End of Vacations (1)

I trained at the school every morning, even avoiding interacting with the main characters by focusing on training alone or getting abused by Monica, and then ate together with my family after the day.

Without me even noticing it was already the start of September.

While the vacation was supposed to be for a month, it was cut short because too much time had passed without the students receiving any classes.

The academy announced that there was an increase in the defense of the academy and that they are taking better measures to identify contractors.

This is pretty much a lie, they only did it to calm down the public and the two households that came to complain, it would only be after another attack happens that the academy would finally act.

But they didn't act because of public pressure or anything but because this time, Aso, the son of the headmaster actually got hurt as well.

It just shows what kind of headmaster runs this place. While in the end, Aso got expelled, this was only due to the fact that his behavior was so bad, that not even the headmaster could deny his expulsion.

Anyways, classes were back in full force and I stopped going to the library not because I wanted to, but because they increased class time all the way to 8 pm, to make us catch up.

Monica seemed to target me with her questions but thanks to my ability to retain the knowledge of any book, I was easily able to answer her questions, as I already read all of the material for this year.

The only difference this time was that I actually did attend the training and dueling class, as my physical stats had finally reached a point to consider me at the top of the first-year students.

Arthur should be around E ranked overall, so that would mean I'm in a similar position to him.

I don't really remember his stats but I do know that during most of the first year Arthur remained in E grade and in the latter half of the first year he reached D rank.

The training part of the class was actually easy, it was just running around and doing basic exercises, but I was still exhausted after everything.

Monica then pulled out a hologram from her watch and divided us into pairs depending on our talents, for the dueling.

I was matched against non-other than the saint character, Ciel.

I was the last duel, but considering there were only 14 students left after the incident and after one dropped out, there were only 7 duels to be had.

First, it was Noel vs Arthur, which Arthur obviously won.

Then Aso vs another student. obvious who won

...

It was finally my turn.

Ciel stood in front of me and took out a staff that she had in her dimensional pocket.

Monica then screamed, "Start!".

Ciel started to use a barrier spell, but before she knew it, her shoes were already covered by my mana.

I noticed that Monica, also used this technique many times when bringing my lifeless body up to her but she said it was not effective against higher-level opponents as the little mana covering the shoes can be easily stopped or destroyed.

That didn't mean that it wouldn't work on low-level opponents so before Ciel knew it I made her fall to the ground canceling her spell.

And then threw a fireball at her that was stopped by Monica.

With that, the class ended but before we could go home, we still had another 4 hours of lectures for us to catch up to the other classes.

After everything was done, I went back to my store, ate with my family, and accepted another request, this was the twelfth appraisal.

I did three appraisals for Lucia and after her, other high-ranked heroes came with their items, unfortunately for some, they were ranked SS- and I couldn't really blow my cover, I did offer to appraise another item but they declined.

Then I heard a ringing noise and went to open the door, to find Lucia.

'How many spots did she take', I thought to myself but kept a calm expression.

And as always she left an item on the table, I pretended to analyze it and handed her the paper with everything.

She was about to leave, but I stopped her by grabbing the sleeve of her dress. She turned around to look at me in the eyes, which was scary as hell.

"Do you need anything?", She said in a surprisingly nice tone.

But I had to do this for the safety of my family, so I swallowed my saliva and said, "You see there have been a lot of people lurking around me for a while".

"Hoo, so?"

"I would like you to assign some bodyguards to my family if you don't mind"

She smiled, but I knew it was a hard request for her, as lending her bodyguards who are actually A+ to S- ranked heroes, to protect my family is like giving up her manpower for nothing.

"What are you offering?", She said.

I smiled and said, "I will allow you to have the spot for my next 10 appraisals".

I don't think she will agree to it bu-

"I accept", She said with no hesitation.

I paused for a second but soon I smiled brightly and thanked her.

...

Well, he did request for me to protect his family, but I was already doing so either way. The people he saw were probably my men and the men of other guilds protecting him and his family.

The reason was actually pretty simple.

An appraiser that is able to not only appraise S+ items but also give a great description of their traits, is actually something that will boost all of humanity's power overall.

While the round table isn't really paying any attention to the SS ranked hero, even with all my efforts of trying to make them protect him.

They wouldn't do it as they felt that their power was threatened and that the kid, would take their spot as the leading figure of humanity, away from them.

But in the case of the appraiser kid, they would actually protect him, due to the fact that he was useful to them as they also had artifacts to get appraised.

I could have told him the truth about this fact, but the 10 next spots were too tempting to let pass.

And today at 12 pm, we should finally see the change in guild rankings. While the Round Table is the one that manages the rankings, it is actually all calculated by a bot so the members of the table wouldn't be able to find anything out.

...

"I hate that kid", Ciel said while eating in the cafeteria.

Currently, the cafeteria was still open but it was only for the students in class S1, thanks to our change in schedules.

Noel and Monica were trying to calm her down, saying it was nothing serious, but the fight was pretty humiliating.

Not only was it the shortest duel but she also couldn't even cast a spell to protect herself, it may also be due to the fact that fighting a telekinesis user is different from fighting a normal magician but it was still humiliating nonetheless.

But surprisingly, he has great physical stats, normally mages like Ciel would only need to do half the workout but in his case, he did it all and was still standing.

He probably didn't know as Monica probably wanted to torment him a little bit.

I let out a chuckle and Ciel sent me a glare, so I had to give her excuses as to why I had left out a little laugh.

...

The rankings would be announced in around 3 hours, so I thought about buying some more stocks in the Bright Guild and Black Horse Guild.

Previously I bought 150,000 stocks for 100 RP each, totaling 15 million for the bright guild, and then went to the Black horse guild and spent 5 million buying 20,000 for 250 RP each.

Currently, the prices of the stocks have increased by almost 3 folds with the Bright Guild stock costing 350 RP each and 4 folds with Black Horse Guild.

I might be dumb but I think that when stocks increase in price, fewer people are prone to buy making the price decrease as people are cashing out, so I decided to let both of them be.

There were also some things that happened during the month of August, Ray had found a buyer for the orb but hasn't sold it yet because apparently, the race of the buyer was an elf, meaning the trade has to be done with many precautions.

The store also went through some changes, as I wanted to also sleep here together with my family, I called Frank and made him move the library to the fourth floor and make the third floor into 4 rooms and also a bathroom.

The fourth room is in case someone comes as a guest and the other 3 rooms are for me, mom and my little sister.

I went back up after the meeting and headed to sleep.