The Tales of Draconic Warlock

Chapter 174: The end of my third year

Before I knew it, the semester came to an end and that means the third year is. In two more years, I would graduate from the academy and settle down in a manner of my own choosing.

The year ended with the exam that was held at the end of the second semester. I came at the top as usual.

Since from the third year, students can take on missions, which would take them outside of the academy, there were no semester exams but there was a final exam at the end of the year.

If there was no exam of such kind, it would be impossible for the academy to observe whether the students had made any progress or not. After all, based on these exams the academy allocates resources to the students.

If they forgo these exams too, then the allocation of resources would be either based on previous year ranks or everyone would get the same amount of resources.

Either of these options is not considered as a good choice.

If the academy distributes the resources based on the previous year's performances, then the ones who made progress in this past year would be at a loss. A lot of people went out on various missions.

A few of them are likely to stumble onto something good in their travels.

Skills not only improve through training but there are other ways to improve them. Those are very rare and mostly discussed in theory.

The first way was through a resource known as Skill Stone. This can upgrade the level of the skill, irrespective of what the skill is or at what level it is at the moment of its use.

Yes, it can improve the skill from level 99 to level 100, even if the person uses a skill stone that can increase the level by one.

Skill stones come in various levels. Most seen ones improve the level by one, which is the lowest grade improvement. The highest that a skill stone can do is a three-level jump.

This means that if one uses the high-grade skill stone, one can reach level 100 if one uses it at level 97. Of course, the skill stones are already rare and a high-grade one was only recorded once in history.

It was used by a prince of a far-away empire.

Of course, that empire fell a few years later because the surrounding nations feared them. Before the act of the prince was known, the empire was powerful and made many enemies due to its aggressive nature of annexing small kingdoms that bordered the empire.

With a prince of that empire emerging as someone who reached level 100 in a skill, the threat to their existence became imminent.

So many kingdoms and two other empires that share a border with this one made an alliance to end this empire and they did so.

Of course, the alliance didn't last long and internal fights started, destroying a few kingdoms.

The alliance that was formed was very powerful. It even had a name, Sha-Rock Alliance.

In their native language, it loosely translates as Enemy of the Rock. The empire that they formed alliance against was called Rock Empire.

The alliance identified themselves as the enemies of the Rock Empire.

The war between the empire and the alliance started with a demand from the alliance. They wanted the life of the prince who had just reached level 100 in one of his skills.

Without him, the empire wouldn't dare to start new wars. The old wars had already depleted a lot of the empire's ability to fight wars.

With the emergence of the prince, they can start new wars, though it might take a few years. The alliance didn't want to take such a chance.

If new soldiers appeared, the Rock Empire surely would restart its wars against the border nations. The two empires might be safe as the Rock Empire might not attack them, as attacking one of them would invite the third empire to either help the invaded empire or sack the Rock Empire from the back.

Either case wouldn't be too good for the Rock Empire. Moreover, the empires could easily pull the small kingdoms around the Rock Empire into the conflict by offering benefits for joining them.

So the Rock Empire never did anything against them in the light. As usual, there are activities in the dark that all three empires conduct against each other.

When the Alliance asked for their prince's life, who is the future of the empire, they refused. This prince was their chance to become the most powerful empire, if not the ruler of all humans.

War ensued, and the Rock Empire fell after months of battles.

The issue came when the division of the Rock Empire came onto the table. Each of the two empires wanted a larger piece, which put each other at one another's throats.

The small kingdoms joined one or another empire and the alliance ended because they became greedy. Luckily for them, that happened after the Rock Empire disappeared.

---

Ah, I was distracted again. I am going away from what I wanted to say.

These skill stones that can improve skill levels are only available in dungeons. The problem was there was no data on how to obtain them, except one to hope that their luck was good enough for them to obtain those stones.

There was no guarantee that one could obtain a skill stone, even if they went through the dungeon a thousand times. It is said that you need to be lucky to find one.

I went through dungeons a few times but never saw one. If I could find one, I could directly skip a level. This would help me become stronger fast.

Though I want a slow life, it doesn't mean that I wouldn't want something like that. With that stone, I can work less but become stronger. That would be the perfect slow life.

There are other resources but they won't give instant level up.

I read in a book that there is a tree that produces Enlightenment Leaves. Drinking Tea made of these leaves would induce enlightenment in the person who drank it.

There is one problem though, no two problems.

This tree only bears ten leaves, every decade. It means even after a century of waiting there would be only a hundred leaves and that means only a hundred chances of enlightenment.

The problem with this was that there was only one tree in the known world.

It was located in the Empire of Luxem. This empire is known for its luxury and high-quality goods.

The tree is called "The Enlightment Tree", and is protected by a thousand Tier-7 guards. Moreover, it is located at the centre of their capital city. It's impossible to obtain these leaves unless they sell them, which didn't happen as of now.

It was said that they gave a few leaves as gifts but that was just a speculation.

Who would give away such items as gifts to others?

Probably someone who is rich, like the Empire of Luxem. As I mentioned before, they produce a variety of luxury items and earn a lot of money. To them, cost doesn't matter. if they gave away those leaves, it definitely meant as a favour, that the other side has to repay when the time comes.

There was another problem with these leaves. As I said, these resources would induce enlightenment into one's mind. Enlightenment means that they can grasp something that they want to. The problem was that how much one can grasp depends on one's own talent.

Not many could make the best use of these leaves.

So it was said, that even in the empire, no one would use them on a whim. In the first place, the empire won't hand them to people who lacked talent.

There would be a competition among the youngsters of the empire, that gives them a chance to gain a leaf.

Enlightenment, as I said could be induced but also could be gained naturally, though it is very much rarer than the resources that can artificially induce enlightenment but there is an advantage if the enlightenment happens naturally.

It means you are truly ready to understand whatever you were trying to understand and that means you can understand much more than what you can in an artificial induced one.

Gaining enlightenment on our own means, that talent is very good and as long as no accidents happen, the person with such talent will reach the peak of the world.

Since reaching the peak is a goal of mine, I hope I can gain enlightenment at least once in my life. There are a lot of skills in my bag. It is almost impossible for me to reach level 100 without such a push.

---

In this year, as I lead a slow life, it wasn't the same as before.

Though there weren't as many improvements as last two and half years, there is still some improvement and that was in my skill levels.

Now that everyone is thinking that I was Tier-2 and was on the way to reaching the peak of Tier-2, there was no need to improve my rank levels.

The greatest feat that I achieved in the third year was to complete my Tier-6 promotion mission.

Other than that, most of it was very slow.