A moment of elegance.
“Hello there, welcome to the Advanced Course in Magic Studies. These students are a year your senior. By this time next year, you should be able to do this much… no, you are the special class. You should be able to do more than that. I have high hopes for you.”
Many of the students in the special class have high grades and are from noble families who had tutors before they entered the academy, so many of them can use a good amount of magic before they even entered the academy.
“They are now training to improve the accuracy of their basic offensive magic and shorten their chanting time.”
When you first learn magic, you start by learning the chanting spells and releasing them accurately, but in the first place, the activation of magic is all about image, so once you get used to magic with chanting, you shorten the chanting in your own way while imagining when the magic is activated. Eventually, the goal is to be able to activate magic with just one word, such as “fireball.”
… Well, if you can visualize it properly, it can be activated even without any chanting whatsoever.
“Come to think of it, we have one of Teacher Marlen’s favorite students in this year’s special class, don’t we?”
At Teacher Carson’s words, everyone’s eyes focused on me. Ugh, Ronnie-sama was staring at me.
“You must be talking about Miss Cristea!”
I couldn’t hide anymore now that Teacher Neil had mentioned my name.
I reluctantly stepped forward and greeted him.
“I am Cristea Ellisfeed.”
“Ohh, right, right! I heard that you have a tremendous amount of magic power. How about it, will you show us a few things?”
“Eh?”
“All you have to do is hit the target. You can break it if you want.”
No, I don’t want to.
“No, I’m here just for the observation, though…”
“Eh? Teacher Carson said it’s fine, so why don’t you give it a try?”
Teacher Neil~! Please stop him right there!?
The two instructors were looking at me expectantly.
This… they won’t stop unless I do it…
“… Understood. Which target should I hit?”
“Great. Okay, let’s see… no, you can hit any target you want. It’s hard, after all.”
Indeed, the seniors sometimes hit the target, sometimes not, and some of them hit the targets they were not aiming for.
“Then, the leftmost one.”
“Eh?”
Let’s get this over with.
What should I do? A water cutter would have a wide range, so maybe an ice arrow?
I imagined an ice arrow and activated it.
ZDONG!
Oh no, it was a little big for an arrow, wasn’t it?
A lump of ice like a spear pierced the target and blew it away.
Well, I should have imagined a little more carefully to improve the accuracy.
The more magic power you have, the easier magic is to trigger, so it’s a bad habit to be careless with the control.
“Eh… c, chantless?”
I turned around with a surprise when I heard Teacher Carson’s confused voice.
Everyone was looking at me as if they could not believe what they were seeing.
“Eh, umm…?”
“… Ah! Y, you are amazing, aren’t you!? To think you could use chantless magic and with this amount of power at your age… as expected of Teacher Marlen’s favorite student!”
“Eh, no, that…”
“Right? As expected of someone contracted with Sacred Beasts!”
No, Teacher Neil, this has nothing to do with the Sacred Beast contract, okay?”
“Umm, may I return.”
“Eh why don’t you do it one more time…”
“Teacher Neil! We have got other things to see, so let’s get going!”
Teacher Carson tried to hold onto me, but pulled on Teacher Neil’s sleeve.
“Eh, ah~ yeah, we are losing time, let’s continue.”
Teacher Neil was overwhelmed by my momentum, and we left the place with the other students in tow.
Ugh, I feel like everyone was pulling away from me. Only Mariel-chan and Sei were by my side… When I was thinking that, Adry-sama approached me in a trot.
“That was astounding, Miss Cristea! You will have to teach me next time!”
Following the smiling Adry-sama, the boys approached me, saying, “Eh then, me too!” and “Me as well!”
Ah… I never thought there would be a time I appreciated muscle-brains.
But the girls were drawing away from me… Alicia-sama didn’t even look my way.
Ugh, I wonder if I will ever have a female friend other than Mariel-chan…