It would have been impossible to say that Xu Yi had never considered the threat posed by archmages before deciding to openly break with the Mages' Guild Headquarters.
But when Archmage Camilla voiced that threat, it felt especially real and credible, making him tense up despite himself.
His tension lasted only a moment, however, before he relaxed again.
He had long since thought it through. If the Xinfei Merchant Guild wanted to lead the development of the magic industry sector on this continent and establish his ideal magic industry system, it would sooner or later have to face the threat of archmages.
Archmages were exceptionally rare figures on the Sains Continent. At present, even counting Archmage Camilla, there were only twenty-seven on the entire continent.
Every one of those twenty-seven archmages was a figure of enormous influence. Any action they took could send shock waves through the continent's mage community. They could almost be said to embody the authority of the magical world.
In Xu Yi's eyes, however, the so-called authority of archmages rested on their immense power-or, more precisely, their immense destructive power. That was hardly something worth praising.
To Xu Yi, magic was merely a tool. Using its power to develop magic machinery, then using that machinery to improve people's lives, was far more meaningful than using magic for destruction or even participating directly in wars.
Xu Yi had been working through various means to downplay magic's association with power, hoping to shift people's awe of magic toward its practical applications.
His purpose in deliberately taking such an openly confrontational stance against the Mages' Guild Headquarters was to separate the low-rank mages, who made up over ninety percent of all mages on the Sains Continent, from the Mages' Guild. While finding suitable jobs for them, he also wanted