The Most Superior Book!

Back at their dorms, Yuki laid on Yamato's bed while he was reading a book about general magic at his desk. He was at a disadvantage since he could not use magic himself, so there was a lot to do if he wanted that to remain a secret.

"Master, what do you think about our class?"

"You mean about our classmates? They seem alright. I'd have to meet students from class 1 to evaluate our chances of reaching class 1 though. We can't solely rely on you for that."

"Why not?"

"Because it's probably not about individual achievements but about the class as a whole. Or so I would assume it works."

"Aww, so we need everyone?"

"Maybe not everyone, but the majority."

She rolled around from side to side in the bed.

"Do we need Elara?"

"Possibly… She seems rather unwilling to cooperate but maybe there is talent behind her arrogance. Hard to say at the moment. What do you think?"

"Well, she seemed fairly strong… But we would do just fine without her!"

"Maybe… But I'm sure she would be helpful in certain situations."

"Ugh… Fine, she stays!"

"She stays? Sounds like you want to select and remove students for this."

"Whaaat? Pft, no…"

"You should know that the less students only hurt us in the long run. When we compete with other classes. Like, one competitive exam might be where each student can score points, and the class with the highest overall points wins. In that case having less students means less maximum overall points which would put us at a disadvantage."

"Alright, I get it! No one gets left behind..."

"Good."

Yamato continued reading and Yuki rolled away slightly pouting. But gave up ignoring him before she even started.

"Master, y'know I could probably explain anything in that book to you ten times better!"

"You think so?"

He put the book aside and looked over to her.

"Yes! A million times better even!"

"Please, do start. I'm all ears."

A sense of pride overcame her when she proved herself more useful then the book. Feeling jealous of a book for having Yamato's attention wasn't even that weird at this point. It seemed she just generally needed to be the focus of his attention.

"So, the book describes magic as a physical force like gravity, but that's in accurate. It's more like a way for the mana, which is actually like a physical thing like electricity although still not a force, to be used. Comapring mana to electricity works especially well since they both are used as sources of power. So when you imagine mana as electricity, you yourself are like a generator and/or cable, and a spell as the thing you want to power, it helps you visualize and understand it better. Naturally, when casting a spell, you use your electricity, which is mana, but because your body generates mana on its own, it's never truly at zero, even if you can't cast any spells with what you have left. Every spell requires mana, and you can imagine the costs as numbers and your total mana as numbers too, to better see how much you can use one spell in total before your mana runs out. Which reminds me, since you usually can't see your mana, the costs were most likely estimated with the help of one of those crystals which we yet need to find. Each cost was probably documented by someone comparing the mana he had before and after using the spell. Or that's how I would've done it."

"I do feel like I have a better understanding of it now, thank you, Yuki."

"I'm the better book!"

"What…? Anyway, you should get back to your dorm now. It's getting late."

"Yes, yes~…"

She jumped up from his bed and gave the book on his desk a smug look, having bested it in the competition in her mind. Finally she could call herself The Most Superior Book… what an accomplishment for her.

After she left Yamato had no more use for the book, so he put it away and laid down on his bed, which smelled like Yuki. That was probably why she rolled around in it so much the entire time. But whatever, he thought as he went to sleep.

He opened his eyes, just to find himself not in his bed anymore. Instead he was in a white space, where everything was empthy with nothing in it. When he blinked, he suddenly sat on a chair in that same void infront of Yuki who was standing infront of a blackboard, writing something down he had her hair tied back and glasses on, seeming to imitate a stereotypical teachers look.

"…"

Yamato stayed quiet and looked around.

"Master! Are you listening?!"

"What…? Oh… yes…"

"Repeat what I said!"

"You were talking about…"

He looks down at his desk where there was a piece of paper, where he seemed to have taken notes. So he just read them.

"Singularities and how they refer to a point where certain quantities become infinite or undefined, which results in the laws of physics to break down…?"

"What is going on…?"

"Hey, I heard that! But that was correct. Looks like you were listening after all."

"What did she hear?"

"That! Stop thinking about unrelated things!"

"My thoughts? She can read them?"

"I said stop! Or do you wanna get detention?!"

"…"

"Now that's more like it. Now where were we… Page 459…"

She turned around again. Yamato blinked confused, but as he did so, the blackboard was at least ten times bigger, and there where four of them. Yuki flew in the air and wrote equations down that where so long that they had covered almost the entire writing space on all of the blackboards combined.

"Don't forget to take notes!"

She yelled down. Yamato looked back at his desk, where there were mountains of papers. He blinked again. Yuki was now standing right infront of him. All the papers and blackboards gone. Her faces was right infront of his and she stared intensely.

"Uhm… Yes?"

"No talking!"

"…"

She kept staring at him for a while. Yamato just took it and looked back at her.

"Hm… You pass!"

"What do I pass…? And why?"

"Cause I love you!"

"Aha… and what did I pass?"

Then he opened his eyes. Another dream. This one was especially weird, he thought. But that is just how dreams are. He got up and started getting ready to go to class. Yuki was probably already waiting outside. And after he left the boys dorm, she was of course already waiting outside. They weren't as early as yesterday, but they wouldn't be late if they just walked normally. This time there were a lot more students around then yesterday. Seems like most students get it rather late than early.

Arriving at the classroom and sitting down, Elara walked up to Yuki smiling and gave her a small fabric cloth which Yuki took with a smile and put away. They talked rather quietly but Yamato could overhear that she was thanking Yuki for helping her out with something. Once Elara left to sut down on her own seat, Yamato wanted to ask Yuki what that was about but at that exact moment prof. Isaac entered the room.

"Good morning, class. Today we will have a field trip exercise. So without further ado, please follow me outside."

Quite spontaneous, but maybe that's part of the exercise, Yamato thought. But if this was some kind of exercise where you had to actually use magic, which was very likely, then Yamato had a problem now. Though it could probably be resolved with Yuki's help. As they walked out of the classroom, Yamato and Yuki were last in line so they Yamato could talk relatively freely with her.

"So what was that with Elara about? I thought you couldn't stand her?"

"Ah… Well, we made up, you see? That day where we went behind the school to talk with Arina, after that I met up with her and helped her out with something. I'm her bestie now~"

"Ah, I see… Well, good for you. Anyway, about this exercise."

"Don't worry about it~ I have it all figured out!"

"Do you now…"

"Yes! You can just leave it to me!"

"I was going to do that anyway."

"Really?? You trust me that much~?"

"I don't have a choice here. Just make sure whatever you do isn't over the top."

Now outside of the building, all the students gathered infront of Prof. Issac.

"Now please find yourself in groups of three."

Yamato had suspected something like that. It was obvious that he had to team up with Yuki. But with who should be the third? Yuki made friends with Elara, but she seems to already be in a group. Left from the people they knew was… Just Arina. They really needed to get to know the rest of the class. Luckily, Arina seemed to search for a group to take her in. So Yamato invited her to team up with him and Yuki. She happily accepted.

Once everyone had formed groups of three, prof. Isaac gave further instructions. Each of them got handed a armband with a color that represented their team. Yamato's team was Team Blue. The objective was for each team to spread out inside a area in the woods that will be sealed with a magic barrier that contains them. The winner would be the team that had the most armbands at the end of the exercise, which automatically ended after three days or after one team had all the armbands. Once your team loses its armbands, by them being stolen quietly or forcefully taken, it gets disqualified. If only a single person of a team loses their armband, that person has to exit the area like if they were disqualified, but if their team gets the armband of the player that exited back, the player gets to return to the exercise without further consequences. Goal of the exercise was to prepare for the competitive exam and for the class to know about each others abilities and learn to work together while also being aware of everyone's strengths and weaknesses. After prof. Isaac finished explaining, prof Reed appeared, who was responsible for the barrier and to supervise the exercise to be fair and safe for everyone involved.

With a snap of his fingers, each team was teleported to a random place in the area where the barrier was already active. And so began their first and due to time reasons probably only preparation for the competitive exam against the other classes.