Author's Reincarnation in a Fantasy Setting

Chapter 355 The Girl Near The Fountain [2]

As I went along with her I soon reached the right classroom. I was taking notes of the path and it turns out I had taken two wrong turns and ended up going in an entirely different direction.

I could hear the voice of the homeroom teachers coming from the classroom which clearly implied that I was already late and at the same time I recognized the voice.

"We're late," I said to the girl with me. She had a slight look of concern on her face but didn't reply.

In fact, the whole time we were walking she didn't say a word. From what I could see, she was the quiet type.

Standing in front of the classroom's entrance, I saw the view of the classroom filled with students. There were people whom I'd seen at the Zaforths academy before but also faces I was seeing for the first time.

And behind the podium, I saw the homeroom teacher whose voice I recognized. Of course, it was Ryfin.

This was the new class 1A.

When Ryfin noticed us he stopped giving his speech and turned to face us.

"You two are quite late," he said. Along with his words, the attention of the students was also directed toward us.

I didn't know why, but when the students turned their eyes toward us the hands of the girl before me started trembling and she lowered her eyes.

"It seems that way," I said to Ryfin.

"Would you mind telling me why?" he asked.

"There was something I had to do before coming here, and it took longer than I expected," I stated. Of course, I wasn't going to tell him that I got lost, it'd just give him one more reason to tease me.

"Don't waste any more time then, come inside and take your seats," Ryfin instructed.

Following that I stepped inside the classroom and looked around to see an empty seat.

The basic architecture of this classroom was the same as the previous one with a staircase-like structure where the seats were placed. However, this one was much bigger and better built.

I looked around and finally found an empty seat. It was the sixth row from the back on the right side. Fortunately enough, Anya, Leon, Ellyn, and Akumi were sitting only two rows ahead of me.

I went ahead and took my seat—it was the last one beside the stairs since the other seats in the same row were already occupied.

While I sat there I could hear the students starting to talk amongst themselves. The talk was mostly about the new student who entered the class out of nowhere—me, in simpler words.

"Now, now, quiet down everyone," Ryfin said loudly, quieting everyone down.

Meanwhile, I tried looking for the girl who brought me here and as I scanned my surroundings I found her sitting in a cluster of girls on the left side of the classroom.

'Well, I didn't even get to ask her name,' I said inwardly.

Still, I'd say I was a little surprised to see her here. After all, the attack on the academy was quite destructive.

Even though the teachers had started protecting the students right away, the demon beasts were too much of a threat and no matter how much they struggled there were still a few casualties.

As I continued to watch her I noticed that something was off about her, or perhaps about the area where she was sitting—her surroundings to be precise.

She had tilted her head down with her eyes staring at the desk in front of her, as if she didn't want to look up or at the people around her.

On the other hand, the girls around her seemed to have formed a group and were talking amongst themselves. From far away it looked like they were just chatting together and she was simply not a part of the conversation.

However, while observing closely one could notice the group of girls occasionally pointing toward her and looking in her direction while passing words among themselves.

She seemed overwhelmed by this scene.

'Bullying, huh,' I thought to myself.

It was clear as day, and I say this because the entire classroom was more or less aware of it.

There were people who looked at her with pity, people who looked at her with anger, people who looked at her with jealousy, and even people who for some unknown reason looked at her with fear.

Yet no one tried to do anything—which was nothing unusual, if you ask me. That's how it always went with bullying. I was able to say it with such confidence because in my past life, I had bullied and abused students, and even then the other students who knew about it didn't dare to do anything in order to prevent me from continuing with my actions.

There was but one very simple reason for all this: nobody wanted to get involved. They didn't want to get dragged into others' mess and the best way to do that was to feign ignorance.

The more I observed that girl the more I felt like I had seen her somewhere before, even prior to meeting her during the entrance exams. There was a doubt in my mind but since I didn't know much about her, I decided to keep it at rest for the moment and turned my attention away from her.

The class went on as usual. It had already been about a month since the academy started and I was joining now, therefore obviously I had missed a lot of things.

However, the class in itself was not that different. Ryfin taught us about how to cast two spells at the same time—in short, double casting.

It was quite hard compared to doing one spell at a time since you had to calculate a lot of things simultaneously and not lose your concentration while doing that. Other than that, you also had to do all that in a relatively short amount of time or you'd end up getting killed by the enemy.

And from now on the "enemy" were the demons and demon beasts hence a single miscalculation meant certain death. The students knew that well.

In the end, it turned out that despite missing a month's worth of classes I still was not in the red zone. From what I could gather, all the things they had taught till now fell within the area of what I already knew—more or less.

The double casting taught in today's class was something I had a good grasp of a long time ago. In fact, now I was pushing myself to be able to do quadruple casting—the highest number of spells that were simultaneously cast by a human till date.