Elite Mages' Academy

Dawn City was a capital city, and it was also the first colonial city on Planet Norma. Xiao Lin had always thought that Dawn Academy where the name Dawn City came from, but it turned out that Dawn City was actually established before the academy.

This was quite different from Judge Academy. The Americans had already sought help from the British in establishing a colonist academy before they even declared independence on Earth, while New Washington was only built after their independence.

Dawn City had a very long history, practically having witnessed all two hundred plus years of their history on Planet Norma. Even if their expansion was halted thanks to the war against the orcs, it remained one of the largest and greatest cities on the planet.

The city had over a million inhabitants. The number might not be much on Earth, but in the New World, even counting the native cities, there were very few cities that would even reach a million in population.

Just like the rest of the academies, Dawn City’s population was mostly taken up by the natives. As colonists that came from lightyears away, their numbers would never amount to what the natives had. Other than the naturalized citizens that fell under the rule of Dawn City, there were also a large number of merchants from out of the city. Dawn City was a coastal city with a very large port. The various races of the New World usually did a lot of their business there.

An Fumin had a very deep understanding of the city. He was quite the interesting conversationalist, and quickly turned the topic to himself. He claimed to have fought hard in the city for over fifty years before being as accomplished as he was. His tone was filled with pride.

“Would you not automatically be assigned a job after graduating?” Xiao Lin asked curiously. An Fumin had said that he had a lot of different careers after graduating: an adventurer, a recorder, a hotelier, and–at his lowest point–even labored at the docks. With his self-deprecating words, those kinds of jobs were extremely shameful for a colonist. Xiao Lin felt the academy would not leave someone who had been nurtured for so many years to do those sorts of jobs.

“Ah, you’re still too young.” An Fumin said with no malice, he said with a hint of regret. “The history of us colonists needs to be looked at in two parts. The first hundred years saw a lot of war, and every colonist was very valuable. They needed manpower everywhere. Furthermore, war meant that the natives could not easily be trusted, so everyone was assigned something right after graduating.”

Pausing for a moment, he continued, “Ever since the Law of Immortality, various treaties were signed, basically meaning war would be very rare, so everyone started to focus on expansion and their economy... The academy would naturally still assign us jobs after graduation, but do you really feel like a job that made less than two thousand New Dollars a month would be meaningful? Ah, I came to the New World to enjoy my life, but how could I buy houses, maids, and women without money? That’s why I needed money...a lot of it!” An Fumin declared, not hiding the fact that he was a money-chaser. The truth was, Xiao Lin did understand that most of the people who chose to stay at the academy probably had the same goal. Anyone who was obsessed with morals had probably already been kicked back to Earth during the entrance examination.

The colonists were basically nobles in the colonist territories, and it was no different in Dawn City. However, even nobles were split into those with power and those without. In over two hundred years, there was already an established status quo. With so many of them, someone needed to be on the losing end in the end.

That was why people started to reject the assigned jobs by Dawn Academy, choosing to carve their own path. Some of them were just filled with a sense of adventure, and chose to leave the academy to explore for themselves.

An Fumin was considered one of the more successful people from that group. Thanks to his large tax contributions every year, a lot of the upper level of the academy had good relationships with him, allowing him to have the freedom to travel in and out of the academy and establish connections.

Xiao Lin was not as experienced as An Fumin, so he showed some admiration after listening to everything, but An Fumin waved it off. “There’s nothing to envy. Your future is much brighter than mine! You’re only a first year, but you’re already a captain. You’ll end up as the head of a regiment in the future, and might even be able to own a territory yourself!”

Dawn Academy only had six regiments in total, so officers were quite limited. It was different during the war, since most of them would enlist after graduation thanks to having nowhere else to go, but after the war, an awkward situation appeared where officers started to outnumber the regular soldiers, which led to the number of officers being culled.

There were still nobles, so they could not be regular soldiers like natives. Xiao Lin thought about it, and he would definitely not be willing to be treated the same way as the natives. He would rather quit the army at that point.

With that thought, Xiao Lin started to understand the significance of the dean’s personal letter of appointment.

The two of them got much closer after the conversation, and the carriage quickly arrived at the stop. The Timesand then began to fade away from the carriage.

Stepping out of the carriage, rays of bright sunlight struck his face as a wave of fresh air hit him. He could hear the sound of waves, signaling that the interspatial gate was near the sea. Looking over, he could see the limitless blue sea. There were countless cargo ships moving around, the docks bustling with activity.

Xiao Lin took a few deep breaths. The New World did not have a trace of pollution, and the clear air was extremely soothing to his lungs. Even though Dawn Academy was in a space that mimicked the New World, but since it was a pocket dimension, the space was way too small, and there was a sense of suffocation after staying there for a long time.

The platform they stood on was quite vast. There did not seem to be anyone around other than fully-armored troops. The interspatial gates were heavily guarded by every academy. Xiao Lin even noticed a silver-colored resurrection tower a few hundred meters away, but it was not very large.

An Fumin smiled and said, “Dawn City has two resurrection towers. This was the one built initially, but another larger one was built elsewhere since it covered too small an area. However, they did not destroy this one, leaving it as a backup.”

After he got off the carriage, he underwent a security check as usual, verifying if he had the appropriate permissions and that he did not bring any restricted goods. However, An Fumin seemed to be a regular there, and was not submitted to the same checks. The guy even pulled out a hundred dollar bill and stuffed it into the officer’s hand. The latter gave him a smile before waving him away.