Chapter 55: Upcoming Monthly Exam
The two of them did not exchange many conversations when they met. After the goods were delivered, the young man hoisted his laptop and asked Xiao Lin to pay the balance on the spot. With that, the transaction was completed.
Before leaving, Lu Renjia handed his business card to Xiao Lin. One could see that it was self-made at a glance. In addition to his name and phone number, there was also a rather unattractive business introduction: Custom-made weapons and equipment available made-to-order for freshmen and sophomores.
“This branch of enchantment that I chose is relatively niche, haha.” Lu Renjia smiled shyly.
Of course, Xiao Lin still did not understand what Lu Renjia meant by niche, but he asked out of curiosity, “Did anyone other than me come looking for you to order weapons?”
“Why yes. There’s plenty of rich people in your batch of freshmen,” Lu Renjia licked his dry lips with envy. “More than twenty freshmen have bought equipment here in the past two weeks. Seven or eight of them even asked for custom-made ones.”
As it turned out, Xiao Lin was not the only one who wanted to show off in the upcoming monthly exam. It was likely only those other acting monitors who could get those custom weapons too. Unless anyone achieved Grade S in the admissions test, they could not possibly afford his services.
Xiao Lin repeatedly looked at the wand in his hand as he made his way back. The wand was about half a meter long and had a dark-red wooden handle. A water-blue, fist-sized orb was inlaid on the top of the wand and was slightly cool to the touch.[1]
[Novice wand (Enhanced-type); Attached skill: Ice Bullet; Spell damage evaluation: Grade F; After striking the target, their attack and movement speed will be reduced by 25% for 3 seconds]
Xiao Lin was more or less satisfied with the wand. Upon seeing that it was still early, he decided to go to the training hall to have a feel of releasing the spell.
The academy had prepared a special training hall for students in the spell class, but the hall was empty during the first lesson, when everyone had basically not yet met the requirements for learning spells.
When Xiao Lin went there however, the roar of explosions coming from the hall could be heard from afar. He was obviously not the first person to go there to train spells.
He pushed the door and entered, but hardly anyone was in the hall. More precisely, there were only three individuals including Xiao Lin himself. The other two were Gu Xiaoyue and another long-haired girl in a cape.
Xiao Lin’s arrival caught the eyes of the two girls, but their gazes stopped for less than a second on him before quickly turning to continue focusing on the spell practice at hand.
Gu Xiaoyue was a person of few words, while the other long-haired girl was someone Xiao Lin vaguely had an impression of. He had seen the girl a couple of times in meditation class and also spotted her with Cheng Ming in the lounge area of the dormitory on occasion. She appeared to be an acting class monitor as well, but both sides seemed to have no interest in getting to know each other. As a result, other than remembering how she looked, Xiao Lin never actually said hi to her.
The training hall for spells was different from the large and empty swordsmanship hall. Many single rooms were separated by glass, and each room was about 100 meters long and two or three meters wide. The glass windows clearly looked to have been specially strengthened, as they remained intact despite the dull blasts resulting from the girls’ spells.
The biggest problem freshmen faced with spells was the hit rate. Once the spell was released, no one knew what the spell would end up hitting, so the room was designed specifically to prevent accidental injury.
Xiao Lin approached a single room and produced his newly-acquired novice wand, ready to start experimenting. A wand enhanced with spells required only sufficient mental power to release it directly, without requiring the caster himself to learn the spell.
Xiao Lin’s main focus of training was his accuracy. He also had to study his current meditation level and intelligence attributes, and how many ice bullets he could cast in rapid succession.
His training used up nearly the entire afternoon, yet his hit rates were still far from satisfactory. His Basic Perception level was not high and he aimed purely by relying on his sight. At most, he was able to accurately achieve 80% of the hit rate against targets within 10 meters.
The limit to his number of uses was worrying too. He could only sustain the spell for a maximum of four times if it was executed in quick succession. It was during the fourth bullet that Xiao Lin saw blackness in front of him and he immediately collapsed to the ground. A few minutes later, he could only barely stand after supporting himself with the glass windows. He would then have to rest outside for at least an hour before going back in to cast more of the spell.
As a Black Iron-rank spell, the Ice Bullet was one level higher than the novice spells in the admissions test and thus consumed much more power.
Xiao Lin now knew that the attributes in Dawn Academy did not represent a certain aspect, but was actually an amalgam of multiple capabilities. The upper limit of his mental power was determined by the value of the intelligence attribute and the level of his Basic Meditation. In light of everything however, his basic intelligence value was still too low.
Basic Meditation also affected the speed at which his mental strength recovered. That was why he had to rest for an hour before continuing to use spells. Students who had not even reached LV1 Basic Meditation could cast spells once or twice, but they subsequently had to rest for a longer time before gradually recovering.
He did not interact with either of the girls throughout the entire afternoon. The long-haired girl, who apparently was the acting monitor, seemed particularly disinterested with Xiao Lin’s Ice Bullet. She used a blue ball of light similar to energy bombs but had greater power. Xiao Lin surmised that it might be the upgraded version of the novice-level spell Energy Bomb—the Black Iron-rank Convergent Energy Bomb.
Lu Renjia had also mentioned that the power of the Convergent Energy Bomb had reached a formidable E rating. It was considered to possess the most astonishing power of all the spells of the same level, but its hit rate was extremely low and it took a long time to gather up the energy. Whether or not it was practical was up for debate. Xiao Lin guessed that the girl might have likely commissioned Lu Renjia to make a new, enhanced wand with the Convergent Energy Bomb.
On the other hand, Gu Xiaoyue merely trained her energy bombs throughout the session. The combination of her extremely high intellectual attributes and reasonably good Basic Meditation allowed her to produce energy bombs in a very skillful manner.
One particular aspect that surprised Xiao Lin was that the girl had actually used her bare hands to cast her energy bombs. It meant that Gu Xiaoyue had actually mastered the spell instead of relying on the wand’s skills like other people.
A person had to reach at least LV3 Basic Meditation before they could begin to learn the lowest level of novice spells. Xiao Lin remembered that point being mentioned in class, which meant that Gu Xiaoyue’s meditation speed was rocket fast.
In addition to shock, Xiao Lin unknowingly developed a curiosity toward Gu Xiaoyue. One could hardly imagine that a silent girl like her would possess such striking magical talent.
He wondered, on more than one occasion, whether the girl actually possessed any hidden talents. Although the two of them were still friends as of then, she would probably not tell anyone else about that sort of thing.
As time passed, life continued at the academy.
After the initial days of the freshman period, most had gradually become accustomed to the Dawn Academy’s intensive courses. Once the initial novelty wore off, it was inevitable that everyone had complaints, such as the boring, repetitive courses, and their urgent desire to head off to the new and desirable world the dean described.
During the first month, many people spent their time whining, but because they were left without a choice, they could only endure the suffering. It reached a point where many people even forgot one extremely important event.
On the other hand, the acting monitors—including Xiao Lin—bore in mind the instructor’s words from the beginning. At the end of each month, a test similar to the admissions test would be held. That test was also known as the monthly exam. In addition, the results of the two monthly exams would be included in the final exam for their candidacy as true class monitors.
The freshmen would soon be welcoming their first monthly exam.
[1] We admit this fist-sized orb does make the wand seem rather big. There are no problems with respect to its length, but one could argue that this might better be called a scepter in light of that huge orb. However, since there were comparisons made with the wands used in the admission test, it is perhaps better to just say wand here.