Chapter 1302: Hogging the Food, Seeing the Dean

Actually, thinking about it carefully, the situation Yilisi described is almost certain to happen.

The Sage Prophecy states the Golden Scroll is the key to the Empire's revival, so the Great Arcanists above will certainly be extremely cautious about it; it is reasonable for them to withhold the news until a later date if they cannot guarantee they will be the ones to obtain it.

If Xia Duo were the decision-maker above, he would make the same choice. It is just that this effectively cuts off his possibility of obtaining a private version of the Nether Scroll from this Projection Plane!

"Sigh—"

What else could Xia Duo say!

After returning to the Laboratory, Xia Duo suddenly thought that if the Judgment Division was going to send a Headquarters Supervisor like Yilisi to recruit people on-site, then how could the Research Institute wait for the available number of Apprentices?

It is very obvious that the Research Institute has added many new laboratories this year and needs a large number of Apprentices (allocated by laboratory), but the number of people graduating from the academy each year is indeed relatively stable.

Although it is also growing slowly, it certainly cannot compare to the Research Institute suddenly doing something like this.

The Judgment Division has already received the news and sent people to recruit on-site; if the Research Institute falls behind, the gap will be significant, especially since they might not even get a single one of those top-tier graduates ranked at the front.

Thinking of this, Xia Duo suddenly had some bad premonitions; his own laboratory's twelve Apprentices were already full, but his cooperative laboratories did not have a single one yet, just waiting for this year's allocation!

It was fortunate that Yilisi called him; otherwise, Xia Duo would not have realized that time had unknowingly arrived at the graduation season.

Consequently, he hurriedly contacted those dozen or so collaborators, notifying them to go to the various academies to snatch people, and they could use his name if necessary.

"Received, I'm going immediately."

The first to reply was Luo Zi, and after him, the replies of the others also arrived one by one, all of them being messages about departing immediately without exception.

Although guiding Apprentices will indeed have an impact on the laboratory's projects to a certain extent, having Apprentices can not only be used as Spell Batteries, making the number of daily experiments increase, but they can also be used to do some odd jobs.

They are called "Apprentices," but at the very least, they are all Low-level Mages who have received academy education; they only need a little bit of adjustment to join the normal operation of the laboratory.

Overall, the benefits to the project's progress outweigh the disadvantages.

In the evening, Xia Duo received a Sending from Luo Zi, "We just came back from the academy, there are two pieces of news, one good news, one bad news, which one do you want to hear first?"

Upon hearing there was bad news, Xia Duo knew something was wrong and hurried out of the Xiu Xi Shi; in the hall, Luo Zi and the others were already making a noisy commotion.

Seeing Xia Duo come out, everyone immediately quieted down; Luo Zi separated from the crowd and came before Xia Duo, but Xia Duo did not see any disappointed expression on his face, but rather a hint of a smile.

"Luo Zi, oh Luo Zi, I didn't expect you to learn to be bad too; tell me, what exactly is the good news, and what exactly is the good news?"

"Let's say the bad news first; we went late, the base has almost finished picking people!"

Xia Duo raised an eyebrow; he knew the base Luo Zi referred to was the Judgment Division, which included the field departments, production, cultivation, upbringing, and even the academy itself; these were the big takers of recruitment in previous years.

In previous years, the Research Institute only plucked the very best; going late this year, who knows what kind of dregs were left!

Hopefully, it's not the case that they can't even reach the level of an Official Mage, that would be too ridiculous.

However, looking at Luo Zi's appearance, there seemed to be a turn for the better, but Xia Duo did not point it out, deliberately pretending to be somewhat worried and asking: "Then what is the good news?"

"The good news is—"

Luo Zi deliberately kept him in suspense, but others could not help it and said it for him, "The good news is that Dean Bernie had long anticipated all of this and reserved a batch of people in advance; although there are fewer than in previous years, those people have now all joined our laboratories!"

When he first heard that Dean Bernie had reserved them in advance, Xia Duo did not feel too surprised; gathering the best batch of talent to do research was already the common understanding of the Empire Remnants.

He estimated that even if Dean Bernie did not reserve them in advance, the academy would have reserved people for the Research Institute ahead of time, but now that a large number of new laboratories had suddenly appeared in the Research Institute, after everyone divided them up, there still weren't enough people.

But hearing the last sentence "people have all joined their laboratories," only one phrase appeared in Xia Duo's mind—"hogging the food"!

Taking all the people who were supposed to be divided equally among all the new laboratories and giving them all to the dozen or so laboratories of Luo Zi, Hake, and the others. (Other laboratories have Apprentices promoting, so if spots open up they also need to be filled, but they won't take the extra ones.)

No wonder he didn't see any disappointed expressions on their faces.

It's just that hogging the food is easy to provoke public anger; Xia Duo himself doesn't care, but he is afraid Luo Zi, Hake, and the others can't handle it, so he asked again:

"Have you contacted Vice Dean Samuel about this matter? What did he say?"

"Contacted him, Vice Dean Samuel said that as long as we arrived first, we could get them first; this was tacitly approved by Dean Bernie. We don't need to do anything for the follow-up; he said he would handle it for us."

"I see!"

Xia Duo was silent for a moment, knowing that Vice Dean Samuel was showing goodwill to him; besides, Dean Bernie should also have the intention of promoting him, and this might even be a reward.

A reward for the contribution he made to improving the atmosphere of the Research Institute.

"Since that's the case, then you take them; just do your research well from now on."

Saying that, Xia Duo had already decided to personally visit Dean Bernie and Vice Dean Samuel tomorrow; besides, he also had to go to the Management Center.

Over the past half year, in the laboratory cooperation system, he had always focused on pushing his own research plans; as for the project tenders posted above, except for a very few that could complement his own plans, he had not accepted any of the rest.

In return, perhaps he should also accept more projects from above.

Even if it is temporarily unrelated to his research plan, returning to the Main Plane, it can also serve as an accumulation for the Tower of Time; in short, it is not a loss.

The next day, Xia Duo did not go to the negative second floor to visit early in the morning, but waited until lunchtime to set off; as soon as he arrived there, he knew he had chosen the right time.

Because he saw seven or eight Level 1 Researchers who were perhaps there to complain.

Xia Duo did not have any good expression for these people, and of course, no bad expression either; when passing by them, he treated them as air and didn't even look at them.

Arriving at Dean Bernie's Laboratory No. 2, eight or nine people were crowded into the not-so-small Reception Room, and the atmosphere was quite strange, but up to now, those few people had not made any particularly unfriendly moves.

At most, they cursed in low voices, and Xia Duo treated it as if he didn't hear it; for such people, the more you care, the more smug they become; instead, the more you don't care, the more miserable they become.

It wasn't until the Dean's assistant came out and invited Xia Duo to a Xiu Xi Shi nearby that the expressions of those seven or eight Level 1 Researchers became truly spectacular.

Two of them even couldn't stand this blow and left the Reception Room on the spot; as for where they were going, Xia Duo naturally couldn't care less.

Because at this moment, he had already seen Dean Bernie again.