Just as Alex expected the Estos race was open and transparent. While Alex had gone into 'hibernation', his words were relayed to people and the thoughts of progressing just waiting a year made them incredibly excited. During this time, no one attempted to push their territory any further. No military operations took place and the people waited for him patiently. If Alex were to come out and see everything that happened he would definitely be shocked by how much faith these people had in him.
Right now they focused all their resources on two things. The first was building a seed worthy of their new champion and the second was focusing more resources on the students and trying to improve their growth exponentially.
By the end of the year, everyone in the class had already made it to the Viscount rank and while this may look slow but for beings that live for more than a century it is a short time.