Industrial Revolution of the Mage Lords

Chapter 695 The Secret of Inheritance
The Starfire City Palace is located in a large conference hall on the first floor.

The high-ranking officials who had been summoned by the emperor all had solemn expressions, especially the senior members of the Academy of Magic and the New Federation... Even the two legendary chiefs, who usually avoided getting involved in political affairs, made an unprecedented appearance here.

The fragmentary intelligence gleaned from the soul-searching interrogations of the winged captives undoubtedly gradually unveiled the full truth of ancient history, directly overturning everyone's understanding.

Humanity was exiled from the continent's center, their ancestral land, to the southern border. Under the enslavement and oppression of the dragon race, they endured nearly a thousand years of struggle and resistance. After finally uniting with many sub-human races and gaining freedom through hundreds of years of bloody war, they were about to face the annihilation of their nemesis once again.

The cause of all these calamities... was that they stole the core of the inheritance from the demon lizardmen.

This is especially ironic for those extraordinary individuals who always pride themselves on their righteous stance and consider themselves guardians...

Harvey sat on the throne at the head of the table, surveying the expressions of everyone around him. He couldn't help but tap the armrest heavily and chuckled, "What? Faced with a major crisis concerning the survival and reproduction of our race, do you all still possess a worthless sense of morality?"

"Don't forget that we were banished here because we lost the competition... But if we hadn't successfully stolen the core of the inheritance, our fate might have been far more than just banishment..."

Both the dragon race and the frost giants, who also perished in the long river of history, proved that once an entire race becomes a loser in the struggle for survival, what awaits them is inevitable extermination, until the tragic end of the entire race.

"Backwardness invites aggression, and weakness is the original sin... In order to survive and reproduce, we must seize resources by any means necessary and completely crush other competitors. This is the goal we must firmly achieve!"

These words clearly had a strong motivating effect... Many people immediately raised their heads, their eyes burning as they looked at the throne where Harvey was.

Chief Salas and Dawson exchanged a glance, then simultaneously gave Harvey an approving look.

Asdaren rose leisurely and was the first to express his opinion, echoing His Majesty the Emperor's viewpoint: "Let's assume that all the information revealed by this winged captive is true... then can we be certain of one thing: they have lost the core of their own race's heritage?"

Reiner was clearly taken aback for a moment, then suddenly realized and said, "That's right! If this prisoner who is an evolved human wasn't lying... then all of this makes perfect sense. A race that has completely lost its core of inheritance will inevitably decline and perish, which is why they are willing to go to the Southern Territory to declare war on us regardless of the consequences."

"Then why didn't they start a war against us sooner?" Pierce keenly spotted the logical flaw in their statement. "They were capable of defeating us from the start, otherwise humanity wouldn't have been driven out... If it were during the War of the Dragons, or during the hundred years when humans and demons were entangled with each other, the Southern Humans would have been a disorganized bunch fighting their own battles. Wouldn't it have been easy to defeat or even completely exterminate us?"

This logical flaw was clearly noticed by more than one person... When humans were exiled, the core of inheritance they stole from the Lizardmen did not add much strength to the entire race. On the contrary, because they could not decipher its secrets, they had to divide it into twelve fragments and secretly hide them by different tribal leaders.

Why didn't the Lizardmen attack sooner to reclaim their stolen heritage cores?

What held them back? And what held them back for a full thousand years...

A murmur of discussion immediately arose among the crowd, filling the hall with a low hum of conversation. Harvey, however, stood up at this moment and slowly walked down from the throne... to the long conference table where the high-ranking officials were seated.

"Gentlemen, since I personally carried out the soul transfer and mental interrogation of this winged captive..." He paused, his eyes gleaming as he looked around, "I captured some fragmented memory pieces and streams of consciousness during the entire sensory resonance with him, and through these, I pieced them together to come up with a very bold conjecture."

Everyone bowed respectfully, placing their hands on their chests, and said in a deep voice, "Your Majesty, please enlighten us..."

Harvey nodded, raised a finger, and said seriously, "First, we assume that not every race is qualified to independently possess and control a heritage core."

This assumption is easy to verify—countless historical records show that countless races perished due to their weakness. The dragon race was forced to perish because of the united resistance of other races... while the frost giants naturally withered and became extinct over time due to their limited reproductive capacity.

The Coral Sea Clan and the Abyss Sea Clan once jointly waged a war of genocide against the Merfolk. The Cave Dwarves, after migrating to the Southern Territory with the humans, also launched a campaign to exterminate the Nightscale Clan, who were native to the underground of the Southern Territory, ultimately leading to their demise.

"Therefore, it can be concluded that after we stole the inheritance core from the Demon Lizardmen... they did indeed experience an unstoppable decline in strength. This decline even made it difficult for them to fight against other competing races in the center of the continent. With their own survival in such a precarious situation, they naturally couldn't spare the time to deal with us for a very long period of time."

Salas nodded repeatedly in agreement, "His Majesty's guess is very likely the truth, which also proves how important the inheritance core is to a race. It's a pity that after our ancestors stole the core, they were unable to decipher its mysteries, thus preventing us from gaining the powerful strength necessary to protect ourselves..."

Harvey didn't end the conversation there; instead, he immediately threw out another point that sent shockwaves through everyone.

"Have we truly failed to unravel the secrets of this stolen core of inheritance? Let's think about this further... Where did magic, first mastered by humans, come from? Where did the divine arts created by the Church come from? Why are the Lizardmen naturally able to restrain and resist our magic and divine arts?"

The magic that humans and their sub-kinds have learned and mastered... was deciphered from a stolen core of inheritance?
As the only person present who had truly come into contact with the core of the inheritance, and even directly fused with and devoured one of its fragments, Harvey's words and opinions naturally possess credibility.

Many past experimental studies involving magical theories have shown that ancient wizards learned and created magic mainly by imitating other magical creatures, from imitating how dragons lift their huge and heavy bodies to soar through the sky, to observing how an ice-eyed beetle spews frost crystals to capture its prey...

All of this learning, imitation, and adventurous exploration requires that humanity first discover the magic network and be able to draw upon its inexhaustible magical power for its own use.

Harvey shrugged and spoke softly about his guess and belief regarding the ultimate truth concerning the inheritance of the ethnic group.

"Therefore... I believe that the most important thing this inherited core, which humanity stole, brought us... is the Magic Network!"

(End of this chapter)