"Alien Spirit Communication Academy, hm-hm-hm-hm..."
A hoarse, cruel voice came from the winding, muddy path.
A mysterious scholar draped in a wide brown-black robe gazed at the tip of the High Tower gradually emerging at the edge of the horizon, watching the mesmerizing vortex of immense energy support above it. Her eerie laughter sounded like a ghost from a lost land. Leaning on her cane, she slowly made her way toward it, one step at a time.
Enlightenment, Nature, Esoteric, Transcendental, Pioneer, and Taidou corresponded respectively to the levels zero through five of the living creatures discovered by scholars in the Academic World and natural world.
Between level-three and level-four creatures, however, the gap was far too vast. Thus, there were also some Super Creatures capable of escaping from a level-four creature, posing a threat to one, or even briefly fighting one head-on. The Academic World named them legendary-level creatures.
Correspondingly, the Academic World also had a number of transcendent scholars whose status equaled theirs. They were known as academicians.
It could be said that only by becoming an academician-level existence could one truly possess a voice and a place of one's own in the Academic World of this new era in the vast wasteland.
And all the Royal Academicians knew that ever since Reilo, dean of the Grand Natural Sciences Academy and the Sun Power, first proposed the fifth-level Taidou realm in the Academic World several decades ago, countless academy laboratories and high-level academicians had explored and struggled toward it, attempting to uncover its Evolution's Profound Meaning and unleash the terrifying power it contained.
Decades passed.
Research institutes everywhere seemed to have made breakthroughs. Every few months, an academy would announce with great fanfare that its research had made groundbreaking progress, or some secret laboratory would accidentally leak news