"The elves' achievements in magic? If we're talking about before the Race War, they were certainly far ahead of us humans. But more than three thousand years have passed since the Race War. Their standard of magic today may not be much higher than ours."
"I'm not so sure. Elves live far longer than we humans do, and their traditions have been preserved more completely. Besides, they aren't bogged down by all sorts of miscellaneous affairs like we are. They can devote themselves entirely to studying magic, so their standard can only keep rising."
"That's probably not right. Elves aren't as creative as we humans are. Over these three thousand years, we've been able to innovate, improve, and research magic in all sorts of ways, while the elves have done very little of that. This was already quite apparent before the Race War. In my opinion, our standard of magic probably surpassed theirs long ago."
"Hmph! Creativity? You people are always so proud of human creativity, but can any of you tell me why something as novel yet fundamentally uncomplicated as magic machinery had to wait until Xu Yi, a mere level four mage, came along before it was developed? Why did none of us great mages develop it?"
President Allen's words silenced everyone present.
This was a regular senior-level meeting of the Lampari Kingdom's Mages' Guild, attended by the kingdom's only five great mages.
The original purpose of the meeting was to review this year's Mages' Guild Qualification Certification Examination and invite comments from the four great mages other than President Allen.
However, while discussing the specifics of this year's examination, the great mages noticed a strange phenomenon. The number of low-rank mages taking the examination had increased significantly, nearly doubling from last year. Compared with the year before