Hello, Kel'Thuzad

There was no entrance exam.

Any apprentice who could obtain a letter of recommendation, whether they were gifted or hopelessly dull, would be allowed by Dalaran to study at the Violet Academy for a time.

Only those who were truly worthless would be expelled from the Violet Academy.

This was a compromise between Dalaran and the other human powers. With a recommendation from a noble or a higher-ranking mage, one could enter the Violet Academy and give it a try.

Orendo was a viscount himself. The letter he carried was a special recommendation he had obtained from an earl two years ago; the earl owed his father a favor. Even if he knew absolutely nothing about magic now, Dalaran would still give him face and let him stay for a few days.

Hadren, the elven mage, merely spoke to him indifferently for a few sentences before calling over another apprentice who had happened to come looking for him and telling him to take Orendo to register.

Once the registration was complete, he paid five hundred Lordaeron New Gold Coins in annual tuition.

Five hundred gold coins was nearly what an ordinary person could earn in a lifetime without eating or drinking. No wonder there were so few mages. Ordinary families simply could not afford such expenses; no amount of talent could change that.

After paying, Orendo received a stack of items.

Two magic robes, bearing no mage's insignia, merely identifying him as a Dalaran magic apprentice.

A badge—a magical access badge—which served as his identification in Dalaran. It allowed him to read in the library and enjoy many special privileges—for example, he could enter the Violet Academy freely without being stopped by the guards at the entrance.

Several beginner magic textbooks, all books like Fool's Guide to Runes: Arcane Edition.

And some other things.

Orendo casually flipped through several of the textbooks and found that he had already read them all.

Maybe he could sell them secondhand?

That was what he thought.

At that moment, the apprentice assigned by Mage Hadren said:

"You've collected your things. You can choose to live in the academy; with your identity badge, you can get a dormitory room. Of course, you can also live outside, but you'll have to return for classes."

"The same goes for meals. You can eat outside, or you can dine in the academy's public cafeteria."

"You've just arrived and don't have a mentor yet. First, you'll need to attend public classes for a while. Only when a mentor takes an interest in you can you enter the mage tower and receive your mentor's instruction."

"Any other questions?"

After rattling that off, the apprentice looked at him coldly, his voice remaining detached throughout.

This expressionless apprentice was very young. Orendo estimated that he was at most one or two years older than himself, certainly no more than fifteen.

"I have a question. With this badge, can I go to the library and read right now?" Orendo immediately asked.

With the Eye of Truth as a cheat, he could hardly wait to finish every book in the library at once.

"You can. But yours is only the most basic apprentice badge, so you can only read on the first floor of the library. You can't access anywhere else," the cold apprentice said.

"How many floors does the library have?"

"Please don't ask such pointless questions. Is there anything else?" the cold apprentice said again.

"All right. One last question." Orendo held out his hand and said under the baffled gaze of the cold apprentice, "Hello, my name is Orendo Seferosa. May I ask your..."

"My name is Kel'Thuzad. That's all. If there's anything you don't understand, ask someone else."

And so, in the Eye of Truth's assessment, this apprentice became: [Kel'Thuzad, junior mage, capable of easily killing more than five hosts...]

In the Eye of Truth's eyes, he seemed to have become a unit of measurement... It was always about how many of him someone could kill!

The cold Kel'Thuzad did not satisfy much of Orendo's curiosity about Dalaran's Violet Academy.

It was not until evening, when Orendo was in the Great Magic Library, that he finally figured out what an apprentice trainee was supposed to do in Dalaran and what he could learn.

As one of the academy's lowest-ranking apprentice trainees, Orendo could attend one public class each day, covering basic techniques and the history of magic.

The public classes were taught by experienced full-fledged mages. From time to time, higher-ranking mages would appear in those classes to select apprentice trainees as their students.

Only after gaining a mentor and becoming the student of a higher-ranking mage could an apprentice trainee drop the word trainee and become a true mage apprentice.

From then on, they would no longer need to attend ordinary public classes and could study knowledge and mysteries under their mentor.

As for apprentice trainees who never gained a mentor's favor and could only attend public classes every day, they could remain at the Violet Academy for only one month.

If no one wanted them after a month, then sorry... go home, brother. Magic wasn't for you.

In other words, apprentice trainees like Orendo had only two options at the Violet Academy: one public class of roughly an hour each day, and self-study in the library.

The Violet Academy had no real classes. Usually, a mentor took only a few apprentices, and they were not allowed to disturb their mentor too frequently. After all, every mage had work and research of their own.

After learning these rules of the Violet Academy, Orendo sighed. There was nothing more to say.

Read.

In a corner of the library, he brought over more than a dozen books related to magic in one go.

There were introductory textbooks like Fool's Guide to Runes: Arcane Edition, extracurricular reading like Kirin Tor Monthly, which was similar to a mage magazine, and beginner alchemy books closely related to magic and the arcane, such as Karyl's Compendium of Minor Elixirs.

It made Orendo feel that the five hundred gold coins in annual tuition were more than worth it!

If he had bought these dozen or so books himself, they would have cost at least over a hundred gold coins.

Reading them here cost nothing!

The only rule was that they could not be taken out of the library and had to be read here.

But there was another advantage: the library was managed by magic, and students were allowed to stay up all night reading here!

What else was there to say?

Orendo immediately plunged headfirst into the ocean of knowledge.

Thus, when midnight arrived and junior mage Kel'Thuzad came down from the library's third floor, he saw Orendo in a corner of the library, so absorbed in "turning pages" that he had forgotten to eat and sleep.

He really was just turning pages!

When Kel'Thuzad saw Orendo, the apprentice trainee was holding a thick beginner book on elemental magic. Yet he turned a page every two or three seconds, finishing the book—which was at least a hundred pages thick—in just a few minutes!

Even Kel'Thuzad, cold as he was, could not help pausing to observe him for a while.

Was that reading?

Who read like that?

What a clueless brat.

Thinking this, Kel'Thuzad could not make heads or tails of it and left coldly.