"Alicia, your mana manipulation is very good…"
"Yes, you're the best in this class…"
"Just with you, I think we can showoff to other class…"
Alicia maintained her smile to everyone. Even though she was indeed better than anyone here, she never thought it would be an easy win if she competed with other class. There was few of noble students that better than her, so the performance she showed before was still not enough to impress her inner self.
From the outside, many classmates adored her because she was such a beautiful girl. Blond hair and cute face, making many suitor soon came flocking around her. Not only that, her family was also strong in its rank. The nobility of duke became a strong interest for everyone to confess their loves
one by one.
Alicia had a headache to reject many confessions one by one. Although the family didn't arrange for a man to marry her later, she felt her fate wasn't in her hands. As soon as she showed weakness, she would become a pawn for others to pave the way. Looking at the poor and commoner side, she
sometimes envied them because they only needed to take care of themselves. They
wouldn't get complicated by their family prestige. Of course, it wasn't simple like that because they needed to survive in this harsh world. As for her, she didn't need to worry about that at all. Anyway, there would be advantage and disadvantage on each side.
Not far from there, Baston and the others wanted to go back soon, but some nobles blocked their only way. The students didn't dare to pass them because the path had congested. Each noble was still busy, greeting their own people while praising Alicia as the best student in their class. The other students who had lower status than them could only wait patiently until they
dispersed by themselves. If they dared to pass by, even they asked for permission with good intent, the nobles would think it was a provocation.
Baston who saw the blocked path also didn't want to make a trouble, so he only sat in his seat. Not until 10 minutes later, the other
students could finally go out from the classroom. It was such a waste of time. In these 10 minutes, he could rush and picked his sandwich early rather than lining up with longer time. When he finally arrived there, Baston could see the line was getting longer and it would be too late to eat it.
"Damn it! Now I can only keep it and eat at the next break…"
Baston wanted to line up but suddenly, the waiter came up to him and gave a full packed sandwich. It was different from free one because it was bigger with full meat and vegetables. Beside that, the waiter also gave him an orange juice. The fat boy was dumbfounded because he thought the waiter had a wrong person to give these to him.
"Excuse me, I never order this so I think you have a wrong person here…"
The waiter only smiled and bowed down a little, "It's alright. The sandwich and the drink have been paid by someone. The person said that I need to deliver it to you personally."
"Who is it?"
"I don't know for sure because the person just left the message with the money," the waiter replied, "Excuse me, I have to go back. There are still many customers waiting for me."
Baston could only say thank you, looking at the waiter curiously. He wondered who the one who treated him a meal. Was there any hidden intention in this food or not? He thought it would be poisoned, but he never
found any case like this since the academy controlled the process heavily without any leeway. Regardless that, since the food was already on his hands, then just enjoyed it. Any food that he didn't need to pay tasted heavenly.
Meanwhile, at one of many tables there, Panto stared at Baston who slowly disappeared from his sight. He felt happy immediately when his bought food was successfully given. The boy could just do it directly, but he felt it was meaningless. It was because when he saw the ice magic on him,
yet he still hid it even when the teacher asked him for mana manipulation, making Panto believed there might be something that made him did this. The only reason he could foresee was the cult Baston told before might be still lurking among them. Since he tried to protect him, Baston needed to be careful, leaving him powerless.
"How can I help him other than paying for his meal?" Panto was thinking, giving a strange signal to his other lackeys.
"Boss, I saw you staring at Baston for a long time. Did he cause a trouble for you?"
"Yes, just say a word and we will take care of him."
"I'm pretty sure he will cry out loudly when we slap him hard…"
The lackeys were laughing, but Panto frowned. Not only they mocked his protector, but they even wanted to bother him. With just Baston's ice magic, he wanted to see who died first by then. Pretty sure all these
useless bumpkins would tremble uncontrollably when the fat boy showed his magic.
"Wait, if I let them handle this, I'm afraid Baston will do nothing since he still hides his true strength. I can't let it go…" Panto
thought before giving a command to his lackeys, "Don't touch him! I will handle
it personally!"
His timidity seemingly vanished for a moment before resuming his usual personality again. It seemed he didn't realize his behavior changed slowly once it involved with Baston. After the break time finished, once again, everyone got back to the classroom.
The same lesson was still running since the mana manipulation was very important to everyone. This time, unlike the beginning
when Ms. Pashan told everyone to maintain their own magic into a ball form, she ordered everyone to infuse their own magic into a certain instrument stably.
"Everyone, take a look of this. I'm pretty sure some of you have already saw what is this before. This kind of instrument can measure your own magic accurately. Usually, this thing will be used to assess your maximum magic power, but right now, I'm not going to do that. Instead, I want you to try to insert your magic repeatedly for 10 times. Each infused magic will give you a score. If the score varies greatly, it means your mana manipulation is still poor. If the difference is smaller, then you're already good of having to control it."
After the quick explanation, Ms. Pashan distributed the instrument to all students here. Whether you were from commoner or noble side, everyone at least had one on them. The test was fair because it didn't matter whether you have a little of magic inside because it only measured the stability. As long the score didn't stray too much, their own mana manipulation was already good.
"Hey, look! My score is 100 for first try!" a certain noble boy was cocky.
"Hah, just a mere 100! Look at me! My score is 150, higher than you."
"Your score is worse than Alicia. Look, she got 300!" a noble girl grinned smugly.
From the noble side, every student was busy to show off. There was no other way because the instrument could also measure how the
maximum magic score you could get. By maximizing the mana manipulation in their
body and infused it into the instrument, they would get their scores. Still, it couldn't be used continuously because they would be exhausted by the time that they finished the task.
The other student was also curious of their own maximum score, so they tried hard to manipulate the mana, but the score they got was disappointing. Even Panto could only get score of 80 which was already good
from the merchant side, yet he still couldn't overcome the noble's score. Looking at the poor and commoner side, Baston saw many disheartening score.
"20, 50, 35, 10, and 5…" Baston shook his head, "What a low score. Truly, the resources everyone could get will decide the present score."
Baston was also curious of his own score so he focused and manipulated the surrounding mana, converting it into his magic and infused it to the instrument. Slowly, the score came out which made him shocked. He
quickly covered it so that no one could see. If not, it would make an uproar and the next event wouldn't be good for him. Too much attention didn't always make benefit by the way.
"The score of 500 is too high. I better don't need to tryvwell this time…" he thought anxiously.
He looked around and heaved a sigh of relief when no one paid attention to him. Still, he couldn't erase the score record on this
instrument, so he needed to make it looked like the fault came from the instrument itself. Right at the moment, he manipulated the mana for a second time, yet when turning it into magic, he put it a little, exclaiming a score of 15.
"Well, that's quite good. I only need to put this score repeatedly, so the teacher will think the first one is just an error."
The score then went stably for Baston, but it was huge difference from the first one. He made sure his own score was under 20 which made it more believable by then. Certainly, when someone checked it, they might think it was just a defect from the instrument when measuring.
At the time when the students dispersed and went back to the dormitory, Ms. Pashan collected all the instruments. Checking one by one would be troublesome, but with the help of magic, he could accumulate and process all the scores within her range. Looking at the score of 300 from Alicia before, she beamed with smile. It was because such a talent was really hard to find in these days. Even the quality of noble children began to deteriorate after playing around for a long time.
"What? There's a score of 500? Who is it?"
Ms. Pashan was shocked and quickly traced the source. She then found it came from Baston from the poor side. Immediately, she doubted if the score really came from him. It was very rare for the poor and commoner to
have such a high talent because they didn't have many resources to develop their abilities.
She started to check the next record of magic instrument for Baston, yet she found the rest were all bad one. Only the first one had a high score unlike the others. She then thought perhaps it was a fault in the instrument. If he really got a high magic on him, the score must be not bad like these.
"That really surprise me. I thought there will be a talent of century, yet it's because of the fault…"
She heaved a sight of relief before ignoring the firstvscore. Accumulating the rest of lower one, the final score could only be said
as disappointing one. Still, she didn't doubt the score from Baston again because such a low result really matched with his background. With everyone finished, she then took care all the instruments, but she excluded one Baston used before.
Because she believed the instrument had a defect on it, she just needed to inform the related people who knew how to fix it. Meanwhile, Baston had already went back to the dormitory. He worried there might be some people who suspected him regarding the score, yet he just shoved it off for now.
"There should be no one who expects my score is real. The disparity is too big and anyone who see it should just think it's the fault on the instrument…"
Baston thought so and he went on his personal business. Before in the class, he felt a tremor from his old book. Afraid that someone might see the message, he could only be patient until the class was dismissed. He was sure the second quest already popped up, waiting to be completed.