Several days had passed, and the deadline for teams would be today. By now, most of the students had gone ahead and confirmed the formation of their own groups.

The most significant buzz going around the Academy was the teams formed by strong individuals. The group Thea was forming obviously had the most enormous following. She essentially had the entire year to pick from. As expected, she had created one with several of the highest-ranking students. These students were flattered that she had chosen them and thought themselves to be the ones closest to Thea.

And Kaiel? Well, Kaiel was still in the same situation he was in two weeks prior. If there was one thing he regretted, it would be the time he wasted mulling over it. He should've known that, in the end, he would have to leave it in the hands of fate.

At one point, he considered asking Leo, the only person he's talked to more than once.

But decided against it when he realised the boy had already been invited elsewhere. Which was relieving in a sense since he had zero ideas as to how to approach the task of inviting or requesting to join a team.

The scratch of chalk could be heard on the wide board at the front of Class IX.

Words appeared at a steady pace on the board, but no one was standing there.

Sitting with a chair at the podium was Silva. She was slouching and lazily held a book in one hand while controlling the piece of chalk with mana using her free hand to write out the information she was reading.

The students of Class IX were used to Silva's personality, but in this case, they didn't know whether to be impressed or shocked at her laziness.

History was a class where a large amount of information was being dumped at them continuously. Aside from the occasional question she asked the students, most of the class was spent with her summarising the key and essential information regarding the history of the Empire into digestible chunks for the students.

"... The Rangurd Empire is famous for its tremendous military might and advanced magic technology. It is located at the heart of the continent and is one of the mightiest powers in the world. The Empire is ruled by Kalsis Valna Ragnasia II, the greatest ruler in the world. Since he ascended to the throne, succeeding the previous Emperor, the Empire has prospered tremendously in many fields. The strength of the Empire's army has increased to a level never seen before, and with his decree, the advancement of Magic Technology has been developed to a point where now, the Empire leads the world with the most cutting-edge airships and artifacts."

The airships mentioned were actually military-exclusive and have yet to be commercialised into being used as a means of large-scale transport.

Only the extremely wealthy had access to them, and as they were, they were extremely expensive and cost-inefficient to operate.

"Moreover, if not for the Empire, the world would not have the transportation system that connects most of the major kingdoms and regions together, the Mana Rail. The Empire possesses two of the rumoured 12 Sovereigns. They are the Captain of the Imperial Guards, Dwight Livius, and General Lansarv, both of whom are loyal subordinates to his Imperial Majesty. It is known that both of them have been the Emperor's aides even before he ascended to the throne, and they are rumoured to be close friends... While the ranking has them at 12th and 9th place, respectively, their strength does not lose out to those in the top five... Which patriotic idiot wrote this bullcrap? It's making me cringe."

Silva abruptly stopped reading, and the chalk piece previously being controlled dropped to the ground and snapped in half. She sat straight and started to flip through the pages of the textbook, but the more she read through it, the bigger the frown her face became. This was not her first time teaching this class, but because she wanted to slack off today, she decided to use existing material provided by the Academy.

As for the 12 sovereigns, they were twelve individuals who were famous for their prowess and achievements throughout the world. They were given the title Sovereign by the denizens of the world who admired them and feared them. Aside from the two who belonged to the Empire, most of them were not associated with any of the other factions in the world.

Silva tutted in disapproval and finally gave up, she threw the useless book aside and sighed heavily, "I'm really not cut out for this."

She didn't even know why she was surprised. The Academy was originally a place solely for the nobles of the Empire. Its biased teachings were supposed to instil into their youth the everlasting glory and justice of the Empire. Naturally, this meant that the textbook she borrowed from the Academy was unusable since it was written by one of these nobles. I should've known from the beginning. It looks like she was going to have to work after all.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

As someone who was not from the Empire, she knew that the book was littered with distorted truths and facts. So, she decided to enlighten the kids.

"The Airship Technology mentioned actually originated from Regisvar. It was created in retaliation against the Empire. The Empire did not invent it. They merely improved on it in collaboration with the people of Regisvar. After the Empire conquered the Kingdom of Regisvar and it became a vassal Kingdom, of course.

Secondly, the Mana Rail was created by the man known as Eugene Kharshill. He is a man from the City State Veritas and is a man renowned as the greatest inventor of our time. Those holographic screens you use that operate on spiritual energy are also created by him. The Empire only took his creation and spread it to the world.

Finally, that man who reigns at the top of the Sovereigns would probably snap the general and imperial guard in half if he wanted to. That man is not...human."

That last part was said with a shudder that seemed to stem from something more than just knowledge.

Some of the students were discontent with how she dissed their heroes and idols.

"Listen, kids, it's crucial to form your own opinions. Blindly believing everything you are told and shown is the easiest way to be manipulated by those superior to you.

And you noble brats, don't assume I'm saying this in favour of the commoners and badmouthing the Empire. I'm only telling you the objective truth.

But you can take what I'm saying with a grain of salt. The general knowledge is there. Opinions are another matter."

The lesson continued for another half an hour before they had to make their way to their next class.

History, alongside economics, math etc., were the compulsory subjects that fell under the Theory umbrella.

Mana Arts Theory was the all-encompassing and the most important class, obviously. This class would teach the fundamental principles of magic and mana. This was not one's personal arts ability but rather general mana techniques such as body augmentation and barrier creation. General techniques that could be done by anyone with proficient enough usage of mana.

There were other more specialised electives such as Alchemy, Runes and Mana Tech, but that were things that were optional in the Academy. If you wanted to specialise and learn more about them, you would join the associated Societies.

Finished with classes today, Silva began the string of announcements she needed to make. "Alright. That's it for classes today. I have announcements to make before you leave."

Silva explained the rest of the process to her students, "As you know, the deadline is tonight. If you still haven't submitted the form, then you better do it quick. Otherwise, you'll just be randomly assigned. Each and every team will be designated a meeting room on of the three floors of the Teams Building. It will serve as your meeting, planning, gathering room or whatever. It's your space, so do whatever you want with it. And all of you need to gather in the auditorium tomorrow. That's where you'll find out which number your team and room are. Usually, we would announce things like this in the foyer of the building, but there's no way hundreds of you are gonna fit there simultaneously. Classes tomorrow are cancelled, and instead, you'll spend the day getting to know your new comrades."

All the students frowned. The structure of her explanation was all over the place. They would most likely facepalm if they knew that Silva had lost the briefing sheet and was only explaining the things she knew based on her memory. She was only saying whatever came to her mind first.

After she finished saying everything necessary, the students were dismissed. The energy levels were clearly through the roof as the students were excited at the prospect of working in teams.

Kaiel packed his belongings and returned to the dorm in preparation for his routine.

As far as Kaiel was aware, most people had chosen to form teams. So the ones who were to be randomly assigned tonight would be the anomalies, the people who didn't fit in, basically.

It was probably wishful thinking if he wanted to be allocated to a semi-functioning team.

But one could hope, right?

===

The next day, students crowded the enormous open space of the auditorium. Typically, students would be sat in orderly manner of rows to listen to whoever was speaking on the front stage, but today, there was no speaker.

They were spread out all over the room, and all of them had their heads craned upwards, similar to the release of the rankings of the first month.

Kaiel was one of these students. He searched for his name amongst the hundreds of different teams.

The board listed the team number and the names of the members.

He found it eventually, team number 68. He saw that there were only five names on the team currently.

Team #68

Kaiel Dreyar

Faye Luvisol

Langris Blazar

June Veldra.

He was surprised to see a familiar name. He didn't know this Faye person personally other than knowing their name from being consistently top-ranked in combat. But he didn't expect her, of all people, to be on his team. Her being on the same team could only mean she also left it to random assignment. But why? She had endless options to pick from as she was a perfect addition to anyone's team.

Now knowing his team number, he saw no need to waste any more time and made his way over to his team's designated room.

Like many of the buildings in the Academy, there were three team buildings, each for one of the three different years.

These buildings had three floors, and being team 68 meant that he was on the third floor.

When Kaiel entered the room designated for his team, he found that he was the last one to arrive.

The room had a board attached to the wall, presumably for them to write on when they were in discussion about things. There was a long table in the middle, and three individuals were sitting around it, each minding their own business.

As Kaiel opened the door, they all spared him a glance.

There were two male students and a female student. They had sat at opposite ends of the table, almost as if they were in opposition to one another.

He did not expect to see a familiar face he met not too long ago, his neighbour.