Shang slowly walked down some wooden stairs. The entrance he had walked through was near the top of the hall.
Of the seven people currently inside the hall, three were inside their small homes.
Nine of the ten people associated with this branch had a lot of ambition and wanted to grow more powerful. That's why most people were always busy with their own training.
Shang was no longer in some separate Area made for developing different Paths.
No, this was the real world, and the millennia of knowledge known to humanity were not a secret here.
While the weak humans in Area 23 had only trained in isolation and with some materials, the stronger and more experienced Mages here did more.
For these people, their journey toward power was divided into five parts.
Part one: Gain resources.
Training without assisting resources was just making it more difficult for no reason. The quicker one managed to achieve their goals in their training, the more time they had left in their life.
Around 10% of all High Mages didn't die to some beast or other Mage, but due to their longevity running out.
With only 500 years in total, everyone had to work on their own power with a lot of enthusiasm. Otherwise, all the training would have been for nothing.
Yet, resources were extremely expensive.
Because of that, a huge part of someone's journey to power was about gaining the resources to expedite their training.
Part two: Comprehending Concepts.
After the person got their resources, they would focus on comprehending their next Concept. With the help of the resources they had gained earlier, the Mages could save several decades in this process.
Getting resources for a full decade could pay off big time by saving five decades of meditation.
Part three: Creating Spells.
A Concept only counted as that, a concept. One understood the Concept, but before one could make full use of the Concept, one needed to create a fitting medium.
That medium was Spells.
After comprehending a Concept, the Mage would use the knowledge they had gained to create several powerful Spells. Most of the time, this didn't take as long as comprehending the Concept, but it still took quite some time.
Part four: Practice.
After creating the Spells, the Mage would find some weak opponents and become familiar with using their Spells during stressful situations. Most of the time, this was the shortest part of their training, but it was still irreplaceable. A weapon that couldn't be used when someone was under stress might as well not exist.
Part five: Inspiration.
Inspiration was the last and most dangerous part of training.
By fighting a powerful opponent, someone's mind and body would reach their full potential, allowing their minds to come up with and combine several principles.
When someone was stuck in meditation and felt like they were progressing way too slowly, they could go out and fight someone that was a genuine threat to them. Like this, they would be pushed to their limits, and they would unearth all their potential.
Of course, there wasn't a set rule as to how powerful an opponent should be.
It was simply a combination of risk and reward.
The more powerful the opponent was in relation to oneself, the more one had to push oneself to win.
However, these fights were extremely dangerous.
On the other hand, someone could take a slightly dangerous opponent and gain some scattered insights by some slight scares here and there when the opponent launched an attack.
Very dangerous opponent, very great help.
Very weak opponent, very little help.
Surprisingly enough, the reason why so many Mages died to old age was precisely this part of their training.
They were simply too scared to risk their lives, leaving the fifth part of one's journey to power out.
It was still possible to become an Archmage without risking one's life, but only the smartest and richest people could do it.
The overwhelming majority still needed to risk their lives at some point.
Gain resources, comprehend Concepts, create Spells, practice, gain inspiration.
This was the cycle of training for ambition-filled Mages.
And the nine Named Agents in this branch were all very ambitious.
Of the ten people in this branch, three were on leave, focusing on comprehending their next Concept.
Of the seven that remain, three were currently focusing on creating Spells inside their homes.
The people that were focused on comprehending Concepts needed their peace, which was why they meditated in some isolated locations in the wilderness, away from others.
The three people focusing on creating their Spells were still here because they didn't need to fully focus on the process. If they got interrupted, they would, at most, lose around three minutes of work while still getting the opportunity to snatch up some good missions and practice their new Spells.
For the people here, part two and part three of training often happened in short bursts of alternating order.
In the middle of the hall were two people playing some sort of board game against each other.
Those two were focused on gaining resources or gaining inspiration.
They would mostly focus on earning a lot of money to exchange for resources, but if a particularly fitting opponent became the target of a mission, they could also gain inspiration.
Those were the eight other Named Agents in this branch, leaving Shang as the last one.
Just like the last two, Shang was currently in the process of gaining resources…
Or, more precisely, was.
The latest mission had been worth a lot of money.
That left only one person and the only person that wasn't a Named Agent in this branch.
The Keeper.
The Keeper was the manager, commander, and defender of any given branch of the Temple of Blood.
The Keeper was always present, and they never accepted any missions. Their job was to run the entire branch according to the rules of the Temple of Blood.
In order to be eligible to become a Keeper, one needed to be an Ancestral Mage.
Of course, with the special location of this branch, getting an Ancestral Mage in here wasn't an easy feat. After all, the Yellow Sunbreaker loved attacking Ancestral Mages.
Because of that, the Keeper in this branch was a bit special.
The Keeper of this place had another job as well.
Keeper was only the secondary job of this person since it was too expensive and troublesome to smuggle an Ancestral Mage to this location.
Because of that, the Territory Lord personally acted as the Keeper of this branch.
The Territory Lord was the superior of all the Keepers in a given territory.
A Territory Lord had to be a Mage Lord, at least.
