Atlas Academy

Atlas Academy was one of the three great branches of the Mage's Association, the institute of accumulation and calculation.

An academy of alchemists with a stronghold built in Egypt's Atlas Mountains, it had existed since before the Common Era.

Unlike modern alchemy, which had become mainstream in the Middle Ages, it was a collective of alchemists who sought to elucidate the laws of the world—the progenitors of magecraft.

The alchemists of Atlas had always possessed very few Magic Circuits. They acknowledged their shortcomings as magi and thus intended to seek the truth through their own methods.

The highest authority in the Atlas Institute was its director. Every director was granted the title "Atlasia," and rumor had it that every director throughout its history inevitably went mad.

The three great branches of the Mage's Association had diverged over how to address the decline of True Ether to zero after the beginning of the Common Era.

They were unlike the academic faction that preceded the Clock Tower, which sought to reconstruct the Great Source.

Nor were they like the fundamentalist faction that preceded the Wandering Sea, which upheld the supremacy of the Age of Gods.

Instead, as the alchemical faction, Atlas Academy placed its emphasis on the Small Source.

The dispute between the first two revolved around the composition of the Great Source, but to the alchemists, the Small Source was far more important than the Great Source.

So the alchemists found a quiet place to develop independently. That became the present-day Atlas Academy.

Atlas Academy likewise had its own factions. The Clock Tower's factions and truth were the Twelve Lords and Spirit Tomb Albion.

The Wandering Sea's factions and truth were the Five Great Doors and the Hidden Godly Village.

Atlas Academy's factions and truth, meanwhile, were the six great families