Ayla's plan was so decidedly accepted by the girls that they pushed two tables together to better facilitate the discussion about methods, notes, and who to employ to teach them.

Despite not wanting any involvement, Mathias was forced between two groups - largely since he sat at the edge of the first table prior to the addition. Lisanna was occasionally called on since she, too, was skilled enough - with a difficult element, at that - to avoid the attack on their egos. She sat directly across from him, but since he had long-since abandoned any pretense of caring about the scene, he picked at the light meal of vegetables half-heartedly.

'I could finish this, but... I'd probably lose my excuse,' he thought tiredly.

He just kept at stabbing, unstabbing, and stabbing the last few carrots tiredly as the girls around grew emboldened by the plan.

"What's going on here?" Erik asked, whispering in Mathias' ear.

It was clear from any observer that Mathias did not enjoy his position at the table, but it was enviable to some of the boys regardless. Erik was the first to approach, already steeled against the fiery aura of the fairer sex's conjoined anger.

"..." He did not reply. He concentrated a lot on ignoring their discussions, which included half-hearted whispers behind him as well.

Ayla, however, noticed him. "Erik! How'd you get by without a complaint, but I did?!"

"You dropped the wind stick! It was your fault!"

"You made it too unbalanced! Ah, I got beat by you of all people?! Ugh! Erik! I formally request the use of the betting pool for a group class-wide cake-meeting!"

"Cake-meeting!" A girl chanted aggressively from beside Mathias.

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Mathias lowered his head completely unable to deal with all the noise and gave up on escaping. He was already captured three times.

"A cake-meeting? What the hell does that mean?"

"We're using the funds to go to a cafe and order all their cakes while we train to beat Mr. Shields' stupid test!"

Erik stepped back as the girls chanted "Cake-meeting!" over-and-over again. He covered his eyes as he recalled the amount he was in charge of safe-keeping. Ayla had the other half and if their balances did not match, both knew the other would be the first to call them out on it.

"It's just a day's worth of fights so we only have twenty-six gold. There is also today's line-up to take into account, but it's not here yet. It should be more than enough, but do you really want to use some of it for cake...?"

"It's war! I refuse to be talked to like that by that teacher! The cake-meeting is to prevent another incident! We'll use ten gold - which is about a hundred cakes! Probably! Everyone will buy their own drinks since it's a cake-meeting!"

Ayla was fired up.

Doing the math, it meant that there would be four slices of cake for everyone. Slices. Not whole cakes. There would be more for some since there were a few like Mathias who did not like sweets. But since the declaration was made in the middle of the dining hall, everyone heard it.

Anywho still stood against the idea of using a betting pool, on principle or otherwise, was immediately blown away by the amount of cake they could collectively eat by employing the Scylla class' rumoured system. Of course, it was a cheaper cake than what they had, but it was a luxury nonetheless.

"I'll talk to the guys to make sure it's-"

A few of the Scylla boys immediately shouted, "Cake-meeting!" when they saw Erik look back. The entire table chanted.

"... I guess it's fine."

Thus, the first weekly cake-meeting was planned. There would be none missing at the event due to the stakes involved. And there was cake. For those that did not like cake, there were girls. For those that did not care about eating cake or meeting new girls, they were forced to come anyway because, well, class cohesion.

Mathias slipped out in the chaos and gratefully enjoyed the sudden shift to peace-and-quiet as he left for the training field.

Before he left, he thought he heard the frenzied voices confirm that there was a new quota of money allocated from the class pool for the express purposes of any-and-all future cake-meetings.

However, there were things he preferred to consider to be a figment of his imagination and blissfully ignore any potential responsibility in these matters.