14 Ch. 13 What's Become of our Education System?!

It took only a couple minutes to arrive at the classroom in question, we didn't even pass by the front desk of the library, otherwise I'm sure the librarian would have stopped the guy and explained who I was. Quite lucky on his part then, as I'm sure the fear of discovering that he had touched someone so sick would have given him a heart attack. Not that I am of course, but the way that woman reacted before, you'd think I had something deadly, which I do, it's just a deadly poison.

As we entered the classroom, which was apparently a relatively mid-sized room that was attached to the library, I got to see for once the other noble children that were part of my father's fiefdom. Of course what I saw wasn't exactly good. To begin with, there wasn't a single girl in the entire class, only boys as far as I could see. On top of that, most of these kids had zero respect for the teacher who just came through the door. If they weren't chatting with one another, they'd be play fighting with some wooden swords, trying to pretend they were something they weren't. Even within that though, there were one or two who looked at the teacher with respect and looked as if they had been studying... Interesting.

The teacher himself ignored those kids that didn't want to listen and would drag me off to a bench seat that wasn't occupied at the moment. After making me sit down he'd return and I got to learn why he didn't seem to care. You see, behind the teacher's desk at the front of the class was a black board and sitting at his desk was some kind of claw shaped piece of metal. He took that and... It's terrible to describe it, but... He dragged that across the board. That sound, dear gods that sound! Why would he torture us in such a way?! I mean, yeah, it worked... But that sound was terrible! Who cares if the kids immediately went to their desks, that sound hurt!

While rubbing my palms against my ears to try and recover from that pain, the teacher apparently started his lessons. Not sure what it was he said thanks to that pain, but once cleared I heard him talking about the natural sciences something or other. Apparently the current lesson was of the Aether of the world and it's mysteries. From what I can understand of this nonsense, Aether was a special state of matter that explained why when you boiled water or turned something into another there was a decrease, it was being destroyed by the Aether being agitated, or something like that. Honestly, I started to tune him out while he was speaking and instead paid attention around me.

As I said before, the room was basically all male, and most were paying attention about as well as I was. A few though were quite the attentive student and would be jotting down notes on some notebooks with their quills and inkwells. It was a bit surprising to see such an archaic writing method when the notebooks had paper that looked like it was semi-modern with only a slight discoloration to it. Of course the students that were jotting down notes seemed to be quite used to using the quills as well, though the little flourishes looked a bit unneeded with their writing.

Anyways, all the students looked as well off as myself so they're likely to be nobles of the area. Quite a number of them too, at least 13 minus myself. If I was to assume that the nobles had daughters too, then it's likely that there was quite a fair number of nobles within this city. Either that or there were a few who bred so much that rabbits thought they had a problem.

While I looked around, a few of the students turned to look at me. Not sure why, do I still look so sickly? Hmm, it's actually gotten quiet. Looking over to the teacher, I found him looking at me with some kind of expectation. Was my looking bad, no wait, I know this situation. Standing up, I'd look at the teacher as I asked, "Could you repeat the question?"

Looking a little annoyed, the teacher would sigh before finally asking, "I asked if you could tell me what Aether does to water when you try to boil it." Wait, that was it? "What kind of stupid question is that?"

I think that may not have been smart, a number of students gasped and teacher himself had what looked like this vein in his forehead start to wriggle… I think he was angry. "Stupid question? What about that question is stupid, this is a fundamental! What has your parents been teaching you?!" Uh oh, yep, he's angry. Why should he be angry though, it really is a stupid question.

Standing my ground I'd place a hand on my hip, looking a bit annoyed as I'd answer "Because Aether has nothing to do with water boiling, hell Aether doesn't exist!" A proper answer, but his look didn't improve and instead turned angrier as he'd question back, "Oh ho, so you think you know better than the alchemists who have studied the world and Aether?"

Huffing a bit, I'd stare at him, glaring really. "Well, apparently I do. Water boils because of the agitation of particles from heat. This in turn causes their movement to excite which leads to the water's temperature increasing. The water doesn't disappear either as it bubbles, it's shifting into the gaseous state of matter. It's not getting destroyed by Aether or anything silly like that." Hah, beat that you asshole, a textbook answer! At least I hoped it was, been a long time since I was in a science classroom.

Apparently though, my words didn't get through to him and instead of thinking on my answer. The teacher grabbed a ruler, coming at me with it raised like a damned weapon. "Oh shit." I kind of forgot my situation here and turned to try and make off. Unfortunately, I also forgot that I was sitting on a bench and in my haste managed to trip over it and land face first into the ground.

The moment my face hit the ground, I could see something change, almost as if something had appeared without my bidding, a bright flashing red number coupled with a line of red shrinking down almost halfway. I apparently had a health bar and falling down in injury like this must have counted for an attack, besides the obvious damage to my image for what it was worth. Moving to sit up and turn, warmth ran down my face and the teacher was frozen in surprise as well.

Looking at the teacher's surprise, along with the warm wet feeling that was rolling down my face, I'd reach a hand up to touch and came away with a palm dyed red. Staring at the blood in confusion, I'd finally glance downward, noticing just how much I was bleeding. I didn't react though, I mean my healthbar thing wasn't going down any further than it already had so I guess I didn't have any kind of bleeding status effect or anything else that told me I'd keep losing health and despite the unnatural amount of blood I was losing, I felt fine overall.

Unfortunately, the idiot of a teacher seemed very concerned and frozen up at the sight of a student of his bleeding so profusely. He'd move to approach now out of concern rather than malice as blood stained heavy on my shirt, but before he could get more than a couple steps toward me, the door opened and everyone turned to look, to see my grandfather, standing there with a furious expression as he saw the blood.