It was by far the biggest section in the library and it was all organised very neatly into chronological order, so knowing where to start was no trouble at all.

At the end of my little break and after a normal day of doing upkeep and chatting with Kara a little bit, at night, I sat myself down at the desk in my room, lit my two lamps for optimal brightness, opened the book Origins of the Magic Era, and started reading.

I had looked through the catalogue to find out where to start; the opening events of history for the people of Calzyn. I had hoped at the beginning of my search to possibly find some similarities that my people and I might share with the humans of Calzyn, cultural aspects and features that I could easily slide myself into without too much trouble.

But as it turns out… There wasn’t much hope for that.

I had expected my research to include speculations on the origins of humanity, possible past great civilisations that had fallen, and lost segments of the past hypothesised upon in the investigation of prehistory.

However there was none of that.

In fact, in Origins of the Magic Era, the founding book detailing the prelude for the entire span of Calzyner history, there was to my puzzlement, only a few pages at the beginning of the book. Four to be exact, outlining the circumstances and the state of humanity before the emergence of magic.

What the book recorded was that in a region called “Meda” on the western coast of the Homeland Continent, some time in the distant past, humanity just… emerged. There was no indication or even apparent interest in the time before this event and the ones following that led to the emergence of magic.

What it did mention however, was that humanity lived initially in a tribal structure where mana was used only in a very primal version of the current Warrior Pathway, much like the way magical beasts themselves grow stronger. These members of humanity were mostly the men who went out to hunt and combat the surrounding magical beasts and through their exertions, established a connection with the surrounding mana and used it in turn to strengthen themselves.

This was how humanity was and would have continued to live in the balance of all things forever, either striving onwards against the harsh adversity of their natural environment or eventually being wiped out by disease, disaster or magical beasts at some point.

But that wasn’t what happened.

Humanity and the entire history of Calzyn changed, because of one person.

She was the first page of humanity’s story, the first sorcerer and the woman who changed the course of Calzyn history forever.

She was Ava, the beginning.

It was with her appearance that history began and humanity began to soar. Her life had been catalogued fairly in depth for someone who lived millenia ago, and from what the books said, her life story basically went like this.

Ava was a common girl from a common tribe who was living a common life. She would have continued to live and die in this common way if not for a certain disease that had happened to sweep through her tribe when she was young. There was no real description given of the disease and how deadly it was but what it did do to those who just barely survived it, was render them completely blind.

Life’s tough for anybody, but it’s especially tough for a young blind girl living in a tribal society surrounded by deadly wilderness at a young age, as the young Ava was now at this time finding out for herself. With her blindness her survivability dropped as well, dramatically, and she was forced aside to the fringe of her society, only able to survive due to the care and struggles of her own family members.

It was in her new darkness, isolated from the world and with no hope on the horizon, that she retreated into introspection and depression. Becoming lost within herself for a long long time it is said.

And it also said, that it was in this abyss of self, that she found mana.

There was a mention of some rudimentary tribal knowledge about mana being around at that time, but what Ava found was a bit different to what she was taught. She found that she could actually feel mana and move a part of it as she willed if she really tried hard. Knowing how warriors fused mana into themselves to grow stronger, she naturally tried to control this new grasp of mana and fuse it into her eyes, hopeful to make them strong again so that she would no longer be blind. But the mana did not fuse. Instead, what it did for the very first time in human history, in Ava’s literally blind attempt at mana infusion, was form a core.

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Fast forward a bit of time and Ava with her new discoveries had laid out the rudimentary foundation for the development of the Sorcerer Pathway, changing everything for all of humanity and the world of Calzyn. Forever.

Ava soon demonstrated her new found strength and won the admiration of her tribe's Chief and became his wife. But in actuality, what she really did was take over and became her tribe's new leader, supplanting her new husband and only marrying him as a means to an end. From this point on she taught the other women of her tribe her techniques, those who could learn them anyway, and significantly increased the strength of her tribe. After this build up of strength was achieved, she would rally her tribe together under her command for the achievement of one simple goal.

Conquest.

Ava’s time in the dark, left completely powerless, had planted in her a desire for power and control over her life and surroundings. And, so it was that from that point onwards wars were waged against all the other tribes of humanity until eventually they were either eradicated or assimilated.

By the middle of her reign, all of humankind was united and subjugated under Ava’s unquestionable leadership.

But with this newfound explosive growth of people she now had to rule and govern over, the old tribal ways no longer worked, and the ambition of society had evolved under her governance from survival into a more ferocious and violent thirst for conquest. In light of these circumstances, she would set up two establishments to further her new empire’s ambition and ensure the ongoing pursuit of her desire for power and control.

The responsibilities of these two institutions would be for the first one to continue her research and development of magics and warrior techniques to push their power higher and higher. The second one would be to organise the everlasting battlefield and conquest into the surrounding lands to expand humanity’s domain and obtain greater resources.

These two institutions would evolve and eventually progress into what they are now today after thousands of years, the Scholar and Martial Associations.

As for Ava herself and her dynasty, she made it responsible for the governance of not just the people but also the goods and resources that flowed throughout the nation, all of which she would control to ensure the strength of her reign.

Eventually of course, she died. And after some time passed, her dynasty died too at the behest of the growing influence of the Scholar and Martial Associations and internal politics of her own faction until eventually, her monarchical hierarchy ended and its authority evolved into the Trade Association as it stands today.

These three Associations became the ruling bodies of everybody and everything and kept Ava’s ambition alive as it drove and continued her conquest and the strengthening of her people. At one point the Scholar Association’s work resulted in the creation of the Pleasure Association that, after a bit of political backlash, was eventually accepted by the other three and was brought into the fold to make up the fourth association of the Coalition and determine its final form.

From the beginning of history starting with Ava’s emergence to the final and stabilised form of the Coalition, just over a thousand years had passed. During this time humanity had expanded its territory enormously but in the broad scope of things had only really occupied about five percent of the total available land mass in the Homeland. However, the land they did occupy was completely unified into a vast and powerful civilisation that was the epitome of culture, strength, learning and wealth unlike anything the world had ever seen before.

But…

There was an issue.

For all its growth and glory the Coalition, with all of its resources, research and rigour had reached a bottleneck in their development.

A very crippling bottleneck.

Because the fact of the matter was that at this point in history, they couldn’t expand anymore.

On all sides of their civilization they were bordered by lands inhabited by magical beasts that, no matter what methods they used, couldn’t be defeated or pushed past to get into new lands.

The reason for this happening lay in the two parts. The geographical challenges they faced in relation to the atmospheric concentration of mana, and the wall their own research was facing.

For you see Meda, the region humanity originated from, was in fact an area with some of the lowest atmospheric mana concentration in the whole continent. It was why humans started off so weak and was what motivated them to develop the Paths to economise their development and enhance their combat ability.

Along with their expansion, they migrated towards areas of higher concentration as it made their advancements easier and the resources available were better. This migration continued over time, the strongest of humanity moving further and further out from where they began and by doing so, the Pathways progressed through the discovery of the Adherent and Master stages after Initiate.

However, after all that expansion and conquest, they now found themselves bordered by areas of peak atmospheric concentration, occupied by magical beasts far too strong for them to defeat as they currently were.

Faced with this blockade the Coalition endeavored to spend more of their resources into the Institute to try and find a way to break through the Master level and into the next yet undiscovered stage of the Paths. This way, they could nurture combatants that could battle their way in, kill the occupying magical beasts, take over their land, and enhance their progress even further to continue their way of life.

But after decades and decades of trying… it didn’t happen. No one could figure out where to go next with the Pathways and what they could do to solve it.

Faced with this technological and societal bottleneck, things soon enough began taking an unfavourable turn. For over a thousand years all of society had endeavored in one goal, to expand and grow stronger.

Now, all of that was put on hold.

As time passed development stagnated as resources settled down into a reduced and steady flow. Less fighters died as with no method of moving forward their techniques for fighting the specific magical beasts on the borders became refined and they became more adept at surviving.

This led to a cap on resources as they would instead go to the powerful fighters on the frontlines who won them as well as their families. Therefore, the development of the next generations became skewed and favoured towards certain factional forces within sections of the Coalition. This in turn led to the creation and increase of terrible tensions between these factions that as time passed only grew worse.

All in all, having been fighting a thousand year conquest that was now blocked with no solution in sight, human society was now facing some very problematic internal issues.

Who knows what would have happened in the end if he didn’t emerge.

I had actually read about him before, on my very first day here in the side branch when Kara had tested the eligibility of my claim about being able to read.

He was the next era defining figure since Ava the Beginning and would shape the world for millennia to come through his words and actions.

He was the one who paved the way into the Supreme level, becoming the world’s first Shevani

He was the First.

He was the Conqueror.

He was Zhorr.