The victories we had won and the peace we had secured brought with them a new and subtle danger: the danger of stagnation. Our rapid growth was built entirely upon my shoulders, upon the knowledge granted by the system. But what if I were to fall in battle? What if I were to die of a simple fever? The entire edifice of our civilization would collapse, its knowledge lost, its progress halted. A nation cannot be built on the mind of a single man. It must be built on institutions.
With this sobering realization, I embarked on the most important public works project to date, one that required no stone and no iron, but would be more enduring than any fortress. I would build a school.
My System Point balance, flush from our recent victories, was a healthy thirty-five. I invested a significant portion of it into the future of our people.
[EDUCATION & PEDAGOGY - KNOWLEDGE PACKET][Cost: 15 System Points.][Description: Provides a comprehensive understanding of educational systems, curriculum development, teaching methodologies for diverse skill sets (from literacy to engineering), and the principles of fostering critical thinking and innovation.]
The knowledge was not a set of blueprints, but a philosophy. It was the art of transmitting knowledge itself. Armed with it, I announced the founding of the Lyceum of Oakhaven.
It was not a single building, but a new district of the city dedicated to learning. We constructed a Great Library to house our growing collection of reference tablets—laws, histories, agricultural records, and engineering diagrams. We built workshops for hands-on instruction and lecture halls for theoretical lessons.
The faculty was composed of the best minds in our Confederacy. I, myself, taught the principles of engineering and physics, using models and demonstrations to explain concepts like the arch and the steam engine. Elian, our First Magistrate, established the School of Law and Letters, teaching reading, writing, and the articles of our new constitution to all who wished to learn. Kael, the Minister of Agriculture, took on apprentices to pass down his now-instinctual knowledge of animal husbandry and soil management. Jor and Grak, between them, founded the School of Metallurgy, teaching the secrets of our new steel to the next generation of blacksmiths. Even my mother, Elara, established a School of Textiles and Sustenance, formalizing her teachings on weaving, dyeing, and food preservation.
The student body was the most radical part of the institution. Attendance was open to all—citizen, former prisoner, Ironpeak smith, Ashen nomad. The only requirement was a willingness to learn. A young goatherd could spend his mornings learning to read. A veteran legionary could spend his evenings learning the principles of masonry. We were breaking down the traditional barriers of class and origin, creating a true meritocracy where a person's worth was defined by their knowledge and their contribution, not their birth.
The Lyceum became the engine of our society. It created a sustainable source of skilled labor, ensuring that our progress would not die with me. It fostered a culture of innovation, as students began to experiment, combining the lessons from different schools to create new techniques. A student who learned metallurgy and agriculture, for example, designed a new, more efficient type of steel harvesting sickle.
More than anything, the Lyceum created a unified Confederate identity. When a young man from the Ashen tribe and a young woman whose father had been a Royal Knight worked together to solve an engineering problem, the old enmities of their parents became irrelevant. They were no longer nomad and soldier; they were students of the Lyceum, citizens of the future.
The system recorded this profound societal shift. My personal 'knowledge packets' were slowly but surely being transferred into the collective consciousness of my people. I was not just teaching them facts; I was teaching them how to think, how to solve problems, how to innovate. I was making myself, and the system that empowered me, wonderfully, beautifully, obsolete.