Jacob’s spoon clicks on the side of the bowl of soup he’s eating.

  Vice Principal Caradoc just brought him back to the Academy’s grounds a few hours ago, to his dorm. He saw a message on his bed left by Lancelot saying that he’s having lunch every day at the same place and to meet him there once he’s back.

  Lancelot said that his new Class is big.

  Jacob worked hard in order to provide Lancelot with the best resources his money and knowledge could provide. And despite the fact that, among the Champions, he has only helped Vyrrak with the knowledge of the Grimoire so far, that can’t be said for Lancelot. His Squire has been by his side much longer than any of the Champions. Most importantly, the fact that Lancelot never once bothered asking how much Jacob knows so much about Draconic Skills to the point that he taught him how to fix every single flaw of them made teaching the guy the least stressing thing ever.

  I’m sure he got something good, Jacob reasons.

  Despite his apparent laziness, Lancelot is actually a pretty hard worker. It’s not surprising that he never gave up with finding a Knight—the guy has willpower for days.

  As much willpower as appetite, Jacob finds himself thinking.

  He looks around, feeling once again weird.

  Why are they all looking at me?

  He has yet to meet anyone he knows today, but it feels like everyone has just been staring full-time at him. Hell, for some reason he saw a bunch of people run when he walked around the Citadel.

  But, having finally come back after a week might explain it. Plus, Jacob is tired enough that he doesn’t want to even think about all of this. He got all he wanted and more thanks to Caradoc’s help, from learning Domain of Ruin and Bones with its additional Primordial Spell to finally being able to trigger his Class Rank-Up.

  The problem is that I need to upgrade my body even further. As things are, I can only use it for—

  “THERE HE IS!”

  Jacob hears the sound of wood breaking as a wave of people just bursts through the inn’s door, much to the owner’s and staff’s displeasure, and several people just elbow each other in the mouth, punch the ones standing near them, and pretty much just break into a crawling brawl that is moving toward Jacob.

  “What are they doing?!” Someone shouts over their stew, hugging the bowl protectively. “Who the hell are those kids?!”

  “First-years, they’re after him,” someone points at Jacob, making him frown and suddenly giving him a bad feeling.

  Yet, looking at the crowd in-fighting and briefly scanning them with the Grimoire, he smiles to himself and returns to his soup.

  Finally, one guy, an Elf, manages to disentangle himself from the bundle of people and, panting, runs up to Jacob.

  “YOU!” He says, so close that he’s almost into Jacob’s bowl.

  Jacob takes the bowl up, slowly leans backward, and keeps eating. This is his first real meal since he came back. The Rank-Up allowed him to need food less than before, but after more than a damn week up a chilling-cold mountain, no one’s getting between him and his bowl of hot soup.

  “I challenge you!” The Elf says with a smug grin on his face.

  Jacob just looks at him, confused.

  “You what?”

  “You heard me, you bastard! I challenge you for your spot as Champion, you useless tool!”

  The crowd that had been infighting until a moment ago releases a collective groan at those words.

  “Dammit! I can’t believe he made it to the Fake Champion before I did!”

  “Man, he’s got the easiest one!”

  “I ran all the way from my dorm when I heard that this idiot showed his face up again! Can you actually believe he had the guts to just stroll around the Academy like this?! How unlucky that he didn’t bump into me first!”

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  What are they talking about? Jacob wonders.

  “My spot as Champion?” Jacob asks, frowning.

  “You heard me!”

  “I did,” Jacob replies. “Would you mind explaining? I was away for more than a week. No one told me nothing.”

  “I CAN’T BELIEVE THIS!” A guy just kicks a table and shatters it. “HE DOESN’T EVEN KNOW AND THAT GUY GOT TO HIM FIRST!”

  “Hey, you! You’ll have to pay for that!” The owner of the inn says, roaring.

  “Oops, pardon me,” the student replies sheepishly.

  Yet, more chime in.

  “He doesn’t know about the Headmaster’s announcement, the fool.”

  “I mean, maybe he was hiding from some class assessment already because of his incompetence. That’s what you’d expect from the Fake Champion.”

  Jacob raises an eyebrow.

  “The Headmaster?”

  “The Headmaster announced that Champions can be challenged for their spots!” The Elf cackles. “And I’m about to take yours!”

  Jacob looks at the Elf up and down until he sees where the Elf’s foot is.

  “You’re stepping on my cloak.”

  “Who cares about your cloak?! I’m about to show you what a pathetic miserable life you’ll have from today onward!”

  Jacob looks at the guy, downs the soup in a few gulps, and is about to get up and take care of this when a few people start flying from the crowd of onlooking first-year students.

  “Coming through! Sorry! Oops!”

  Everyone looks stunned as a thin guy just bashes his way through the crowd and makes students literally fly away as soon as he touches them.

  “Who’s that guy?!” One student cries after putting a hole through the inn’s ceiling and looking down from it.

  “What the hell?! Is he a third year or something?! Why does his body feels harder than steel?!”

  “And have you see how thin he is?! Why doesn’t he eat something?! What, he has some eating disorder or something?!”

  Jacob frows as the thin guy, who’s looking vaguely familiar, stops in front of him.

  “Boss! Oh no, they’ve found you!”

  Jacob looks at the guy and squints.

  “Wait… No, this can’t be…” Jacob’s stunned as he recognizes the guy. “Fatty?!”

  Everyone frowns.

  Fatty? They think. What’s that guy even talking about? Hasn’t he seen how thin this guy is? Who in the right mind would call him Fatty?

  “Oh, right,” Lancelot looks down at his body and frowns. “It happened with the Rank-Up.”

  “You just lost all your weight? Wow, that’s something,” Jacob smirks. “I suppose you heard about the Headmaster announcement.”

  Jacob suddenly gets up and the Elf who was stepping on his cloak trips and almost lands on his ass.

  “Yeah,” Fatty nods. “How are you feeling about it?”

  “I didn’t know,” Jacob facepalms. “I suppose Vice Principal Caradoc wanted to have some fun and play a prank on me.”

  “Oh,” Lancelot looks at the crowd and suddenly realizes. “You really had no idea, Boss?”

  Jacob shakes his head, “absolutely no idea.”

  “Hey, you two!” The Elf is blistering with rage. “I’m still here!”

  “Mhh,” Lancelot takes on a pensive expression and says, “there’ll be lots of people challenging you, Boss. They all think you’re the weakest. If you didn’t know about the announcement, by the way… you probably don’t know about Zibrek and Boomgar.”

  “Don’t tell me that…” Jacob drags his words.

  Lancelot nods gravely.

  “They already lost their spot. They were the two weakest fighters. No one challenged Vyrrak, Asterion, and Princess Iskara, though. Everyone else has already had multiple duels. Sabrina Margrave was so angry about being challenged so much that she almost crippled the last fighter. A Professor had to stop her before she could finish it. That deterred a lot of people from attacking her.”

  “What about Kai?” Jacob frowns.

  “He’s been challenged, but apparently he won with so much ease that people are much wearier about him now.”

  “Do you know who’s replaced Boomgar and Zibrek?” Jacob frowns.

  “No, Boss, they lost it two days ago but I barely heard anything. I was training to get acquainted with my new Class Skills.”

  Jacob nods at his Squire and then turns to look at the ceiling.

  “I don’t like this. I don’t like it at all,” he says. “I’d like to summon the other Champions to discuss this. Just the old ones. Boomgar and Zibrek are still part of the team in my books.”

  “The Headmaster declared it’s completely fine to challenge the Champions, though,” Lancelot frowns.

  “That’s fine. But I still trust Boomgar and Zibrek more than strangers.”

  “You should worry about yourself!” The Elf shouts, charging his aura, before Lancelot frowns and backhands him.

  The man immediately loses his senses and flies through a wall.

  He looks pretty scary without the weight, Jacob admits to himself.

  Lancelot is now looking much sharper, and quite good-looking too. He has very sharp cheekbones that had been hidden by all the layers of fat he had before.

  Most importantly, though, his loyalty has not changed one bit.

  “If you want to challenge him, you’ll have to go through me first! If you can’t beat his Squire, who do you think you are to challenge my Boss?!” Lancelot roars.