Strongest Noble's Daughter Uses Water Magic

First Day of Class

With the troublesome noble incident over with, the orientation went smoothly. During the orientation, the headmaster made a speech about how much of an honor it was for us to be here, both noblemen and commoners alike, and humans and crossbreeds. He also spoke of the role of this academy, which was to nurture our abilities for a great and bright future. Be it as a member of the Royal Guard, a great adventurer, or otherwise.

As he gave his speech, I could not help but notice two things. One was the number of students not paying attention to the headmaster. How do I know? I had been feeling eyes staring at me from behind. Well... not much of 'staring', as they were more of glares. No doubt about how a 'mere commoner' like myself was about to make the top five.

The other thing I noticed was, aside from the princess sitting at the first-place spot, sitting next to me in fourth-place... was none other than Leia. So to say, while I was not particularly angry with her, nor did I... dislike her so much, it was still weird to be sitting here next to her of all people. How can it not be? I was sitting next to the girl who replaced me in my own family. Every now and then, I even noticed her glancing at me from the corner of my eyes. Whatever for, I would never know.

After the orientation was over, we were to head to homeroom. As I got up from my spot, though, Leia grabbed my sleeve.

"Wait, Levi. Can we talk?" she requested.

I instinctively clenched my hands at the simple sound of her voice. Talk? What was there to talk about? About how she was my replacement in the Anberibca family? About how she nearly deceived me into thinking she was a kind noble girl, when she must be silently laughing at how low my rank had become for the real daughter of a duke? I had read plenty of reincarnated manga and books in my previous life; of over half of those stories I had read, if I was reborn in some villainess, or soon-to-be villainess's, body, Leia may as well be the twisted protagonist.

"... We have class to get to," I told her. "If you were a noble, you should know better than to be late to anything." Without another word, I shrugged her hand off me and made my way to class.

******

I sat in my classroom, Class 1-F, with surprisingly all my dorm mates, as well as several crossbreeds and nobles. Not too little, but not many either. Not only that, but our classroom seemed quite... old, so to say. Parts of the walls or ceilings were peeling off, and the window seemed dirtied up, too. I also could've sworn I saw a rather big spider crawling about. ... I hope it was just me.

As I sat at a desk, waiting for the professor to arrive, I noticed the nobles and crossbreeds were only chatting amongst their own kind, making no move toward each other or the commoners. There were a few who kept to themselves, but even so, seeing this truly made me wonder how much of the equality between the two race was really true in this kingdom.

"It's really separated here, isn't it?" Azalea spoke, sitting next to me.

She was not the only one at my desk; Mindy and all our dorm mates were around me as well, either sitting near me or just standing around me.

"You're telling me. In the village I come from, humans and crossbreeds get along well with each other," Austin stated.

"I ain't surprised to see this," Leroy said. "Even in the village I come from, the nobles there were nothing but douches. Always looking down at all the commoners... If it wasn't for the village rule that only the strongest of their generation was allowed to attend this academy, I would be stuck back home, and you guys would have one more headache to deal with."

I raised a brow at that. "'Village rule'?" I repeated.

"Don't you know? Because of the high tuition fee in this academy, if there was anyone in a village interested in attending here, each village is to hold a tournament of sort the year they were to become adults with every kind in their generation. The winner or winners of the village tournament, depending on the income, was allowed to at least attempt to attend the Royal Academy. Any victor who wish to decline, the reward is given to the runner-up," Hailey explained. "Don't your village do that?"

"Actually, Lady Levi and I live here in the city," Mindy answered for me. "Since your rule only applies to those who live in villages, to city people or townsmen, I imagine it'd be different."

"I can vouch for that," Shaun said. "I live in a town quite a distance away from here. My parents own an apothecary, and business was good. Good enough that they set aside enough money for my tuition here."

"Same here. My dad's a merchant, so we often move around places and make enough money to make a living. Never knew until my birthday that he saved up more than half our money for me to attend to the academy," Tem added.

"I was already feeling jealous of Levi for making the top five for a commoner. Are you trying to make us villagers be jealous of the rest of you?" Belle questioned.

"We were just saying," Shaun said. "Still, sounds like you villagers have it rougher than the rest of us."

"You can say that again," Azalea answered that time.

Just then, the door opened up, causing everyone to go silent. The person walking in was a female professor with violet eyes and platinum blonde hair held up in a high ponytail. The woman simply walked to her desk and set her binder down. "Hello, class. I am your homeroom teacher for your not-even four years here, Professor Terranium Greenwood," she introduced, causing some of us to raise our brows in confusion at a part of that intro. "I will be blunt. I have no intention to teach any of you." The confusion turned into surprise at those words.

"Hang on! What do you mean you have no intention to teach us?!" a noble questioned.

"Exactly as I said it. Not only will you be kicked out of the academy anyway, but you won't take this class seriously even if I do teach you," Terranium said.

"'Kicked out'?" I repeated aloud.

"Half of you are commoners, and the other half are low-class nobles with various bad reputations, no matter how small or petty the rep is. Kids like you often tend to get into some trouble with higher nobles, trouble that get you kicked out of the academy."

"How would you know?! You don't even know us!" Leroy questioned.

"Do you really think you're the first set of commoners and bad reputation, low-class nobles I had to deal with? I cannot count how many times I had tried to teach people like you, only to be very disappointed in the end, one way or another."

When she said that, my mind thought back to the rumor of commoners never being able to graduate despite being able to even attend to this school. If what the professor said was true, then it would explain the rumors told.

"Besides that, I don't think any of you students had noticed, but our class income is nonexistent in the first place."

That brought more confusion to us. Class income? What did she mean?

Noticing our confused expressions, Terranium explained, "For those of you who don't know, our class income is the income paid by our school for anything class related, such as this room and materials you need to learn and study, even getting the other professors to teach you. The amount of income we get depends on our monthly class ranking, and Class F is always at the bottom, and thus never get any sort of income, nor were able to properly study well."

Hearing that shocked us all. Wouldn't that mean we would be wasting our time and money in this academy as she said?

"That's not fair!" exclaimed a crossbreed with a raccoon's tail. "You're a professor, aren't you? Shouldn't you do something about this? We're your students!"

"I had already tried helping your predecessors. You want to blame someone? Blame them, and curse yourselves for being born the way you are," Terranium said. "I will not even bother taking attendance. First week for all classes is a study session, with a mock exam at the end of the week. This exam is what will decide the class rankings of each year. Consider your study session a self-study, as I much rather not waste my time on teaching any of you, not when you are all going to be placed last anyway."

"You don't know that!" another noble exclaimed. "As much as I hate to admit it, but we have a commoner who is ranked fifth in the entrance exam! If she can help us nobles tutor her clueless commoners, we may have a chance!"

Offensive as his words were to said commoners, none of them dared argue against it, for he was not wrong about them not being book smart.

Terranium only sighed at the noble's words. "It seems you've misunderstood something. I say it is an 'exam', but it is not some written test. The mock exam is more of a team exercise, where your teammates are your classmates, and your goal is to sneak into an opposing team's base, take their flag, and bring it back to your base. Along the way, you are expected to run into members of the opposing team, fight them for their flag, as well as defend your own flags. Considering the amount of magic high-class nobles have compared to low-class nobles and commoners combined, as well as their superior skills in swordsmanship, strategy, and magic, can you truly tell me you at least won't be the first ones out? With you kids being the weakest class, you are bound to be targeted first and be incapacitated, your flags taken from right under your nose, unable to stop them nor be able to get any of their flags, destined to be ranked last. I had seen enough losses done in this class. I much rather not see any more of it of any kind. It's self-study session now. Take this day and the next few days to do as you please. Just don't ask me to teach any of you, since you will fail and be dropped out." Without another word, the woman took her leave, her words weighing heavily on the rest of us.