The Endless Dream (Part 2)

According to incomplete statistics, the number of duchies in the Starveil Land had remained between seventy and one hundred and ten for a long time.

The statistics were incomplete because most duchies were simply too small, and the political situation was highly unstable. As a result, their nations were constantly splitting apart and reunifying, leaving countless royal families in exile.

For centuries, the centers of civilization among the many duchies had been led by the Six Great Duchies and influenced by the distant Aurora Empire in the Central Plains. But after centuries of scholars' relentless pursuit of truth, the scholarly system had grown ever more complete and powerful. In recent years, the rivalry between the two great duchies of Gran and Xilan had finally taken shape.

Behind these two great duchies stood the cold figures of countless scholars.

The three people here now came from the Xilan Duchy and the small duchy of Satiya, which was controlled by Xilan as a puppet.

Ailan came from a typical minor noble family in the Xilan Duchy. Her family ran a malt-sugar business in the duchy's northeast, but as she matured into a widely renowned beauty and mage, she gradually attracted the attention of an heir to the Lya family.

The Lya family ran the most lucrative slave trade in the Xilan Duchy and maintained close ties with its royal family.

With the Lya family's support, she had successfully entered the Royal Academy of Natural Sciences of Xilan and studied more advanced knowledge of Natural Law. Now, not yet fifty years old, she was already attempting to earn her Scholar Bachelor's Degree.

That kind of achievement made her a genius of the sort born only once in a thousand scholars!

Though she could not compare with those legendary monsters, she was still an