This really was a parallel world, since the spitting image of Erhardt was here, though his personality and bearing seemed completely different.
The Erhardt I knew would never have settled for simply being Dean of a school, the man managed to establish his dominant position and rule of the entire Society of Mages at the young age of twenty-five.
The one sitting in front of me at this current moment was reaching the same old age I had remembered when I had met him five years ago, when I first entered the Society.
Unfortunately, I wasn't sure why or how the deviations from our universe happened.
Regardless of that, I now had to patch my previous mistake, because in this lifetime, "Candace Mendoza" had never met "Erhardt Mahler."
"My bad," I said. "I must have confused a dream. It is true, I did have amnesia and couldn't even recognize my own parents when I awoke."
"But you recognized me with a single glance?" he asked doubtfully.
"Sir, the mind is a mysterious, understudied portion of the human construct."
He nodded, skeptically accepting.
You just can't fool the elderly, can you?
"That was an impressive performance you put on today," he said after thinking awhile.
Maybe I did stand out too much. that's just how I was taught: to always aim at the top. That was the secret behind my almost lightning-fast advancement through the ranks, reaching A-ranked magus at 21 years of age when most bottlenecked at the C-rank.
There was still one man I could not compare against, and that was Erhardt Mahler, who beat me to A-rank by a year and reached the S-rank at age 22, to take over leadership at age 25.
That Erhardt Mahler looked exactly like the old man sitting in front of me, though the man in front of me did not command the same respect I had for the true Erhardt Mahler.
"I'm sure others performed as well," I said.
"Did you know that you're the first individual to be proficient in the freezing portion of the water element in the entrance examination?" he asked.
"I was not aware, sir."
"When your father pulled a favor from me to let you take the entrance examination, you were not such a stellar student."
I stayed silent.
"I looked through your junior high school grades," he continued. "Your only score higher than average was in the History subject. Though, amusingly..."
Why did past me have to be such a historian? History was the only topic that I couldn't have known everything about, provided this was an entirely different world.
"Today, you only scored slightly higher than average in history, but your scores in the Sciences and Magic Circle Mathematics are enough to place you at the top of your class," he said. "Even if you hadn't completely destroyed your battle royale and instead placed into the B-class, your paper scores would still have gotten you solidly into the A-class."
"And what did you need from me, sir?" I asked. "I was informed that classes would be starting soon after the placement exams finished."
"Well, I was wondering if you knew..."
I looked at him expectantly.
"I'm sure you know that despite being named the Academie de Magie, our school has reached rock-bottom of the Grandmagic Rankings and we have been there for a few years."
Of course I didn't know that, but it would probably be better to play along for now.
"Our school has reached the bottom of the Grandmagic Rankings due to the lack of talented fighters these past few years. They have all gone to better schools in the ranking, so we are at risk of losing our status as the Academy of Magic, and our status as a school in the Grandmagic Ranking," he continued.
"And what, pray tell, would you like me to do about this...problem?" I asked. "As far as I know, I couldn't even use magic until yesterday, and my father had to pull numerous strings to even get me into a school on the Grandmagic Rankings."
"Well, your performance yesterday was quite impressive," he said.
"I'm sure you've seen more impressive performances before," I waved airily. I had only used the most basic of spells, and any more competent mage wouldn't use such long chants for such simple spells.
"If that's what you say..." he trailed off awkwardly.
"I'm sure that the top fighters in this school are much better than me," I said. "However, I wouldn't mind helping if you really needed it."
He sighed, almost in relief.
"The first round of challenges will be going out in two weeks. Here are the profiles of the top five fighters in the school," he said, tossing a file at me.
I stuffed the files into my bag. "Anything else?" I asked.
"The second tournament of the year is next Friday, you should see our team in action," he said, dismissing me.
I nodded, and left.
I headed away from the dean's office, feeling somewhat regretful at my show-off nature.
A good score on the paper examination was extremely easy, but did I really have to be so arrogant in the Battle Royale?
Maybe Therese was right, I needed to stop standing out so much. Standing out was essentially the same as just asking others to kill you.
I should know better. I do know better, but I was working with incomplete information.
Determined, I stepped into the Freshman A-class classroom.
Five minutes late, I was the last one to show up. As I shuffled my way to one of the open desks in the back of the classroom, I knew in my head that every other student in the room had their attention focused on me.
What a great time to say I was going to try and fly under the radar.
The teacher walked in not long after I had taken a seat, chair scratching along the floor noisily as everyone stared at me.
Once he walked in, however, the attention was off me and on the chalkboard in front.
"Greetings, class," the teacher said. "My name is Wilfred Eustice, and I will be your homeroom teacher for the year."
"Greetings, Mr. Eustice," the class intoned.
"I'll be teaching the Magic Circle Mathematics class this year," he said.
Half the class groaned in response. The other half, me included, simply sat in silence.
"But first, attendance will be taken."
The class nodded. Mr. Eustice called out each name, and the student in question would respond that they were present.
While this was happening, I pulled out a small parchment booklet from my bag. It seemed that in what is essentially Middle Ages France, notes were taken on small parchment booklets. With the help of grass-type and water-type magics, the manufacturing of these had become extremely inexpensive, so they were the preferred way to take notes for school. In addition to that, I was given a quill pen, but as it was scratchy to write with, I had retrieved a modern pen from my dimensional storage, one that looked exactly like the pencil that I was given.
"Candace Mendoza?" Wilfred asked.
"Present," I answered.
"Impressive performance," he said, before calling out the next name.
All I received were glares from the rest of my classmates. They didn't seem too happy that I had shown all of them up by defeating every other individual. Apparently in the other Battle Royales, even the girl who had arrogantly mocked our group had only managed to take out three other individuals with the help of her friend, so both of them were in the A-class. I was the only one who had sent every other competitor to the C-class ranking, though some managed to crawl their way into the B-class through stellar paper examination scores.
Up in front, Wilfred had finished calling all the names.
"So now, I'll begin the lesson. On the entrance examination, all of you did at least passingly well on the exam, as expected of the A-class..." he trailed off, and began to write a new problem on the board.
This circle consisted of various fire-type elements, and the sheer amount of them meant that it was an extremely explosive spell.
Devastating if combined with an element that delayed the time. With sufficient preparation and trigger, the spell would annihilate a small radius in moments.
The downside of this specific circle spell is that it was location and time-specific, unlike the more general-purpose magic circles that could be rather simply prepared and used on the fly.
Thus, these types of destruction magics were better off as chant magics to be channeled through focus, rather than a circle.
"What type of spell is this?" he asked when he was finished drawing.
I looked at the blackboard, and found that my analysis was consistent with what had been drawn.
It was missing a trigger-type control, but that only made it so the user had to be absolutely certain of the time that had elapsed once the circle had been drawn.
Trigger-type controls hadn't exactly been popularized until the mid 20th century in my old life, however, so it was somewhat reasonable that it wasn't being utilized here.
The girl that had burst out at my battle royale instantly raised her hand.
"Yes, Miss... Lacie Arvas?" he called.
"It's a destruction-type magic circle," she said confidently, sending a side glance towards me. "It has a delay element, so it will trigger after a certain time once magic is poured into it."
"Miss Mendoza," he called me out. "Would you like to tell us more about the circle?"
"Miss Arvas was very thorough in her analysis," I answered. I needed to get the attention off of me, I had already received more than enough considering the pathetic performance I had exhibited.
"Miss Mendoza," he continued. "I looked at your paper examination, and your essays analyzing various magic circles was much more thorough than this."
"Is it really such a big deal?" I asked. "Miss Arvas was correct in her analysis, it is destruction type which can be seen from the numerous fire-type elements drawn in the circle. Since the explosive fire-type elements are drawn along the edge of the circle, it could be categorized as... a class-B destruction-type. In addition, there is a delay element inserted in. Since it's an octagon with a circle drawn on the inside, the circle will detonate precisely eight minutes after activation."
The contents of what I had said were pretty much the same as what Lacie had said, with only a few details added.
"Class," Wilfred said. "That is the level of analysis I will be expecting from you by the end of the year. Dismissed."
The moment he walked out, I received numerous hostile stares from my classmates.
Today was going to be a long day.