"Mmmm." Ignis hummed, thoughtfully, as he listened, and started in on kneading the bread with his reply. "But it does make a certain kind of sense, really. In...most academic settings" he put that emphasis in with great deference to the nature of the one they currently existed on the periphery of on his very island, "there is rigid order, there are correct ways of doing things. There may be discourse and disagreements and dialogues, but they usually exist within rules and restrictions, decorum and expectations, written or otherwise. And theoretically, the same stands for war and death and bloodshed, but, in my experience, theory is a realm strictly for the scholars. In actuality, in actual war and death and bloodshed, it's the first thing to be defenestrated, and there is a chaos there even in the more tactical of battles. So, once the fires of war have faded into ashes and cinder, there is an appeal to something that creates an order for itself and strives to actually adhere to it, in ways that seek to expand our understanding and reach for an improvement to it, rather than tear it down with more hostile intent...

"I'm reminded, a bit," he added, "of when I first started to teach here. My teaching spot was an unexpected gift, if you can fathom it, from Prompto and his sister, a concept that I was incredibly skeptical about at first. But I found, once I started, that the two of them might actually be onto something. At the time, tensions were high between our nation and our enemy; it felt like, and quite frankly was, a bubble on the brink of bursting. But when I was here, I was able to pursue and share knowledge not as a matter of survival, but rather just for the pursuit and sharing of it in and of itself. With likeminded individuals who cared not for backstabbings or resource allocations or spycraft except in that comfortable, theoretical fashion. It was...a refreshing departure."

There was a soft smile, which grew a little crooked as his lifted it toward Liliana. "Though I'm certain," he declared, "you gave enough of your professors enough hell to make them question the validity of such a perspective."