Elite Mages’ Academy (Web Novel)

Chapter 445: Choosing Support Roles

That night, Xiao Lin pulled open a discussion group for Class Seven in the forum. He announced the general situation of the courses to everyone. Unsurprisingly, the education reform sparked a lot of controversial debate. Everybody reacted with complaints, especially for taking away a day of break, which upset a lot of people.

Of course, some people cared about the Elite Club and were even eager to sign up. However, before the student union had issued the regulations, the club was nothing more than a preliminary framework.

Under the management mechanism of Dawn Academy, the student union managed the grade leader, the grade leader managed the monitors, and the monitors managed the class members. Therefore, Xiao Lin had more or less full authority to manage Class Seven. Naturally, everyone would point toward him if they had any questions.

Qualified managers could not expose their inner thoughts to their subordinates so easily. However, this reform also obviously left most monitors in a clueless state. In contrast, Xiao Lin seemed to be much calmer. After all, he had his sources of information and had gotten to know much of this information in advance.

In a series of ambiguous and moderate explanations and reasons, he managed to ease the group’s excitement. They then quickly entered into the topic of the new course schedule. Chen Yu had sent the timetables to the monitors, and Xiao Lin posted a large number of timetables into the group chat. There was another burst of chatter and discussions.

[Herbology? F*ck. Not only are we colonizing, they want us to become farmers too?]

[The above poster must have never played any games. Don’t you know about support roles? There are always sub-professions in games. This is normal.]

[I think you’re addicted to playing games! Do you think support roles can be learned so easily in real life?]

[Actually, I’m curious. Why would the school force us to learn this stuff? After we get to the New World, there would be a need for all kinds of professions, but it doesn’t have to be these subjects, does it?]

[A discipline in forging? Damn, am I miserably going to become a blacksmith in the future?]

[I would never do this kind of physical labor!]

…

Xiao Lin watched quietly for a while, then expressed his opinion in due course. As the administrator of the chat group, he bolded and blackened his font. After he spoke, the noisy chat group suddenly quieted down. After half a semester, he had managed to cultivate some authority in the class.

[Actually, don’t you think it’s more accurate to call it ‘logistics support’ than ‘support roles’?] Xiao Lin continued typing, [Logistics is important in a war. It could even be the determinant of victory or defeat. Herbology can produce various potions for the battlefield to treat wounds, while the forging discipline can repair broken weapons. I think the academy hopes that we have more professional and comprehensive skills, or you’d blame the academy for lacking talents in these areas.]

[War?] Someone astutely picked out Xiao Lin’s use of terminology.

[At war with who?]

[We might have a war? It shouldn’t be possible for Normans to fight us. Under the influence of the Resurrection Tower, it’s pure suicide.]

It had to be said that the academy’s education was still deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. In just six months, the might of the colonists and the academy were deeply ingrained in everyone’s hearts. The colonists will not wage a war on Planet Norma. Although nobody would talk about this openly, they all believed this to a certain degree.

[I’m just giving an example, just treat it as a reference!] Xiao Lin was feeling rather helpless. Due to Chen Yu’s request, he could not explain certain things directly. War was indeed looming, but the higher-ups of the academy would never want this matter to be made public, let alone be announced by a monitor.

Xiao Lin immediately changed the subject, [In short, moving forward, a class may be taken as a whole unit. So, I hope everyone’s choice of subjects can be evenly distributed and not overly concentrated on certain subjects. Yeah, you all should understand what I mean.]

[Monitor, what you mean to say, is that you hope if we are suddenly thrown into war, we can deal with various emergencies more comprehensively. I agree.] As the team leader personally appointed by him, Zhou Feng made the first agreement.

There were no objections to this, and he smoothly obtained everyone’s approval.

Regardless of whether it was for the monthly exams, or for real operations on Planet Norma, if a class was taken as a whole, then the more classmates who specialized in different disciplines, the more beneficial it would be.

Next, Xiao Lin asked everyone to write down the major they wished to select. The academy allowed everyone to choose at least one. However, Xiao Lin asked everyone to write down three, and to hand them to the two team leaders Zhou Feng and Gu Xiaoyue to compile. About an hour later, the summarized report was passed to him by Gu Xiaoyue.

The academy offered a total of six support role courses for the freshmen: alchemy, herbs, forging, scrolls, enchantments, and engineering. There were a total of 60 people in Class Seven. Xiao Lin took a rough glance and found that most people’s first choices were enchantments and alchemy, followed by herbs and scrolls. Finally, almost nobody chose engineering and forging.

Xiao Lin did not know whether to laugh or to cry. He had expected this to happen. These two disciplines could be said to be the hardest and most physically demanding of the support roles. Forging, just as the group had previously complained, was just the upgraded version of blacksmithing. Engineering was even more difficult. On the battlefield, everything, from various defensive towers, fortifications to simple military housing, and so on required engineering.

Nobody was willing to accept this punishment, and Xiao Lin could understand this. However, when it came to the battlefield, nobody could repair broken weapons, and destroyed defensive towers cannot be built by just anybody.

In actuality, there was no way they would personally perform the engineering and forging. As colonists, they were nobles after all. Often, they merely needed to provide blueprints and work instructions. The local natives were the ones who carried out the hard work. Xiao Lin could not help himself and he tried to persuade the others.

Xiao Lin did not say it, but if there really was a war with the local native people, would the military still use the natives for such important tasks? Perhaps these disciplines were set up to enable them to become more self-sufficient in critical moments, and not having to rely on the local indigenous people.

However, his persuasion was to no avail. Xiao Lin mercilessly pulled out his authority as a monitor and started calling people out.

[You, your intelligence attribute is so low, and you actually chose scrolls? Are you kidding? Scrolling is a discipline related to spells!] Xiao Lin used his authority to compare the basic attributes of each class member. These support roles were also closely related to the basic attributes of each person.

[And you, your strength attribute is so high. Isn’t it a waste for you to choose herbs? Get yourself to forging!]

[Your attributes aren’t very high, and it would be difficult for you to be proficient in any of these. You go for engineering! The attribute requirements are the lowest there!]