drive-Anchor Method and simply learning new runes doesn't get you there by itself."
"Training your mana-motive force and your eidos mastery by themselves does help, but you need to tap more into your own strengths once you start pursuing the higher ranks of magic," she replied, engrossed in thought. "Simply doing what you did as an apprentice will not get you to the master rank. I will need to find my own path to the master rank. And if I don't, I will most likely not make it."
The success rate of senior mages qualifying as masters was abysmally low, and only ten percent of senior mages around the world, on average, managed to break through to the senior rank. It was a truly difficult task to cultivate such extraordinary skill with magic, to be an entire order of magnitude higher than the previous rank.
Each rank served as a filter that filtered out many mages, leaving only the truly qualified to be treated as mages of a higher rank.
"I think for now…" she continued after some thought on the matter. "I will focus on Trinity Housings while slowly training my mana-motive force with the Drive-Anchor Method. Simultaneously, I will learn more runes in my magic and pursue even deeper paths within alchemy and master methods needed to create even more advanced substances and materials. This will help with Trinity Housings as a business, and it will help my path to the master rank."
Cæ nodded appreciatively.
He had been quietly wondering whether she would take a step back from the business in order to pursue the master rank, but her words affirmed that she had no intentions of stepping back from the business.
This was good because finding a new structural engineer and an alchemist with a special slant towards non-magical engineering was going to be very difficult. Thankfully, Seliphaz had already fallen in love with the company and what it was trying to do. She would never bring herself to abandon it unless she needed to.
"Besides, reaching the master rank isn't extremely important to me," she smiled lightly. "I don't want to become a master for the sake of becoming a master. So, as long as I'm able to do good in the world through Trinity Housings and help my parents retire in comfort, I will be very satisfied with what I have achieved."
She didn't harbor extremely bold ambition.
Some might argue that she was wasting her talent, given that she was a student accepted into the Elendir Institute of Magic of all places. However, she didn't pay any mind to such words. After all, she had heard them many times when she chose to pursue non-magical engineering.
"W-What about you?" she shook her head with a flustered expression as her attention returned to him with interest. "Do you have ambitions to reach a particular rank? I feel like, based on your earlier reactions, you would say you want to become an archmag—"
"Magus."
Cæ's correction was sharp and firm.
Her eyebrows rose with surprise. "…I-I didn't expect that."
The rank of magus was an exalted rank that very few mages around the world had the skill to reach.
They were regarded as gods in human form, to whom the very fabric of reality bent.
Such an absurdly microscopic proportion of people reached the supreme rank of magic that harboring it as a goal was almost laughable.
And yet, one look into the determined severity in Cæ's eyes told Seliphaz that he was dead serious about achieving the goal.
"…You are very ambitious," she murmured with an amazed tone. "If your goal is to become magus, then it's not shocking anymore that you want to master all the fields of magic."
Cæ shrugged lightly. "I didn't say it would be easy."
She smiled with an awed expression and a hint of curiosity in her eyes. "Why do you want to become a magus?"
Cæ paused as the question put him on the spot.
He couldn't just tell that he wanted to destroy the existing world order, and mastery of magic was an important tool and weapon in achieving that very objective.
"What can I say?" he stirred where he sat, taking a sip from his cochil beverage. "I love magic too much to allow any of it to be out of my reach, including magus-level magic."
This was also the truth, so it served as an honest shield from the more dangerous and controversial truth within him.
"You truly are passionate about magic," Seliphaz noted with an endearing smile. "Well, when you do become magus, don't forget me, Feidin and Trinity Housings, ok?"
A sincere smile cracked at the edge of his mouth. "I would never forget any of you, no matter what. Trinity Housings is my first company, and it will always hold a special place in my heart."
His words were sweet, but Seliphaz couldn't help but hone in on something in between his lines.
"You say that as if you intend to start many companies," she couldn't help but remark with a quizzical expression. "I know you said that you were a businessman and that creativity and diversity were important to you, but how many companies do you intend to start?"
It was a good question.
"…I didn't particularly have a number in mind," Cæ remarked as he fell into thought regarding the question that she had asked him. "Several, many, dozens, maybe even hundreds."
Her eyes widened with surprise at his words. "…What?!"
"What?" Cæ raised an eyebrow, gazing at her with a puzzled expression.
She simply gazed at him with furrowed eyebrows, trying to discern any humor in his tone.
However, Cæ was not a man who joked.
"…You intend to start dozens or hundreds of business ventures?" She stared at him with a dumbfounded face. "Is that even physically or humanly possible? Has anyone actually achieved that in the history of humanity?"
Her skepticism was entirely valid and in place, so he didn't take any offense at her pronounced disbelief.
This particular goal seemed to shock her even more than the ambition of becoming a magus.
Of course, that didn't mean starting hundreds of business ventures was harder than becoming a magus. The latter was unfathomably difficult and was the single greatest achievement that a human could make in the modern era.
However, it was something that the most zealous and driven of mages were prone to aiming for, and Cæ did seem to fall in that category with how much of a workaholic he was, so it was more understandable.
However, the goal of wanting to potentially create hundreds of commercial ventures was not only absurdly difficult, if it was to have any degree of meaningful success, but also incredibly incomprehensible.
"…Why do you harbor such a bizarre goal?" Seliphaz couldn't help but blurt out the follow-up, staring at him with confusion and curiosity.
Cæ thought about the question for a moment, stirring where he sat as he took a sip of his cochil drink.
Once more, he was constrained by the fact that he couldn't reveal his ultimate ambition.
He just couldn't.
Unfortunately, it had become the center of who he was, and everything he did eventually wound itself back to his ultimate ambition. Thus, the deeper she inquired into him and why he did what he did, the more she touched on something that he simply couldn't divulge to her.
"I like business," Cæ remarked with another truth. "I may not have the kind of emotional bond with Trinity Housings that old man Leland has with Marshall's Manufacturing, but I will say that I enjoy the business development and business strategizing. It's very fun and it allows me to exercise my creativity in these fields."
He saw potential where others didn't.
It was one of the reasons he realized the sheer potential in the slums, where everybody else merely saw a wasteland of the impoverished.
"…I see," her tone was a little lost in disbelief as she simply heaved a soft sigh of amazement. "I don't think I have ever met anybody as ambitious as you in my entire life. You want to become a magus and achieve such a difficult goal regarding your commercial pursuits? That's truly unbelievable."
It had long become normalized for Cæ, making him forget just how absurdly nonsensical his objectives were when he actually put some of them into words. And even the ones that he told her were still more realistic and achievable than his true ultimate objective, which they were merely in service of.
RUMBLE!
Heavy thunder broke him out of his thoughts, breaking him out of his thoughts as he directed a pointed sweeping glance out of the window as it began raining heavily across the entirety of Colohen City.
At this point in time, Cæ could only imagine just how much the people of the slums were in for a punishment. He could also imagine just how grateful those who had managed to get their hands on a haven unit were. Their factory back at headquarters had chugged out several more batches to fulfill some of the growing demand for the haven units by now, but it was still ultimately a drop of water in the bucket.
"Thankfully, our partnership with Marshall's Manufacturing will ameliorate our pressing need for production and manufacturing," Seliphaz remarked with a hopeful tone. "We should eventually be able to supply everybody who needs a haven with one."
Cæ nodded as his gaze returned to the storm that brewed outside. "We will contract with as many contract manufacturers as needed to ensure that we have achieved market saturation. For now, however, we're stuck here."
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