Elite Mages' Academy Chapter 279: Library (1)

Chapter 279: Library (1)

It got progressively harder to increase their attributes the more they trained. It was especially true for the new students. They had recently reached a bottleneck period.
Normal training started to yield very low returns for the class monitors. For instance, even someone like Cheng Ming needed two to three days to get an increase in his attributes through Basic Swordsmanship training. That was even under the conditions he threw himself into his training, ignoring everything other than eating and sleeping.
For regular students who did not have any talents aiding them, their climb was even slower. That was why everyone had a lot of faith in Chen Dao and Cheng Ming. Anyone whose total attribute scores were more than ten points away from them basically had no chance.
Xiao Lin’s training was at a higher level than theirs. With the simulated battles, the virtual characters were given very high attributes and he constantly dodged around with his Phantom Steps. He had begun to realize that the stronger the foe, the better the effects on training.
However, even with his current pace, Xiao Lin would at least need a month to reach the Black Iron-rank. It would mean he had used a total of four months. That speed was not that slow, but it was not fast either.
With how popular the gambling pool was getting, the forums started to discuss the fastest colonists to reach Black Iron. Xiao Lin had curiously read up on it as well.
Those records did not mean much, especially since everyone’s attributes when they first arrived from Earth was different, which led to a lot of discussion.
However, no one questioned who held the record for the fastest breakthrough. Xiao Lin could not help but sigh when he saw the name.
Ivanovich.
The first SS-rank talent holder among the colonists. There were reliable records that showed that he only took seven days to reach Black Iron-rank after he entered the Russian academy.
Seven days. That meant his attributes were already close to Black Iron-rank when he first entered. Xiao Lin remembered Song Junlang telling him that Lilith from the Judge Academy only took two months as well. Compared to them, he was lagging behind by quite a bit.
After a bit of lamenting, Xiao Lin quickly typed out a reply in the thread, but his focus was completely different from everyone else, ‘Thread starter, where did you get that information?’
He got a reply very quickly; it was just two words: The library.
Dawn Academy naturally had its own library. Xiao Lin had actually wanted to visit it since the first examination, but had to delay it due to Judge Academy. Even after that, he had been busy preparing for the third examination and was unable to.
It had been a week since the end of the third monthly examination. Thanks to the pressure from the gambling pool, every class monitor was frantically training, but Xiao Lin felt like he had to take the time to visit the library.
He needed to look for appropriate skills that he could learn. Not every skill was as structured as Phantom Steps. The academy’s courses were limited, and not every skill had the same effect on their attributes.
Taking advantage of the weekend, Xiao Lin got the location from someone and headed over. The library was toward the center of the academy. It looked not much different from a library on Earth. The size was quite large and thanks to the weekend, it was quite crowded. Even professors and research students could be seen.
There were staff from the student union managing the library at the front hall. The entire process was quite smooth, but the queue was longer than expected, so Xiao Lin took the time to read the explanatory notices beside the counter.
The process to obtain a library card was quite simple; all they needed was the school universal card. The library cards were tied to the owner, and would need to be replaced if lost.
However, the interesting thing was that the library cards had ranks attached to them. The order from low to high was C, B, A and S. C-ranked cards only allowed usage of the reading room, and books were not allowed to be brought outside. That rank consisted of first-year and some second-year students.
B-ranked library cards could take books outside, but each book could only be taken out for a month at most, and only one book was allowed to be borrowed at a time.
A- and S-rank cards did not have limitations to the time and amount of books. Other than that, the notices also detailed the different sections within the library.
To put it simply, even if some books were in the library, the academy did not want everyone to have access to them. Rather, they did not want the lower-year students to be exposed to too much too early.
There were quite a few students in the queue. Other than first years, there were also quite a few students from the higher years. After fulfilling certain conditions, they would need to upgrade their cards as well.
Looking at the queue, Xiao Lin estimated that it would take at least half an hour to get to his turn. As he got ready to head to the back of the line, someone called out to him.
“Xiao Lin? Xiao Lin! Hey, over here!”
An excited girl called out to him from the counter as she waved to him. Looking at Xiao Lin’s confused face, the girl pursed her lips, saying, “I bet you’ve forgotten who I am!”
A gentle-looking guy walked over, hurriedly pulling the girl over as he stared at her awkwardly. Looking at Xiao Lin’s awkward smile, he said, “I’m so sorry, my girlfriend loves making a scene.”
Xiao Lin suddenly realized that it was Gu Fantian and his girlfriend Zhang Tingting. They were the two who were in charge of assigning the new students to their dormitories when he first entered the academy. He later asked them about Perception training, but had stopped interacting with them after that.
Even though the two of them probably treated him better because he was a class monitor, they were still quite decent people.
Gu Fantian more or less saw through Xiao Lin’s awkwardness and wisely came over. “Monitor Lin, why don’t you come inside and take a seat. We haven’t talked in so long. I heard you did well in the monthly examination and have officially been appointed as the class monitor. Congratulations!”
Xiao Lin could not help but admire the way that man turned that awkward situation around, even revealing to everyone else around them that he was a monitor in the process.
Monitors were quite rare in the academy. Adding up all four years, there were only a few dozen of them. Even the higher-year students had to look at him differently after hearing that.
Xiao Lin was not that familiar with them, but following Gu Fantian into the resting area confirmed one thing: he would be able to skip the half-hour-long queue.