Shikkaku Mon no Saikyou Kenja - Sekai Saikyou no Kenja ga Sara ni Tsuyoku naru Tame ni Tensei Shimashita - Vol. 2 Ch. 7.1 - The Strongest Sage, in th…

[MangaDex]

 

[firosahoge]

ohhh, demons are the ones sabotaging magic research. Clever. A nice twist :) I thought it was another bored isekai kid like him.

 

[izayamikaelis]

yeah the demons are definitely the one who sabotaging the magic knowledge of that world so they can get a monopoly on the skill
but.... really... are human in that world really that stupid? or the Sage is too introverted to actually pass down his teaching to an actual person.....its the future right he could've done that before he goes "im sick of my life im gonna do a reincarnation magic"

 

[Glomoro]

@firosahoge This isn't an isekai though, he's already from this world.

@izayamikaelis The problem is that he ended up being a loner exactly because everyone else treated him like trash for having the crest he had. There were plenty of other people in high level research institutions in his days too, so most of the things he's familiar with from back then probably were passed down until whenever the demons decided to do all of this. It's not clear yet how many years it's been since he reincarnated himself. Should be more than a generation or two though considering how far humanity has fallen.

The first chapter sort of made it sound like his path to being a sage had him living for hundreds of years (unless the translation was just wonky, which is unfortunately fairly likely too), if that was a thing other people attained at all too I'd imagine the time frame since he cast the reincarnation spell is to the tune of thousands if not tens of thousands of years though. Plenty of time to dumb down the masses and hide all the evidence of how great civilization used to be. If he hadn't met that guy who apparently founded the currently dominant sword style before reincarnating, I would've said it's also possible he'd gone into the past before civilization became as advanced as he had experienced.

 

[izayamikaelis]

@Glomoro i don't remember how this thing goes exactly but going from what i wrote and your reply basically before he used his reincarnation spell he's already an outcast despite being a respected sage? from that i still think he's too closed off so normal people doesn't know the difference between their feet from their hands regarding the whole crest thing

 

[Glomoro]

@izayamikaelis Even at the level of a sage, with that crest he was basically stuck at a point where anyone else who made it to that level with a different crest still had room for improvement over him by a fairly large margin, and he suspected there were stronger beings in the rest of the universe that only people who could still get stronger might stand a chance against. I think that basically if there were other sages, they would have still been snubbing him for being stuck at the point he was.

I also get the feeling the reason his previous crest is the "highly valued" one now might be related to his achievements being twisted by the demons, so they could convince people that that maximum level was all they could ever achieve. He was strong enough to beat that final boss looking dragon thing from the first chapter's introduction of him, so it does sound pretty impressive if nobody knows there were potentially even stronger people.

 

[flannan]

@izayamikaelis from what I gather from few flashbacks of the WN,

Spoiler

For much of his life, Gaias was a stereotypical "sage" - he lived alone in a laboratory somewhere in the wilderness, practicing his art, and did not interact with others all that much. Occasionally he would appear, do something helpful that would reinforce his reputation, and go back to making even crazier weapons and magics.
Most of it seems to be based on his own obsession and lack of social skill.

 

[sjmcc13]

@izayamikaelis : I know this is a while later, but he did pass down what knowledge he could, but it was not always a case that people understood, and he was not the only one who wrote down their knowledge.

Spoiler

At one point in the WN they find copy of a mass printed magic encyclopedia (multi volume set) explaining much of the pre-destruction magic, he wrote large portions of it.

Someone (likely the demons) convinced humanity that there was a curse on the ancients that caused their destruction, and if you read any of their old texts you would bring it down on yourself, even a novel in their script/alphabet, which is why the alphabet changed since they think they will bring doom on themselves if they use the old one.

It is not that the knowledge was not there, it is that people were tricked into not reading it.

 

[Raudhbjorn]

Demons...OUT!

 

[SotiCoto]

... He pulls out a Sword in an H2H match?! Why is he not disqualified for that?

 

[Aronida]

6

 

[Kaarme]

@SotiCoto I imagine the other school would be even more disqualified for having demons as their representatives.

 

[Frosty_Josh]