The next day, classes had resumed but it did on a sour note. At the start of the class, they were informed that their test with the 2nd year students was scheduled to hold in 2 weeks.
It wasn't much of bad news at first until they were told each team will be composed of 5 randomly selected students.
According to Professor Gibson, the team knockout exercise was aimed at assessing the students on how well they performed with known allies. While the second will be aimed at working with unknown allies under the supervision of a 2nd-year student.
The students greatly complained, but they were assured that it was for only the test and it wouldn't be the same for the examination which was the beast tide.
Even after the news was announced, nothing changed in the way or pace they were taught.
In the Fusion magic class, Professor Gibson was true to his words when he said he would inculcate the habit of making use of arcane spells. He kept on giving them different exercises that covered many scenarios and made sure they used only arcane spells to complete them.
His goal was to make them see mana as an extra pair of limbs with much more functions. Almost all students in the top 10 had accomplished the desired level of understanding but he had to make sure more than 80% of the class were carried along.
When that had been accomplished they would move to mana vision which was one large step away from fusion magic.
In the Forgemastery class, Professor Tacitus quickly covered the 1st part of the integration method by telling them to read up on the different grades and types of power sources.
He went on to the second stage that was where he was brought to a halt. He did a lot of explanation and demonstration but almost none of the students could understand half of what he was teaching.
Seeing the number of blockheads in his class he had to do the 2 things he hated the most. Being patient and slowing things down.
His class hours for the entire week were focused on trying to make them understand, one array at a time.
Unlike the integration method of the forgemastery class, the array mastery class was moving smoothly as always.
They had been studying all types of arrays and it got to the point when the students were asking him to teach them dimensional magic. Professor Mack rejected their plea because he had already scheduled it for after their test with the 2nd year students.
To Blake, the most interesting class that week was advanced combat technique class. The school had fulfilled their promise of giving everyone a combat technique.
It was a basic tier combat technique called Mana enhancement. It granted the user extra power when using arcane spells.
It wasn't much but it was enough for the absorption stage of the combat technique lesson to carry on.
Instructor Zirrack had taught them the mechanisms behind the absorption process of all combat techniques. Although he had already been taught by the system, Blake had gotten some insights learning from someone else.
He was excited about this because there was a chance for him to unlock the second stage of the breathing technique as long as he had enough understanding of the technique.
…
Unlike the Blake's set which had the elite and normal classes, the second year only had 1 class and they could all be considered elites.
When they were being admitted, the magic school didn't lower their standards like that of Blake's set, also there was no one to expose their conspiracies against the commoners.
But even at that quite a lot of them managed to pass thanks to intervention from Bryon and Principal Lovren, but unfortunately that wasn't the end of their tyranny against the commoners.
Some of the commoners ended up dying due to 'mistakes' of their noble team leaders, while some ended up quitting the school when they could no longer handle the maltreatment.
All these drastically reduced the number of commoners to like 7 to 1 ratio, and even though equality system used for the 1st years were implemented for them, every day was a struggle.
They had recently been briefed that the test would be an expedition exercise deep in the Mina woods and it was to last for an entire week.
But unlike the first years who were busy preparing for whatever they may come across in the test, the pressure wasn't that high for the second years.
Due to their lesser numbers, each student was to lead a team in the test. The top 13 second year students were to lead each of the randomly selected 13 teams of the elite class. As for the rest they were meant lead the teams of the normal class.
Both classes were to be tested in different location. Unlike the location of the elite class that of the normal class wasn't going to be too deep into the Mina forest, but one thing for sure was they were going to be huge.
"I hope I get a not so useless team in the Test.' Sach prayed as he unlocked the door to his room.
Sach was a commoner with a warm beige skin complexion. His face was not young, but he had large eyes that made it look simple. He stood at a height of 5' 8'' and had a great deal of hair which was not dressed.
Sach was the current rank 20 in the second yeah even though he was a commoner. He was very talented but was known as a professional bootlicker.
During the pre-school training, Sach's performance had been above average and this had drawn the attention of nobles.
He was constantly getting bullied and 'putted' in his place once in a while, but due to him being (street) smart he was able to get the message they were trying to put through.
From then onwards he had always reduced his performance to an acceptable level, thereby reducing the attention on him, but that didn't completely stop the bullying.