“Mister Rein Bellua, you have shown how dedicated and powerful you are. Your magic prowess is good and you have utilized your talents to the best of their abilities thus far. Sadly you don’t match either of your teammates in pure talent. We decided to give you a score of eighty-six.

Miss Kayley Alius, the fact that you have managed to learn as many spells as you have is frankly astounding. Your casting times are also short making you a great threat for nearly anyone in the first grade. Sadly you are lacking in the control of your spells, work on this and you will have the potential to become a truly powerful magus. You have been given a score of eighty-eight.

Lastly, we have mister Villin Grey, you have shown you are willing to make personal sacrifice to allow your team to win. Your magic power is great and extremely vast, you managed to detect the bear’s sneak attack and took down your instructor at the end. We advise you to take some time to get a larger library of spells, you should also work on integrating the skills you have in your fighting. We decided to give you a score of ninety-one.”

Lady Valentine paused for a moment allowing them all to process her words before she continued on.

“Since you passed you will all naturally receive a healing spell, this gets given at the top three in the regular tournament so naturally you would receive one as well. Other than this there are rewards for every ten points you go above the passing score. So there are additional prices for getting sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety, and a hundred points. The rewards of the combat round will be given soon.”

After readjusting her monocle, she continued on.

“Next up come the rounds for enchanting, pill-making, and magic arrays.”

Three more teachers came out of a door behind the teachers’ desk. Villin recognized two of them as his teachers for enchanting, and pill-making. The third teacher was also wearing a golden robe but he didn’t recognize her, he guessed she was here instead of the undead Richard who could only exist in his classroom because of the arrays.

With a wave of their wands, the desk extended and more chairs appeared, allowing them to sit down. Another wave of the wand later inscribing pens and a couple of ceramic bowls appeared on the ground before Villin and Kayley. Rein took a few steps aside as he didn’t have this class.

Their enchanting teacher stood up and gave them their challenge “In ten minutes I’m going to be destroying these bowls, try and make me fail.”

Villin vaguely noticed professor Crumb frown at the challenge but he ignored this as he got to work. He knew their enchanting professor seemed to heavily dislike them but he ignored it, after all, it would be hard to show bias in front of this many teachers.

If a regular person asked him to stop them from breaking the bowl he would probably try to increase the punishment it could take since the person would probably pick the bowl up and then throw it against the floor. But he was up against a magus and it was more likely he would try to use spells instead.

With ten minutes on the clock, Villin began writing down enchantments within the bowl. There were a few that increased its endurance against physical things but most of the runes had the effect of storing or enhancing magic. The latter was a rune he had found in the wand-maker’s schoolbook he managed to lend a while back.

Professor Crumb looked at this with a somewhat confused expression, he was wondering why the boy wasn’t putting down enchantments that would increase the object’s magic resistance. If someone were to throw at the spell now, the enchantments on the bowl would just strengthen the spell.

After nine minutes, half of the bowl was filled with runes, he kept doing the same thing as earlier but added some more physical protection as time passed. Then in the final minute, he aimed his wand at the bowl and focused before sending out a certain derivatory spell. A faint blue mist instantly covered the top of the bowl and the ground around it. With half of his magic power now gone Villin turned the bowl upside down and cast the spell again, Making it so that the entire bowl was covered by a faint blue mist, a spell further enhanced by the enchantments drawn upon the object.

A bit later time was up. The enchanting teacher looked at the bowl in front of Villin with a frown before saying something.

“This is a test on enchantments yet the students used a spell to cheat, it’s a fai-”

“HOLD UP A MINUTE YOU OVERSIZED PIMPLE.”

Professor Crumb looked as if he was about to blow up because of his anger, he got out of his chair and headed toward the enchanting teacher, he looked as if he wanted to fight despite his old age.

“YOU FOOLISH BRAT, TELL ME, WHAT’S THE GODDAMN PURPOSE OF ENCHANTING”

The professor said with a face that was starting to look like a tomato.

The enchanting teacher started sweating a bit, back when he was in the Academy he had also gotten classes from professor Crumb.

“WELL TELL ME NOW YA DAMN FOOL!”

The teacher finally managed to get a grip on himself and confidently told him the answer he had been taught.

“Enchantments are made to create a magus’ power in all ways shapes or form.”

Such a simple sentence held the entire purpose of enchanting. If you enchanted a cup to become harder to break you increase your power as a mage because instead of having to go get a new cup when one breaks you would be able to spend that time on increasing your magic power, at least that was the theory.

After he said that the enchanting teacher got what professor Crumb was trying to do and thought of a way to refute him. What professor Crumb meant was that using enchantments to enhance magic was totally allowed, Villin hadn’t broken any rules and should be applauded for his practical use of enchanting instead. The other students stayed silent in this exchange, most of them never had enchanting, the only exception was the magic array instructor but since he didn’t give any class to these kids he didn’t feel like he was in a position to involve himself.

The duo started having a heated competition but it was clear to anyone that listened who was in the right. Most of the time professor Crumb only had to repeat the earlier sentence to refute a point.

After a few minutes of this, lady Valentine interfered.

“Gentlemen, let’s start with miss Alius then shall we, the scoring there might be a bit easier.”

The enchanting teacher scoffed and looked at the bowl, Kayley had put it upside-down hiding the enchantment she had written within, a good move. 

He pointed his wand at the bowl and a spell shot out after a short incantation. It was a blue streak that moved relatively slowly, when it got to the bowl, the bowl got shot up and to the back. A few barely noticeable cracks were seen where the spell had landed but no damage had been done when it landed harshly on the floor.

“Sixty-five”

Lady Valentine looked at him and then at professor Crumb “Professor Crumb, do you agree with this assessment?”

The professor seemed a lit calmer now as his face looked normal again “I would give seventy-five but the score is understandable.”

The professor clearly showed his professionalism here, even though he didn’t completely agree he acknowledges different teachers valued different things. It was only because of how outrageous the scoring of Villin was that he interfered.

“Alright, miss Alius shall have a score of seventy. Now gentlemen please try to score Villin in a calm and professional manner.”

The enchanting teacher immediately replied with a “Zero”, but this time instead of getting angry professor crumb looked at the bowl, he grabbed his wand and pointed at it.

A short incantation later he shot out the same spell that was used on the other bowl, but instead of causing the bowl to shoot backward, the spell itself reversed direction, heading for professor Crumb. After using a simple defensive spell to keep himself from harm the professor looked at Villin with a surprised expression.

He pointed at the bowl again “Gashfi!” a purple streak shot out but when it got halfway to the bowl it split into five different streaks, hitting the bowl in different places.

Once more professor Crumb had to defend himself against his own spell. He noticed the density of the mist had halved by now but it seemed to be thickening as time passed. So he went to the third phase of the test, he pointed his wand high above the bowl “Shietac!”

A distortion seemed to be made within the space itself before an anvil fell down. When it hit the bowl it shattered.

“Ninety” professor Crumb stated as he turned toward lady Valentine. She was quite unsure of how to continue now. She couldn’t ignore a teacher but at the same time, she could hardly fail a student given a score of ninety by professor crumb, a teacher known for being able to find and cultivate talents.

After a bit, she turned toward the magic array professor they had called in “Professor Stem, what is your assessment.”

This professor sighed deeply as he was pulled into this trouble, he wouldn’t lie though and told her of his honest assessment. “I would have to agree with professor Crumb and rate it as ninety.”

Lady Valentine nodded as the situation was back under control “Alright so that makes an average of sixty points. Villin passes.”