Vic, hands jointed like an evil villain, elbows planted on her desk, listened to the nervous chitter-chatters of the students seated around her. The group of students she’d followed into their classroom was giving her looks.

  Vic continued intensely staring at them. She hadn’t said a thing to them. She wouldn’t be the one to make things escalate.

  Those little cowards were avoiding a confrontation. When they’d first entered the classroom and sat down, she’d picked the desk right next to that Cassandra.

  She’d been stared at, they’d made “tsks” and noises, but they’d left, leaving the back of the classroom to join the first ranks. One boy had even commented on the smell while getting up, which wasn’t true. She didn’t smell like rotten eggs and wet spoilt cabbage.

  The only one with half a working braincell had been the student that had failed to compete against Vic during the spell contest. She’d just left the classroom after her fellow pack of friends had decided to stay against all good sense.

  Vic had chosen to stay with the bigger pack of prey she was tracking.

  She stared at them without blinking. She’d seen more students come in, and even some made an “eep” when they saw their usual spots now taken by the groupies.

  Some students were forced to sit close to Vic as the classroom filled.

  She ignored someone friendlily greeting her to stare more at the group where that Cassandra was. That girl, annoyingly, was ignoring Vic.

  Vic tsked. She let her fingers dig in the palm of her hands.

  The bell rang, but the classroom was still empty of any teachers. Huh. Was this a free period? So early in the morning? Why would students be here if they started with a free period? Could she potentially mess with them now?

  After some good five minutes of staring, Vic decided it was time to get up and take on a bit more of a hands on approach.

  The teacher entered fast-pacedly, a storm of papers following them behind.

  “Good, class, quick, sit down, I was distracted by an interesting talk with a fellow academician but you still have one hour to take this surprise test…” she said, without even looking from her papers.

  A student complained about only fifty minutes being available and not a full hour but was ignored, because the teacher instead just read the paper she was holding in her hand. She abruptly shot her head up and looked at Vic.

  “You.” she said. “Who are you? You’ve got the wrong classroom. You’ve never been admitted into Advanced Basic Magic Theory III.”

  Vic slowly blinked.

  There were more snickers from the certified group of bullies.

  Vic smiled.

  She was about to open her ominous mouth when the classroom’s door was swung open again.

  Principal Lunbumster entered. He seemed out of breath.

  “Victorya!” he said. His head whipped to scan the classroom.

  His eyes found Vic. It was easy. After all, she wasn’t even trying to hide, and she was standing up with her big backpack full of golden clinking coins within it. Those poor bastards would never manage to find her if she actually tried to hide.

  “Hello”, she said in a cold tone. She smirked a toothy, pleasant grin. “Missed me that much already?”

  Some twenty pair of eyes were staring at her.

  Some were full of incomprehension.

  Vic tranquilly sat back down on her seat and put her hands palm down on the desk.

  The tension somehow grew.

  The teacher was staring at Vic with a frown. She probably didn’t get the reason for the disrespect.

  The principal closed his opened mouth. There might not have been a gulp there. He might just be thinking very hard.

  Behind him, there was that girl she knew. Thalis, wasn’t it? Vic smiled at her and saw the hopeful smile on her face wilt.

  A chuckle from the principal broke the silence spell that had fallen on the classroom.

  “Victorya”, he said. His smile was hesitant and polite. “I thought you wouldn’t be on this level of the building. What brings you here?”

  “The appeal of a formal education”, she said dryly.

  There was some nervous laughter from the principal. Some students were gaping at Vic. Most likely because she was getting away with clowning sarcastically on people who had conventionally respectable roles in their society.

  Tsk.

  “Is that what you want?” he said. He scratched the lower back of his head, where the little demon that was wrapped around his head was attached. That jaw couldn’t be comfortable. Being that jaw was probably worse.

  “I’m not quite sure yet”, Vic said. “I might be here for the sake of my own personal amusement.”

  “Principal Lunbumster- you can’t be serious”, Thalis said. “She’s trespassing. She’s clearly trespassing considering what happened with-”

  She stopped as the principal raised a hand in the air, a pacific gesture that hid much, in Vic’s opinion. If someone silenced another person, it meant that what would have come of their mouth would have been enlightening enough to disrupt the entire conversation. Vic yawned.

  “Don’t worry cutiepie, I don’t intend to become the top one student. You’re safe”, she said reassuringly, hands brought together compassionately in a way that showed that they shared the same worries.

  The girl reddened.

  “This! This is not what it is abou-”

  Vic interrupted. Rudely. Vic was so rude, tsk tsk tsk.

  “Because I won’t even be trying”, she said, “If you lose your spot, you’ve got no one but yourself to blame”, she said while checking out her nails.

  “YOU-!” Thalis said.

  “Me!” Vic gasped, still checking out the tip of her fingers.

  “Victorya”, the principal interrupted.

  Vic gave him a look, head still tilted down to be closer to her interesting nails.

  “If you mean to join a cursus”, and no, Vic didn’t mean to do that, “even temporarily, please do not antagonise every single person you meet.”

  The principal’s voice turned kind.

  “See this as an opportunity. Yes?” he said.

  Vic was half-tempted to reply “SeE thiS aS an oPpoRtUnitY” to make a point.

  She gave him a side eye.

  “I will not start anything”, she said. “All else is consequence.”

  She was so cool. Sasuke would be proud of her.

  “Can’t you… try at least, a bit harder than that?” he asked.

  If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  “No”, Vic said.

  The principal seemed a bit frozen, and his smile felt like plastic. He sighed, after a while, letting the smile go. Those were the sort of things she lived for. Seeing the facade of a cultist fall down was like music to her ears. And seeing them stop trying? Oh, that was just cause for celebration.

  “You will only be allowed today in my Academy if this is the behaviour you decide to stick with”, he said. “Even if his Holiness has vouched for you-”

  “Emperor Alberon vouched for that thing?!” Cassandra interrupted. Her voice had come off as genuinely shocked. So was Vic.

  Because had done what? Oh, that little schemer. Of course. Of course this had been his plan. Pfeugh. He’d pretended to want her not to go here to do the very basic trick of reverse-psychology. She felt more disgruntled that she hadn’t seen that coming from fifty kilometres away. It was kind of insulting that it’d worked.

  When Vic glanced at the principal, he was frozen. He was staring at Cassandra, lightly gulping.

  Vic stared at Cassandra too. Right. Hm. She would have liked to slowly creep up on that bully, but now she’d have to twist things a bit considering that she’d somehow gained status because of the regional cult leader.

  Cassandra smiled awkwardly back to the principal. “Apologies”, she muttered, then looked away.

  “…Even if you’ve been vouched for, Victorya”, the principal said, “it doesn’t mean that I can accept all sort of rude behaviours from a student that gets a pass from a recommendation, no matter from how high up it may come”, he gently said.

  Vic gave him a stare. Yeah, from his point of view, there probably wasn’t anything more higher up than the local city’s divinity.

  “Do you understand?” he asked. He seemed so well-meaning that it had to be fake.

  “I do. One day is more than enough”, she said.

  “Should I expect trouble?” he suddenly said. His pale eyes didn’t move Vic.

  “Should you?” she said. She smiled pleasantly.

  The principal closed his eyes, as hurt. He reopened them, and smiled pleasantly too.

  “I trust you, Victorya. If not, I would not accept your presence.”, he said, eyes fixed on her own and not letting that go. “Do not betray that trust.”

  Vic didn’t answer.

  The principal sighed.

  “This can’t be right”, Thalis slowly said. “You can’t be serious. She… she… Have you just forgotten what she did…?”

  The Principal spoke then hushedly, but everybody still heard him.

  “Remember what I told you. That will be all.”

  Vic couldn’t see his face as he had his back turned on Vic while speaking to the other student. That was annoying. What had they spoken about outside of the classroom? She disliked being out of the loop.

  “Yes”, the teacher said. “Principal Lunbumster, if you will, I do still have a test for my students.”

  The principal’s facial expression turned pleasant again.

  “Of course, professor Knolocia. Apologies for the disturbance”, he smiled at the boringly black-haired teacher. He retreated, and seemed to communicate one last time to Thalis without words. There seemed to be a choice in the balance.

  Thalis stepped in the classroom without giving Vic a look.

  Aw, that hurt her. Personally. Being ignored sure was horrible. Boohoo, she was soon going to cry. Vic was going to need a handkerchief.

  The girl went to sit with her group of bullies, who’d kept a seat warm for her specifically.

  “A word, still, professor”, the principal said. Said professor raised an eyebrow but still followed him in the corridor.

  The door closed for about two minutes. Vic could hear nothing. Hm. There might be a literal silencing spell at play.

  Then the door reopened, and the professor walked back in alone, and still moving, sent the pieces of paper flying to each student’s desk. She seemed indifferent as she sat down, and the principal was gone, or at least couldn’t be seen from where Vic was sitting. Well, that was a little disappointing. She’d expected something else to happen.

  She observed how the students behaved. They seemed to have completely forgotten about the interruption, now focused on the test with some groans.

  “But ma’am, we only have less than forty-five minutes now!” a student complained near the back of the classroom.

  “And you should be all capable of completing it in thirty minutes if you applied yourselves”, she coldly said. “Only the two last questions concern the second semester’s textbook.”

  There were faint sounds of despair spreading through the room.

  Vic wouldn’t judge. What the hell was this, a torture chamber for the gifted?

  “Do not groan, Deryl”, the teacher said to a student close to the front. “It is available in the Imperial Library that you all have a card for.”

  “But ma’am!” he said, and the teacher turned her finger towards the grandfather’s clock in the forefront corner of the room.

  Vic let her mouth become a flat line.

  Holy shit.

  She did not miss school. At all.

  Vic noticed that Thalis had already started writing on her own paper for the past two minutes. Quickly, the classroom was filled with scritch-scratches of pencils against parchment. Huh. They didn’t use quills.

  She only saw two students really stress out and begin eating their pencils.

  What was so anxiety inducing?

  She stared down at the paper that had flown to her desk.

  She stared at it and then the first question.

  ‘The target X is at thirty metres’, she read. ‘Wind resistance is of 3.4 arbitrary units against you. Define three solutions according to the Cassiopean method, and explain simply which one would be most flawed and which one is most cost efficient for this distance.’

  There was a magic related equation right next to it.

  Vic threw down the paper like it’d spat venom at her.

  The girl at her right startled. She hadn’t started writing down her answer. She was chewing her pencil nervously, her other hand’s fingers digging in her leg.

  Vic took notice of the desk’s great quality. Huh. The way they were carved did speak of a certain luxury that simply wouldn’t be given to some highschoolers. How important was this academy? Or did this city just have really good carpenters?

  An essential question, of course.

  She stared back emptily in the classroom. It had at first felt a bit cosy, between the presence of warm wood and dark stone. But all this scritchy-scratching of pencils was making her feel dangerously anxious.

  Come on, it couldn’t be that bad, right?

  She’d confronted eldritch gods.

  That hadn’t made her shit her pants.

  This couldn’t possibly be the thing that brought her to the edge.

  She stared down at her piece of paper.

  There were thirty questions on the test.

  This was just sadism.

  She put it back down.

  People-watching it was then.

  Her eyes glazed over the students, and she let her eyebrows raise.

  Despite the initial protests, there wasn’t much dissidence in the classroom to begin with. Should she start throwing balls of paper on the bullies from before? She did have one piece of paper at hand’s length.

  Her eyes accidentally met the ones of the teacher.

  The teacher gave her one single raised judgemental eyebrow. In another life, this would have left her in tatters, and she would have immediately begun staring at her desk again while sweating. But that was in the past.

  Vic stared back.

  The teacher stared back.

  Vic stared back.

  The teacher’s glare changed.

  “Are you not going to do the test along the rest of the class?” the teacher asked.

  Vic blinked a few times with raised eyebrows before answering.

  “Why would I do that?” she said. She’d never ever admit to not knowing whatever the hells each of the questions were about. She hadn’t even read past the second one and it scared her. And scarred her. There were some mental wounds on her mind that couldn’t easily be healed.

  “Are you not part of this class now?” the teacher said. Some students raised their heads from their tests. Perhaps some welcomed the distraction. Yes. Vic was such a benevolent creature, bringing relief to all the poor souls that were stuck in ungratifying situations that they could not escape.

  “No.” Vic said. She began swinging her chair.

  “You can get out then”, the teacher said. “You are distracting my class. I will not have a troublemaker here. I do not care for sponsors and your connections are meaningless to me if you do not put in any sort of effort to adapt.”

  Vic blinked. She took a deep breath.

  Impressive.

  The teacher thought that she held any sort of authority over Vic.

  A most grievous mistake.

  “I don’t see the point of those questions”, Vic said, and tapped the test sheet with her finger, because she didn’t have a pencil. “Are you only doing theoretical tests? Does actually putting the spells into practice not matter?”

  Vic held up her hand and made sparkles happen. Heheh. Sparkles.

  The teacher gave her a look.

  “Practical Application is a discipline of its own, but now is certainly not the time for that. Put that magic away”, she spoke, clinically. There was no mockery in her tone. “Theory is necessary, young lady. You need to understand magic at its basic core in order to be able to change the variables of your spells.”

  She was given a challenging look by the teacher.

  “Do try to answer some questions, still”, she said. “It is your first day, and you might not know some of the equations, even if most of the questions guide you fairly kindly to the desired conclusion, except for question 8, students. Careful with that one. It’s a trap question.”

  There was some furious pencil scratching in the classroom. She stared and only saw Thalis smirk at her own paper. Vic wondered one thing only: how were people past the eighth question already?

  Vic grimaced.

  “Don’t make that face now, new student”, the teacher said, like Victorya wasn’t yet deserving of being called by her own name, “I am fairly curious on how you would answer them. You do have a peculiar background, it seems.”

  Vic stared at her paper, then at the teacher.

  She blinked at her.

  The teacher smiled with a smile Vic did not like.

  __

  “Oh boy, did you get 64,5 for question 8?” a student a few ranks ahead asked hushedly. “I got 76 at first, but that was before I checked again for the trap question. Honestly, I’d gotten so used to having the equations given with the question that I didn’t think that we would be given an incorrect one.”

  “Really? That was it? Ah shucks, that’s why I still got 76”, her neighbour said.

  “Wait, it’s reaaally not 76?” someone else asked, a bit behind them.

  “It was 64,5”, Thalis said from the forefront.

  “Aughhh”, groaned quietly the girl next to Vic, her voice like a dying moan, hiding her face with her arms. “How did I manage to find 45,5?”

  Vic stared at her piece of paper that she still hadn’t given back.

  “Silence”, the teacher said. Some people still haven’t given back their tests”.

  Vic stared at the classroom who was slowly getting up, followed Cassandra with her eyes, who was still pointedly ignoring her, and heard everyone start making annoying chair noises as they got up from them, and decided that screw it, she wasn’t paid to do this.

  She got up and lent back the paper.

  The teacher stared at it, then stared at Vic.

  “And what’s that supposed to be?” the teacher said.

  “I don’t know, I got bored, so I answered in Morse Code”, Vic said. “I like Morse Code, I find using it mildly amusing because no one here gets it”, she said. And even she didn’t fully get it, she knew only two thirds of the letters.

  The teacher stared.

  “Should I throw this trash away?” she asked.

  “I don’t know, I wrote the real meaning of magic in code somewhere there”, Vic said, “it would be a shame to throw that rare piece of wisdom away, right?”

  The teacher didn’t seem impressed, but didn’t throw it away. She stored it with the others, then looked towards another student.

  “Deryl! Time’s up. Paper. Now. I am leaving”, she said.

  Vic grimaced internally for the boy. This felt like trying to drink pure lemon juice. The horror.

  Deryl fake-sobbed while giving it back. He might not have had the time to answer all the questions if the empty spaces near the bottom of his sheet of paper were any indication.

  “And that’s why starting to study lessons I give you the very night after having first written them down is necessary”, the teacher said, and got up to leave, having packed it all up in her bag. The teacher was still reading one of her notebooks and noting some stuff in it when she left by the door without a look back. Only right afterwards did the bell ring.

  “What a piece of work, huh”, Vic said.

  People gave her looks.

  Bonus:

  scares me