Flaws in Magical Education

Ordinary people found it hard to remember someone they had met only a few times and spoken to only a few times a year ago. When they met again, they would at most feel that the person looked familiar.

But Orendo would not.

[Eiro Sadwind: Former probationary mage apprentice, from Brill, Lordaeron, eighteen years old]

The Eye of Truth had information on the attendant before him. He had been one of Orendo's classmates in the public classrooms of Violet Academy a year ago.

Aside from Nielas Aran, he was one of the few probationary mage apprentices who had crossed paths with him.

With the Eye of Truth's help, the few memories related to Eiro Sadwind automatically surfaced in his mind.

This former probationary mage apprentice came from prosperous Brill in Lordaeron. He was the son of a wealthy merchant, though his family was not truly that rich.

Looking at his former classmate, dressed in an attendant's uniform and still carrying a tray of wine, Orendo smiled. "Hello. Eiro Sadwind, I remember you. You're from Brill."

A clear expression of delight appeared on Eiro's face. Even the hand holding the tray trembled slightly. "You actually remember me! You were so dazzling in Dalaran, while I..."

His voice fell.

Orendo looked Eiro over and asked curiously, "Why are you wearing that? You work here?"

A probationary mage apprentice had actually become an attendant! And in a place like Dalaran, where mages stood above all else, that was rather unbelievable.

"Yes," Eiro said softly. "A year ago, no mentor was willing to choose me as a student. According to the rules, I could only leave Violet Academy. But I didn't want to return to Brill like that. I wanted to become a mage, a mage of Dalaran! So I chose to stay."

"But..." A bitter smile appeared on his face. "With my family's circumstances, living in Dalaran is still manageable. But without the Kirin Tor's support, my path as a mage is extremely difficult."

"My father is no longer willing to support me. He wants me to go home and help with the family business. I don't want to go back, so I stayed. I need to live, and I need to study. All of that costs money."

"I work in Dalaran while studying. The senior ball attendants at the Lordaeron Embassy are paid well, so a few friends and I came here."

Orendo was left somewhat speechless.

What Eiro was doing sounded somewhat like working while studying. But Orendo knew it was not. Working while studying meant attending school while holding down a job.

Eiro, on the other hand, had already been cast aside by Dalaran's official education system. Unless he was extraordinarily lucky, it would be difficult for him to become a Dalaran mage.

Orendo looked at this mage apprentice, who was much older than himself. The longing for mages and the arcane on his face gave Sir Severosa the feeling of seeing those students at Hope Primary School in his previous life.

It was a yearning for knowledge.

Sometimes, having too good a memory was not a good thing. Eiro's situation reminded Orendo of a paper he had once read in Kirin Tor Monthly. In that paper, a mage had boldly raised the issue of former probationary mage apprentices like Eiro Sadwind.

As mentioned before, if probationary mage apprentices were not selected by an official mage to become formal apprentices during their one-month probationary period, they had to leave Violet Academy.

The paper claimed that around three thousand probationary mage apprentices came to Dalaran every year. Usually, five hundred to eight hundred would become formal apprentices, and eventually around one or two hundred would become official Dalaran mages.

Aside from the more than two hundred who ultimately succeeded, the remaining two thousand or so would lose their chance to receive formal mage education in Dalaran unless they were exceptionally lucky.

So, among those twenty-eight hundred probationary mage apprentices who lost their qualifications, were they really all so incorrigible and devoid of magical talent?

Perhaps most probationary mage apprentices truly lacked the aptitude, because in any world, ordinary people outnumbered intelligent ones. Mages were also a profession that required extraordinary intelligence and wisdom.

But among the roughly twenty-eight hundred mage apprentices cast out each year, could there really not be even a few promising talents?

Not necessarily! In Orendo's eyes, as someone from Earth, Dalaran's educational system was actually extremely unfair!

Since its founding, Dalaran had followed a teaching model learned from Quel'Thalas: the mentor system.

The so-called mentor system meant that one teacher taught several students. Mentors who wished to take students selected several probationary apprentices as their own. Under normal circumstances, an official mage would have two to five students.

Those students required roughly two to five years to become official mages. In other words, an official mage could train at most five official mages in about five years, while one hundred official mages could train five hundred mages in five years.

That sounded like a lot. Ten thousand official mages would only need five years to train fifty thousand mages, and after a few hundred years, all of Azeroth would be full of mages!

But reality could not be calculated that way at all. Leaving aside the matter of student quality and talent, mages themselves rarely took in five students over five years.

Aside from a small number of mages obsessed with power or occupied by other interests, most mages single-mindedly pursued arcane truth. There was no doubt that teaching students consumed a great deal of their energy and distracted them from their pursuit of arcane truth.

Most true mages did not particularly enjoy taking students—wasn't focusing on arcane research better?

One had to know that taking in a student meant taking on another responsibility. Not every mage was as good at teaching disciples as Antonidas. Nor was every mage apprentice as worry-free as Kel'Thuzad or Orendo.

Therefore, while a Dalaran mage would normally have two to five students, they generally only took in one every three or four years. More or less, they would accept another apprentice only after one student advanced to become an official mage.

Moreover, many mages did not even have apprentices. They focused entirely on arcane research and ignored worldly affairs. Even the Kirin Tor had been left helpless and issued several rules rewarding mages willing to teach students.

What was more, due to the special nature of the mage profession, it required serious spending. At the very least, one needed either money or power to support the exploration of the mage's path.

That alone meant that many talented commoner mage apprentices could only remain minor mages for their entire lives, or simply had no way to become official mages—they had no money to support their exploration of the arcane.

The paper ultimately claimed that because Dalaran's educational system was unreasonable, or rather because mages were not proactive in teaching apprentices, at least several hundred promising mage talents were overlooked each year and ultimately fell into the ranks of ordinary people.

That was a severe waste for Dalaran, and also a severe waste for the arcane.

The paper's author never proposed a solution in the end. Perhaps the author had some ideas, but lacked either the ability or the courage to voice them.

Orendo had merely read it and let it pass before. It was only after meeting Eiro Sadwind this time and hearing about his circumstances that he happened to recall that paper and Dalaran's situation.

After thinking for a moment, Orendo patted the shoulder of the former probationary mage apprentice, who was actually a little taller than him, and said warmly, "Everything will get better."

"Mm! Everything will get better." Eiro smiled as well. He had been working to earn money, and he spent everything he earned on research materials and magical scrolls. Eiro believed that one day, he would definitely become a true mage!