Elite Mages’ Academy (Web Novel)
chapter-174

Chapter 174: Checking Attributes

Xiao Lin did not like being the center of attention. He lost the will to enjoy his meal under everyone’s gazes, so he hastily wolfed down his food before leaving. There were a few unfamiliar faces who tried to greet him and start conversations on the way out, but he ignored them.

In another corner of the cafeteria, a few monitors were having dinner together as usual. In the two months they had been there, everyone had gotten closer, but not all of them liked the thought of working together. In the long term, they would be fellow comrades in war on the New World, but in the short term, it was still a competition between themselves in the school, especially considering the fact that the year leader could only be chosen from among them.

“The monitor from Class Seven is back. Wasn’t he expelled?”

“How could you believe such a ridiculous rumor!” Cheng Ming said. He had refused to entertain the idea.

“I heard that the monitor of Class Seven actually went to the New World! I even heard he went to the American territories!” a girl said, amazed. To prevent the others from disbelieving her, she added, “I heard about it from a friend in the student union!”

The rest of them were stunned. They might be acting class monitors, but they did not really have any power in the school hierarchy and did not know that much more than regular students. They refused to reveal much shock, but the look of admiration in their eyes was obvious.

“Only half a month left till they pick the actual class monitors.” A dissatisfied monitor changed the topic.

“Are you not confident in retaining your position?” someone else said.

“How could that be! In the two months of training, no one has been our equal other than us class monitors fighting amongst each other!” he said arrogantly.

“There’s Gu Xiaoyue from Class Seven!” came a retort.

“Oh… Did you mean to say that Xiao Lin would not hold onto his position?”

“Did you not see what just happened just? Even the student union president and the dean know him. I refuse to believe he won’t stay as the class monitor.”

“Dawn Academy isn’t like Earth. Power talks here. Furthermore, everyone is a new student, so how could he have so many connections.”

“That’s not necessarily true. Look at Department Head Song…”

They were not completely clueless. A lot of information could be gleaned just from talking to the upper year students. To be honest, they were just slightly curious about Xiao Lin’s situation, or some of them were envious of the fact that he could head to the New World so early.

To those acting class monitors, they were more interested in the year leader position. To them, the class monitor positions were in the back, and they had their eyes set on being year leader, that was in charge of the entire year. However, to this day, the student union had yet to announce the criteria for choosing year leader.

There was still some time until his meeting with the dean, so Xiao Lin opened up the forums, planning on understanding the latest news and gossip in the school and their year.

For example, even though the second monthly examination had ended half a month ago, there were still a large amount of threads discussing how they could have earned a higher grade or even how to earn an S grade. According to the contents of the threads, Xiao Lin knew immediately that no one had earned an S grade, even though the second monthly examination had drastically lowered the difficulty. Even A grades are very scarce, only encompassing about 15% of their year. Compared to the first monthly exams, it was still quite the improvement.

With the oncoming third monthly examination, skill studies had been added into the classes for the new students. Everyone was celebrating with joy after two months of boring basic training. Even if skills were much harder to learn than they had thought, everyone jumped right into it passionately. The obvious proof was that more people were going to the training halls themselves during the weekends.

Xiao Lin remembered the skill books he had brought back. His various attributes had improved greatly in his time in The Final Land, and at the very least, he should be able to start learning Lightsword.

Dawn Academy had very limited skills available for new students, since they did not want to let the new students have too many options. It was just like the man who gave Xiao Lin those skill books in New Washington said, the Academies needed students that were useful to them.

Other than topics regarding their classes, there were various gossip topics on the forums as well. For example, a beauty from one of the classes managed to get together with an officer from the student union, getting various benefits from it. She was given various gear and tools, which were common among the upper-year students, but extremely helpful to new students. It seemed like a classmate of hers started that thread, and claimed that the girl was always just average in skill, but with the added equipment, she managed to get an A-grade in the second monthly examination.

The replies seemed to belittle the girl, but they mocked the thread starter as well. At least the girl had looks and a good body; the thread starter did not have the skills to get a high grade, nor even the body or face to make up for it, so it was obviously just a jealous classmate.

Other than that, a lot of the discussions centered around lifewater. After the second monthly examinations, a lot of people died from accidents, even though the difficulty had been decreased and their lifespans were fast becoming a limited resource.

At the start of the third month, the academy released a batch of lifewater. Everyone who managed to get decent results in the second examination quickly exchanged their points for lifewater, but those who had lackluster results would need to at least wait until the third month to afford it.

Xiao Lin could not help but think of Gu Xiaoyue. She only had two years left in her life, but with her skills, she definitely could have afforded to buy lifewater after the two exams.

With that in mind, he left the forums and entered the class database. He had access to all basic information of Class Seven other than information related to talents. First, he browsed through everyone’s skills and was not surprised at what he found.

The higher the skill level, the harder it was to level it up. At some point, it required actual battle experience to slowly improve. Most of their skills stopped at around LV5, and their attributes only grew by about 10 points, so there was not a significant difference.

Xiao Lin’s current total attribute score was 40 points, thanks to the hard battles he fought in The Final Land. His initially low attribute scores had now leapfrogged almost everyone else’s. To be accurate, his total attribute score was now firmly in the second position in the class.