Demis woke up the following morning. The guards were less strict and they were allowed to go around the perimeter of the university grounds, the orphans were allowed to discuss and converse with each other. Demis didn"t speak to them but instead decided to go into the dormitories to sleep, he wanted to get some rest as he had yet to recover from staying up all night the day before. Demis became less cautious about the knights because of the fatigue, it came to a point that he didn"t even care.
After his nap, he was awoken by the shouting of the guards commanding them to gather in a.s.sembly. He followed and fell in line, he saw that there were fewer in attendance around a third of them were left from the day before. He concluded that those who remained were the vagabonds and gangsters that stayed and they were gathered to finally be evaluated on their choices.
"There are those that came before you who have opted for the third choice," Ezra declared, "choose and choose wisely, all those who want to leave may come in front. We promise we will be true to our word."
Demis frowned," I have yet to meet a n.o.ble who is true to his word." He twitched, he wanted to go in front and to be done with it.
However, none of the other people went toward the stage. He became frustrated, he didn"t want to be the first one to leave. The most prominent one was the object of focus. He just wanted to blend and become invisible, another person in the vast sea of faces.
"I shall count to twenty, all those who do not come forward shall be considered to have chosen the third option."
Still, no one flinched. He started sweating, even though every inch of his body wanted to flee, he didn"t want to be the first to leave.
"Three. Two. One." Ezra"s voice counted down.
He flickered, he wanted to leave at that instance but it was too late, he had frozen in his place. He now had no choice.
"Very good," Ezra announced, "I am happy that you have chosen this path, from now on, all of you shall be of one accord, and of one mind, you shall follow the orders of your superiors, and through the course of time you will become the superiors yourselves, officers of the new era. You shall be first to enter the battlefield, and you shall be the last to disengage." Ezra cleared his throat, "From now on you shall be called the Combat Engineer Corps."
There were gasps of bewilderment they most of them didn"t know the word engineer.
Demis shook with fury internally but he didn"t show it.
"Your superiors will discuss the details of your conscription, as for your stipend you will receive three months wages equivalent to that of knight"s tomorrow. Dismissed!" Ezra shouted boldly.
Despair was in Demis" eyes, he had been trying to escape this feeling all his life; the feeling of being a slave.
Ezra slunk back to his leather chair in his office in the University district, he already planned this to be a city within Bren itself, he gradually opened the true plan of what the University would become to his father lest he object and he also negotiated the knights that would be a.s.signed to the district and Reitz gave him a little over a third of the Knights in Bren and thirty Blackfyre Guard for training the Combat Engineer Corps and for the security of the new district. These individuals were hand picked by Ezra himself, he chose those he was friendly with and guards who he had already interacted with.
He looked at the stack of papers that was on his desk, he was looking at the test questions that were submitted to him by the professors he a.s.signed.
"Certainly not this, this would be too hard," he rubbed his temples, "I guess I need to explain to them more thoroughly the concept of test questions."
The basic apt.i.tude test had already been finished. This test was to be administered to the Combat Engineer Corps. Ezra planned to test the knowledge of this new corps and segregate them in apt.i.tude. Those who excelled were to be placed in different levels for a year. They were to be tested in mental and physical capacity.
The papers before him were not the basic test, this was of a different kind. He sighed and decided to make his own test questions for the for the students he already taught it designed it to be like an entrance exam of sorts and place them in the where they excelled the most.
He had segregated the university into three parts. There was a part for military training and there was a part for the sciences and another for administration. A student enrolling in the university could opt for different programmes. First was Administrative Executor, here the students would be taught management, finance, economics and banking, they were still taught the sciences but not too detailed. The head of this department was Extos.
Another was Material Engineer, this track focused on creating new materials for building, weaponry, and other applications, they were taught smithing and chemistry. There were two Heads for this department they were Anton and Arran.
The next was Biomedic,, it was an amalgam of both biology and medicine, this programme focused on biological research and health. This track was headed by Hygeia. There was also a subfield in this was Distribution Executor, which focused on agriculture, horticulture and overall production of food and research in this field, this was Headed by Evered.
Another field was ElectroMechanical Engineer, this was headed none other by Ezra himself, it taught the sciences required for industrialization and electrical deployment. Ezra decided that he would hand-picked the top bra.s.s. He needed all the help he could get for domain-wide deployment of his blueprints.
Lastly, was the Combat Engineer, they too were overseen by Ezra, however, it was Rycharde that was in charge. They were supposed to be taught ballistics, gunsmithing, explosives, civil engineering, and architecture, but this was still much later. This field was the most complex among all the tracks he developed as everyone could voluntarily join. But the orphans were only forced on this track. He planned to experiment for two years and those who seemed to be having a hard time would be transferred to other courses depending on their apt.i.tude.
Each track was taught some aspects of each other so that each could convey their thoughts about the subjects when the time came. Ezra already confirmed that the commoners had a higher IQ than people on earth on average, but he couldn"t determine the actual range. Each of the programmes had military training embedded in them so that Ezra could conscript officers when the situation demanded of it.
There were also subjects that he himself developed like the field of Arcane Anthropokinetics, the movement of the body with the aid of magic. He already tested the commoners and it seemed that they could be taught how to use magic, however minimal, to quickly move, although they could never learn to cast spells. This skill was crucial and those who learned this could go toe to toe with a superior magic user if he had the sufficient weapons at hand.
He also planned to make a subject about magical materials when he had gathered sufficient data to model the phenomena surrounding cores and crystals, but it was a secret for now.
When Ezra finally finished writing it was dark.
"Milord, shall we set off to the castle?" Rycharde asked.
"Not yet, I"d like to take a stroll first," Ezra replied.
He walked past the buildings and took a look. He wondered what the future held. He wondered if all of the things he decided to do was right and took one last final glimpse at his creation and finally decided to head back to the castle.