Five people were sitting in a quiet room. Well, no, it wasn’t quiet at all, even though it was the room of the Student Council. The one making the most noise was the one selected since his background was special.

He was a commoner.

The Princess knew that commoners would start arriving at the Academy so she decided to nip any future problems in the bud by selecting Zack as the student representative. However, all he did was make noise and partake in perverted activities like his potion making or confessing to women. Zack had already proposed to Princess Ophia several times, only to be beaten up by not only Emeril but Nolan as well.

Nolan was currently tapping his fingers on the table as he read the list of payments and allocation of school funds. Apparently, he knew the song well enough, even though the sound was incredibly strange.

Then, a surprise to all, he started singing! An even bigger surprise, he was actually really good!

“What? I took voice lessons as the son of a Duke. It was meant more for enunciating magic incantations.”

He had looked a lot better. His skin had regained its pink color and the bags under his eyes were hidden behind thick glasses that made him look very…weak, actually. In fact, if people didn’t already know any better, they would have thought him an easy person to bully!

His hair was unkempt and disheveled, making him look a little unreliable as well. However, he was seriously doing his job. When he wasn’t singing along with Zack’s new creation.

Zack had used a magical recording stone and recorded various instruments and sounds, putting them together to form music. When he applied magic, the song would play. He had cut the sounds off at times and copied those onto a new stone.

It was a bizarre activity, but when he had completed his one stone, it was an entire symphony! Unfortunately, the sounds were loud and distracting, much unlike real music, Ophia thought. But why did Nolan know this song as well?! And it spoke of unknown things!

What the heck did it mean by man-eater? A tiger? A monster? Or was this a song talking about a terrible cannibal?

“Anyways, since we are planning on hiring professionals for a study period next year, we need to make cuts.”

“But…Nolan, many of the clubs need a high amount of income to supply their ever growing need for equipment.”

“That may be, Princess, but I have an idea in place if you will allow me to act upon it.”

“What is it?”

>>><<<

“Get that annoying idiot out here! How dare he cut our group’s funding?!”

“Yeah, our Eating Club won’t stand for this!”

“Actually, you can go ahead and keep your low funding, the Eating Club sounds completely useless.”

“Hah?! And your Bubble Club isn’t?! All you do is blow Ragweed Water all afternoon!”

“Shut up!”

“You!”

At the entrance of the Academy, there was a large announcement. As of now, almost everyone’s club got their funding cut!

Only one club was saved and this was the best club on campus, the one Emeril was in, a close combat club. The one that had its entire funding cut was actually the Rise to Prominence club! Now almost no one will complain if there were three members that agreed to cut the funding of their own club!

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In order to receive a better funding, prove the club’s worth. The more worthy clubs will be funded and if all the clubs do well, then everyone will get more money. It was a simple incentive plan, but many were upset.

Mainly the second years.

The third years were fine and actually nodded their heads. They themselves knew that the useless clubs were a sore sight for good eyes. Thus, no one was able to openly complain, but the lower clubs had started to band together.

“Nolan, this isn’t fair, is it?”

“No, it’s completely fair. If you gave everyone the same amount of money, that would be unfair. Why would those who worked for where they are, be at the same level as someone who did nothing? I thought you wanted to appeal to the commoners?”

Ophia gasped as she thought about the actions of equality.

For her, wasn’t equality where everyone was treated the same? Was she wrong? Nolan sounded correct, and even Emeril stood there proudly.

“We get lazy when things are easy. We must strive through adversity!”

*Click!*

Nolan activated a recording stone and also snapped an image of Emeril and went off to do something else. Zack chuckled and sat back in his seat to play around with his music. In front of him was a pile stacked high of paper. Yidris berated him and followed Nolan out while looking around strangely.

After the whole ordeal with Nolan at the ball, Yidris had started acting differently around him. She would silently watch him and follow him if she had nothing else to do. Every time he acted heavy-handedly, her face would turn red and she would shiver. It soon came to light that Yidris either held intense attraction towards Nolan or hated his guts.

Nolan ignored the actions of the weirdo and continued knocking down troublesome students. Emeril would help out every now and then, but for the most part, Nolan would work on his control of power and smack the small fry around.

After the Student Council meeting ended, the members of Rise to Prominence convened. Bucco was actually the one to start the conversation. Nolan was surprised, but he wasn’t shocked. It would seem that Bucco had calmed down a lot since they had first met.

“Hey, Nolan, what’s going on? You finally got some time to meet us.”

“Oh, nothing much, just reprogramming my brain.”

“Eh?”

“When I was tampering with lightning magic, I internalized it to fill myself with power, but it went crazy and overwrote several parts of my brain. Now I have a safety mechanism that makes me essentially into an animal. So, I have to either rewrite the connection, which may make me a vegetable or add more, specifically made, electrical signals that can keep that mode under control.”

“How so?”

Everyone was paying attention since this was a dangerous field.

“Well, instead of never unlocking the mode, I set a limit. If the mode is activated, it will switch back off, but the lowest time I can make it is 5 minutes. I also set a condition that it could only activate in times of high stress or when my life or someone else’s life is in danger.”

“That’s not bad. What else?”

“Well, I rewired the desire to procreate in this mode to eat potatoes.”

At this, everyone was flabbergasted.

“Well, I found the reason I kept going for the girls is that my pubescent body wanted sex. So, I just changed the target to something else. Simple. You know the basic needs of an animal, right?”

Yidris looked a little lost in thought, but the others couldn’t help chuckling at the weirdness of their strongest person. At the awkward surroundings, Nolan quickly changed the subject.

“Ah, how are those two? Did they come to sign up?”

“Well, not yet, but they may just share info with us instead of joining us. Though they did talk about possibly joining.”

“That’s fine.”

Nolan looked around and sighed with a smile. It seemed that everyone here was now close and had gotten stronger since his absence. It had been nearly a week since he had come back, but now that he had finally met his fellow reincarnates, he calmed down.

Well, not really, as the girls would probably come find him soon. He had evaded them for now, but…

*cough*

Nolan sat up abruptly and coughed to ease other’s attention away from him as he stood up to go get some water. Unfortunately, Abigail stood in front of him. When he turned around, Bucco was standing, waiting for him. Then he realized everyone was boxing him in.

“Screw you!”

Nolan clenched his teeth and darted off, applying magic energy into his legs and buzzing out the door, from which came several cries.

“Where did he go?!”

“He just left! He caught on!”

Three super fast silhouettes could be seen chasing Nolan as he fled around the campus.

‘Whew, they’re still down there, hehe, once the heat cools off I can…uh oh’

One of the seemingly demonic figures stopped and looked right up at him.

‘How can you read my mind from down there?!’

A shrill laugh came from below as Nolan once again fled. That night, people couldn’t sleep as lightning strikes and evil auras filled the campus.

Nolan should have greeted the girls when he came back…