Chapter 129 - 129 – The Role System

"All that I see is a bunch a crap, and that is the biggest compliment you could get, frankly I'll have to go apologize to crap for what I just told you."

Lirian berated them one after the other as he slowly got up and close in their faces, he had no idea if he was getting the write people but as almost a dozen of them had dropped down crying he felt that he got a few right.

The ones who didn't cry really wanted to scream in his face, 'You're blind, you can't see shit, and none of us have ever seen you in the cartography class, what the hell do you even know about it cartography.'

"Can even one of you tell me what cartography is all about?" he asked sarcastically, he didn't intend to get an answer but that is when one the students couldn't take it anymore.

"Cartography is about drawing maps!" she shrieked with tightly clenched fists flaying around at her sides.

"What's your name?" Lirian asked turning his attention to her.

"C-C-Carmen," she stammered out as she felt Lirian full focus land on her, she found it difficult to breath.

Lirian nodded slowly with a disapproving look on his face, he pointed at the lot of them and bobbed his pointed finger up and down, "The next person that gives, such a stupid answer, is going to make my shit list, and I promise you that none of you want to be there."

The severity with which Lirian spoke made even the other candidates take a step back and they could hardly see how that was a wrong answer.

"Cartography is a form of art, as old as sentient civilization itself, the first maps drawn were carved into slabs of rock and placed in the centre of a village, where all its inhabitants would gather,"

"In some cultures, the art of map drawing, was consider a gift from the gods, and those that could draw maps were treated and celebrated as heroes to their people,"

"In other cultures, map drawing was a sacred tradition handed to only the brightest of minds, they called map makers, 'Light Bearers,' for maps would guide them in places where all was unknown,"

"Maps are a series of chaotic lines that seem to make no sense at all, they curve, they bend, they break of and leave a trail of dots within the oceans, there is a special name given to those that can make sense of them…"

"A cartographer takes those lines of chaos and puts them together to create a guide that others may follow,"

"A cartographer, stitches order from chaos, and in because of that in many worlds the most common name for a map maker, is a 'Creator of Order'," Lirian finished his short inspirational speech about the value of a cartographer.

His audience had been completely entranced by his views on cartography.

They felt a true appreciation for their art from Lirian and they were sincerely moved, they had never heard such a gripping lecture on the subject in all their years in the academy.

"I feel slightly touched by that," Cole said with a sour expression, because he knew that if he felt something good about what Lirian said, Lirian was going to dash it and ruin it and as if on que Lirian began.

Lirian suddenly slammed the remaining pages in his hand onto the table and faced them with a frown.

"This nonsense that all of you have done, doesn't even resemble real map making, out of the all of you only twenty were chosen to draw the maps, but even they are walking on thin ice," he said pointedly.

Lirian tapped his watch and suddenly, twenty of the students heard their watches beep, as they glanced down a notification popped up.

<Your commander has assigned you a position>

<Position: Cartographer>

<You may choose one assistant and assign them the role of Assistant-Cartographer>

"Choose you assistant from amongst the thirty remaining and of the ten others, five will be assigned to redraw the maps as one piece and the other five will collect information about every little thing we discover and list it's locations on the maps."

Lirian concluded and had them leave the tent, after assigning them their roles.

"Why did you assign a role to all of them?" Edith asked stepping very close to him, "I thought that you were only going to select the twenty we chose?" she asked with a finger on her chin.

"I just thought of those new tasks as a spoke to them, and it's always better to have more than one person looking at the same area," he said after a while.

Tobias stomped to the table in thought along with the others and they each took a seat.

Media spoke suddenly, "The role system that you came up with is really interesting, maybe we can use it now to start handing out roles and build up some order," she proposed the idea.

But Lirian quickly turned it down, "You are right but we won't be doing it just yet, the students are still doing fine, for the first few days, they'll be enthusiastic about the new situation, if we start pushing in roles and rules now, they will only get annoyed,"

"We need to wait for a little trouble to build-up before resolving the problems, that way they will not only appreciate the rules, they will enforce it," Lirian explained.

"But most importantly is that we need to observe how well some students react to this, and give them roles depending on their ability, if we start handing out roles to only the nobles or our friends, the student that don't know us personally will feel no motivation to be helpful," Lirian took that last part very seriously.

In total about 30% of the students were nobles and 25% were from extremely wealthy families, the remainder were either locals whose families could barely afford to send them to the academy and the scholarship students.

That made up almost half of the group, if they were unhappy it would affect the entire group in very significant way.

"But it's not like everyone is willing to follow the rules on their own, even if they see the problems, there are some that will thrive because of the problems," Wentian added in his usual stoic voice.

Lirian nodded in agreement, he narrowed his head suddenly as he felt the chair to side move a little closer to him, in fact he noticed that it was inching forward every few seconds.

He sighed internally as he realised what Edith was doing, before continuing, "Yes, that is why we are going to provide incentives for them to be model…" Lirian thought hard to find the right word but if such a word existed it alluded him, so he simply said the only word that came to mind, ", campers."

"Like?" Cole asked curiously, they were in the wild it wasn't like they could get anything they wanted.

"Better food, better tents, and better sleeping bags," Lirian answered, "At first I really thought all those options on that god forsaken list was rubbish, to tempt me into squandering money on myself," Lirian said with clenched fists.

"But I realised that it could also be used to encourage good behaviour, and I mean we have hundreds of nobles, when it comes to luxuries there isn't a single one of us that has the ability to ignore it," he chuckled softly.

Media bobbed her head up and down as she was already coming up with ways to use this new system to take advantage of the students.

"When we assign roles I want to use the system to assign tasks to every person based on their role, and if they fulfil all their tasks, they can get certain privileges, like using the toilets first, or being the first to get their rations," she said excitedly as she realised that she could literally control the behaviour of the students with a simple press of the button.

"One step at a time," Tobias said loudly, "Once all the students have been assigned roles then we can slowly implement the new rules.

"For now, we should just keep focusing on gathering the student's response to everything, and figure out what we can improve," Lirian concluded, from there they all returned to doing their own things.

A few hours later, Media said she was tired of filling in the map and went to sleep leaving only Lirian and Edith, in truth the main reason she left was because Edith wasn't doing anything besides staring at Lirian like he was some irresistible drug.

She didn't know if anything happened between them but from the way Edith was staring at Lirian throughout the meeting, she was certain that something was going to happen.