John had assumed that after pulling that stunt, everyone except Barnabos would sign the application form. After all, just to avoid the support mission, those four blockheads had even pretended to be clueless. Clearly, Faoken's support mission had scared the wits out of them.
Aside from Barnabos, who had been warned in advance by Olaf and knew he could not get out of it, the others probably had not received any subtle hints from their superiors.
Therefore, it was only natural for them to hope they could get away.
But John knew the real situation very well. Of the thousand Mage Soldiers Dormammu had assigned to him, only those below squad leader rank could be replaced to a limited extent.
There simply were no replacements for Mage Soldiers with the rank of second lieutenant or above.
After all, Dormammu had spent an entire night selecting these Mage Soldier officers. This was already the maximum number of casualties the Seventh Air Force could accept.
Unless these officers made major mistakes or attacked their superiors, there was basically no possibility of replacing them.
If John truly tried to replace them, the available replacements would probably be less capable than the current candidates.
Thus, even after discovering that these five were oddballs like Wendy, and despite sighing repeatedly to himself, he had not immediately turned around and left with a dark face. Instead, he had used the application forms to stage a little act of "retreating to advance," displaying the benevolence of a superior officer.
He had originally planned to wait until those four blockheads signed the applications, only for their respective superiors to ruthlessly reject them.
Then he would step in and say he had done his best, but headquarters had refused, placing himself on the same side as them.
That way,