After listening to Levi's analysis, the students felt as if the clouds had parted to reveal the sun. Everything ahead suddenly became crystal clear!
They finally knew which path to take.
Had Zaunites rebelled before? Of course. They had rebelled more than once in history.
Just ten years ago, under the leadership of Vander, the boss of the Black Lanes, the Zaunites launched an organized armed uprising against Piltover, using fighters from several major Zaunite gangs as their backbone.
But that rebellion ended just like any other over the past two hundred years. They couldn't even push past the Sun Gates Canal Bridge. Before they could even set foot on Piltover soil, they were slaughtered by the Enforcers, leaving rivers of blood in their wake as they suffered a crushing defeat.
Why did they always fail?
The students hadn't understood before, but now they did.
It was because the Zaunites of the past had always acted blindly on emotion. Their vision was too short-sighted and shallow.
They only thought about overthrowing the Piltovans who oppressed them, but they never considered what they wanted to change or achieve after toppling that mountain. Nor did they seriously analyze the dynamics between the enemy and themselves, or the feasibility of their actions.
With no goals and no plans, the result was a chaotic riot every decade or so. Then, after taking a harsh slap to the face from the Piltovans, they would immediately scatter to the winds.
Such rebellions could never frighten the Piltovan enterprise owners.
They might even hope the Zaunites would pull a stunt like this every so often, making it convenient for them to periodically purge the troublemakers who dared to resist.
But now, Levi was here.
As soon as he arrived, he clarified the ultimate goal for everyone: achieving Great Harmony across the entire world in the future.
Then, he established a short-term goal: achieving victory in the single city of Zaun in the near future.
Now, he was explaining the feasibility of their actions: Janna, a goddess with theoretically limitless power, would be the ultimate martial guarantee for their future endeavors.
With the analysis reaching this point, the question of what they needed to do next became abundantly clear.
"We need to spread Janna Thought to more people, attract more believers to join us, and help the Goddess Janna restore her power!"
Sitting among her classmates, Lina once again acted as the class representative.
Her gaze was incredibly focused, her small face flushed with excitement. She was so engrossed that she almost forgot the person standing on the podium was her once clumsy and boorish older brother.
"Exactly," Levi said, casting an appreciative glance at his sister. "What we need to do next is—"
"Mobilize the masses to the greatest possible extent!"
"Mobilize the masses?" The phrase seemed to carry an inherent sense of struggle. The students' faces flushed with excitement and their blood boiled at the very sound of it.
"Yes, but everyone must pay attention!" Noticing the overly enthusiastic atmosphere, Levi immediately lowered his tone and emphasized to the students, "When I say 'mobilize the masses' at this current stage, I mean spreading our ideology to the public, awakening their class consciousness, and drawing them closer to us and to Janna—"
"I do not mean blindly inciting the masses to fight and engage in direct confrontation."
"That would be impractical, and even meaningless."
Levi always adhered to the principle of seeking truth from facts.
He knew that some methods that worked well on Earth would not work in Runeterra.
Mobilizing the general public to rise up in struggle sounded passionate and thrilling. It was as if everyone could just tie a yellow scarf around their heads, raise their banners in revolt, and immediately usher in a golden age of peace and prosperity.
But what if they actually tried that in Runeterra?
The social environment of Runeterra was still in a highly primitive and brutal era.
The power of life and death over the Demacian people still rested in the hands of the nobility, while Ionians were bound by various clans and sects.
Zaun, Shurima, Bilgewater, and the Freljord were simply in a state of lawless anarchy where the strong preyed on the weak. It was survival of the fittest; if you were weak, you deserved to die.
And as for the Noxian Empire, the world's largest slave estate and warmonger, the situation there went without saying.
In this world, human life was incredibly cheap.
Humanitarianism simply did not exist.
If you dared to rebel, they dared to kill you.
They would slaughter however many came, and it wouldn't even matter if they killed everyone.
After all, Piltover was the city the world yearned for. They didn't even have to lift a finger; cheap laborers harboring the "Piltover Dream" would endlessly flock there from all over the world of their own accord.
There was an endless supply of exploitable masses; no matter how many were culled, more would always take their place.
As for the power of the general public... in this world, the combined strength of ten thousand ordinary people might not even match a single powerful warrior or a brilliant mage.
If there were too many ordinary people, the enemy wouldn't just be unafraid; they might even get excited—
Just like using Sivir to clear a hundred waves of minions in one breath. It was both thrilling and stress-relieving; the more people there were, the more satisfying the slaughter.
"The power of the general public is indeed limitless, but we cannot dogmatically treat this phrase as a holy text to guide all our battles. Instead, we must adapt to the actual circumstances and find a rational method to mobilize and utilize this power!"
So what was this method?
Naturally, it was still Janna.
In this extraordinary world where immense power was concentrated in individuals, only magic could defeat magic.
"We must mobilize the masses so that the power of their faith converges upon Janna, creating an extraordinary powerhouse who belongs to our general public!"
"And Janna is a god shaped by the power of faith. Her very existence naturally dictates that she can never deviate from her own beliefs or abandon the humans who follow her."
Yes, this was Janna's fundamental setting, and it would never change.
Just as a dog was born a dog, and a human was born a human... Janna was born from the belief of "protecting humanity." As long as she drew breath, she would forever protect the humans who followed her.
Levi could, of course, use his "evil contract" as a Summoner to order Janna to do things she didn't want to do.
But that would be meaningless.
Because if Janna deviated from her own beliefs, even if forced, the power of faith she gained from those beliefs would no longer serve her.
The only result would be that the humans' power of faith would turn around and abandon her as a traitor, naturally shaping a brand-new "Goddess Janna" who would forever protect humanity.
And Levi, along with Janna, would completely lose his power.
"Therefore, Janna's power is the power of our general public."
"She will always stand on the side of the suffering, forever unchanging!"
Levi's explanation, which directly revealed the fundamental nature of Janna's existence, made Viktor and the students even more fired up.
A goddess of limitless power would forever stand by their side!
What they were doing absolutely had hope!
"T-Then how should we start spreading our message?" a student asked excitedly. "Where do we begin? Who do we reach out to? How do we do it?"
After the ultimate goal, the short-term goal, and the feasibility analysis, it was finally time to discuss the concrete operational steps.
In the hearts of these Zaunite students, Levi was exactly like the lab instructors they had seen at the Academy of Hextech.
It felt as though he wasn't lecturing them on politics or discussing the grand scheme of things, but rather guiding them through a scientifically planned, rigorously designed experiment where every step was clear and complete.
Sure enough, Levi did not disappoint them this time either.
"Where should our outreach begin, and with whom? That is a good question," he said.
"And to figure that out, we must first clarify the most paramount question—"
"In Piltover and Zaun, who are our enemies? And who are our friends?"
"Who are our enemies? Who are our friends?" The students fell into deep thought.
Soon, someone answered, "The Piltover Council, and the wealthy plutocrats who control it, are our enemies!"
"And those Zaunite Chem-Barons who look like Zaunites but are actually in cahoots with the Piltovan enterprise owners—they are our enemies too!"
"Well said!" Levi agreed, adding, "I already analyzed the sins of Piltover's grand merchant class in my previous article."
"And the Zaunite comprador class, represented by certain Chem-Barons, may appear independent, but in reality, they are entirely the economic vassals of this Piltovan merchant class."
"These people represent Zaun's most backward relations of production. They only want to forever rely on Zaun's cheap labor to supply Piltover with low-value-added minerals, chemical raw materials, and mechanical parts, just to earn a few meager scraps."
"They have absolutely no desire to develop science and technology or achieve industrial upgrades, because doing so would offend the Piltovan lords who firmly occupy the high-end market. It would threaten their stable position in this system of dividing the spoils—"
"So in a sense, these Zaunite compradors are even more evil than the grand merchants of Piltover."
"Piltover's grand merchants at least play a role in promoting technological progress, while these Zaunite compradors only fiercely guard their own little turf, hindering the development of productive forces!"
Levi's explanation thoroughly exposed the ugly faces of their enemies one by one.
Everyone clearly understood exactly who their enemies were.
However, another student asked, "Then Teacher Levi, what about the commoners of Piltover?"
"Are they our enemies?"
As soon as this question was raised, a divergence of opinions emerged in the room.
Because Levi had previously learned from the original Levi's memories and from Baku's accounts that the oppression Zaunites felt most viscerally in Piltover didn't come from the aloof, high-and-mighty enterprise owners. Instead, it came from the Piltovan commoners who looked at them with discriminatory eyes every single day.
Call these Piltovans friends?
The Zaunites would be the first to curse them out.
But calling these ordinary citizens enemies... that didn't feel quite right either.
"The ordinary people of Piltover are certainly not our enemies," Levi replied.
"But we cannot naively treat them as friends, either."
"If you view the Twin Cities as a single entity, you might understand that these so-called Piltovan lower classes aren't actually at the bottom. They are, in fact, a head above the poor of Zaun, occupying the middle tier of the pyramid as the middle class."
When Levi put it that way, everyone realized the truth.
The Twin Cities only appeared to be two separate cities; they had always been one entity.
Those Piltovan commoners who were theoretically also at the bottom were, in reality, inherently superior to the Zaunites.
"They are not our enemies, but they have already been bought off by the super-profits that Piltover's powerful merchant class has extracted from Zaun and the rest of the world through their technological and financial hegemony."
"This middle class, who live in comfortable houses and eat steak, also belongs to the group of people who do not want to change the status quo. Therefore, it is very difficult for them to understand the struggle we are about to undertake—"
"We can try to win over some of them, but we absolutely must not treat them as the focus of our early outreach and struggle."
With the enemies clearly identified and the Piltovan commoners difficult to win over in the short term, the question of who their friends were became very easy to distinguish:
It was the destitute of Zaun.
Due to Zaun's extreme situation as a semi-colonial and semi-primitive society, aside from the tiny minority of Chem-Barons and their cronies, almost everyone else belonged to the destitute class—and they were a progressive, industrial destitute class at that.
"They are highly concentrated, have a low economic status, and have almost lost all hope of getting rich. Furthermore, they suffer extremely cruel treatment at the hands of the Chem-Barons and the merchant class. These people are our natural allies."
"But right now, we are in Piltover. Our cause is newly established, our strength is weak, and we cannot yet gain a foothold to carry out our work in Zaun, so..."
Levi pointed out their specific direction of work:
"What we need to do right now in Piltover is to try every possible means to carry out our outreach work among the Zaunite exchange students, Zaunite apprentices, and new Zaunite immigrants!"
"While we find ways to accumulate manpower, financial resources, and material assets, we will simultaneously strengthen Janna's power by spreading her faith. Ultimately, at the right moment—"
"We will return to Zaun, back to the place where the conflicts are sharpest!"
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