451 Announcement and expulsion

Vincent nodded and checked her stats. He and Kazumi were surprised by the result.

historical

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[Name] Ester Lionheart

[Soul Synch] 59%

[Race] Human

[Age] 23

[Condition] Healthy, Mana Tempered Body Stage One

[Traits] None

[Class] Sigil Apprentice

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[Stats] Strength 10 || Agility 12 || Perception 17 || Mana 362

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[Class Sigil Mage]

*Frost Sigil

*Wind Sigil

*Earth Sigil

*Amplify Sigil

*Sigil Fusion

*Self Magic Immunity

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“Your mana stat skyrocketed, and you gained the Mana Tempered Body trait. I feel a little bit envious, to be honest, haha.” Vincent honestly said.

Ester chuckled. She removed her gloves and used Earth Sigil with Amplify Sigil on the one hand.

The skin of her hand became coarse and cracked like dry earth. Multiple applications with Amplify Sigil caused her skin to become covered by a thin brownish layer of earth. The appearance looked similar to grabbing mud and letting it dry.

Ester focused her control, and the thicking of her earth-like thick glove stopped. Instead, it quickly gathered at the center of her palm. Shortly, a flimsy earth spike extended at about five inches tall.

Ester raised her other hand. She used Wind Sigil with Amplify Sigil, creating a light breeze of fresh air. The air gathered and spun around the flimsy small earth spike.

*Crack* The spike floated in mid-air and spun at a moderate rate, catching the attention of everyone in the room.

“Teacher Maira taught me how to control and refine my mana into my body more efficiently than normal methods, she told me. I felt better mana and spell control after yesterday’s lesson with teacher Maria ended. It appears it was because I gained Mana Tempered Body yesterday evening.” Ester explained.

Everyone in the room became amazed by Ester’s potential. However, she didn’t tell them the important thing.

Currently, Ester could only do this stunt with all her concentration on this task. A simple sneeze could break her concentration, causing her to start all over again.

Furthermore, Ester was wasting too much mana to control the precision of the spells. Not to mention how she had to compensate for her low mana with Amplify Sigil to power up her spells.

Ester stopped her Earth Sigil, and the flimsy spike crumbed to dust. She extended her hands and stopped her Wind Sigil. The dust fell nicely on her hands, and she went to throw the dust in the bin.

[Ester loves to surprise us every time we take our eyes off her.]

Vincent agreed. He clapped to attract attention and continued before he got interrupted by Ester’s interesting trick.

“Ester. You gained some strength, agility, and perception stats as well.” Vincent said. “It looks like everyone on trained to become better.”

“Can you look at me... I mean, can I know if I improved?” Iris nervously asked.

Iris wanted to create a new magic seed to grow after being successful with the lucky random mana increase tomato. Thus, her mind was elsewhere, and concentrating while meditating in Maria’s tutoring class didn’t provide much mana growth.

Vincent became curious and checked her status window.

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[Name] Iris Lionheart

[Stats] Strength 17 || Agility 28 || Perception 21 || Mana 205

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However, the result wasn’t like the others. Iris didn’t improve much in the past week. Even Kazumi was left out of words.

Iris only gained six mana this week. It was a rate ordinary people had. Comparing Iris with the two improvement monsters named Ester and Lupa, she barely had much growth.

“Your expression and hesitation, I understand.” Iris understood she barely improved as she thought. “I believed I could make another new plant... but I failed... ”

Iris believed if it could be done once, it could be done again. But it appeared she had experienced beginner’s luck when creating the Lucky Cherry Tomato Magic Seed.

Iris tried creating the magic seed alone, and she succeeded at first. However, the process failed a while later, causing all the hard work to get lost.

The Seed Guardian, with the plant growing inside its chest cavity, started to rot after a certain percentage of integration.

Iris’s wish to harmonize two plants into one failed, and the new type of plant growing inside kept dying before forming. As if the seeds became unstable to contain life or rotted at the sprouting phase.

Vincent and Kazumi weren’t around to give pointers from farming simulator games experiences, causing Iris to stumble into a creator’s block a few more fails later.

“Don’t stress too much, Iris. I know you will be able to do it again.” Vincent looked at everyone and looked back at Iris. “Have fate in your skills because we believe in your skills of growing plants.”

Iris felt better after keeping all the problems to herself. She nodded and said, “I will not give up.” with a beaming smile and a gaze of determination.

After some small talk, Vincent went to sleep. As Lupa offered, she used his hand as a body pillow in the name of helping him recover.

*Day118 – 4 October – Sunday*

The academy student card of all the first years flashed in the morning. It was to gather for an announcement at eight o’clock in the morning. Darwin had a lot to explain about what happened after all.

Today was Sunday. They usually would return home, but because Sofy wasn’t going to come today and they didn’t send a letter to her, the Lionheart family decided to remain in the academy today.

However, it didn’t mean they didn’t have a plan. On today’s agenda were two things.

The first thing was to check if Kilo Blackheart would keep the end of his agreement for losing the eating contest. This was supposed to happen next week, but because the test abruptly stopped, Vincent didn’t know if Kilo would make the excuse of not being prepared.

The second was for him and Lilith to exchange voucher points. However, it was still unknown if Darwin was or wasn’t going to cancel the rewards because of what happened.

Vincent went outside the mansion, and he could only see Nick and Clair waiting to leave for the announcement. He headed to Jun Ye Rim’s room.

As Vincent was about to knock on the door, he overheard, “I will think about it, but it’s not like I want to go to a womanizer’s home and risk being assaulted. I also do not think he is a gentleman after ripping my clothes, but he took responsibility and... but it’s not like I am interested in him or anything.”

“...” Vincent felt guilty for what he did, yet he also felt his actions were justifiable as he tried every way he could think of at that moment to stop Jun Ye Rim from killing Kazumi without killing her.

In the end, ripping her clothes not only didn’t help, but if Jun Ye Rim wants to follow the elven rules and religion, then both are bound as man and woman.

Vincent opened the door. He saw Lilith sitting across a blushing Jun Ye Rim. She looked as if she was caught red-handed saying something embarrassingly enough to cause her cheeks to redden.

“Are we going now?” Lilith asked casually.

“Yes. ” Vincent answered. “It’s better to go early today.”

Kazumi left Vincent’s body and said. [I will stay here and help Jun Ye Rim wear her uniform.]

‘It’s not like you can help her wear clothes. You simply want to stay because of your curiosity.’ *Sigh* ‘I hope Kazumi will not cause a problem.’ Vincent thought while leaving the self-proclaimed Cupid Kazumi with Jun Ye Rim.

A few minutes later...

Kazumi returned with news. If it is good or bad depends on how one thinks.

Kazumi mentioned how Jun Ye Rim accepted to go home with them if she was allowed to. How did Kazumi and Lilith manage? Vincent didn’t want to think about it.

However, also Kazumi mentioned how Lilith was going to demand compensation for helping Jun Ye Rim decide. Vincent didn’t know how to feel about having a wife tell another unmarried woman to live in their home. As if she didn’t mind about a woman becoming harem member number seven.

The five of them teleported and went for the announcement area. Darwin was already there. Beside him were Biro, Ollie, and Maria. Ton and Ming Xiao Fan weren’t there.

The announcement began a while later.

Darwin announced how the test was finished earlier because many students appeared to be struggling more than they anticipated. However, this wasn’t bad news as everyone passed, yet not all one hundred students were attending the announcement.

Melissa and her four teammates, one of which acted very suspiciously and lied about what happened, weren’t present. A few more students were also absent, possibly from getting hurt or sick from eating something bad.

Darwin soon revealed a shocking announcement. Eight students were given the severest punishment the academy was allowed to give, but he didn’t name them.

The students were expelled, which meant they might not be accepted next year. If so, they were going to remain low-ranked nobles for years.

The word expelled was heard a decade ago, making all the students shocked to hear this word almost forgotten word.

Expulsion is severe as it humiliates the reputation of their parents. Some families with multiple children would disown their children to save their family reputation and the business.

Noble families would have a lot of rumors surrounding them because of their expelled child. Most would be about how they raised an unsophisticated child instead of a graceful and rule-abiding next-generation noble.

Engagements being broken were also an outcome of an expulsion. In other words, expulsion meant the end of the student’s future, and occasionally their parent’s as well.

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