"No, professor... I won't be taking your Class Advancement Exam." Vale answered immediately without any hesitation. This shocked his classmates for a moment as they thought that Vale would immediately take the opportunity.
They all looked at Vale as if they didn't recognize him anymore.
'That's weird… Is he really that Vale?'
'Perhaps, he's not really that impressive… What is he afraid of?'
'I'll be taking that opportunity if it was me.'
'Well, he's not omniscient so he's probably unaware of many things. He's only lucky to have an advanced study in arithmetic.'
This is the thought of some of his classmates as they heard Vale's answer.
Professor Lucius looked at Vale for a moment before asking once more.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, Professor." Vale answered.
"Very well… Just in case, I would like to ask if there are others who had finished recording the spell?" Professor Lucius asked everyone this time.
After not hearing any answers from his students, he understood that Vale was still the only one who had finished the Spell Recording.
"Alright... I want everyone to record the spell as quickly as possible. If you haven't recorded the spell within the next weeks, I will bring you a stronger version of Darkness Pill to help you with the recording ritual. It will greatly help you to ease the burden brought by creating the Spell Model but the pill isn't for free. You have to pay 5,000 zen per piece…" Professor Lucius explained.
The price may not be that expensive for those rich merchants and nobles but for some of them who came from a poor family, they were obviously frightened by this amount.
This includes Lisa who was worried about not being able to purchase the pill.
Currently, most of them were only using the free Magic Circle in the Ceremony Hall. It should give them a 30% chance of success rate in their Spell Recording but it is obviously not enough to have a successful Spell Recording.
"Professor, why are we in such a hurry? I heard from our seniors in the Second Year that they were only required to learn the Darkness Manipulation Spell after two or three months. Not even two months had passed in our class." Neil suddenly said as he has a connection to some higher years.
This question is also something that many of them wanted to ask.
Luckily, Neil has a thick face and would always ask questions without any hesitation.
"Let's just say that the peaceful era might come to an end soon… What would you do?" Professor Lucius asked.
This question alarmed all of the students as so many thoughts immediately surfaced in their minds.
Neil thought for a moment as he answered matter-of-factly.
"We need to get stronger of course… Although the Dark Arts Faction has many strong practitioners and the Order of the Evanescent Vessels is incredibly powerful compared to the other Secret Orders, they still have limited numbers. Our own strength is what will matter in case we're at war once more."
Professor Lucius nodded at this as he continued.
"He's right… Your own strength won't betray you. Although this thing won't happen any time soon, it can still happen."
"Professor, what about the Treaty of Keslore? Is it about to lose its effect?" Vale asked this time. He can't imagine that the Treaty would just be disregarded like that.
That treaty is the one that made their Dark Arts Faction "accepted" as part of the Arcane Paths making the eleven members of the Association of the Harmonius Arcane Paths into twelve. Vale believed that it would at least take another generation or two before changes can be made to this treaty, especially if the current king was replaced.
"It's still effective… However, a huge disturbance has been happening in some other Factions. Some of them are being blamed on our Dark Arts Faction even if we don't have relation in those incidents."
"What? Someone is trying to blame our faction?" Chad asked in surprise.
"Yes… However, since we are also attacked by these mysterious individuals, their suspicion of us has weakened a lot."
"Ahh? Who dared to attack us?" Leonore asked with genuine surprise.
The Dark Arts Faction may have suffered from the previous war but that was because they have no allies!
They were fighting multiple factions while on their own. They even get to make these factions suffer tremendously and they had no choice but to agree with the treaty that Morgan Vermont suggested.
Although the treaty suppressed them because they were banned to practice some dangerous Dark Arts, they were at least able to grow in other branches of the Dark Arts and multiplied their practitioners by over twenty times in just a few years.
In short, Leonore knows very well that the current Dark Arts Faction is scarier than it previously was.
Professor Lucius shook his head at this question and answered.
"We don't know as well… It will soon be posted on the bulletin boards of your clubs so you'll know more about it. Anyway, I'll let you know a few things about them now. It's a secret organization and as you expected, we don't even know of their official name. We only know that this organization is comprised of multiple rogue practitioners of different Arcane Paths…"
"What's their goal professor?" Chad Bulmung asked.
"We don't know… We only know that this organization sent a few people to our Academy to find and steal something. It's a pocketwatch with an unknown purpose. If you have any information about a mystical pocketwatch with strange abilities, then you have to immediately let us know."
Professor Lucius solemnly said.
In the meantime, Vale froze at this sudden revelation.
He didn't know that the Academy was actually attacked and this matter might even be related to his golden pocketwatch!
'Are they searching for my pocketwatch? This is dangerous…' Vale's mind raced quickly as he knows that he has to do something about it…
Although he's not hundred percent sure that it was his pocketwatch that was being tracked, there is still a high chance of it happening.
Currently, the pocketwatch is just placed on his room's study table and could be found easily.
At this time, Vale's eyes lit up as he recalled his beautiful Dark Spirit.
'Right… Dark Spirit, can you bring a mystical item in my shadow?'
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