I Arrived At Wizard World While Cultivating Immortality Chapter 780: Enrollment

The plaza was a flood of people.

Batch after batch of children of the right age walked in orderly fashion into the various testing arrays under their mentors’ guidance.

As each array activated, soft light rose from the ground and swept over every child’s body like flowing water.

The next moment, pillars of elemental light in different colors shot up: red, blue, cyan, yellow… all different in color, all different in height.

The taller the pillar, the stronger the elemental affinity.

At the same time, on the other side of the plaza, a great many alchemical instruments ran in parallel, measuring mental energy strength, soul stability, precision of elemental control, potential for law perception…

Reading after reading was recorded, and at last compiled into a complete aptitude file for each apprentice.

Jie Ming stood at the edge of the plaza, watching the bustle before him, and could not help a certain feeling.

Several thousand years ago, when Noren No. 147 Academy had just been founded, the whole academy had held no more than a few hundred apprentices.

On enrollment day back then the plaza had been empty, a scattered few dozen people queuing before the testing arrays, not even filling half a football field. And now.

Children from several hundred subordinate planes had gathered here.

The long queue ran from the testing arrays all the way to the edge of the plaza, then wound back on itself several times along the streets.

Pillar after pillar of elemental light rose and dispersed, over and over.

Crimson, ice blue, emerald, gold…

Every color interwove until it was like a slowly flowing ocean of light, casting the whole plaza in a gorgeous glow.

In both numbers and overall aptitude, it was long past anything the old days could compare with.

Just then, a particularly loud cry of astonishment broke out at the center of the plaza.

Boom!!!

A thick crimson pillar of light shot violently into the sky.

That pillar was far more dazzling than any before it, a full measure thicker across, and it climbed all the way to the testing array’s highest graduation and stopped there at the very top.

Fire elemental affinity, maximum.

“Tenth level!”

“Maximum fire elemental affinity!”

“Someone notify a mentor!”

The mentor handling registration shot to his feet.

The children queuing nearby all rose on tiptoe to look toward the center of the array.

Standing there was a small boy of about eight or nine.

His pale gold short hair looked gilded in the firelight, and there was still something excited in his dark brown eyes.

Jie Ming took one glance and raised an eyebrow slightly.

That child… the soul fluctuations about him were rather familiar.

“David?”

The pale gold hair was all but identical to David’s in his younger days, and as for those dark brown eyes, they presumably came from his wife Erin. So Jie Ming confirmed the boy’s identity at very nearly a glance.

Jie Ming turned to look toward the edge of the academy grounds.

Before long, he found a familiar figure in the crowd.

David was standing at the very front of the line of parents. He seemed to have watched his son’s performance with his mental energy, and a smile had appeared on his face. Several centuries on, he had not changed a great deal.

His long golden hair was still combed back without a strand out of place, and his robe was as neat as ever.

His Law Solidification Domain was a good deal heavier than in those days, but it lacked the keen edge of a genuine combat wizard.

Jie Ming smiled, made his way soundlessly into the crowd, and tapped him lightly on the shoulder.

“David.”

David turned, and on seeing Jie Ming was startled for a moment.

Then the smile on his face turned brilliant.

“Jie Ming! Long time no see.”

The two of them shook hands.

David could not help looking Jie Ming up and down, and said with a smile:

“I was just wondering whether you would come to this year’s enrollment. I did not expect to actually run into you.”

Jie Ming laughed. “The academy is my responsibility at the moment. I ought to come and have a look.”

As he spoke, he looked toward the center of the plaza.

“That child… your son?”

“He is.”

At the mention of his child, the smile on David’s face deepened at once.

“Cohen. He just turned eight this year.”

Jie Ming nodded. “Good aptitude.”

“Good hardly covers it.” David laughed until his eyes nearly curved shut. “Maximum aptitude.”

“Speaking of which, I have you to thank.” He looked at Jie Ming in earnest.

“If not for that aptitude enhancement technique you worked out back then, Cohen could never have had talent like this.”

“The family ran the calculations later. Without the enhancement, his elemental affinity would have topped out around the seventh or eighth level.”

“But now…”

He looked at that pillar of flame in the distance, not yet faded, his eyes full of pride.

“It is top-level talent in the truest sense.”

Jie Ming waved it off.

“The technique could only do its work because you made that choice yourselves. Besides…”

He smiled.

“Aptitude is only a starting point. How far he gets in future is down to him.”

“True enough.” David nodded in complete agreement.

While the two of them were talking, the small boy on the plaza had been led by a mentor to the branch registration desk.

He hardly hesitated at all, and pressed his hand straight onto the combat system’s registration crystal.

Pale red light flashed, and the registration was done.

Jie Ming was somewhat surprised.

“Combat system? The boy’s own choice, or the family’s arrangement?”

“Both.” David smiled.

“We ran a good many tests on him in advance these past few years. The results were rather interesting.”

“His stability at fine control is average, but the moment a large burst of energy is needed all at once, he performs better than other children his age.” “After discussing it, the family felt he was better suited to the combat system.”

Jie Ming nodded thoughtfully. “That is right. Beyond intelligence, logistics values precision of control more. Combat values burst, reaction and adapting on the spot.”

“Since the talent is there, there is no need to force him down the logistics road.”

“Exactly the point.” David said with a smile.

“In fact some at home did think the combat system was dangerous, but on reflection they let it go.”

“You cannot send a child down a road he is simply not suited to out of fear of danger. That would end up more dangerous still.” Jie Ming nodded and did not argue.

By the point the wizard civilization had reached today, there were countless statistics on the choice between the combat system and the logistics system.

At the low levels, the death rate in the logistics system really was far lower than in the combat system, and combat-system wizards seemed to be weaker in a fight than logistics ones as well. So many novice wizards instinctively treated the combat system as cannon fodder and the logistics system as the elite.

Even Jie Ming had once thought that way.

But as time went on, Jie Ming increasingly found that combat system and logistics system really were very apt names.

Strictly speaking, they were two different roads.

The combat system was better at gaining resources through war and at honing itself, and its capacity to digest resources in real time far exceeded the logistics system’s. In terms of combat power, if one looked at the high-level wizards, those combat-system wizards who had fought their way out of mountains of corpses and seas of blood usually surpassed logistics wizards of the same level in combat instinct, application of law and reaction under pressure.

The most typical example in the academy was Berta Vera Augusta.

Nearly every high-level mentor who knew the details took it for granted that once she successfully entered the sixth level, her combat power would be second only to his own and Viola’s. And more importantly…

Mandatory war conscription was a fate no wizard could avoid.

If someone who was never suited to research forced his way into the logistics system for the sake of so-called safety, in the end his own rate of growth would simply be insufficient, and when conscription came he would face a dangerous battlefield anyway, at which point his death rate would be higher instead.

The road that genuinely suits you is the safest road.

Watching his own child being led away by a mentor, David let out a light breath.

“Well, the boy has finished his paperwork, so I should be getting back. There is a pile of things waiting for me at the family.”

Jie Ming nodded. “We will get together again some time.”

“Definitely.” David waved with a smile.

“When Cohen has a holiday I will bring him to visit you, and let him meet the man who actually created the aptitude enhancement technique.”

“He has always been curious about you.”

“By all means.” Jie Ming waved back with a smile.

The teleportation array lit, silver-white light flashed, and David’s figure vanished from its center.

Jie Ming stayed where he was, watching the crowds still streaming across the plaza.

Batch after batch of children stepped onto the testing arrays.

New pillars of light kept lighting up.

New cheers kept ringing out.

His gaze swept slowly over every child, watching closely.

After a long while, he sighed quietly to himself.

“It seems… this year still has no genius in the true sense.”

That was not to say these children were not excellent.

But Jie Ming’s standards now were of a different order.

To his mind, what decided whether someone was a genius was not reaching the tenth level of elemental affinity, nor surpassing ordinary people in mental energy.

It was… “intelligence.”

And in this batch of children, at least, he had not yet seen anyone like that.