Chapter CIV - Canteen (part 2)

"Good morning. You guys eat such a heavy meal in the morning? You can get fat."

I greeted them, but the black haired girl looked rather displeased.

"Speak for yourself!"

She pointed at the meal bag on my left hand, and I chuckled after realizing.

"Well, I had a rough fight this morning. And since I'm quite hungry, I ordered some heavy stuff."

"Oh, so I have heard...! It must've been tough. A-And how about joining us for the meal?"

The short black haired girl with the round glasses offered me, and I turned to her friend next to her.

Her friend, Jericho, seemed to be against that idea. But, remembering how I helped her during class, she just stayed silent. She is pretty weird when she's looking away like that, but it's still a charm in a way.

Well, looks like my chance to make friends has arrived.

"All right, then. Thanks for having me."

I pulled the chair and placed the meal on the table. When I opened the meal, both Jericho and the black haired girl stared at it. They are curious about what type of food I am eating.

"It's just chicken."

"R-Right."

On their plate, they are feeding off cooked lamb, which is fairly heavy. They looked like they also just started eating.

"By the way, I haven't quite heard your name."

I asked the short black haired girl. She knocked the top of her head, punishing her clumsiness.

"My name is Manda. It's weird seeing how people are already fighting in the morning."

"Well, you can't just fend off a mob in a single day. Which technically is what I just did."

"W-What do you mean?"

"I challenged all of them to fight me at once and won."

""W-What??""

Both Jericho and Manda looked shocked to hell. Their eyes turned wide, and they just lost their appetite fairly quickly.

"That's a lie, right?"

Jericho finally said something, but her gaze looked around and saw some of the seniors with bandages on them. She ended up accepting it without me ever continuing.

"That's… insane."

"It is what it is. I kept on beating them non-stop since yesterday. So, to make things quicker, I let them all come at once. The council president also came down right after that. She said I somehow ruined her class."

"Yeah. Even us can hear the battles all the way from the dorm."

Jericho said proudly as she took a bite. She is surprisingly chatty, even though she was very cold to me before.

I think there's a name for her behavior, but I couldn't quite remember it…

I continued telling them about the battles I had this morning since they were very curious, and they looked very out of breath from just hearing my stories. It was indeed something that not just anyone is capable of accomplishing, so being at the same table as me must've been pretty tiring.

And in return, I asked them about what has been happening during the one month I missed at the academy. They began telling me things, starting from a class called Magic Aptitude, where it basically teach the students theories about making your magic abilities better.

In the Practical Magic Class, we will try the magic techniques that we learned from the Magic Aptitude Class. I found this method quite interesting, because we learn the theories in class and practice them in another class.

"But, why is the practical magic class on the first day of the week?"

I asked because that part didn't make sense considering the order, and the two only looked at each other very confused. Looks like they are oblivious, as well...

They also told me about the mid-semester tests, which happens in the third month of the semester. It's technically a magic affinity test, where a series of tests are done to the students to measure their affinities.

And a bit after that, there's the autumn event. It's technically a class based event that will be held by the academy and the student council. 

There are multiple events held by the student council and the academy for the autumn event, and one of them is called the battle arena.

Three students will be chosen among the class, and then the team will be pitted on another team from another class. It's like a tournament between classes, and whoever wins, gets a ton of scores from the academy.

The score of the winners will be given to everyone in that class. For example, if one class won a certain amount of points, then all the students who are a member of that class will receive that amount of points.

And there are multiple other events too, like shooting range, race, and other events. The events will be held next month, around after the mid-semester test. Which means we will have to go through the tests first before we can enjoy the academy event.

"I see… That's a lot of information to feed."

I complained a bit while leaning my back, and Manda only laughed seeing me so burnt out from listening.

After turning my eyes up, I found myself staring at the clock placed on top of the shopping stalls. It says eight.

"Oh shoot, we are late."

"What? Oh, we should go!"

Manda followed my gaze and looked at the clock. We all panicked as we ran through the halls into the class. And apparently, the teacher is already there.

"Go and take a seat."

Thank god we didn't get punished. If it was any other teacher, we'd be smoked for being late to class.

We immediately headed to our seats, and the teacher continued her explanation.

"… As I was saying, on the mid-semester exam, the teachers will test your control over magic, and that you will definitely need to do some training on that."

The teacher explained to the class, which just happens to be the topic that Manda and Jericho was just telling me... Huh, wait, what class is this?

"Excuse me, teacher! How are we going to train for it?"

One of the students asked the teacher. The teacher lifted her right hand, and a magic tool suddenly popped out from her hand.

"With this."

The teacher placed the tool on the table.

"This tool will be the item that will test you during the mid-semester exam. And I brought it here to place it here, so that you can train at any time in the class."

She showed the tool starting from the details. The tool looked like a microscope, except on the bottom, there's a magic crystal where we placed our hand.

"So, how will the test go, you ask? One just simply needs to put their hands on the crystal…"

She placed her hand on the crystal and imbued magic energy into it. The crystal lit up and the tool started glowing. And all of the sudden, a flashlight on the tool turned on, showing the yellow light shining at the ceiling.

"Now, to control this, you just need to increase or decrease the amount of magic energy you are inputting to the device."

As she said it, the light on the device started to change, but it changed very quickly. It changed from yellow to red, and then blue a second later.

"Now this is the difficult part. The judges will ask you to switch to a certain colour. And to get a colour perfectly… like blue for example."

She started switching the colours again, but she somehow skipped past blue. I can see her face trying very hard until she landed it on blue, but she always missed the blue colour. She always gets yellow or red.

"T-This is difficult, but it's possible."

She removed her hand from the tool and gave up.

"Now, I want you to come forward and try it one by one."