For the first time in his life, Spade had decided to try hard in school. As a result, the first month flew by without him noticing.

Lt. Rolls had spent the last month teaching students about the different steps in forming one’s celestial weapon: how to visualize it, how to use mana to bring about all kinds of change in shape, material, and other features. There were countless options from the swords, shields, axes, maces, spears, daggers, to bows, crossbows, staffs, whips, and whatever one could think of.

Today for the Celestial Forging class, Lt. Rolls would test students on their ability to create their very own celestial weapon. Needless to say, this was important. Some magic knights were even known for using the same weapon from the time they were in school, displaying a great proficiency and dominion over it.

Spade had finally come to another important event in his life as a student and as a magic knight.

A celestial weapon was one of the distinctive features of any knight. Created with the mana of the student, it could be summoned at knight’s will provided they had enough mana. By fighting with it, one could greatly change their style of fighting, combat power, and attacks.

Spade did not want to screw this one up.

Lt. Rolls arranged his class so that in the center of the room was empty but for a big chair, his big chair. Students would take turns in summoning their celestial weapon in front of Lt. Rolls. This meant that everyone would be required to perform in front of their classmates. Nevermind the grade, the judgment and possible humiliation in front of the whole class was much worse.

The first ones to go did so willingly.

Martin Lardor was first. He walked confidently with hands in his pockets to the center of the room. Under everyone’s gazes, he briefly grinned as if finding the situation funny, closing both of his knuckles.

Clang!

Martin bumped his closed fists together at the height of his chest making a slightly metallic noise. This sound proceeded not of his bare knuckles but of titan-like, silver gauntlets which now covered his hands and forearms all the way up to his elbows. Their red details suggested something fiery about them, although it had yet to manifest itself.

“A+” said Lt. Rolls with a pleasant look, not adding more than a “well done Mr. Lardor.”

Despite all of Martin’s arrogance, no one could deny his ability.

After three more students repeated this routine. The first got a C, and the other two B+s.

From their display the criteria became clear enough. Assuming that one’s weapon did not disintegrate in the first ten seconds after being formed, and that it was more than a glorified stick with a blade, they would get at least a B. Additional points seemed to be more subjective.

Students kept taking their turns. Sometimes this happened out of their own initiative, as going after a bad performer would make any performance look relatively better. Sometimes out of being cold called by Lt. Rolls upon making accidental eye contact, a kind of army rule that, to the students great demise, the lieutenant liked to enforce in his classes.

Eventually, many As were given in a row to a number of outstanding performances.

One of them was Eleonora Solaris’, who summoned a gorgeous-looking, plume-filled wooden bow.

Another was Maaria Hellscavenger’s who, after summoning two lethal-looking black daggers, threw them up and summoned a deadly scythe about one meter long.

By the time Spade was forced to go by a condemning-miscalculated eye contact with his teacher, he had seen all kinds of weapons and grades.

Slowly walking to the front, Spade did his best neither to look at anyone nor to trip.

He was nervous.

Yet, he was serene. For some strange reason, something inside of him felt confident about making the weapon he wanted. He had trained before and, although not perfect, he thought this time he would get it.

A meter away from the professor, Spade looked at the person who was going to give him the grade as if requesting permission to begin.

The small lieutenant nodded. He was not very tall, about a meter and a half or so. However, he had strong muscles, a brown short hair and beard, as well as a pronounced scar under one of his blue eyes. This made him look less like a teddy bear and more like a fighter stuffed animal.

Abandoning all distractions, Spade stopped comparing his teacher to weird things and started to focus on what he was about to do.

He wanted a lance.

As he stretched his hand in front—

Nothing happened.

‘Great’, he thought in self-derision.

Before anyone could mock him, Spade closed his eyes and stretched his hand up.

He wasn’t quite sure why.

Nevertheless, this time something slowly formed and was grasped by his hand.

It was a lance.

On a first look, it did not look like much. However, if one looked closer they would see some strange gold-engraved faintly patterns in the light brown shaft. The lance was about Spade’s height and had some interesting bottom end, it seemed more ornamental than for combat.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“A-. Next!” Said the lieutenant in a nice but slightly disinterested tone.

Spade did not move.

“Move!” The student behind him said full of anxiety.

Spade woke up and went back to his place in silence.

‘I did it!’ he thought to himself. This time a smile erupted from his face.

Nevermind Bs, for as long as Spade could remember he had never gotten anything more than a C, usually Ds. So for him, getting an A- was well beyond his wildest dreams.

Assuming students stuck with their choices, Spade would be a Lancer, Martin a fighter, Maaria an assassin, Eowyn and Julius swordsmen, and Eleonora a archer class magic knight. Soon, Lt. Rolls’ class came to an end.

…

Spade’s next class was Ms. Farkz’s class called “On the Classics of Combat (TCC).”

Despite being only in his second month, Spade already knew that he did not like this class. It was very different from all others, all the teacher seemed to do was ask questions. Today’s topic was “deciding on who to protect.”

If the name sounded vague, wait until you see the class.

10 minutes in…

“So what would you do? Run for the village, or keep your positional advantage?” Ms. Farkz asked the class.

“Stay where I am” said Eowyn as if it were obvious.

“Why?” the teacher pressed him.

“There is no need to risk my skin to go save some randos who cannot help me anyways” he answered promptly.

“So you are saying that when confronted with a legion of ecthroy, you would not give up your terrain advantage to go protect innocent villagers who are being killed for pleasure. As you do not see their lives as an asset in the battle to come? Is that right?” she calmly enquired.

“That’s right! In fact, it would be hard finding a commoner worth saving” Eowyn stated, annoyed at the unending line of questioning.

‘Here it comes’ Spade thought to himself waiting for Ms. Farkz to put Eowyn in his place.

Being royalty from another country, Eowyn was more arrogant than Martin, exuding a particularly reprehensible discrimination against commoners and those who he deemed inferior to himself.

Needless to say that Spade did not like him.

“Okay. Does anyone else have any other opinions?” continued Ms. Farkz to Spade’s surprise.

How had that cocky and entitled classmate of his been able to say such things? Spade was left aghast. Although Eowyn was stronger than him, Spade still felt like punching him in the snout (to Spade, he was not different from a human pig).

“I do.” Another hand went up.

It was Julius.

Of course it was him. The new guy had difficulty closing his trap. Every class he had to ask or answer questions. Some people were starting to get tired of him. And so was Spade.

“I think that, just as Arthur Magnus Cranel thought, one’s claim to being saved should not depend on their usefulness on the battlefield. Thus, although I myself am not sure I would have the courage to risk my life, I think that there is no sacrifice more noble than helping those weaker than you,” said the new noble student.

Even though it was good to have someone do the talking for you, since this way the teacher did not have to cold-call students, Spade was glad he did not have more classes with Julius.

What an irritating guy. Spade had her stories from others taking Swordsmanship 101 with Julius about how he sometimes answered the questions he himself asked, just to see if the answer was right.

After a long and very boring class, the day was finally over.

…

Tuesdays and Thursdays were very different.

Spade went to Miss Rias’ practice period. Some professors were so popular, or their courses so difficult, that their practice periods were almost as full as their classes. After helping students communicate with their beastly partners, this teacher had been teaching them a number of combat applications to mana.

Students with a coveted elemental celestial beast, like Laurel’s Forest Spirit or Julius’ Winter Wyvern (also called Ice Wyvern), spent their time practicing changing mana’s nature to match their own. This was key in performing attacks aimed at burning, freezing, or restricting enemies in some way.

Others who did not have this fortune focused more on creating a shield of mana and simple aura attacks, the techniques most commonly used in any fight. Those who, like Spade, belonged to the latter group would eventually be able to cast mana attacks of a different nature depending on their celestial beast’s power. However, since the element was not intrinsic to their partner's power, the role it would play in their combat performance would naturally be reduced.

After this class, Spade had his first elective. While others went to the classes they had picked, the group of students with a sub-par academic performance in 9th grade, which obviously included Spade, were forced to spend one of their electives catching up on what they should have learned before.

It was boring.

However, after it, Spade had his first ‘true’ elective, Ancient Languages.

As dedicated as he was to being a good student, some habits from when he was a poor student remained. One of them was the tendency to pick classes that looked like they would be easier and require little effort.

This was one of such classes.

It was taught by an old teacher with a weird dressing sense and a deep love for cats. She spent much of every class giving examples which included descriptions of the army of cats she had at home.

Just as Spade had predicted when making the course selection, it wasn’t very interesting. The teacher tried her best to make it so, teaching what she claimed was “Ancient Dragon Tongue” during the first month of class.

Despite having a knack for it, Spade doubted that he was learning anything more than a made up language. After all, he had never heard of dragons, much less ones that could speak.

After leaving his second boring class that day, he would finally be able to do what he wanted. Spade spent the final part of his Tuesday being personally trained by Ms. Sylvia.

He was very satisfied with himself, as he was now capable of fighting two gray horns just like the advanced class kids had done. It’s true that they had done so easily in their first classes of the year, but for someone who had never tried, Spade was making progress.

With training came two levels, making Spade level 12.

Having leveled up 10 levels in the last decade or so since meeting Lucius, he had just leveled up 2 levels in one month. That was a monstrous rate of growth by any standards.

As soon as a person developed the ability to perceive mana, that would mean that their body also possessed the capacity to receive it and store it. However, like the human muscle system, one’s mana system could be trained to improve their capability, storage capacity, and efficiency.

In parallel, because mana circulated to all organs of the body through one’s blood, leveling up not only resulted in an increase in mana, but also improved one’s vitality, strength, and other attributes. When someone leveled up, their heart would briefly contract harder than usual, subsequently expanding and releasing mana from a seal within it—permanently increasing one’s reserves.

With more mana and a stronger body, came new possibilities and magic knights could acquire or develop new abilities in unison with the celestial beasts.

At the moment, Spade was working on a body enhancing technique. It wasn’t like Ms. Rias’ partial transformation, but it could grant him some abilities that his Northern Wood’s Fox had.

In general, everyone developed this kind of skill around level 15, but this was only an indication. A magic knight mastery of a new technique depended on several factors, not least of which was effort. Something Spade did not lack.