Mage or knight? That's the question.

A mage must have a flexible mind, a broad vision, rational wisdom, and free will, while a knight must have a strong physique, firm faith, extreme self-confidence, and stubborn will. Although the two are not as clear as the Demon Martial Pole Wall mentioned in some fantasy.

However, different ways of thinking determine that the two have completely different ways of thinking. It is difficult for a person to maintain a flexible mind and a broad vision in thought, and to be able to cling to stubborn beliefs and unshakable will. Just as it is difficult for a person who believes in materialistic atheism to believe in a certain god with all his heart, when you believe in both this theory and that theory, it is very likely that one of them believes in falsehood, or both beliefs are false, and you are just deceiving yourself.

Whether it is the study of a mage or the cultivation of a knight, to a certain extent, it is a kind of refining and sublimation of the self, and when you advance to the silver rank, you will face the torture of your true beliefs, and you can't get the slightest falsehood.

If you find that the beliefs you have adhered to for most of your life are all deceived and false, at that time, you will not only face the backlash of the power that will impact the silver rank, but also the danger of faith collapse, broken three views, and confusion of consciousness.

Therefore, cultivation is never a simple thing, refining oneself and torturing one's mind is a necessary process, and it is also a process that cannot deceive oneself.

The difference between the path of a mage and a knight lies not in the external conditions, but more in the difference in the core ideas of the two, and the three views of thinking are completely different paths. It is almost impossible to try to be compatible.

Moreover, the way to upgrade a mage is to recognize the world, observe the world, study magic theories, conduct magic experiments, verify magic theories step by step, and integrate them into their own worldview. Most of the time is spent conducting theoretical and experimental research.

And most of the knight's cultivation path is spent exercising the body, tempering the bloodline, sharpening combat skills, meditating and thinking, and torturing the soul. The direction of effort and exercise on both sides is very different, and the strength characteristics obtained are also very different.

Mortals have limited time and resources, and even if a person spends his whole life, he may not be able to reach the end of a path, let alone cultivate both? Even if a genius can cross the ideological gap between the two, he will not have enough time to not only do magic experiments, but also spend a lot of energy to train his body and hone his combat skills.

Carl himself prefers the path of a mage, after all, he has received a modern education on the earth, his thinking is more flexible, and his way of thinking is more biased towards science students, and he has a natural love for the path of a mage.

However, he can actually accept the knight's practice of self-cultivation, Qi family, ruling the country and leveling the world, restraining himself with various etiquettes and creeds, and polishing himself into an ideal perfect personality.

After all, as a Chinese, the traditional education he received is also unconsciously affecting him, and the education of collectivist tendencies in Chinese society has always emphasized the need to become a perfect person in society, and the mainstream propaganda and public opinion of society are guiding a person to move closer to a predetermined ideal personality.

There is no essential difference between the path of virtue of a knight and the saints, gentlemen, and scholars in ancient ideals, and the successors and moral models in modern ideals. They all require that in every word and deed in society, they should take virtue as the criterion to demand themselves, and every move must conform to the norms of virtue, and finally be consistent with words and deeds, integrate inside and outside, and achieve the ideal perfect state.

Carl didn't actually think about this problem originally, but whether it is the philosophy of magic, meditation theory, illusion magic, oath magic theory in magic practice, or the theory of knight's virtue practice, there is a large amount of this kind of self-torture and thinking about life, about self-consciousness and character, which unconsciously affected Carl, making him think of a philosopher and a literary youth, and can't help but analyze his past and dissect his own thoughts.

In a sense, the most perfect knight is still Princess Alicia's situation! Alicia was very young by the curse of the Sword of the Heartless and froze her heart, and stopped the development and growth of her heart, and her heart remained in the innocence and purity of a child. This heart, as pure as natural crystals and precious stones, is a blank sheet of paper, without any distractions from thoughts, and as long as the knight's virtue creed is written step by step, it is a perfect knight whose main personality is completely composed of knightly virtues.

Therefore, Princess Alicia's knightly heart is so pure, and her strength is progressing so rapidly, and in less than twenty years of knightly cultivation, she has broken through the last heavenly barrier that has trapped countless golden knights and promoted to the realm of Heavenly Destiny Knight.

And remembering the path of knightly virtue that Alicia chose, Karl not only sighed.

"Loyalty!"

The virtue of loyalty, although understood by most knights as loyalty to the monarch, loyalty to the family, loyalty to the lover, and loyalty to duty, but in fact it is not only that, it is actually an extremely serious, extremely sincere worldview, more similar to the way of sincerity in Confucianism, is to be loyal, honest, sincere attitude to life, to treat the world, to treat oneself, just like the sword of Ximen Fuxue's "sincerity to the sword", is a kind of extreme sincerity, the ultimate focus.

Alicia's knightly path is like this, she has lost all emotions and emotions, and naturally she has no interference from all distractions, and she lives extremely seriously. She sincerely focuses on everything she should do, sincerity to her heart, sincerity to the sword, sincerity to the knight's path, sincerity to her sister, sincerity to her father, sincerity to responsibility, sincerity to responsibility......

Alicia's world is so pure and focused, as transparent as crystal and as brilliant as a diamond.

However, it is precisely because of the understanding of the legendary knight's understanding of loyalty that Carl knows that he will never be able to be so loyal and sincere to the world, and to take the path of loyalty and virtue, he needs a heart that is extremely sincere to himself, the world, and others, and can naturally face his own heart, treat life sincerely, and love what he does seriously and dedicatedly, sincere and sincere.

Obviously, none of these Karls can do it. However, if it is just to simulate Alicia's understanding of the virtue of loyalty, using the thinking mode of the legendary knight as a template, it is a very simple thing to use to cast the magic of the "knight's mark"!

The difficulty of the magic of the "knight's mark" is mainly in how to create a personality that conforms to the knight's virtues, and as for the oath part, it is just to restrain the personality and get closer to the knight's power.

But the creator of the magic "Knight's Mark" probably never imagined that there would be a person who had the memories and experience of a legendary knight, and had the mind and personality of a legendary knight as a template to perform this magic. 8)