Elenia's Request to the King

Just as Elenia anticipated, each youth from the back-row seats did their best to put on a show. 

Only one of them dared to re-draw their summoning crest, and they did it early on, only wasting a couple of brushstrokes. None of them dared to make a simple chalk circle. From the fifteenth to the seventeenth students, they all drew a six-pointed shape in the middle. Either a six-pronged star or two, stacked triangles. 

But no one else dared to make a magic circle as large as Ostan's. They followed their rehearsed performances to a tee. And they each earned an honorable nod from King Ikarat. 

What none of them earned was royal applause. Of course, none of them expected as much. 

Those four were pushing to graduate with honors. They had given up on the valedictorian challenge, due to either accepting long-standing expectations of the top two students or feeling internally crushed by Ostan's breakout performance.