......

  Hulim Heyerar arrived at the Preliminary Academy.

  By this time, quite a few boys and girls around her age were already streaming through the school gates.

  “Morning, Hulim! Long time no see!”

  “Yeah, morning, everyone!”

  After exchanging greetings with a few familiar faces, Hulim headed toward her classroom.

  “Yo! Hulim! Showing up right on the dot on the first day of the new semester, huh? Color me impressed you’ve never been late once!”

  Just as she was about to reach the classroom door, a golden-haired girl with two curly pigtails stepped in her way. The girl was dressed in a fancy gothic dress, paired with white knee-high socks and brand-new leather shoes, her face twisted into a haughty pout.

  “Unlike me, of course—I’ve been here ages ago! Being the first to arrive is the mark of a proper noble lady, after all~!”

  “Uh...... excuse me, but who are you exactly?”

  Hulim asked suddenly.

  The golden-haired girl’s expression froze instantly.

  Then she exploded, yelling at the top of her lungs. “Fran! I’m Fran Banton! How could you not remember me?!”

  “Fran Banton...... Oh right, it’s Fran. Sorry, you changed so much I didn’t recognize you.”

  Hulim replied in a flat, monotone voice.

  But Fran wasn’t buying it for a second.

  “Cut the crap! It hasn’t been that long—how could I have changed that much?! You totally forgot about me before this, didn’t you?!”

  Hulim fell silent.

  “Hey! Don’t just stand there! Why are you quiet all of a sudden?! It’s like I hit the nail right on the head! That’s so rude! You did forget about me, didn’t you?!”

  “Students outside the classroom, please take your seats. Class is about to begin!”

  A teacher’s voice echoed down the hallway, saving Hulim from further interrogation—for the moment.

  “We should head inside. We can talk about this later... Uh... Fran?”

  With that, Hulim stepped around Fran and walked toward the classroom.

  “Huh? Wait a minute! What was that awkward pause for?! You still don’t remember my name, do you?! Hey! Get back here and explain yourself!”

  Hulim ignored the shouts behind her and slipped into the classroom quickly. Fran clearly wasn’t ready to let the matter drop, and was about to follow her in when—

  “Miss! Please hurry and take your seat!”

  The teacher called out, fixing her with a stern look.

  “Ugh......”

  Chastised, Fran had no choice but to abandon her pursuit. She shot Hulim’s retreating back a glare of pure frustration, then stormed into the classroom after her.

  ......

  “Good morning, class. Congratulations on starting a new school year. You’ve learned a great deal over the past semester, but~”

  The teacher standing at the podium wore a warm, gentle smile—but beneath that smile, a mischievous glint lurked unseen by the students.

  Slowly, he pulled a thick stack of papers from under the podium and slammed them down hard on the desk with a loud thud.

  “...after such a long vacation, I’m curious how much you’ve actually retained. So......”

  “So today, I’ve prepared a comprehensive assessment for all of you. How exciting is that~?”

  “Huh—?! No way! Not so suddenly!”

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  “What do I do?! I’ve forgotten almost everything!”

  “Don’t do this to us on the first day back, teacher!”

  “If I fail this, I’m gonna get grounded for sure......”

  Groans and complaints filled the classroom in an instant.

  But nothing could stop the inevitable.

  The exam began shortly afterward, and once it was over, the teacher wasted no time grading the papers—apparently determined to inform the students’ parents just how “hard” they’d been working over the break.

  When the results were tallied, the teacher announced them to the class one by one.

  “...and the student who came in first place is...... Hulim Heyerar!”

  As soon as Hulim’s name left the teacher’s mouth, every eye in the classroom turned to her. Among those gazes, one burned with particular intensity.

  “Damn it! How is this possible?! How did I lose to Hulim?!”

  Fran, the golden-haired pigtailed girl sitting a few rows behind Hulim, clenched her test paper so tight her knuckles turned white, her eyes fixed on Hulim’s back with seething resentment.

  “This can’t be right! I’ve had private tutors since I was a kid—I mastered everything this academy teaches way before anyone else! And I even reviewed over the vacation! The Heyerar family shouldn’t even have the money to hire a private tutor! But me—me! I lost to Hulim in grades?!”

  “This is infuriating! Absolutely infuriating! I refuse to accept this! There’s got to be something fishy going on here!”

  “I’m going to get to the bottom of this!”

  Fran had already been annoyed with Hulim over the morning’s incident, and now losing to her in something she was so confident about only added insult to injury. Fueled by both frustration and humiliation, Fran vowed silently to herself that she would get her revenge one way or another.

  Meanwhile, Hulim remained completely oblivious to the target now painted firmly on her back, her expression as blank and impassive as ever.

  Elsewhere in the classroom, the students were too busy panicking over their exam results to pay any attention to the teacher’s next words, chattering loudly among themselves. The teacher sighed, rubbing his temples in frustration.

  Finally, he decided to drop a bombshell.

  “Alright, everyone. Settle down. I have an announcement to make.”

  The classroom fell quiet for a brief moment.

  The teacher scanned the room, then spoke slowly, letting his words sink in. “I’m sure you’ve all been guessing this, but yes! Starting tomorrow, you will officially begin your magic instruction!”

  “What?! Is that true?!”

  “Oh right! I totally forgot about this!”

  “Yes! Finally! Magic lessons are here at last!”

  The classroom erupted into cheers, the earlier dread over exam results vanishing into thin air in an instant.

  Watching the now even more chaotic classroom, the teacher couldn’t help but regret his decision—maybe he should have waited until after school to break the news......

  Magic instruction was the most important part of the Preliminary Academy’s curriculum.

  In fact, it could be said that the academy had been founded solely to teach magic. The reason they didn’t start teaching it the moment students enrolled was simple: given their age and lack of foundational knowledge, diving straight into magic would have been impossible. Hence, the academy focused on academic basics first.

  Magic, after all, was a complex and profound discipline—one that required a solid grasp of theory and knowledge to master. Trying to teach magic to someone who couldn’t even read would have been nothing short of absurd.

  Some might wonder how an academy like this could afford to teach magic to such a large number of students.

  The answer lay in the academy’s extraordinary background.

  The Preliminary Academy had been established by the Adventurers’ Guild—an organization that spanned the entire world—with funding provided by the Seven Heavens Church. Every race and nation had contributed manpower and resources to its creation, turning it into a public institution that existed in nearly every country across the globe.

  Its purpose was simple yet ambitious: to cultivate as many low-to-mid-tier combatants as possible, ready to be mobilized at a moment’s notice. This was to prevent a repeat of the catastrophe from centuries past, when the world had nearly fallen to the Demon Lord’s invasion due to a crippling lack of troops and a civilian population that couldn’t even defend itself against the smallest monsters.

  Normally, a project of this scale—one involving so many powerful factions with conflicting interests—would have been impossible to pull off.

  But the tragedy of the last great war had changed everything. During the Demon Lord’s Invasion two cycles ago, Himril World had been on the brink of total annihilation. The Six Heroes had sacrificed their lives to defeat the Demon Lord, dying alongside him to save the world.

  The cost of that victory had been unimaginable. The entire world order had collapsed, civilization had nearly been wiped out, and the calendar had even been reset to mark the start of a new era—the New Divine Calendar.

  The survivors had learned their lesson the hard way, resolving to fix Himril’s greatest weakness once and for all.

  And so, the Preliminary Academy was born.

  The academy revolutionized the world. It churned out countless low-to-mid-tier combatants, especially at the grassroots level. Before its founding, most people had only possessed magic talents of Rank D or even Rank E—considered too weak to be worth teaching. They would have been written off as “untalented” and denied any chance to learn magic at all. But the academy treated everyone equally, offering the same systematic education to every student, regardless of their talent level.

  In the end, countless people who would have never touched magic in their lives gained the ability to wield it. Ordinary civilians who once would have fled in terror from a single Slime or Goblin, waiting for adventurers to save them, now had the power to defend themselves.

  Of course, the academy’s existence also brought a host of social problems in its wake. But after the remarkable results it delivered in the last great war, all voices of opposition fell silent.

  Today, the Preliminary Academy had stood for nearly eight hundred years, and had long since developed a highly efficient teaching method—one that was even more effective than the private magic tutors hired by most noble families.

  That was why even noble children like Fran Banton, who could easily afford private tutors and exclusive magic lessons at home, still chose to attend the Preliminary Academy.