Nearly a hundred parents had come, bringing countless pleas for them to stop. The parents who had not found their own children let out cries as though their hearts were being torn apart.
This harsh reality left Robert in a daze. If his own parents had been here, would they have tried to stop him like this too?
Was Lylier wrong?
Of course not. He firmly believed that what they were doing was both right and just. Whether for public or private reasons, the Haluar Council should not have targeted apprentices like them for extracting wealth—those with the weakest abilities, the fewest ways to earn money, and lives that were already difficult enough.
This was not merely squeezing the sweat and blood from apprentices. It was squeezing their futures, and Haluar's future as well.
Imposing extra taxes on apprentices was as shortsighted as a policy could possibly be. He simply could not believe the councilors had approved such a new measure.
But was Lylier's mother wrong?
She was not wrong either.
Haluar was the Mage Country, but compared to its more than one hundred thousand apprentices, the over four hundred registered Archmages were the true backbone of the nation—not to mention the High-level Mages, who outnumbered them several times over. Apprentices might be numerous, but they could only be called the foundation.
If Haluar's Archmages had not been accustomed to roaming all over the universe, leaving behind fewer than fifteen percent of their number, then if they stayed in Haluar every day instead of going anywhere, the neighboring countries probably would not sleep peacefully at night.
Those apprentices who could not graduate from the magic academy even after delaying their studies, and could only leave bleakly with an apprentice certificate, would have their lives set in stone if they did