The year 3793 of the continent calendar was destined to be an unsettled one for the Sains Continent.
First, at the beginning of the year, the Mages' Guild Headquarters took the exceedingly rare step of directly designating the Xinfei Merchant Guild an unwelcome merchant guild, declaring it an organization that every mage on the continent must refuse to associate with.
Such a measure had been taken only four times in the Mages' Guild's several thousand years of history. Each merchant guild targeted had committed heinous crimes and was notorious throughout the continent, making the Mages' Guild's actions entirely reasonable.
This time, however, the Mages' Guild Headquarters had targeted the Xinfei Merchant Guild, an organization with a clean record that had never committed any serious wrongdoing. It even maintained good relations with countless countries on the continent and received widespread praise and approval. Naturally, this prompted doubts from countless people across the continent.
What truly shocked people, however, was the Xinfei Merchant Guild's subsequent response.
Normally, when a merchant guild was targeted by the Mages' Guild Headquarters in this manner, its first choice would be to seek reconciliation. The Mages' Guild's influence over the Sains Continent was simply too great, and confronting it head-on offered no benefit whatsoever.
Yet the Xinfei Merchant Guild not only refused to show the Mages' Guild Headquarters the slightest deference and publicly announced that it was severing ties, but subsequently went so far as to invade the Mana Magical Kingdom, a unique kingdom backed by the Mages' Guild.
And... it won!
Before people could finish digesting these successive waves of shocking news, another report broke-one even more astonishing, one that left the entire continent speechless.
Levin Hasoko and Salandur Clay, two archmages renowned throughout the continent, had joined forces to attack the Xinfei Merchant Guild's Main