Magic Practice Class (1)

Time flew by.

Five days later.

Morning.

At the Royal Knight and Magic Academy, the sun was as bright and beautiful as ever. The refreshing breeze of the new semester swept through every corner of the campus, bringing with it the vibrant energy of spring.

I was currently eating breakfast.

Breakfast consisted of toast and milk, paired with bacon and butter slices, all cooked to perfection.

“Delicious.”

Elegance never goes out of style.

It had now been nearly a week since school started, and I had gradually grown accustomed to school life. Shirune didn't actually have to do much to take care of my daily needs—just making my bed and washing my clothes after I left the dormitory. I told her she didn't need to follow me around during classes and breaks. After all, her presence as a half-demon in the teaching building would probably make many students uneasy.

I seemed to have gone off on a tangent.

In any case, after a week of school, my days had suddenly become highly disciplined—

Waking up at seven in the morning, starting classes at eight, attending two theory classes and one practical class in the morning, taking electives or self-study in the afternoon, and reading in my dormitory room at night until lights out...

It was so structured that it felt a bit unnatural.

Fortunately, though, this academy had holidays. Tomorrow, I could take a break to go out, play, and experience the local customs and culture of the Royal Capital.

Of course, my personal preference would definitely be to stay indoors.

But looking at the current situation, in order to successfully survive past the age of eighteen, I would have to sacrifice this holiday.

Over the past week, I had also gotten to know almost all of my classmates. Correspondingly, they had all come to clearly understand what kind of person I was.

“Villainess☆Daughter”

To the point where now, no one dared to sit near me.

Misha had to rush to catch up on her homework this morning, so she didn't accompany me; otherwise, she would have been here. But back to the topic.

They weren't intentionally isolating me. It was just that I had once said, “I hate it when people sit next to me while I'm eating,” so no one dared to come close. It was treated as an absolute command. Yet, even under this high pressure, there were still a few girls who wanted to curry favor with me.

Actually, I really wanted to make friends with some of the girls in my class, but as the saying goes, there was nothing I could do about it.

—However, I didn't harbor any particular ill will toward those girls. As long as Providence didn't interfere, I would still interact with them generously.

Speaking of which, quite a few interesting things had happened during this first week of school. I might as well introduce them while eating breakfast.

First, the first incident happened during magic practice class.

Clara Wendell fell asleep in class.

Ms. Elena was in the middle of explaining the principles of magic circuit stability when she suddenly paused halfway through. Everyone followed her gaze toward the third row by the window.

Clara was slumped over her desk, her platinum-blonde hair splayed across half the surface. Her face was buried in her arms, her breathing slow and steady.

Her magical pet, Cotton, was perched on top of her head, also fast asleep. Its fluffball-like body rose and fell gently with her breathing. The two little creatures were sleeping incredibly soundly.

At this sight, Ms. Elena's face darkened. A piece of mana-infused chalk flew out, scoring a direct hit right on Clara's forehead!

Oof— Clara was jolted awake.

“What are you doing?” Ms. Elena asked.

“Teacher... I was practicing Mana Perception. I closed my eyes to better feel the flow of surrounding mana,” Clara defended herself.

The classroom fell dead silent for a moment.

Ms. Elena stared at her, and she stared right back at Ms. Elena, completely unperturbed and unashamed...

Then, holding back her temper, Ms. Elena asked, “And what did you perceive?”

Clara fell silent for two seconds. “...Cotton snoring.”

Cotton was Clara's contracted magical pet—more on that type of creature later. In any case, the little fluffball bounced on her head as if in protest.

“Gugu gaga! (Magical Beast Language)”

The entire class burst into laughter.

Ms. Elena did not laugh.

—And so, Clara was punished by being made to stand outside the door.

That was how the entire class got a lasting impression of this little loli.

The second incident was a minor joke Klaus made in the cafeteria—yes, that nouveau riche boy.

It all started with a steak.

The food in the Magic Department's cafeteria had always been decent. Since noble children made up the majority of the students, the kitchen staff didn't dare to slack off. Every Wednesday dinner, they served grilled steak accompanied by baked potatoes and buttered asparagus, making it the most popular meal of the week.

Of course, to me, it was just average.

Klaus was in the food line at the time. When his turn came, the cook placed a perfectly grilled steak onto his plate, grease still sizzling on its surface.

Carrying his tray, he took a couple of steps, looked down at the steak, and suddenly stopped.

“This steak,” he said in a voice that wasn't too loud but was just enough for the people nearby to hear, “is pan-seared.”

He sounded incredibly grand and self-righteous.

At the time, I was sitting a short distance away, eating and elegantly slicing my steak, while Misha watched me with utter adoration.

The cook poked her head out from behind the counter, looking utterly bewildered, practically saying 'what' with her eyes. “Excuse me?”

“Steak should be grilled,” Klaus said with absolute seriousness, his gray-blue eyes staring straight at the cook. “It should be placed on an iron grate and cooked over an open flame. It needs char marks on the surface and should be juicy and rare inside. This—this was seared in a flat-bottomed pan. The surface is too uniform, and there are no grill marks.”

The cook opened her mouth but found herself speechless.

The students waiting in line behind him had already begun to whisper, and someone let out a soft chuckle. Klaus, completely oblivious to the stares around him, adjusted his collar. What kind of petty thoughts did a twelve-year-old boy have? He was merely trying to show off and look sophisticated.

He stared at the steak on his plate for a few more seconds before adding in an educational tone:

“At my house, all steaks are grilled. The old chef in our mine's cafeteria said that pan-searing a steak is disrespectful to the meat.”

“Your family's mine actually cares about how steaks are grilled?” someone behind him asked with a laugh.

“Of course. The miners work hard all day; if they don't eat well, how can they mine?” Klaus replied as if it were the most natural thing in the world. He set his tray down and asked the cook if they could make it grilled next time.

The cook was stunned for a few seconds before saying that the kitchen didn't have an iron grate.

Klaus thought about it and said, “Next time, I'll have my family invest in a sufficient amount of them for the school,” before carrying his tray away as if nothing had happened.

That very night, “the old mine chef's steak-grilling philosophy from the Heller family” became the class's newest inside joke.

Fiona and Liliana had already become good friends, along with that glasses girl. While the three of them were chatting, Fiona laughed so hard she almost spat out her soup, while Sarah pushed up her glasses and remarked, “From a food science perspective, pan-searing and grilling do indeed have distinct differences.”

Only Liliana was thinking to herself that this was the first time she had ever eaten such a large steak, and that academy life was indeed wonderful.

By the time I heard about this rumor, it was already the morning break of the following day. The girls who hovered around me shared it as a joke to curry favor with me.

Meanwhile, from the corner of my eye, I noticed that Klaus's cheeks were redder than a monkey's backside—he had probably reached his boiling point.

“You guys!—” He wanted to point fingers and say something to us, but the moment he made eye contact with me, his momentum instantly deflated. He could only let out a cold snort, turn around, and walk away.

Consequently, everyone laughed even harder.

...

Ah, breakfast was finished.

I instinctively pulled out a tissue to wipe the corners of my mouth. The etiquette lessons I had taken back at the estate had already become second nature.

After finishing breakfast, I left by myself and walked toward the classroom. If I remembered correctly, we had a practical practice class today.

Having studied theory and practiced magic manipulation for a week might be just the right pace for these students, but for someone like me who had spent over two years poring over ancient texts, the material felt a bit too basic.

That Simplified Chinese senior was truly too powerful.

However, because they were teaching modern magic, those magic circuits were much more optimized compared to the ones in the ancient texts...

To give an example of the difference between the two:

Almost all the magic recorded in the ancient texts required no chanting or focusing catalysts. Some large-scale spells did require chanting for magic circles, but their mana consumption was correspondingly high.

On the other hand, modern magic basically relied on wands and incantations. The mana consumed was nearly a mere seventh of the original amount, and the power was even somewhat enhanced.

So, while ancient magic was indeed incredibly strong, modern magic was also progressing.

This was merely the tip of the iceberg of differences. I would have to wait for further studies to uncover more distinctions. After all, whether it was ancient magic or modern magic theory, I could only be considered a beginner—albeit a beginner who had practiced a single thing tens of millions of times.

Because of this, I now understood why my mana capacity was so high. Looking back on those past two years, I really had been courting death... wasting my mana like that.

But I had made it through.