It was the day after Kyros’ last test that Chemirk (the prince) Evergreen, (the military nobleman) and Jim (the genius mage emeritus born once every millennia), found themselves standing in a huge building in which the floor was composed entirely of pinkie-sized black metal squares.

  They’d come early, in an attempt to make a good impression, in the case of the first two, and because he’d forgotten when the class started, in the case of the latter.

  “It’s going to be very different from now on, huh?” Chemirk said lazily, raising a hand to seemingly pick at his ear, before dropping it and glaring at his pinky as if it had personally offended him.

  “Most people take Combat Magic 2 in the second year. I don’t think the previous professor let anyone graduate early,” Evergreen replied, trying to look nonchalant, but crossing his arms as if he were anxious.

  Jim, meanwhile, was standing there, relaxed, with his feet apart the width of his shoulders, and his arms swinging freely at his side. He scoffed. “That old guy with the beard that was on the boat here?” he asked. He hadn’t liked Kyros from any of the visions he’d had. But, the man let talent prosper by letting it graduate from his class.

  That was something at least.

  “May his soul rest in peace,” Chemirk remarked, saying it in a tone as if he didn’t actually mean it.

  “Amen,” Evergreen said a bit more heatedly.

  Slowly but surely, the second-year students started joining them in the weird space, giving them odd looks as they arrived. They weren’t curious enough to come over and ask anything, however, so the grandiose tale of his advancement that Jim had been spinning in his head went untold.

  Rather than interacting with them, Jim couldn’t help but note, however, that…

  “They look haggard,” Evergreen remarked with a frown as a few more second years joined, making for about two dozen.

  “No decorum,” Jim complained quietly. The students did indeed look a bit haggard. Sunken cheeks, dark bags under their eyes, pale. It wasn’t befitting of any academy class that had a Savant attending.

  It was as the time for class approached that one of the older students finally approached the three, awkwardly coughing into his hand as he did so.

  “You’re the first years that got pushed up, right?” he asked them with a dull brown gaze of someone who’d given up on life.

  “Yes,” Jim replied imperiously, before looking at the students around them with a scornful look. “Why does everyone look so uncouth?” he asked. “I thought this was an academy, not a shelter for the criminally sleep deprived and starving.”

  The older man looked at Jim with a frown, causing Evergreen to kick his classmate in the shin.

  “There’s no asylums for the starving, idiot,” the boy grumbled.

  “Well, there should be,” Jim replied stubbornly. “Why do we have to look at their pathetic emancipated bodies? It’s an aesthetic assault. They should just eat something."

  Evergreen ran a hand down his face and gave a loud sigh.

  Chemirk, meanwhile, simply laughed.

  The brown-haired second year gave the three of them a hard look.

  “The classes aren’t a joke. I’d prepare myself for next time if I were you, Professor Quatzel encourages self-study,” he said, before shaking his head. “I’m Hayate by the way, Hayate Magasachi.”

  “Shufu?” Chemirk asked.

  Hayate gave a tight smile. “Not anymore,” he said simply. At once, the entire field quieted; even the errant chatter, slight as it was, disappeared tracelessly into the light breeze.

  “Hello students,” a cheery voice announced from the front, causing Jim to experience whiplash to look at the spot where previously no one had stood.

  “Good morning, professor,” some of the second years replied with long-suffering sighs.

  The professor, a seemingly male skeleton -from the voice- of average height, dressed in simple and crude brown hemp robes, waved a hand at the students. A rusted brown crown was adorned on his white, polished head.

  “I see we have some new faces today,” the lich, because it couldn’t be anything but, said happily. “I already explained the rules of our current game at the beginning of the year. If our new arrivals haven’t yet asked around to find out the specifics, that just shows a lack of initiative. Anyway, let’s begin!” he announced and clapped his hands together.

  A disconcerting rattle resounded from where the two skeletal limbs met, and a bubble of mana rapidly spread out with the lich at the centre point, quickly enclosing the clearing and shaking all the small black metal squares underneath.

  Their surroundings gradually shifted, and Jim felt like he was being lifted up somehow. The assortment of squares beneath them grew into a hill, stone statues erecting themselves from the ground. The statues depicted mythological creatures and people dressed in a variety of armours.

  The second year had already started running. Evergreen and Chemirk quickly followed, while Jim stayed stuck in his spot, uncertain about what was happening.

  “Eh, you’re not running?” the lich asked curiously with a tilted head while looking at Jim.

  “What’s there to run from? Isn’t this just class?” Jim asked stubbornly.

  “Well, yes,” the lich replied. “Just seemingly not the kind of class you’re thinking of.” A skeletal hand was raised towards Jim.

  The Savant, to his credit, recognised the motion and promptly brought up a shield.

  A concentrated beam of fire shot out of the lich’s hand, taking about a second to evaporate Jim’s shield and burn a head-sized hole through his torso.

  “Better luck next round,” the lich said cheerily and promptly walked past Jim in pursuit of the other students.

  Jim, for his part, saw himself, in a sort of third-person view, fall to his knees, then on his face.

  “I fucking hate this school,” he managed to mumble through bloodied lips and closed his eyes.

  …

  Jim opened his eyes again after a few seconds of not dying. As unfortunate as it was at this point, he did have a certain amount of experience with his entrails becoming outrails.

  He struggled to turn his head. There was some force pushing against him, but he eventually managed, only to see no hole in his torso and no blood on his robes.

  The rest of his body refused his attempts at moving it into a standing position, but his head was nevertheless able to follow the cataclysmic explosions of fire occasionally mixed in with a smaller retaliation of some other element.

  An odd sound, like a soap bubble popping suddenly, resounded from next to Jim, and he turned to see Hayate, the man he’d spoken to earlier, appear on the grass next to him in a crouching position.

  A painful grimace on his face, the man spared him a glance before putting his palms on the ground, at which point he slowly started sinking into it as if it were actual earth.

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  “The black squares, they allowed for a large-spread illusion conflict zone,” he muttered at Jim’s questioning look when he was halfway merged into the earth.

  “I knew that,” Jim scoffed in retaliation, rolling his eyes. “But what’s the lesson? I’m not learning anything.”

  The brown-haired boy continued sinking into the ground while bright red flames spewed heat into the sky. “There is no class, just try and survive,” he said bitterly before finally disappearing fully into the ground, leaving Jim once again alone, still paralysed.

  The explosions and the screams of pain in the background slowly but surely faded into silence.

  A loud humming sound suddenly resounded through the field Jim was lying in. It was quickly approaching his position, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it other than glaring at the flying professor coming his way. The skeleton had his two arms at his side, ejecting bright blue flame from the palms and was using that to propel himself forward.

  Once he arrived, he stopped channeling the propulsion spell and neatly hopped in place in the air before landing on his bare skeletal feet.

  Jim patiently waited for an apology, but the professor seemed intent on ignoring him, walking in a small circle around where Hayate had dug himself into the ground. Eventually, the man shrugged and clapped his hands, producing a rattle.

  “Well, I can't get him from down there with my current skill set in the time limit,” the professor announced happily. “I guess we have a survivor,” he finished. Then he bent down and stuck a hand into the ground, penetrating the earth as if it were water before dragging out a struggling Hayate by the hair.

  “You lived! Congratulations!” Professor Quatzel said happily once Hayate fully emerged under his not-so-careful ministrations. “Unfortunately, you’re the only one from your team that did, meaning that the only gain from this mission is knowing that this version of me specialises in fire magic. I’d rate the completion grade as…” He unhinged his jaw, as if thinking deeply.

  “Trash!”

  “Thank you, professor,” Hayate responded in a despondent tone of voice.

  “Hmm, getting trash and being grateful.” Jim entered a seated position. The paralysis had lost its effect on him when the professor had pulled Hayate out of the ground. “You should try to aspire for more. Your attitude is unbefitting of this academy,” he complained.

  Hayate simply turned to give him a deadpan look with his gaunt face. “What grade do you think you got? You didn’t even survive a second.”

  Jim rolled his eyes. “Outstanding, obviously. I held him off so the rest of you could escape. You can thank me later.”

  The other student looked at Jim with a dubious look. “You can ask the professor, I’m sure he’d tell you,” he eventually said.

  Jim looked at the hemp-robed skeleton who was holding up all of the ten digits on his two hands and seemingly playing some advanced game of abacus. He turned back to the brown-haired man.

  “It’s alright, I’m quite sure of my analysis,” he eventually determined.

  Hayate looked at him with a dull face before shaking his head. Then he promptly got up and laboriously walked out of the field. His feet were dragging themselves against the floor, and he swayed dangerously to the left and to the right as he disappeared behind one of the large statues standing firm against the ground.

  Turning to the professor revealed that the creature had stopped with his game and put a bony finger to his neck. He was basically pointing out the spot which Jim had accidentally exploded quite recently while trying to utilise a mana missile from his throat.

  Just about to chastise the abomination for making fun of him, Jim was interrupted when the professor bellowed in a voice loud enough to fill the entire simulation arena.

  “Congratulations, students. One of you managed to survive. This marks the first time any of you have gained a grade above absolute trash!” A lone cheer travelled through the air to weakly dissipate in the field. “As for the next run, it shall commence in exactly 42 seconds.” He clapped his hands, producing another rattle.

  The simulation environment suddenly shifted again, the statues turning into rotten trees and the green grass turning into a disgusting sludge that looked like mud but smelled like horse-shit.

  Jim disgustedly got up, looked at the professor and his hemp robe, considered for a moment if he should wipe his hands on the monster’s worthless clothing, then turned around and started running.

  His feet squelched in the mud, and he inwardly cursed at the indignity.

  It was as he tried to distance himself as far as possible from the obviously deranged lich that he stumbled upon Chemirk precariously balancing on top of one of the rotten wooden trees.

  “Tree’s taken, find your own,” the prince said sullenly when Jim stopped and looked at him.

  Jim narrowed his eyes at the boy, who looked back with an apathetic gaze.

  “You’re sitting on flammable material,” Jim reminded him kindly, before turning around and continuing to run.

  There was a muddy hill in the distance, and he thought he could see some black-robed figures gathering at its top. Maybe going there would give him the advantage of numbers and high ground. He set it as his destination.

  “He’s not going to use fire again, moron!” Chemirk shouted after Jim as the more talented of the two continued onwards towards the hill.

  Jim simply shook his head as he got closer and closer to the hill. “It doesn’t matter if it's fire or not,” he muttered to himself. “Sitting on a tree is just too… Undignified.”

  He slowly approached the hill, mud seeping into his boots and weighing him down as he did so. Undaunted, but mostly afraid, he walked up the hill, the seven or so second years looking down at him critically as he did so while they whispered amongst themselves.

  “At ease,” Jim said once he finally ascended, huffing and puffing. He didn’t want the others getting distracted by someone of his standing coming to join them. They’d need all the concentration they had to serve as meatshields later.

  “Freshman, turn around,” a red-haired girl said in an annoyed tone of voice.

  Jim had actually wanted to do it, to observe the direction in which he’d left the professor, but now that someone had told him to do so…

  “Thank you for the suggestion,” he retorted while crossing his arms and trying to calm his breathing.

  The ginger woman gave him a deadpan look. She was almost as tall as he was. She took a step forward, unceremoniously put her hands on his shoulders and turned him around with surprising strength.

  Jim squawked in a dignified manner and was just about to make her unhand him when he paused, beholding the sight in front of him.

  The bog, for it couldn’t be anything but, stretched out almost endlessly into the distance, but eventually stopped in a dull white wall. There was mud, lots of it, dead trees and some hills.

  The other hills also had students on them; they’d obviously copied his idea.

  In the middle of the field was the barely visible brown-robed professor. The only way to distinguish him against the brown muck was his gleaming white skull.

  And the house-sized bubble of blue mana surrounding him.

  A pulse.

  The mana bubble was pulsing, like a heart.

  Growing smaller.

  In the span of a few seconds, it went from being the size of a house to the size of a cabin, then the size of a carriage.

  Jim narrowed his eyes, feeling something from the amalgamation of mana round the lich.

  The spell looked like something he’d seen before. A spherical manifestation of mana contracting before collapsing in on itself. He’d been killed by a similar spell in one of his visions. His fists clenched themselves involuntarily as he gritted his teeth. The headmaster…

  “Supernova,” he growled.

  The red-haired girl scoffed. “Supernovas don’t get that big,” she said derisively.

  A darker-skinned man standing not far away from her suddenly frowned, however. “No, he’s right. It’s a variation. I was thinking that the bubble would eventually shape itself to his body, making him indestructible or something. But, a supernova makes more sense. Its contractions are too unstable to be a defensive tool.”

  “Fine,” the redhead muttered. “The plan is still the same. Bombard when it's close to being finished, then shields up.”

  “You have a plan,” Jim determined and nodded. “I’ll add my mana missiles. It should be the tipping point between success and failure,” he said with his head held high.

  The students around him chuckled, but the critical moment arrived too fast for them to jubilate at his joining. The professor’s bubble was a few more contractions away from reaching his robes.

  The hum of mana filled the air, a variety of attacks suddenly manifesting. Ice spears, water bullets, hounds made of flames and on Jim’s part, two impressively rotating mana missiles.

  The spells shot forth. Jim ignored how the mana missiles dissipated a tenth of the way before even reaching the professor, who was a few hundred meters away. He’d done his part.

  Similar efforts came from the other hills, a bright array of magical offenses converging on the lich.

  Upon reaching the man’s bubble, however, all the spells suddenly blinked out of existence like farts in the wind.

  The bubble, for its part, suddenly glowed a darker shade of blue.

  “I hate this class,” the red-headed girl spat in disgust.

  “Second year’s voluntary,” the dark-skinned man said with a chuckle.

  “Drop out and let you take first place uncontested?” the girl muttered. “You wish.”

  “Shields up,” the other man replied, raising his hands and manipulating the ground underneath them to rise up and cover the group of eight behind a protective barrier.

  Jim’s mage shield joined a variety of others, most of them elemental in some way.

  He couldn’t see the bubble anymore, but he could hear it.

  A dull pop resounded throughout the bog. The sound resembled a lead ball bursting.

  A bright flash of light suddenly blocked out the entirety of Jim’s sight.

  The wave of force that followed disintegrated the barrier of earth in front of the ground, before promptly ripping apart the rest of the shields as well.

  The students disintegrated to dust under the force of the spell. The shockwave that followed scattered that dust into the air.

  Jim opened his eyes to find himself, once again, unharmed in the position he'd died in.

  The ground beneath him shifted, and suddenly they were standing on a mountain peak, biting cold winds ripping at his robes.

  “How many scenarios does this class have?” he groaned in complaint.

  The dark-skinned man next to him stood up and dusted himself off, looking at the rough rock they were now standing up, before glancing further up the mountain that was covered in snow and ice.

  “98 more to go,” he said helpfully. “In other words, almost halfway done!”

  The group of students around Jim quickly ran off in different directions, leaving him sitting alone on the rocky outcropping of the mountain.

  Jim looked down, saw how beyond a certain point the mountain peak cut to white, ceasing to exist. He looked up. Same thing.

  “One minute and 21 seconds!” the professor’s voice announced loudly.

  The Savant got to his feet and staggered off.

  “I fucking hate this academy.”

  AN: I really tried making this class cool, I hope I succeeded and didn't just deliver a cringefest.

  Anyway, this chapter came early because we reached rising stars rank 1, which really confused me tbh since I wasn't expecting it at all.

  Unfortunately I seem to be getting sick so I have to delay the chapter tomorrow to monday and rest this weekend. I'm trying to save my energy to change the title when the poll becomes conclusive, otherwise I feel myself fading away into a feverdream.

  I love every single one of you is what I likely wouldn't say at this point if I didn't have 38 temperature but it is what it is. Now it's time to lay down on the couch and doze in and out of consciousness for the rest of the day while taking paracetamol.

  Professor Quatzel