Elite Mages' Academy

After a semester, everyone was quite familiar with monthly examinations. However, the times Xiao Lin had actually participated in them were few. Of course, what he had experienced in the New World greatly exceeded examinations, be it in intensity or in realism.

However, thanks to the restructuring of the courses, the monthly examinations stood to be affected as well. There were various rumors sprouting up on the forums, and those who started the rumors were those who were closer to the upper-years and the student council. It was a pity that Song Junlang had yet to return to the academy, or Xiao Lin could have gotten information from him.

No matter what, the current Xiao Lin would face it the same way. The forum was filled with a large number of students being worried about the standard of the examination, including those in his class. That was because the last few monthly examinations in the last semester were quite moderate in difficulty, which Xiao Lin could see from the reports on the results after the fact. Even so, each class had close to a third of their students losing their lives in the examinations.

If the difficulty were to increase, then the casualties would be even higher. It was not good news for a lot of them, and in truth, Xiao Lin and the other class monitors had noticed it as well. Each class was beginning to break into two factions.

Last semester, everyone had just entered the academy. No matter how talented they were, everyone was still walking on the same path, which was why there was not a huge difference. After a semester of training, the exceptional students were rapidly widening the gap between them and the less talented students.

Xiao Lin’s current attributes were Strength 30, Agility 30, Intelligence 30, and Physique 30, which was already enough to be at Black-Iron Rank. With Miracle and Ruin as extremely explosive killer techniques, he was very confident in his own skill. He could say that, even if the academy increased the difficulty of the monthly examinations–even to the level of the third monthly examinations from last semester–Xiao Lin would not have to worry.

Of the other class monitors, Chen Dao and Cheng Ming were naturally amazing figures, but the other class monitors might be worse than the two of them; they were still much stronger than regular students regardless. Of the class monitors, even Class Four’s Han Manman, who had the lowest attributes, had already reached Black Iron-rank last week, which meant all of them were at that rank.

That was why, facing the upcoming monthly examinations, the class monitors could be considered the group that would need to worry the least. Even if they could not guarantee the overall results for their classes, their personal combat abilities were still enough to guarantee they would get decent results.

Xiao Lin’s personal training plan did not change due to the monthly examination. Of the twenty sword techniques, he had already begun training on the third one, called Breeze Slash. It was a technique that focused on speed, and was quite helpful to increasing his agility.

His Elemental Swordsmanship was also steadily improving. Xiao Lin could already control the compressing and condensing of the elements to around three seconds. The professor initially had strict requirements for him, but after checking on Xiao Lin’s progress a few times, the old man was speechless, and could not help but increase his requirements on Xiao Lin, lest Xiao Lin relax too much. Thus, his next goal was to shorten the time to two seconds.

That one second was nothing to look down on. The further he advanced, the harder it was to shorten the time. At the end of it, even shortening it by 0.1 seconds was extremely hard, but the benefits it brought forth were incrementally higher. The higher level a battle was fought at, the more valuable time was. A strong opponent would not allow you to have those few seconds to slowly compress the elements.

On Thursday, Xiao Lin had finished his dinner and returned to the dormitory. He was preparing to look at his notes when he received a message on his phone, asking him to head to the fifth floor in half an hour for a meeting.

The fifth floor of the dormitories had a lot of meeting rooms, which were regularly used by the various classes. However, at that moment, other than the monitors, no one was doing such a troublesome thing. After all, to most students, meetings were quite pointless. Anything could just be talked about on the forums or even just announced in the various class groups.

The message had been sent by the student union, so Xiao Lin naturally had to abide. He put down his notes and immediately headed to the meeting room. He had even bumped into Cheng Ming and Chen Dao at the stairway; the two of them had confused expressions. On the way there, they speculated that the year leader, Chen Yu, was probably going to announce the details on the monthly examination.

They met their fellow class monitors at the door; no one dared to be slow to respond to a student union notification. They had put down whatever they were doing to rush over. When they opened the door, the second-year year leader was standing there. His expression was very serious as he stood at attention, not averting his gaze. There were two others standing next to Cheng Yu.

One of them was the baby-faced student union leader. He smiled at the class monitors at the door, motioning for them to enter. The other one was the Seventh Regiment Captain Yu Mei. She also had an easygoing smile, and even shot a look at Xiao Lin, which caused Xiao Lin to roll his eyes in response. However, an uneasy feeling started to rise in his heart.

“Is everyone here?” The president flashed his usual kind smile at everyone as he cast a scrutinizing look around. He nodded and said, “Yes, everyone come in. Sit anywhere you want.”

Everyone was shocked. It was not that big a deal if it was only Chen Yu speaking, but this time the president had appeared himself, and a captain was present as well. That ensemble would even shock fourth-year graduates, let alone first-years. Other than Xiao Lin, everyone had noticeably tensed up, their conversations from earlier stopping immediately.

“I’ve asked all of you here mainly to discuss the upcoming monthly examination.” The president’s tone was gentle. It was just like everyone had guessed; the meeting was going to be about the monthly examination, but for it to be something that involved even the student union president caused everyone to curse silently. Would the examination this time be a never before seen difficulty?

Xiao Lin had a look of realization and turned to look at Yu Mei, who was trying hard to maintain an expressionless look to preserve her dignified look. However, the slight twitch at the corner of her mouth showed that she was resisting the urge to smile. Yet, what did Yu Mei have to do with the monthly examination? The sense of unease he had started to increase.

“Everyone should already know about the educational reforms for this semester. In order to verify the results of the change, as well as to raise everyone’s collective combat ability, the upper management of the academy, after repeated negotiations, managed to submit a proposal to the dean and the student union. A conclusion was finally reached…”

The president maintained his gentle smile, but his tone was incredibly dry and official. Everyone almost fell asleep listening to it, but they forced themselves to look like they were earnestly listening to the student union president. Xiao Lin, on the other hand, did a double take. He noticed the student union president say, ‘the upper management of the academy, after repeated negotiations…’