After Applied Mana Manipulation, I separated from Syflie and headed to my Strategy and Tactics class.
This class was purely theoretical, but the wizard in charge of us was someone who was quite passionate about teaching.
Her name was Maya.
And she was very much unlike Wizard Lu, who taught the class while doing something else. She sought engagement from us, giving us the chance to participate and become a part of her discussion.
It was a fun two hours with her, with the orientation basically being a human board game. The class was definitely going to help me with cementing the basics of fighting that I vaguely knew and with learning other tidbits that I would've had to spill blood to learn.
...
After Strategies and Tactics, it was finally time for Group Duels.
I had the same classmates and the same classroom as Individual Duels. Thus, I sat at the same spot I had taken yesterday, isolated from everyone else. Virion was a few seats in front of me, and it was clear that he came from a prior scuffle with a group of foes.
He wasn't as injured as one would expect, however, which was quite the feat.
Ding—! dong—! Ding—! dong—!
When the clock struck four in the afternoon, the same silent wizard who guided us before walked through the door. As if trying to cause Deja vu, they went over to the bulletin board, pinned a scroll onto it, and then situated themselves at the centre of the arena.
Their movements were robotic, perfect and calculated. There was barely any difference in how they moved yesterday and today. It was unnerving to see this characteristic of theirs in real life.
Thus, like before, everyone had to stand up from their seats to take a look at the scroll. A great commotion shook the crowd as they read what was on it.
"How are we going to beat that?"
"Unfair!"
"Should we ask the wizard for a reconsideration?"
Their voices littered my ears with noise. Sight-Sent Senses allowed me to hear all their chatter.
I waited for the crowd to thin before I went over to see just what caused their shock. I was in for a surprise.
'It isn't the same as I had written it...' I pursed my lips. The way that the groupings had been decided was not completely the same five-per-group that I had designed.
'What caused this change?' I wondered as I stared.
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Group Duels
Duel #1 — First Teammates
Group A: Rank 1 Caelum Phricius and Rank 2 Lily Ilventire
Group B: Rank 3 Virion von Santos Sol, Rank 50 Equista Vir, Rank 13 Akana Lee, and Rank 25 Lavve Winter
...
...
...
Duels must begin in five minutes. Failure to stand on the stage counts as a loss.
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Looking at the list, I counted 46 students in total instead of 50. Four were missing, and I recalled who they were.
Rank 32 Aimee Desinge was one of them.
Once I knew this, the conclusion was easy. The expulsion of Aimee and her companions had come swiftly. The church of Liefanissus had rolled out their punishment, and it was only the third day of class.
This gave a mischievous wizard the opportunity to play around with the groupings.
I looked around the room and heard everyone discussing what had happened. Word travelled fast, and I noticed that a few were stealing glances at me as if they were wondering how I wasn't expelled.
I inwardly chuckled.
The mages of Aethercaller had probably finished their investigations by now. They would have been able to discover traces of my presence in Nature's Archives at around the same time that Aimee had been "chasing Caelum Phricius" through Liefanissus' sacred grounds.
They wouldn't have been able to discover any hint of me anywhere else as I had King's special escape tech in my possession. My plans were all blooming perfectly as if coincidence was on my side.
The absolute power of knowledge was astonishing, and it would only grow even more awe-inspiring as time went on.
"Hi~ I guess we're teammates from now on!" I walked up to Lily with a cheerful and carefree spring in my step. My body was blurring ever so slightly with my movements, but it seemed like everyone was quite used to it.
The stares I got from the nobles, however, were pretty harsh. Amusing.
Lily glared at me venomously and I couldn't help but laugh. I was tempted to give her a pat on the shoulder but that would be a very bad idea. Especially since we were going to be teammates for the rest of the semester.
"I'll follow your lead,"
I ended up saying as we walked up the stage to fight a nervous group of five.
"Whatever you do, I will support you."
I summoned Aventine into my hands, allowing a golden snake-like dagger to appear. I twirled the blade and watched as a few of my opponents flinched.
This was a dagger that could pierce through the defences of an E rank second-year. It also bore a certain paralysing poison that could be transmitted with every wound I dealt.
Lily gave me a look filled with scepticism as if she doubted my words wholeheartedly. I simply smiled at her in reply. I then stood a few steps behind her unsheathed blade.
Mana Swordsmanship wasn't that hard to follow, in all honesty. After all, its clear-cut movements were both its strength and its weakness. With every movement one made, mana would follow. With every movement of mana, one would also have to adapt.
Thus, her technique would grow rather chaotic in a group battle. With the fact that there were several more obstacles to the flow of mana, more variables were in play. This was the source of Lily's doubts.
But with my Hyperfocus, Mana Vision, and Foresight, I doubted that I would have any problems. Reading the battlefield was growing to become another skill of mine.
At first, it would be a little challenging to read, yes, but I was the creator of Mana Swordsmanship.
I knew every theoretical concept behind its existence.
Even though I had never performed such a technique in my life, I was more familiar with it than Lily herself. Even if theory was different from actual practice.