The person that Shang was supposed to meet was standing in the sky. That was something Shang could do, but it wasn't something that just any Ancestral Mage could do.
Naturally, the person Shang was about to meet was a Peak Mage Lord.
He looked like a tall and handsome young man, but the clothes he was wearing were a bit different from what most other Mage Lords would wear.
He wore simple silver trousers and a silver shirt.
He had long silver hair, and there was something very relaxed and casual about him.
It was like he wasn't part of a super powerful Empire but was just walking around in a city in his leisure time.
However, when Shang felt his Aura, he immediately noticed something.
It was so grand!
Shang wasn't quite sure how to put it, but he felt like the person in front of him was unique and special.
In a way, it was like he had fused with the world around him.
It was like the world was his stage.
Everything in the world only existed to support him and lift him up.
It was a sort of mastery over power itself.
There was a lot of "character" in his Aura, which made it very easy to talk a lot about him since there was a lot to describe.
Shang had never felt such an Aura before.
It seemed like in front of this person, everyone else just looked grey and uniform.
Shang had expected that he would meet extremely outstanding Mages before coming here, but the sheer level of this guy's Aura still surprised him since it was so much higher than everyone else Shang had come into contact with.
Well, except for the Starlight Queen, but Shang had only seen her for like a minute or so.
Just as Shang's Spirit Sense locked onto the Mage Lord, the Mage Lord's Spirit Sense looked back.
"Have you seen guys like us before?" the Mage Lord asked with a smile.
"No," Shang answered as he flew closer to the Mage Lord.
"Oh? Your reaction was quite subdued," the Mage Lord said with a bit of surprise. "I assumed you met someone like us before."
"I didn't," Shang answered.
Silence.
As the seconds of silence passed, the Mage Lord raised his eyebrow.
"You're the silent type?" he asked.
"I only talk when necessary," Shang answered.
The Mage Lord nodded. "Sure thing. There are a lot of people like you in my unit. You'll feel right at home," he said casually.
Usually, Shang would have asked the Mage Lord why he had accepted Shang this quickly, but after feeling the Mage Lord's Aura, Shang knew that such a question would be unnecessary.
If the Mage Lord had such an intense Aura, Shang probably also had one like that.
Additionally, the Mage Lord was probably responsible for many extremely talented Mages, which meant that he knew exactly how the Auras of these people felt like.
This meant that the Mage Lord could make an approximation of Shang's Battle-Strength based on his Aura.
Naturally, a unit or classroom filled with the greatest geniuses in the world also needed teachers that were geniuses. Because of that, it was very likely for this Mage Lord to have once been part of the unit he was now leading.
"What's the hierarchy of your unit?" Shang asked.
The man just chuckled. "We can talk on the way," the man said as he summoned a small plate of glass. "Hop on!"
Shang slowly landed on the plate of glass, and the two of them shot into the distance at ridiculous speeds.
By now, Shang was very good at estimating speeds, and the speed at which they were currently going was even shocking him.
At this speed, they would travel across a million kilometers in barely 20 minutes, which was insane!
The power of space was warping even Shang's Spirit Sense.
However, he still managed to see the Mage Lord just a couple of meters beside him…
Or, more specifically, the lightning bolt he had turned into.
At this moment, the Mage Lord had completely vanished, replaced by a big bolt of lightning, nearly three meters wide and 20 meters long.
"Is that an Empire Spell?" Shang asked.
"Yep," the young man's voice appeared in Shang's mind.
An Empire Spell was, as the name suggested, a Spell exclusive to one of the Empires. People that didn't directly work for the Empire wouldn't get any opportunity to learn this Spell, no matter how much money they paid.
"How come the researcher from earlier didn't use it?" Shang asked.
"Not everyone gets access to this one," the man said. "Force and Reconnaissance get it free of charge. Logistics has to pay for it. Research, Diplomacy, and Administration don't get access to it."
"I presume these are the different departments of the Lightning Manor?" Shang asked.
"Well," the Mage Lord said, "there's one more, but I can't tell you about that yet. We gotta get you initiated first."
Shang nodded. "What about the hierarchy of your department?"
"That again? Why do you care about the hierarchy so much?"
"It's important," Shang said.
The Mage Lord waited for elaboration, but Shang stayed silent.
The Mage Lord scratched his cheek in thought, which seemed quite strange, considering he was a lightning bolt right now.
"I can give you a rough description of every level's power. Would that be enough?"
"That would be enough," Shang said.
"Good," the Mage Lord added.
"At the bottom, we have the Sparks. They do not belong to any typical department of the Empire and are present in all of them. They are the Ancestral Mages we hired for miscellaneous things. You can view them as assistants, but don't randomly order them around like servants. They are people like everyone else, and they just want to make a living."
"Also, if you give excessive orders, they can report you to their superior, who will then question your social skills. That might sound harmless to you, but it's actually quite bad."
"We are an Empire. We are a group. Sure, we might not be family, but we are still one thing, and we need to act as one."
"I don't expect you to treat the Sparks like friends. I just expect you to treat them as you would treat any employee. Just normal and professional, you know?"
Shang just nodded.
"Good," the Mage Lord added. "Next, we have the Boltlings."
"The Boltlings are the talented Mages that haven't reached the Mage Lord Realm yet. They are quite talented, and they are being nurtured to one day become Mage Lords."
"Will I become a Boltling?" Shang asked.
"No," the Mage Lord said.
"The next level consists of two positions that have the same level of authority. They can give orders to people below them, but they can't give orders to each other."
"These two are the Bolts and the people of your group. I can't tell you the title yet."
"The Bolts are the normal Mage Lords. Every Bolt is responsible for an entire unit of Sparks. You can view them as the managers of the Lightning Manor."
"The people of your group have a special status. I will talk more about that later."
"The next level is the Thunders. A Thunder is a very powerful Mage Lord that is responsible for several Bolts. There are ten Thunders per department, and these ten Thunders basically run one of the Lightning Manor's seven departments."
"These ten Thunders are subject to one of our seven Mage Kings. The Mage Kings don't have any special titles. Just the fact that they are Mage Kings is already special enough."
"Officially, the seven Mage Kings have the same level of authority, but unofficially, the Mage King responsible for the Administration Department is in charge since he is the only one that is allowed to contact the Ancestor, the Lightning Emperor, and basically all of the Ancestor's orders come through his mouth."
"And that's about it," the Mage Lord said. "Did that answer your question?"
Shang nodded. "That's enough."
"Now, let me ask a question," the Mage Lord said. "Why did you ask about the hierarchy before asking about basically anything else? Like your new home, your new job, how powerful everyone else is, and so on?"
"Because I don't want some information that I have to fall into the wrong hands," Shang said.
If the Mage Lord had eyebrows right now, he would raise one of them. "Could you elaborate?"
"I don't want the information I have to get into the hands of someone working for another Empire," Shang said. "I want this information to only reach the ears of the Lightning Manor."
"Quite paranoid," the Mage Lord said.
Shang didn't answer.
"You know, a lot of new guys believe they have some huge secret that nobody has to know, but the truth is that the Lightning Manor is an Empire. As long as you don't have some secret treasure stored away that allows you to become a Mage King, the Lightning Manor doesn't really care," the Mage Lord said.
Shang remained silent for a second.
"What about the reason why there are so few Mage Kings?" Shang asked neutrally.
"What? The Mana Advancing Ritual?" the Mage Lord repeated with some amusement. "Sure, not everyone out there knows about it, but basically everyone inside the Lightning Manor knows. It's not really a secret."
"Is that what you tell the people?" Shang asked.
"Yeah, what else? It's the truth," the man said.
Shang remained silent for a while.
"What position are you?" Shang asked.
"My name is Lucin Sparkwraith, and I'm a Thunder."
