Introductions

"Welcome to the arts of magic course! I hope that you all have managed to get used to the academy since we last saw each other."

Back in the same eastern-looking classroom where we had last met Mrs. Harper, it was finally time for my first actual lecture regarding magic. Technically, it could be said that the mana manipulation course was the first exposure but, to me, that didn't count.

Because this time, I knew that the elderly woman was going to teach us how to actually practice our skills. Needless to say, I was extremely excited! Not just because we were going to practice magic, but also because...

'I might not be physically strong, but this should be an area where I shine!'

If there ever was a time when I would be able to excel, this had to be it. It was just a shame that not all of my classmates were here to see my upcoming brilliance.

In contrast to the physical education class, there were a lot fewer students who had picked this course. Me, Eva, Samantha, Mike, Suzan, and Lya were the only ones who had picked it, which made sense as the other students in our class weren't magical arts students.

Yes, even though we were all attending the same academy, and all belonged to the same class, there was still a distinction between us. In the academy, there were three roads one could pick. Majors, one could say.

Martial art students, magical arts students, and scholars. These were the three majors that one had to pick between when attending the academy. During our first year here, it wouldn't matter much, as our days were filled with mandatory subjects for the most part, but the distinction would increase with time.

This was the reason why we only get to pick two non-mandatory lectures, as well as one of the reasons why I thought it was insane that I was going to attend PE as one of them.

"Before we begin, I would like to ask you all to tell me what inherent classes you have so that I can get an idea of what kind of practice I should assign to you. Yes?"

Raising her hand, the wind magician Suzan seemed to have a very similar question to the one that was currently floating around in my head.

"Uhm... are we all going to practice different things?"

"Correct. Though we will also spend some time practicing general magic, I believe that it is more effective to develop your individual talents rather than to force you all to practice the same things."

"Oh, okay."

It made sense, it truly did, but it was still an answer I didn't want to hear. Because if we all practiced different things, how was I supposed to show off my brilliance? It would be extremely difficult to compare us against each other if we weren't practicing the same spells.

Not that I cared all too much, to be honest. If it meant I wouldn't faint in front of everyone, that in itself was good enough. Because the looks that I was getting from my classmates had already begun to take their toll on me.

The worst offender of this was for some reason the princess herself. Although she was trying to hide it, she was making it way too obvious.

We were currently sitting in a straight line next to each other while facing our teacher, with me on the far right end, and Samantha somewhere in the middle, with Suzan and Lya on her sides. Despite that, I could see her head turn slightly every now and then, unable to stop herself from taking peeks at me.

I didn't like it. While I didn't feel a need to become some sort of mysterious, hidden power, I also had no intentions of becoming the center of attention for no reason.

"Then, let's start with Eva."

Eva was sitting on the other side of the room, right next to Mike, and was the first student to tell our teacher about her class.

"My class is Elementalist."

"Seems like you can carry the Redmoon family name with pride then. But that means you will have to put in a lot of work to learn how to control all the basic elements. Then, next, we have..."

"My class is Pyromancer."

"Oh, you inherited your mother's class? That's a bit surprising, but it's not a bad class to have."

Somehow, as our teacher was just making a casual remark about Mike, I could see his face distort for nothing but a hot second, something that most of my classmates seemed to have missed. But I didn't have much time to ponder it as our teacher carried on.

"Suzan?"

"Oh... my class is Wind Whisperer."

"A wind mage mixing support-style spells and offensive abilities. Good."

Following the green-haired Suzan was the princess herself.

"I'm sorry, Professor. I am not allowed to share my class, I hope you understand. What I can tell you is that I specialize in healing."

"That's unfortunate, but if that's the case, then it can't be helped. The royal family has a lot of secrets, so I guess we should be happy that you are able to attend the academy in the first place."

'Does she have a unique class?'

From my research at the library, when I was reading about stats, skills, and talents, I knew a bit about the phenomena that were unique classes. These were classes that were never passed down to offspring, and, as the name suggests, were unique to one single individual.

These unique classes were most often attained through a class evolution, which was extremely rare, but there were also even rarer cases where one was born with a unique class. Due to the fact that I hadn't deemed it all too important, I wasn't exactly sure, but I wanted to say that it was something along the lines of one in a million.

This didn't tell me much as I had no idea how big the population of Estaria was, nor did I know how big the population of Ghael, the name of this world, was.

"Let's continue. Lya?"

"My class is Spirit Summoner."

Our teacher's eyes opened up a bit as she heard about Lya's class, seemingly very excited.

"Spirit Summoner, you say? How interesting! I never knew that the Lavigne blood carried latent talent regarding reaching out to the spirit world. I look forward to seeing what you can do, Lya!"

Lya, on the other hand, just looked very uncomfortable being the target of Mrs. Harper's interest. Which I very much empathized with. Enough to make me unsure if I even felt comfortable talking about my class, as I had no idea what the reception would be.

There was no internet in this world where I could just search for information about my class, and I still hadn't had enough time in the library to find anything about it.

'But it shouldn't matter too much. In the worst...'

*Bing!*

==========

[Act 1, chapter 2: The duty of a student!]

New mission:

- Hide your class from your teacher!

Penalty:

- 10x status points randomly decreased.

Reward:

- Unlocking a new talent and skill!

==========

"So, Alex. Seems like you are the last one to share your class."

Everyone was now looking at me, waiting for me to tell them what kind of class I had. A class that I, for some reason, wasn't allowed to share with them at all for reasons completely unknown to me.

'But if I tell them that I don't want to expose my class... they might think I have a unique class just like Samantha...'

"Alex?"

Mrs. Harper's gentle voice quickly woke me up to reality again, and now, I had no choice but to wing it.

"Oh, I'm sorry. My class is... my class is... mage?"

"Mage?"

"Mage."

My professor couldn't help but show a bit of disappointment on her face in response to hearing about my class. And thinking about it, it made a lot of sense.

Because I had just told her that my class was one of the most common classes in existence. In reality, most people didn't have fancy classes like Pyromancer or Spirit Summoner. No, most people had more normal classes like mage, warrior, scout, etc. Normally this wouldn't be a problem, but it was probably very weird for her to see someone like that get accepted into Stellar Academy.

Thankfully, she was still very professional about it, deciding to try her best to not embarrass me even more. Unfortunately not professional enough to not stumble over her words a bit as she tried to smooth things over.

"I... I see. Well, it's... The good thing about it is that you will be able to completely choose for yourself what you want to learn. So... that's good. Anyway..."

It wasn't a very good attempt, but I appreciated her trying nonetheless as she then went on to explain more about how our lectures would look like and what we could expect.

At the same time, in sync with the mission panel disappearing, proving that I had completed the mission, I felt my body heating up.

'What's happening?'

An almost feverish sensation washed over me, making beads of sweat emerge on my forehead as my head began to spin. A second later, it stopped, just as suddenly as it began. And as it stopped, I subconsciously learned about the new abilities that had been bestowed upon me as a reward.