Pillar of Yita

”I have studied your Elf Alchemy, and I’ve also seen Rolin’s. I discovered that in essence, they are the same. They both use contemporary Alchemy to express the ancient Alchemy Array. After careful contemplation, the difference lies in the magic itself, doesn’t it?”

Fang Hong nodded. Alchemy was born in the Era of Aithelin, invented by the Numelin Elves. This is no secret — it’s mentioned in the first lesson on the basics of Alchemy during the overview of its history.

The original intention of Alchemy’s inception was simply another means to supplement forces during the cataclysm when the second Star of Calamity ’Verdant’ descended, aimed at combating the Dark Giant Dragon.

It is well known that the Numelin Elves excel at controlling extraordinary spells, but this doesn’t mean every Numelin Elf is a Great Arcanist (a term for spellcasters in the era of magic, roughly equivalent to today’s Archmage), much like how not every human renowned for Magic Guided Engineering is an Alchemist.

During that great war, the Great Arcanists, who were always on the frontline, were often the most easily depleted forces. The Numelin Elves are a long-lived race, but reproduction is not their forte, and among their limited population, the number of Great Arcanists was even fewer.

As the war progressed, it became increasingly difficult for the elves to bear the casualties caused by the war against the Dark Giant Dragon. Thus, the birth of Alchemy had an unavoidable reason.

The earliest Alchemy allowed the ’ordinary elves’ among the Numelin Elves to also have the opportunity to go to the battlefield to fight the Dark Giant Dragon. By the end of the war, Alchemy had gradually split into two paths — one aiming towards the high-end, seeking ways to supplement the high-end combat strength of the elves.

The other path was geared towards the masses, bringing humans, dwarves, and half-persons into this war which was closely tied to the destiny of the continent.

The former is known as Giant Construct technology, which later became the precursor to Dragon Knight technology. Its purpose was to universalize the extremely scarce high-end combat power among the Numelin Elves — the Sky Knights. And the main adversary of the Sky Knights in the war was the Dark Giant Dragon itself.

Therefore, with the emergence of the Dragon Knights, they were given this name. The Dark Giant Dragon had perished, and the Dragon Knight technology, after thousands of years of further advancement by mortal craftsmen, has now long become the pinnacle of strength in the human world.

It also bids farewell to the era it was born into and the historical destiny specially endowed upon it —

The latter path became the beginning of the Numelin Elves imparting magical skills to humans, dwarves, and half-persons. With Magic Guided Reactor technology passed down by the Great Elf Alchemist Ade, it was converted into a set of technical standards that are still in use today — the Magic Guided Reactor.

The invention of this piece of Alchemy even marks the starting point of the contemporary Eteliria Alchemy civilization a millennium later. Subsequently, both the Dragon Knight and Magic Guided Reactor technology routes, despite their different paths, have converged, becoming part of what mortals have gained today.

This is the history of Alchemy.

Yet the history of Numelin Elves’ Alchemy is different.

Ancient Alchemy was intended to allow more ’ordinary elves’ among the Numelin Elves to become expendable forces in the ’Dragon’s War.’ However, the so-called ’ordinary’ here is vastly different from common understanding. Magic is prevalent in Numelin Elf society; not every Numelin Elf is a Great Arcanist, but almost every Numelin Elf can wield magic, differing only in their proficiency.

So, the basis of ancient Alchemy was established on top of a magic civilization, which is the biggest difference between it and contemporary Alchemy.

Because it involved the use of magic, the Alchemists of the Numelin Elves could accomplish many operations that contemporary Alchemists could not, as they had spells for element gathering and material identification that could be synergistically used with Alchemy.

As non-magical human beings did not have these benefits, mortal craftsmen, to popularize Alchemy among humans, built an entirely new system over the centuries, setting aside many of the methods used by the Numelin Elves, creating contemporary Alchemy more suited to humans.

However, the Silver Tower’s research on ancient Alchemy did the opposite. Utilizing a more robust contemporary Alchemy system to simulate the spells used in ancient Alchemy with the Magic Guided Reactor, to reenact the ancient Alchemy of the Numelin Elves.

The debate over which is superior has no definitive answer.

The ’Alchemy Magic’ of the Numelin Elves is very efficient, but the Alchemy from their era was very rudimentary and couldn’t compare to today’s well-structured system that classifies thousands of types of contemporary Alchemy.

Yet when the two are combined, they can shine brightly, just as Fang Hong previously demonstrated in the Continental League. This is precisely what Linen meant — using contemporary Alchemy and the magic power provided by the Magic Guided Reactor, allowing humans, a ’non-magical species,’ to simulate ancient Alchemy that could only be mastered by ancient magical races.

But this is a clear matter; when teaching Dill, Cui Yu, and Eis, Linen was always observing. Fang Hong did not believe that someone who had experienced the Hall of Thousand Doors would not understand the constructs behind this. He also didn’t know why Linen raised this concept at this moment.