C88
Anyone immersed in the world of magic would be able to recognize that Alpheas was a person chosen by the gods. The problem was that he showed off his talents regardless of time and place.
Once a debate began, he would see it through to the end, and if his opponent made even a trivial mistake, he would relentlessly pursue it until they conceded.
Ogent Klump was perhaps the only person who knew that Alpheas' actions were not malicious. Rather than being arrogant, Alpheas was pure, and his excessive enthusiasm simply tired people out.
In fact, Alpheas was the kind of person who would admit his mistakes without hesitation and congratulate his opponent on his victory.
The issue, however, was that such instances were rare.
Alpheas walked around the table and mingled with people, as if waiting for beer was boring. Klump watched him worriedly, fearing he might cause trouble again, but shook his head as if he had no energy left to intervene.
"Saroph! Are you here for a drink in broad daylight?"
Saroph, whom Alpheas welcomed with open arms, was a native of the capital and was one of Alpheas' few rivals. The general opinion was that, despite always losing to Alpheas in debates, Saroph would have been the most promising light mage if not for Alpheas. Naturally, Saroph had no reason to be fond of Alpheas, but Alpheas approached him without hesitation.
"Oh, right. Saroph, I heard you submitted a thesis to the royal academy recently? I had a brief look at it, and it was very interesting."
"What? Why would you read my thesis?"
"Isn't it obvious? I'm a light mage as well, and the royal librarian is one of my avid followers. Anyway, I enjoyed reading it."
"Re- Really? Then what did you think?"
At the time, the highest achievement among young mages was to have their thesis acknowledged and work at the Royal Magic Department under the patronage of the king.
Once the thesis was accepted, they would be provided with a personal laboratory and all expenses for their research would be covered, making it the most prestigious position for a mage.
Having submitted his life's work just a week ago, Saroph couldn't help but be curious about the opinion of his rival, Alpheas.
"You pinpointed the characteristics of light very well. There was nothing to fault. To be honest, I felt like I learned something new from the section on energy accumulation."
Saroph's expression immediately brightened. However, Alpheas did not just let it pass this time.
"However, there was one mistake. It's about the wave nature of light. That's clearly a flawed theory."
"What are you talking about? It's a well-established fact that light is a wave, proven by numerous experiments."
Tags:
Infinite Mage (Novel)
