Mage? Spell Engineer!

Final words \u0026 Happy Lantern Festival!

The longest volume so far, "Kingdom Turmoil", is finally over!

This chapter mainly tells how the Holy Kingdom entered chaos step by step and had to make major changes to save itself. In the last part, I wrote about a great uprising similar to what happened in France at the end of the 18th century in our world.

To avoid censorship, I used synonyms instead. I hope this content will be mainly fantasy, supplemented by historical sports. If we use an analogy, this roll is a "dumpling stuffed with chives and meat", the supernatural element of magic is meat, and the historical process is leeks. It can't work without meat, but without leeks, it wouldn't be the same. Unfortunately, river crabs don't like eating "leeks", so I can only "wrap the two elements in the dumpling skin" together, and serve the "dumplings" with "thin skin and big filling" to the book friends as much as possible.

But I also urge everyone not to get upset when eating dumplings stuffed with chives. For example, when I described "the streets were blocked by piles of sandbags and private houses became outposts," it would be great if book friends knew it was "Jie Lei". If I wrote If it comes out or appears too much in the comments, it is likely to trigger the moderation mechanism.

I’m not being alarmist. One of my favorite books has gone through the process of “rename → restricted, no recommendation, no list → cannot be searched, can only be found through the author interface → cut in half”. The author is also very careful to avoid this. However, in the end I still had to go to the small station to open a new book.

When it comes to the book itself, I tried my best to develop it from the perspective of Rorschach and the people associated with him. In the author's conception, the bridge between the extraordinary and the historical is the "Church of Order" and the "Magic Guild".

The church is the villain in most Western fantasy works (especially Starting Point, Le), but I think that in a specific period, the church has its positive significance: when the old empire collapsed, it was the church that reestablished order and preserved order on the continent. gained knowledge and resisted foreign enemies. I believe readers have also seen that compared to the original magic guild, the church has a more tolerant attitude towards absorbing children from civilians.

In the past, it was the church that chose to cooperate with the feudal lords, which not only transformed the shape of the kingdom - far away, the pope baptized and crowned the first king, and recently there was a red prime minister assisting the king to complete the centralization of monarchy; in turn, the church was also deeply influenced by the feudal lords. Deeply affected, most bishops came from the nobility, bringing a secular power hierarchy and hedonistic corruption to the church.

Nowadays, the magic guild abandons the tradition of "glorious isolation" and participates in public affairs. How do you act after giving up isolation, and who do you stand with? In the Holy Kingdom, one group hopes to embrace the feudal lords like the church and gain access to the throne; the other group chooses to stand with the big bankers and big factory owners (i.e., the capitalists). It can also be seen in the empire that out of resistance to the strong authorities, the Tower of Secrets and the Tower of Forest chose to support local forces.

The competition between the two parties within the magic guild resulted in the victory of the latter faction, which corresponded to the victory of the feudal lord in the kingdom. Therefore, the choice of the Kano faction has a certain degree of inevitability. The gradual growth of the alchemy department that appears frequently in this volume is the inevitable result of the combination of magic guilds and industry. Kano's own attitude has also undergone a big change.

Because magic research and the operation of guilds require massive resources, it requires a circulating business system, and a continuous supply of scarce minerals and raw materials for alchemical potions. The guild and the supporting system behind it have a symbiotic relationship.

Although the combat power of top individuals, whether benefactors or mages, is very strong, there is one basis that determines the current shape of churches and guilds - extraordinary powers cannot be stably inherited, and they will randomly appear in the next generation of individuals as talents. "I am a hero and my son is a good man" will not be an iron rule, and it also avoids the "blood (in)line (kin) and essence (refinement) (marriage)" that the Chaorhan family plays.

Therefore, if the two groups want to continue and maintain their dominant positions, they can only open their knowledge to ordinary people in a limited way and select the next generation. Of course, among ordinary people, the children of nobles and the children of farmers have awakened their magical talents, and the probability of becoming a mage is completely different.

Having said all that, there are a lot of things I need to reflect on in this volume. In terms of rhythm, the whole volume is loose at the front and tight at the back. The content of the Kingdom of Byrne is not compact enough, and the affairs of the Holy Kingdom are not fully developed. Let me defend myself. This is also a consideration of the ratio of "meat" and "leeks". After all, the protagonist of this book is Rorschach, and blindly telling stories about clubs, kings, and parliaments will deviate from the theme.

But this also caused flaws in the writing. There were still some plots in the back that were too tense. The places that should have been laid out were simply skipped with descriptive words. There was also the line about Mother Earth, because in the eastern suburbs, the church and the earth were The plot of the mother battle was not well written and received poor feedback from book friends, so I did not continue writing this line for a while. At the end, it broke into the "Angel's Advent Incident", which felt a bit like a "hard landing".

As for Rorschach's next trip, it was actually foreshadowed in the second volume "There's really a black hand behind 154", but it's a hundred chapters away from now! I don’t know if book friends will feel that it is a bit sudden, as if the protagonist is living a good life and suddenly wants to run away to Istany. The extras released in the New Year can also be considered as hints about the next stage and characters (should it be considered an encore?)

The tone of the next volume is similar to the adventure of the first volume, but the painting style will be in a "Georgian-Victorian" style. The time span in the novel will not be very long. After all, the next hot spot is on the mainland. Rorschach will eventually return to his Byrne and the title of this book after the end of the fourth volume.

Some book friends may feel that what happened in the Holy Kingdom came to an abrupt end, but the Great Revolt did not happen overnight, and will continue to develop with the trends of the empire and domestic changes (Maxim: Le. Charles XVI: Crisis ). At that time, people and things that have been spent a lot of pen and ink but are not expanded on at the end of this volume will play a role, such as the "Valouana Supérieure Normale" that both Rorschach and Pascal valued, and the "Reason Above All" secret society. The above is the content of the next volume.

Finally, thank you again to my book friends for reading and providing feedback, support and encouragement! Happy Lantern Festival to everyone!