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After the mock battle with Tebby, a mock battle between Sola and Hermie was held. Their match would be pretty impressive to behold for those that have knowledge in magic or magecraft and can sense the flow of magic, but since it’s extremely plain to look at, I’ll cut it short.

Based only on the sense of sight, a fireball is floating right exactly in the middle of the two. This fireball goes back and forth between the two of them, inch in, inch out. Now as for what the heck they’re doing here, it’s that the magic Sola cast was nearly hijacked by Hermie but Sola resisted it, making this match a battle for the control of this single magic.

The more control Sola has, the more the magic is pushed to Hermie. Conversely, the more control Hermie has, the greater the push towards Sola. This situation happened because the two of them have rivaling capabilities in both magic power and magic manipulation, and if one of them was Tebby, then his overwhelming magic power and domination over the fire attribute would make him practically unstoppable in this sort of situation. Conversely, if they were against Glen or Milt, the control would be easily stolen and the match would be settled. Just like how I hijacked Hermie’s magic the first time around.

While all of the members that joined the student council after-class-training-session receive the same magic manipulation training, the only ones that have gained this much control over magic are Sola and Hermie. On pure power, Tebby is on the top and in actual battles that include physicality, Urania and Selena are much faster. Mahara is not quite there yet though, she still needs more training.

Since this is an opportunity, we decided to have those near in power battle against each other. Setting Urania and Selena’s match aside, my match with Tebby and Sola’s match with Hermie seems to have inspired everyone, seeing how they’re pretty eager. As for me, I walk from student to student, occasionally giving them advice and sometimes showing them an example.

There are a lot more members compared to when we started the training sessions and improvements are visible all around. Both sorcerers and mages have gained sufficient control over magic power. At this rate, I could start that plan as early as this weekend, but soon after that is our long summer vacation. Gaining unfamiliar power, it’ll be easy for them to get overconfident and run wild. With that in consideration, it’ll be best to start after vacation.

In this case, I’ll naturally have to come up with a training menu to last until summer vacation starts. Continuing the magic power manipulation training as is, we’ll have them learn the theory of magic manipulation. Then would they be able to learn it through tug of war or pole toppling?¹

Ah, I completely forgot that there’s a proficiency test before the holidays. Depending on the results, the classes of the members here are going to change a lot. In particular, the class D members are going to at least be promoted to class C, some maybe even class B. If I assume that the strength of those in class B won’t be much different from that of Joaquin and Liev when they first started, then everyone might end up getting promoted to class B.²

The day after I was pondering about that, this incident happened at the earth attribute class.

「Oi! You there, you! You dare have the nerve to ignore me before!」
「…… Are you perhaps talking to me?」
「Who else would it be but you! You shameless red folk cur wearing the color of white!!」

I couldn’t help but look around and tilt my head in confusion, but I’m not to blame here. After all, I never thought that there’d be a student in this academy who would rudely call people by “You there”. Moreover, I never hid the fact that I wear the color white because of my treatment as a house guest of the Iglesio household. To think that there would be someone that wouldn’t know of this and condemn me as shameless.

Rather, he’s implying that I ignored him before, but this should be my first time meeting this guy. Wait, since he’s in earth attribute class, I guess this should be the second time then? With that in mind, I turned to Urania next to me, and she had a figurative question mark over her head. I know, right? Who is he?

「You don’t remember? I assumed it was your ill manners that made you ignore me.」

He also seems to have a question mark over his head over the fact that I don’t remember him. I absolutely don’t remember him. Wait? Speaking of the previous earth attribute class, that should be the day I first met Selena. I was so preoccupied with Selena that day, I couldn’t remember anything from class. Did he talk to me then?

「Forgive me, last time some personal matters took all of my attention. What would be your business with me?」
「Hmph! Very well! Listen up! I am Mark from class B! I challenge you to a duel! I’ll have you return the position of the first place I, the great “Starfall”³ Mark, was supposed to have at this moment! You usurper!」

While a duel system certainly does exist, no one in the first years has made use of it up until now. A part of it is because everyone is still seeing how things go, but it’s also because, to a certain extent, the people close in strength will be able to assess each other during the daily training, so this is also a time when everybody is preparing countermeasures.

Well, the reasons for duels not happening aside, there’s a definite reason why I can’t duel with Mark.

「I cannot fight you.」
「Why!? Having cold feet!?」
「Pardon me, but since you are from class B, then your ranking should be 20 or more, correct? I’m ranked 1st place, so only those ranked 11 and above from class A have the right to challenge me. I cannot fight someone from class B.」

Students can only challenge those that are within ten ranks above them. Students ranking beyond that or below you cannot be challenged to a duel. This is because unfair manipulation of ranks would become so easy if this wasn’t the case. In exchange, those that are challenged to a duel cannot refuse the challenge. This is also to prevent rank manipulation.

「…… Tsk, then just you wait! I’ll come back to you on this soon enough!⁴」

Leaving those sorts of parting words, who even is he? Despite calling me a usurper, he doesn’t really look that strong. To begin with, the fact that he isn’t in class A already should tell much about his abilities.

And from how his magic control seems during our class, none of the class A training session members should lose against him.

1. Lyly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bo-taoshi
2. Lyly: Lol, imagine being a class B student, then after summer all of you and your classmates, excluding two or so, get dropped to C or even D
3. Lyly: Lol, he’s the guy that had a magic power overload during the exam which Lily turned into a proper magic.
4. Lyly: At this point he’s almost cute. Like, a Pomeranian barking at the Great Dane cute.