The classes were arranged according to their scores and remained that way until graduation regardless of rank changes.
The top 100 students in Class A, the next 100 in Class B, the next 100 in Class C and so on and so forth.
Naturally, there aren't enough letters to go around. The current second year alone has more than ten thousand students.
If one went with this method, after 2600 students, the letters would have been exhausted.
As such, after class Z, the next 100 students are sent to class A1, with the next to Class B1. Upon reaching Z again, the next becomes Class A2 and B2.
This continued until the number of students were all allocated to classrooms.
That was how the classes were allocated at the Academy.
As for Arthur's laughter, it was simply because he realized how Zach got his rank of top 300 in his first year.
He bribed the instructor.
Arthur had a habit of digging up people's secrets and keeping them in case he needed to 'persuade' them in the future, an example of this was the director whose office he was occupying.
The director's tryst with the former 5th-year student was just one of the secrets about the director that Arthur was aware of.
If he needed to threat-, 'persuade, the director in the future, he could simply use another one.
One might wonder why the director had so many secrets, however, it is absolutely normal for anyone to have one or two things they wished to hide.
And Arthur, took it upon himself to find these things out.
Concerning Zach's case, he bribed the instructor who was in charge of his written test to give him good grades, and also bribed his combat test instructor to give him a slightly higher rating when the scores were being compiled.
He could easily get away with that as there were nearly hundreds of battles taking place at the same time during the combat tests.
Not all of them were as eye-catching as Arthur's so not many people would pay much attention to his.
As for how Arthur found this out, that was simply him being a busybody.
He just looked at a list of high-ranked nobles and randomly picked Zach out, he then gave the name to the drifters and told them to search for anything they could on him.
As this was years ago and the information found was not to his interest, he had forgotten completely and only remembered it now.
"Okay, so I'm gonna go piss off Zach Pearce."
He suddenly stopped laughing and said that before standing up and walking out of the room.
Naturally, he was pulled back and forced to sit down once again by Layla who repeated her earlier question.
"How did you arrive at that conclusion?!"
Arthur however, stared at her dumbfoundedly and asked back.
"How did you NOT arrive at that conclusion?"
They then began to argue about whether Arthur should piss Zach off or not.
Seeing this, Count Harper asked Nicole as quietly as possible.
"Is this how they always are?"
"Yep."
After a few minutes, the two finally finished their argument. The end result had Layla gritting her teeth in indignation while murmuring something about rock paper scissors being the most unfair game in existence.
"Ah! I'm gonna need something from you Count, stamped with your official seal."
"For what?"
"Worry not, it's nothing illegal, I just want to have a legitimate reason to stick around him for a while."
Although Arthur said that with a wide smile, the count was even more worried.
'His mouth may be smiling but his eyes are definitely not!'
Seeing as Layla was still out of commission for various reasons and Nicole naturally did not see through Arthur's true intentions, the count sighed and decided to do as Arthur said.
'He's helping me out, this much is nothing.'
He repeated that multiple times in his mind, as if to hypnotize himself into thinking that was true.
As for Arthur, his reason for helping the count out was quite...diverse.
As expected, 60% was simply for the fun of it, 15% because he felt Diablo was testing him somehow, 10% for Layla and Nicole's sake, 5% because he wanted to beat up a senior year student, 5% because he wanted to embarrass a Marquis and 5% because he wanted to mess with a Grand Duke.
If the ones concerned knew of Arthur's thoughts, they might have spat out blood due to shock.
◇ ◇ ◇
Friday afternoon, around the time when most were about to begin the last class for the day, Arthur, with a bag on his back, was strolling around in one of the 4th year buildings like he owned the place.
'Technically my family does own this place.'
While thinking such things, he up to the last floor, not forgetting to troll the occasional teacher he met.
As for why he didn't take the elevator provided; he simply felt like it.
The Buildings were arranged according to year and class.
As the entire planet of Kreiz was the academy's territory, the size of the area occupied by each year was more than that of a small country.
Of course, this distance could be easily traversed with the aid of the teleportation devices set up in various areas.
The A classes all had their classrooms, labs and other facilities in the same area. This applied to the B classes and so on and so forth.
Arthur utilized his personal permit card to access the director's personal teleportation gate and moved over to the 4th year territory.
As for why he was in the director's office in the first place, that was simply because he went over to 'persuade' him to not document Nicole's Father's arrival.
In other words, the Count was officially never on the Academy's premises.
He chuckled to himself as he remembered the look on the director's face as he waved the memory card containing various images of him engaging in 'compromising' actions, the kind that would cost him his job.
Arthur pulled out his phone and scrolled through his list of 'stories', deciding to search for some relating to the teacher currently in Year 4's class C.
Finding the man's name, he tapped on his file and read up on the contents, hoping to use one of them as a means to 'persuade' the teacher into leaving the classroom.
'This school really needs to undergo a serious staff overhaul, so many criminals hiding here, I'm sure grandpa already noticed but he just doesn't care, he's got more important things to do after all.
Besides, the situation in Chrysa is getting worse, the greater demons over there are losing to the angels, mom also went over to help them out.'
Chrysa was a neighbouring universe, not far from Hell. It was currently undergoing a civil war as the members of the Angel race who had been suppressed for tens of thousands of years revolted against their demon oppressors.
They had been biding their strength for a long while so when they finally revolted, they were far more powerful than the demons expected.
Rumours going around say that they even had a monarch realm existence among them.
Cattleya had recently gone over there to aid the demons in suppressing the revolt, or at least that was what she told Arthur.
'It's fishy, mom usually wouldn't tell me such a thing, and she's even more unpredictable than I am.'
While many would argue with that, looking at it from some angles, he was right, Cattleya was more unpredictable and carefree than he was.
There was a time she was happily chatting with him during a rare occasion when they had dinner with his dad.
One moment she was smiling, the next, she was wiping out the nearby planet.
Even his dad who had somehow gotten used to her unpredictable nature couldn't help but stare in shock.
Till today, he still does not know the reason she did that.
'Knowing mum, it's probably because some lesser royal or noble from there pissed her off.'
His assumption was not far from the mark, there was indeed an occasion where a lesser royal pissed her off, however, since his country of origin spanned an entire continent, she wiped out the entire planet, completely ignoring the fact that the people on the other continents were as innocent as a newborn.
'When I get that strong would I wipe out planets for no reason?'
While thinking such dangerous thoughts, he finally arrived at the classroom, or more appropriately, class hall of Year 4's Class C.
◇ ◇ ◇
He pushed open the door and waltzed in like he owned the place, ignoring the obvious looks of confusion on the students' and teacher's faces, he spoke up loudly.
"Wonderful afternoon isn't it, I think it is, the kind that's best for self-study don't you think?"
He turned to the teacher and asked.
"Since it's the last class of the week, why not just make it self-study? Or more appropriately, free period."
The teacher finally recovered from his shock, then asked Arthur in a calm voice.
"Prince Arthur, would you kindly return to your class block?"
"Huh? Why?"
Arthur asked back, his tone and facial expression making it seem like there was no reason for him to be sent back to his class.
The teacher, however, expected that Arthur had come to make trouble.
After all, Arthur and his antics had become a regular topic of discussion among the teachers, at least some of them.
"It is still time for classes, if you have any business with me or my students, wait until after the classes."
"Oh come on! It's boring to have classes now."
"Prince Arthur, I hope you would postpone whatever matters you have until we are done, you do realize you are interrupting our class?"
The class representative stood up and spoke to Arthur, at his words, many others also expressed their agreement.
Arthur just laughed and walked up to a nearby empty seat, he sat down comfortably and pulled two artifacts from his bag and activated them.
One was a barrier artifact that sealed everyone within a certain area for a period of time; a spatial isolation artifact.
The other was an artifact that jammed all communication signals to and fro within a certain range.
He ignored their shocked looks at his actions and spoke.
"I have a story for you, one that would make you forget about your classes."