The gray-haired Alchemist left a magic puppet to clean the sealed room, walked out of the basement, and returned to the sunlit surface.
"Master, some mercenaries have arrived. They say they have the intelligence on Free City you asked them to gather."
Another magic puppet approached with a report.
The gray-haired Alchemist did not take it at once. He cast a Detection Spell on it, then picked it up when he found nothing wrong.
It was impossible to discuss Free City without mentioning one man: Annan Reeves.
Every faction watching Free City agreed on one thing: Annan possessed many of the qualities of the Ancient Families' founding pioneers.
Looking back through the history of the Allen Continent, such people had existed before. Every one of them had eventually become a legend. But what troubled the observers was that none of those people offered a point of comparison for Annan.
Development was supposed to be linear and continuous. There was only so much cake to go around, and those who had come first had already divided up most of it. They also shared an unspoken understanding: keep newcomers out. To rise in a world so close to being set in stone, you had to fight for a seat at the table.
Those who lost ended up on the menu.
Annan Reeves, on the other hand, had suffered none of the hardships his predecessors had. When there was not enough cake, he conjured up another. When the road ran out, a new one appeared from nowhere.
If not for the Year of Turmoil, they might have suspected another "God of Invention" had appeared.
Likewise, the gray-haired Alchemist could not study Free City's inventions without coming back to the man behind them.
Magic Films, Magic Muskets... wheelchairs, eyeglasses... Magic-Powered Trains, Airships...
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