"It depends on what sort of power we’re talking about. There are some things that you can share with others and help them grow, but there are other things that are too dangerous to share with the rest of the world."
Jaen raised a brow.
"You would keep it for yourself even when you know it might change the world? Even though the power would allow people to get far stronger than they were."
Jason huffed when he heard this!
"You shouldn’t assume that every change is good. Sometimes the best way you can help people is by allowing them to continue doing things the way they always have. Power corrupts in the worst ways."
Jason turned to look out the window once he said this, and his mind travelled to one of the worlds he had been to during his journey with Gina. That world had just discovered mana, and now that they had so much power, the first thing they decided to do was to go to war with each other! There had already been a lot of tension between the various races on that world for a long time, and that tension exploded into something even more intense once they gained that power! There was nothing Gina or Jason could do to help them, and at the end, the power that they discovered was the catalyst that led to the death of nearly every single person in that world.
If they had never been given that power, then maybe they could’ve found some other way to resolve their problems, and Jason couldn’t help but think that there was a really high chance Earth could’ve also ended up in the same way. Thankfully, there were no serious wars taking place when humans discovered mana!
Jaen looked at Jason for a few seconds before he nodded to him respectfully and began to speak:
"I suppose the stories of your wisdom are not exaggerated after all."
Jason didn’t show any outward reaction to Jaen’s words, but Jason couldn’t help the slight feeling of embarrassment that rose from his heart when he heard Jaen’s words. It still felt weird for people to call him wise, especially when he wasn’t trying to act wise or knowledgeable at all! Jason was literally just speaking from experience!
Jaen spoke up again, and Jason turned to him:
"There was a discovery made close to three hundred years ago at the edge of the Primordial Expanse. During the Primordial war between the Avarans and the Primordials that shook the Primordial Expanse to its foundation, there was so much death that blood could be seen spread across thousands of parallel worlds. But for the first time in eons, the blood did not belong only to the mortals. Your people, the Avarans, possessed enough strength to rival the Primordials themselves, and that was why, along with the Avarans, there were multiple Primordials who died on that day.
"The Primordial Races have a tradition of always taking the dead bodies of their warriors back to their home world to be buried, so there is never any Primordial left behind after a war ends. But during that war, the sheer number of dead Primordials meant that there were hundreds of them left unattended to for a very long time, and that provided an opportunity for us to secretly retrieve the dead body of a Primordial."
Jason felt his eyes widen when he heard this, and when he spoke, his voice was filled with disbelief.
"You have a Primordial Corpse in this building?"
It was such an unimaginable thing that Jason actually thought that Jaen was lying to him! The idea that an Academy in a world that didn’t have any particular significance to the rest of the Primordial Expanse actually managed to get a Primordial corpse was insane!
Jaen smiled slightly as he noticed the disbelief on Jason’s face, and he motioned for Jason to follow him as he began walking once again.
"It was not easy to find it, and there were many lives lost in the process. The mages from one of our branches in a world known as Yura were the ones who risked their lives to go and retrieve the corpse, and they handed it off to three other branches over the next few years to try and make sure it couldn’t be tracked back to them. Eventually, the corpse found its way to our branch here in L’horm since we were the ones who possessed the most knowledge of how to experiment on it. And after more than a hundred years of research, we finally made a breakthrough."
Jason and Jaen reached a doorway at the side of the hall, and Jaen nodded to the two guards standing on either side of the door. The guards eyed Jason for a moment, but they didn’t bother to stop him since he was with Jaen! Jaen put his hand on the door, and some of his mana was taken before the door glowed with a bright blue light and began to slide open! Jaen led Jason through the door, and they walked out to a large balcony overlooking a massive room! Jason felt his eyes widen when he set eyes on what was inside the room!
It was a giant corpse that stood more than a hundred feet tall! The corpse had the body of a man, but it had the head of a lion, and its entire body was covered in golden fur that made it look very majestic! There were hundreds of wires travelling around and into the body at different points, and scientists were floating on magical platforms to get as close as possible as they took readings and analysed the body.
The entire room was brightly lit with white lights that shone down from magic crystals embedded in the ceiling, and Jason couldn’t help the sheer awe that he felt as he gazed at the creature in front of him! From the platform he was standing on, Jason was able to look directly at the Primordial’s face, and even though it was already dead, Jason could still sense an intense pressure flowing off its body. Like it was one moment away from opening its eyes and attacking him.
’So this is a true Primordial. This is what my father has been fighting out there for the past decade. What race of Primordial is this?’
Jason asked that last question to the system, and the system brought up a response quickly.
[This corpse belongs to a race of Primordials known as the Felinites. They have a very distant relationship to the feline creatures on Earth, and they evolved to possess extraordinary strength and agility in battle. Amongst all the Primordial races, the Felinites possess the highest recorded speed both on land and in the air.]
Jason let out a calm breath as he read this, and Jason couldn’t help but feel impressed! The fact that the scholars of this academy were able to retrieve this body at all was probably one of the single greatest achievements of any world in this entire domain!
"This is a Felinite. One of the fastest Primordial Races. Thankfully, their speed means that they are also one of the lightest of all the races, and that was what allowed us to steal the corpse the way we did. If it had been even slightly heavier, then there is no doubt we would’ve been caught."
Jaen spoke up while admiring the corpse as well. Even though Jaen had seen this corpse every day for the past century, he still felt a sense of awe just from gazing at it. Jaen couldn’t imagine what it would be like to face off against a monster like this while it was still alive!