After spending just two days at the Heiwun Natural Sciences Academy, Reilo contacted Nikola and left.
During that time,
Reilo had limited his interactions to a handful of senior figures at Heiwyn Academy. He had also met Vidon, the [Gravedigger], who had risen to prominence in the Academic World in recent years. The reason was the mysterious curse attached to the T-Gene Engineering Blueprint.
As far as Reilo knew,
the academic study of divination—the prediction of good and bad fortune—had once enjoyed a period of glory in the early days of the Academic World.
But, like many other branches of knowledge that had fallen into decline,
with the dawn of the Academic World's first Golden Age and the establishment of the Natural Sciences Academies in the six grand duchies, Natural Law and Evolution's Profound Meaning had become the mainstream of scholarship. Like many small families that had pursued a particular field for generations, divination had gradually declined, until it vanished from the mainstream Academic World entirely.
For when theological belief was shattered, scholars in pursuit of scientific truth came to believe that the future was filled with infinite possibilities and could not be predicted!
Yet after consulting some ancient texts, Reilo learned that in the divination of the ancients, foreseeing the future had merely been an idealized goal, like the Heliocentric Theory's desire to harness the power of the sun. It was an aspiration, nothing more.
Like curse studies, divination's greatest purpose was to seek good fortune and avoid disaster.
"As far as I know, the families that studied divination vanished from the Academic World several hundred years ago. Perhaps their tradition died out long ago. By contrast, curse studies were passed down in the wake of the first Golden Age. Even today, there are still quite a few curse