Arcane Knight (Thanks to You Shang Wei Guan for the Reward)

During this catastrophe, the Lady of Night, Shar, seized the powerful portfolio of Hatred in one fell swoop, successfully returning to the ranks of Greater Deities. Shar and the Goddess of the Moon, Selune, had lost most of their power during the ancient wars and had never fully recovered since. (Selune is the same; this primordial goddess remains only a Lesser Deity to this day.)

Now, by relying on schemes and fishing in troubled waters, she has finally returned to the ranks of Greater Deities. Furthermore, this catastrophe caused immense destruction to the world. Because Shar is the primordial darkness, the absolute void before time began to flow, she is a cold and powerful divinity. She yearns intensely to return to the tranquil void of the beginning, so she has always been secretly planning to destroy all civilization. The catastrophe of the Year of Dark Boiling was truly to her liking, and the old lady profited immensely.

The other troublemaker, the Prince of Lies, Cyric, gained nothing but the hatred of other gods. The new Dead Three loathe him even more than they do the Triad of Justice, and they want to kill this madman at every waking moment. As for the benevolent gods, it goes without saying that every one of them wants to chop this bastard up and feed him to the chaos hound, Kezef. His comrade, the Lady of Night, also covets his portfolio and constantly looks for chances to finish him off. Even the god of savagery, Malar, has no love for this guy and would definitely mess with him given the chance. However, Cyric is quite indifferent to all this hostility and hatred; in fact, he revels in it. He is the type who is typically spiteful and self-defeating, finding joy in others' misfortune—a case of extreme, perverse humor.

Yet, one must admit that this Prince of Lies is quite capable. Despite being loathed by almost every deity, he has somehow managed to stay alive to this day, popping up every now and then to stir up trouble. His tenacity is truly heaven-defying.

In Avalon, no one would teach these things to Solam. Because the Avalon Orcs were betrayed by the gods, they are quite cold toward divine matters, so few Avalon Orcs ever take the initiative to discuss them.

Solam, however, listened with great interest. This was far more entertaining than the myths of his past life—perhaps because gods didn't exist in that world. These stories were both absurd and real; according to the religious myths of his previous life, gods were supposed to be great and flawless. Unlike these deities, who were certainly powerful, but each one of them was riddled with flaws. That's what made it interesting, wasn't it?

However, the old man was getting on in years, and having just been injured, he began to yawn repeatedly as he spoke. Although Solam was very interested in the outside world, he wouldn't let an old man keep talking under such circumstances. So, he gave his blanket to the old man, let him sleep first, processed the Snow Dragon hide, and then curled up with Frostfang for a good night's sleep.

In the days that followed, the old man hit the road with Solam. Having someone to talk to and pass the time with was certainly much more interesting than traveling alone. Solam could see that Arando was quite knowledgeable; he could tell Solam about things he had never heard of before.

Most importantly, the old man was actually a mage—no, calling him a mage wasn't entirely accurate. The old man was an Arcane Knight.

It was a profession that allowed one to fight in armor like a knight while also casting spells like a mage. According to the old man, this profession was called an Arcane Knight because it originated in the great Netheril era. The great arcanists of that time had a sudden inspiration: they wanted a group of floating-city guards to possess the same spellcasting abilities as arcanists, so they could better serve them.

However, the idea was beautiful, but the reality was not so simple. First of all, neither arcanists nor mages could wear armor, as it would cause spell failure. Generally speaking, leather armor had a 40% spell failure rate, and half-plate had 60%. If one couldn't wear armor, what kind of knight was that? A knight without armor had drastically reduced defense. Originally, the Arcane Knight was meant to be a melee supplement for the arcanist's protection; if they couldn't wear armor, it would be better to just bring along a few more low-level arcanists—it would be the same thing.

However, as the greatest group of people in humanity's greatest era, they weren't just talk. Through a series of studies, they finally invented a solution: they designed a specialized spell and added it to the Arcane Knight through a special ritual, granting these knights the talent to cast spells while armored. But heaven is fair; to gain this powerful talent, Arcane Knights had to pay a price. For every spellcasting level, the number of spells was reduced by one. Today, that means every spell level has one fewer spell slot than other mages.

After the problem of casting in armor was solved, another difficulty arose: the knight's own limitations. If an Arcane Knight were just an armored mage, the arcanists wouldn't have needed to spend so much time and resources creating the profession. An Arcane Knight without knightly skills was no different from an ordinary arcanist. But knightly skills weren't easy to train; they required a massive amount of time, and spellcasting training and research also took up a lot of time. In this way, the Arcane Knight would become a "jack of all trades, master of none," with no practical value at all.

So, those great arcanists put their heads together and decided to modify it again. A new magical ritual appeared. The new ritual not only granted the Arcane Knight the talent to cast in armor but also provided an arcane modification talent. This talent allowed the Arcane Knight to use magical energy to improve their physical fitness during meditation, while also granting them magic resistance. However, it required a reduction of two spell slots at all levels. To those great arcanists, this wasn't a big problem; it was just melee support, so having fewer spells didn't matter.

After solving these two problems, the great arcanists were overjoyed, feeling they were about to reach another peak. But reality hit them with a blow to the head: although they had solved the "hardware" conditions, the knightly skills and spellcasting techniques still had to be learned by the individuals themselves, and there was no way to rely on magic for that. Both skills required talent and time, and anyone who could balance both was undoubtedly a genius. But where could one find so many geniuses? Even if they were found, they might as well just study to become an arcanist; why waste time on this? It wasn't worth it.

Therefore, this profession did not develop extensively during the Netheril era, and only a few people studied it. After the collapse of the Netheril era, this profession miraculously passed down, though it remained in a half-dead state. There are very few Arcane Knights left who can pass it on to this day.

However, it would be a mistake to say this profession isn't strong just because of that. In fact, this combination of spells and knightly skills is quite powerful. But to better utilize the strength of this profession, Arcane Knights generally give up deep research into magic and various experiments, only learning as many spells as they can use in combat. Thus, most mages look down on this "half-baked" profession, although they look down on other professions just the same.

As soon as Solam heard about such a badass profession, he immediately perked up. He had always had a strong curiosity about spells, and this profession didn't require him to become as frail as a mage. Having grown up in an orc clan, he was inevitably influenced by their culture, and Solam still valued that. As for the issue of fewer spell slots, Solam didn't care; wasn't he also a Shaman? They could perfectly complement each other. Besides, Shamans weren't as fussy as mages; whether they wore armor or not didn't matter. As for the time required for this profession, please—he was a Beast Elf! His lifespan was 600 years; he didn't care about wasting a little time. He had plenty of it.

So, ever since hearing Arando's story, Solam had been pestering him to teach him how to become an Arcane Knight. Especially after Arando saw that Solam had too many things and took out a dimensional belt to help him pack most of them, Solam became even more insistent. He had to become an Arcane Knight, because he had heard Arando say that Arcane Knights could also learn alchemy and craft magical items just like ordinary mages.

To be honest, when he saw that dimensional belt, Solam was more shocked than if he had seen a powerful spell. You have to know, compared to his past life, no matter how powerful a spell was, could it be bigger than a missile? If not, there were nukes, hydrogen bombs, neutron bombs, and planet-destroying cannons.

He listened to their descriptions of the Elven era, how badass those spells were, and how majestic the floating cities of the Netheril era were. But in Solam's eyes, what was that? Your Elven magic ritual is badass? Didn't it just blow the continent into pieces? Trash. I could blow the whole world into dust with one planet-destroying cannon. Your floating city is badass? Doesn't it just hold 100,000 people? Trash. My interstellar ark can hold hundreds of thousands, and it won't fall down. A transmigrator has to have the pride of a transmigrator. After seeing the production level of this world, a sense of Great World Chauvinism emerged in Solam uncontrollably.

However, seeing the dimensional belt Arando took out immediately gave Solam's pride a heavy shock. Damn it, isn't this space-folding technology? You have to know, in Solam's past life, this had already been a technical challenge for that world for nearly a hundred years. Humanity in that world had been circling the solar system for hundreds of years, just wanting to get out and take a look, but there was one problem: it was too damn far. A round trip would take N years, and they couldn't handle it. So they had always hoped for a breakthrough in space technology, but it was like running into a ghost; they couldn't even achieve basic space folding, wasting a hundred years in vain, let alone more advanced space jumping.

How to describe Solam's shock at that moment? To give an analogy, it would be like driving the latest model of a small airplane to a primitive tribe in Africa to show off, only to arrive and find that the people in the primitive tribe are all flying around on personal hover-vehicles.