Well he's not really Meng Hao, he's far more survival oriented and less emotional than Meng Hao. Also let's be real, Meng Hao does everything perfectly at every stage, and everything leads to him getting stronger. Leylin has experienced multiple setbacks that didn't benefit him. Meng Hao is the future lord and chosen one of the nine mountains and seas, Leylin is a "traitor of fate".
why do I have the nagging feeling that Leylin is going to screw over Celine?...oh the author will pull a Jenna and have Celine betray Leylin first
Leylin will sooner or later leave the current realm. So it is a safe assumption. I would love for him to actually fix their meditation technique so it is possible to progress to rank 2 and then leave them better than the arrived. Based on previous trends though they should be in even worse decline when he leaves. Another interesting way to handle it would be to change their focus to dragging in knights for those runes. Would work well with their alluring cultivation technique used on normal people, they could create a lot of people equalling low ranked mages.
yea ever since he left the academy he4 has been more and more "dickish" or the author has made a character that was "nice" at the last minute be this total jerk/traitor so that the situation with the MC doesn't make him look like the "bad guy"
The only way I see this happening is either to 1) experiment on ancient meditation techniques to get a better understanding of his own or 2) experiment on them so he can acquire their technique to use for himself. If they have some ancient item that they are keeping as their trump card he may also help them. Remember Leylin doesn't do difficult stuff for other people for no compensation. Either he will help people to improve his power or knowledge, or because it's very easy.
That's the best thing to do, I mean you stay neutral and gain lot of money, well it's a little risky though
but your not....not really. beside who's to say that the victor wont come after you because you sold to their enemy. and the whole White Magi city bs could have been avoided if it wasn't for greed. which is surprising you see magi split rewards from a kill based on contribution to the fight.....but then will steal from each other in secret planes
He tries to avoid wars, too much risk not enough profit. However if one side doesn't trust him and sends him to an active warzone as a potioneering specialist, and the other side wants him to literally suicide bomb the enemy's base, its understandable that he'd f over both sides and use the opportunity to rob everyone blind and advance in power
That's why I say it was a little risky, you need a little secrecy (and running pretty far away before the end of the war). Greed in xianxia is always exagerate...
yea but he keeps harping on how "Magi are rational" but stealing is the most irrational thing to do. At some put your luck will run out and you will kill/or steal from the wrong person. Case in point.....the reason he had to run from the Lvl 3 Magi was he killed another Magi in his attempt to steal from a 3rd Magi.......
Well going with that logic just curl up in a cave somewhere and cultivate. If you want rewards you have to take risks. The risk has to atleast equal the reward for it to be rational. I'd say the ingredients to easily transcend rank 2 into rank 3 were worth the risk, especially considering he had already prepared an escape route and he was already wanted by everyone on that continent.
You also have a point here... But seriously I don't remeber well the story so I can't really argue...
Warlock of the Magus World is one of those novels that I actually wouldn't mind rereading ^_^. That part was extremely well written from what I remember.
I would say our MC is risk seeking. He was presented with a stable path on the light side but instead went out and walked the MUCH riskier and faster path of raiding organisations. During this he created enemies on both sides forcing the situation where he was wanted by everyone and thus stood to gain from stealing even more. I understand that the author needed to create conflicts but it was not rational to start stealing for quicker advancement after leaving the dark organisations behind.