As a mage, I just want to pursue the truth

Chapter 237 Past Events

In the Mage Alliance, mages have more responsibilities than power.

In essence, residents within the jurisdiction are managed uniformly by artificial intelligence, which uses the Mage Tower as a carrier.

And not every mage can own a mage tower.

Mage towers are very expensive, not only the cost of building a mage tower, but also the cost of supporting ordinary people in your jurisdiction, and then you will also be assigned mages who graduated from the academy.

Only mages with abundant resources can have their own mage tower.

Ordinary people can rely on the free food, clothing, housing and transportation provided by the alliance, as well as entertainment in the virtual world.

But for the mage, there is only the endless pursuit of truth.

The Alliance takes care of everything from the birth of individuals using artificial womb technology to adulthood and then to old age.

With the Alliance's achievements in the field of biotechnology, there will be almost no illness or pain.

As they grow up they will receive a general education and then there will be various types of assessments.

The vast majority of people are eliminated in these assessments and become ordinary people.

The assessment is not just about the knowledge level similar to the Chinese college entrance examination, but more about simulating the assessment in virtual reality.

For example, assessing one’s character and problem-solving ability.

You are given a scenario and then asked to use what you have learned to solve it.

Because the cost of training a mage is very high, from entering the Mage Academy to graduation and then becoming a true mage, the resources needed for training alone can support tens of thousands of ordinary people from birth to death.

The Mage Alliance will sign a contract with individuals who have passed the assessment. If they do not want to be a mage, feel that being a mage is too hard and that they see no hope in their life, they would like to go back to living an ordinary life.

It takes hundreds of years to work for the alliance.

Resources that extend lifespan are very precious to ordinary people, but they are common resources to mages.

Basically, as long as you can graduate from the Mage Academy, you can get a potion that can extend your life by twenty years. If you subsequently sign a contract with the Mage Tower, the Mage Tower will also give you the corresponding life-extending potion.

The Mage Alliance is not a Communism in the traditional sense of Blue Star. Ordinary people are only provided with basic resources.

You can live a worry-free life, but it is limited to entertainment in the virtual world and ordinary food, clothing, housing and transportation.

Then the alliance will issue a small amount of credit points every month, which can be used to purchase some other items.

For example, a mage apprentice can earn 50,000 credit points per month in the academy, while an ordinary person can only earn 500.

Alliance points can only be used to purchase magical artifacts and knowledge.

However, many ordinary people choose to work when they are old and facing the threat of death.

I hope to earn money by working to extend my life.

With the existence of artificial intelligence, most of the jobs that ordinary people can do are in the service industry.

Many people go to work as planners in game companies when they are older. It just so happens that they have played games all their lives and put their experience into practice when they are old.

We also participate in work such as space exploration and interstellar population filling.

It is the norm in the alliance that the elderly work to prolong their lives while the young enjoy themselves and wait for death.

Of course, some people will ask, is there any life in the Mage Alliance that is naturally created?
Naturally there is.

Although most young people are addicted to the virtual world, it does not mean that there are no natural products of combination.

For naturally combined lives, the Alliance will take the newborn away for unified nurturing when he or she is three years old.

Then, only after he has completed his basic education and professional diversion, can he be reunited with his parents.

This is to prevent artificial differentiation among newborns during the test.

To put it bluntly, they don't want you to take the risk. Parents secretly teach their children what the Mage Alliance exam is, how to pass it and become a mage, and then exchange it for life-extending potions for them.

I don’t have any memories before the age of three, so it doesn’t matter if I don’t have a magic brain.

However, if parents dare to use the magic brain to instill memories and interfere with the assessment, it is a serious crime and they will be physically destroyed if discovered.

Of course, there are privileges. The God of Law has some privileges.

However, most people who can become gods of law have even less emotions towards ordinary people, and even fewer of them can find a satisfactory partner.

It often happens that after graduation, individuals reunite with their parents only to find that their parents have separated.

For ordinary people, the virtual world is too exciting and feelings are very precious things.

It’s just like a otaku living in the two-dimensional world.

"Teacher, I'm curious why ordinary people have an easier life than mages?

A mage only has work to do, and has very little time for entertainment."

This was the question Zheng Li asked when he first met his direct mentor at the academy after becoming a mage apprentice.

The direct mentor of the academy will only appear on the first day of school for the apprentice assigned to him, and there will be an opportunity for communication.

The next opportunity for communication is when the apprentice graduates.

Therefore, the first communication opportunity is very valuable.

Most people will ask for academic guidance, such as which direction is good and which sub-field is promising and can produce results.

But Zheng Li didn't care about this. He had his own thoughts on what kind of research he should engage in.

What he wanted to make clear was his determination and will to pursue the truth.

“Yes, in the Alliance, ordinary people and mages can only move forward and cannot retreat. There is no way out.

Moreover, these two almost live in parallel worlds, while ordinary people live in a wonderful virtual world most of the time.

The virtual world has instant feedback. Every time you make a decision or take an action, there will be feedback.

There are rewards for doing it right and punishments for doing it wrong. Instant feedback is very refreshing because there will always be a time when you do it right.

If you don't get it right this time, you can try again in the next round.

But the feedback from the master is long. You can spend decades on a problem and still not see any results.

It is even possible that someone else has achieved this result before you.

Once you become a mage, you can only move forward and not backward. If you want to move backward, you have to work for the Alliance for hundreds of years.

No matter from which angle you look at it, mages seem to have no advantages other than living longer.

When I first became a mage apprentice, I had the same idea as you: why can ordinary people live an easy life while we have to live such a hard life?

My thoughts were even more extreme at that time. I thought that ordinary people should not be given such good benefits, and they should be forced to live a hard life by various means. Isn't it a joke that mages have a harder life than ordinary people?

But when my research made progress, when I reconstructed the spell model to increase the power by 50%, when I analyzed the effects of new genetic fragments of magical creatures.

It was as if the wisdom of our ancestors had been passed on in my hands, and civilization had taken another small step forward in its pursuit of truth.

The feeling and satisfaction this brings me cannot be matched by any virtual world."

Young Zheng Li seemed to understand:
“I hope I can feel this kind of emotion in my own pursuit of truth.”

"I roughly understand that mages have responsibilities and obligations. Mages need to guide and lead civilization forward."

The mentor in the virtual world nodded and said, "That's right, from the ancient times to the medieval times to the modern times, to the present day, the mages have made our civilization more brilliant through their own efforts.

We need to do more to advance civilization.

Furthermore, the resources that mages can enjoy far exceed those of ordinary people."

Zheng Li asked: "Then this doesn't affect us not supporting ordinary people, right?
In fact, it is completely possible to support ordinary people without spending resources. For example, the virtual world charges fees, and everyone needs a way to work. "

“With artificial intelligence, what kind of work do they need to do? Apart from art and writing, in what field can ordinary people be better than artificial intelligence?

I have wondered before why we should support so many ordinary people?

It should be written in history books that it is for genetic diversity.”

For a highly developed magical civilization, their knowledge of biology is extremely profound.

Genes can indeed mutate, and it is entirely possible to select all excellent gene fragments.

However, the good genes of the next generation bred in this way does not mean that he can become an excellent magician.

Even the offspring of gene editing, apart from having better physical fitness, have a far lower success rate than the offspring of natural creation.

As for the principle, mages have many different opinions, but none of them is definitive at present.

Ordinary people need to provide their genetic samples, which will be stored in the alliance's gene bank to provide raw materials for cultivating the next generation through technological means.

“Although no one has ever explicitly stated why ordinary people should be given preferential treatment, the predecessors who established this system gave very lofty reasons.

But I guess it’s because most mages don’t get married, and their genes have to be unified through the alliance to cultivate the next generation.

You also don’t know who the next generation will be. How can you guarantee that your next generation will also be a magician and not an ordinary person?
And if productivity is met, why not give preferential treatment to ordinary people? "

The alliance's preferential treatment for ordinary people is not only reflected in the free support of ordinary people, but also in the fact that they also have the right to vote.

They can propose issues and then have a vote.

It’s just that the voting rights have a different weight in the final result.

Due to the presence of advanced artificial intelligence, each person's voting ratio is different.

Artificial intelligence has a complex algorithm mechanism to calculate the value of your ticket.

For example, the voting value of an ordinary person who has never worked is 1, the voting value of an ordinary person who has worked and created value is 5, and the voting value of a wizard apprentice is 10.
Of course, the algorithm is not that simple. The value of the vote will be calculated based on your contribution.

Although they are all mages, their contributions to the alliance are different and their vote values ​​are also different.

However, there are few mages and many ordinary people, and the votes of ordinary people also carry weight.

Before, ordinary people did not receive credit points every month, and this was a right they had fought for.

"How should I put it? Mages and ordinary people follow two different paths. Mages can see far more brilliance in their life than ordinary people."

Even in the virtual world, Zheng Li could clearly see the soul-stirring look in his mentor's eyes.

Zheng Li nodded and said, "I understand. Also, I want to ask what are the situations when a mage chooses not to be a mage and becomes an ordinary person again?"

The instructor thought for a moment and said, "There is a research report in the library that specifically analyzes mages who have given up the pursuit of truth and just want to eat and wait for death. You can go and take a look.

Judging from the situations around me, the cost of giving up being a mage is too heavy, and few people would choose this path.

Because to become a mage one has to go through a lot of tests.

I only know of one person who generally gave up. It was because the results of his hundreds of years of research were published first by someone else, who became a god of law based on these results. He could not accept this blow and chose to give up.

He also applied for an appeal at that time, but the problem was that by coincidence, the person who published the review results before him had indeed come up with the result on his own, just two days earlier than him.

Then I also heard that there are people who developed feelings for ordinary people in the virtual world and chose to give up becoming a magician, just wanting to spend the rest of their lives with that ordinary person.

Of course, I have only heard of the latter, but never seen it.”

The combination of a magician and an ordinary person is almost impossible to succeed if the magician does not give up his career.

Because mages have no time for romance, but ordinary people have nothing but time.

This is a fatal contradiction.

Of course, you can achieve your goal through spells or potions, but ordinary people also have magic brains.

Once you do this, it will be a serious crime if you are detected by the Alliance's artificial intelligence.

It is almost impossible to hide from a strong artificial intelligence.

Zheng Li couldn't quite understand at the time: "Because I want to spend the rest of my life with an ordinary person?"

Even Zheng Li now still cannot understand it.

The instructor nodded and said, "Yes, that's what I heard, I haven't actually seen it. But this kind of thing should have happened."

Later, after Zheng Li became a mage, his mentor at the Mage Academy was sent to a distant galaxy to open up new areas because he no longer wanted to be a mage.

Go to a distant galaxy and open up wasteland for a hundred years as punishment.

Zheng Li felt nervous when he found out. He still remembered how passionate his mentor was in pursuing the truth. He thought about waiting for his mentor to come back and ask him why he made this decision.

But before the tutor came back, Zheng Li had already left.

Coming to Blue Star is not bad. Whether it is the environment or the quality of the people, it can't be considered as pioneering work.

If we go back to the Javanese era 800,000 years ago, that is called land reclamation.

If Zheng Li doesn't expect to succeed in opening up the new land, he will really want to die.

The current Blue Star technology has its merits for Zheng Li in some aspects.

This environment is much better than land reclamation.

The Alliance has two ways of governing planets with intelligent life: deep intervention, and when the mages arrive, they directly transform the society into the same form as the Alliance.

Because this requires high productivity, if the civilization is relatively backward, it will take a long time.

First, we have to complete the colonization of the planetary system, and then take over the entire society through artificial intelligence.

Not only does productivity require it, but the integration of civilizations also takes time.

Another way is the alliance, which only trades knowledge and does not interfere in the internal affairs of the other planet.

In addition, some basic requirements will be put forward.

Based on Zheng Li’s experience at Blue Star, the current Blue Star is more suitable for the second approach.

What's more, there is no need for that. The solar system is not a resource-rich galaxy.

There are no magical artifacts here, and their value to the Alliance is too low.

The only valuable thing is the intelligent life here, but intelligent resources can be obtained through cooperation, so there is no need to spend a lot of effort to take over the Blue Star.

If the Mage Alliance wants to take over Blue Star, it must first break the current situation.

Zheng Li doesn't think the alliance will do a thankless deal.

Blue Star is too far away from the Alliance.

There are many things in it that are difficult to describe in detail, so I will just give a brief overview and you can take a look at it.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask. I will answer them for you later after I have compiled them.

This is roughly how I envision the social structure of the Mage Alliance. Didn’t I mention in my remarks earlier that Zheng Lihui and Clark would swap bodies?

In my imagination, Zheng Li becomes Clark, and then can't stand such a life, so he chooses to give up being an ordinary person, and then is assigned by the Alliance to the front line against the Empire to experience the days of controlling a magic giant ship.

The first god of magic in the history of the Alliance to give up his mage identity.

Of course, that’s another story, which will happen in my lifetime, hahaha.

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(End of this chapter)