The Rebirth of Evelyn Knox

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 

The next day taught Evelyn why she should always take care of explaining things properly to her friends. Even if running away would allow her to relax at first, later on, it would always cause her a major headache.

Not only had she already spent almost half an hour consoling Vivian and the others, even when she thought she could relax in the 'Beast Taming' class, Amber came to her crying, giving her another headache.

"Wuu… I thought something had happened when you didn't come to class yesterday!"

Evelyn patted the girl's head, feeling a little helpless. Although Amber's orange eyes looked very cute when they were wet with tears, she also felt bad for making the little girl cry. "My teacher just took me out for a little trip, nothing happened, don't worry."

The auburn-haired girl sniffled. "Un, un, I got it…"

Evelyn didn't know whether it was the absence of Professor Dane or having Amber to keep her company, but this beast taming class was far more bearable than what she expected.

In fact, getting to know a few little tidbits about various beasts in this world while the teacher gave them practical demonstrations as well was quite entertaining.

Of course, the new teacher seemed a bit amateurish, a young looking girl who looked like she should be an apprentice instead of a professor, but Evelyn preferred someone inexperienced who earnestly tried their best to teach when compared to someone experienced who didn't try at all.

Unfortunately, this wasn't the only class for the day, and the next one happened to be the one that Amber had warned her of.

At first, Evelyn had been a bit happy that she wouldn't have to attend the class in Maker's Mansion today, as not only was the teacher extremely condescending, she had also not had the time to go through 'Arms Codex: I' yet, since she was quite busy yesterday.

However, Madam Augury soon proved to her how hateful someone can be.

"Hey you, standing beside that good for nothing piece of trash, the one with the annoying pink hair! How come I don't remember seeing your ugly mug in the last class?!"

Evelyn frowned. Although this woman looked like a kind old white haired lady, her attitude was truly just the opposite. "I was with professor Aurora, you can ask her if you have any—"

The old lady scoffed. "Are you threatening me?! Hmph. Disgusting. Bringing out your 'backing' to cover up for such minor things like missing class. I assume you're from one of those trash 'ancient families', right?"

Evelyn remained silent, and the old lady sent a wave of spirit power directly to the purple badge pinned on the girl's chest.

"Let's see… Evelyn Knox. A privileged princess of the ancient Knox family. As I expected. Alright, let's see what the affinities of a genius like you look like. Come, it is just right for a privileged brat like you to waste the time for everyone else. Here, channel your spirit power through this stone!"

Evelyn couldn't help but get a bad feeling as soon as she saw the red stone. 'Don't tell me it's fire, right?'

After all, her affinity for fire element was the lowest.

Unfortunately, her premonition proved to be right, and the old lady didn't let go of the chance to mock her at all.

"Thirty percent! As expected of trash! I mean 'genius'! Ahahaha!"

There were a few mocking chuckles from the students, and Evelyn spotted the group with Rufus, as well as another strange group that she hadn't seen in any of the other classes before.

It wasn't much of a surprise that she didn't know them, though, since apart from the introductory classes, all the other years would also be mixed together with them. Perhaps they were just upper year students, though they looked the same age.

With the old lady's attitude, it was no surprise to Evelyn why none of the older students had shown up for her class.

She had no intention to let the old lady keep mocking her, professor or not. "Fire element is my worst affinity, I've already had them tested. Besides, affinity does not—"

Augury clapped, interrupting her with a grin. "Alright! Give this one a go, then, I'll give you another chance to prove that you're not trash."

Evelyn knew with just a look at the half-transparent green stone that it must be for testing wind affinity.

Even if she could have passed off the first one as a coincidence, there was no way that this 'Madam Augury' managed to pick out two of her worst affinities to demonstrate in front of everyone just like that.

Evelyn knew that this whole show was just a farce that the woman had probably already planned out, though she couldn't guess her intentions. 'It's not hard for her to get a hold of my affinities. They were tested publicly during my ceremony, after all. And for a professor to get a hold of my name and other details can't be that hard, either…'

Just the fact that this woman dared to call Amber a worthless piece of trash had already put her on Evelyn's list of scum, but she clearly seemed intent to climb to the top of that list, targeting her like this.

Evelyn had no intention of cooperating to let the woman humiliate herself further, and turned around to leave with a huff.

"Hey, who allowed you to go?"

The door to the room closed itself with a bang, and Evelyn turned around, her brows furrowed in displeasure. "You clearly have something against me, and I doubt you have any intention or capability of teaching me anything anyway, so I would rather leave than waste my time—"

The old lady gave her a cold look as she stomped her foot on the ground, the resounding boom immediately turning the whole room silent. "Hey brat, who allowed you to talk like that to me? Be grateful that I don't do corporeal punishments, or a piece of trash like you would have been a smear on the floor already. Don't forget your place!"

Evelyn's mouth had snapped shut the moment the old lady stomped her foot, and she couldn't open it even if she wanted to. 'T-This woman!'

Helpless, she could only take out the ribbon that Aurora had given her earlier in case she was in trouble, but the old lady just waved her hands with a smile. "Hey now, don't show that to me, what am I supposed to do with it? Just take your seat and listen. Maybe even trash like you can learn something."

Amber squeezed her hand as the two of them helplessly took the backbench. With the door closed, there was nowhere they could go anyway.

Madam Augury didn't pay the two of them any attention. In fact, she didn't pay any attention to anyone in the class at all.

Her focus remained entirely on the strange group of ten Evelyn had spotted earlier, eight boys and two girls. The old lady spent the entirety of the class giving them one on one personal guidance in turn.

Each of the students in the group also seemed to be quite well versed in wielding the elements as well. 'Strange…'

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 

Unfortunately, with Aurora not being in the academy, Evelyn couldn't just rush off to her tower to complain, and could only gloomily move to the next class with Amber. 

Of course, Evelyn fully intended to complain about this 'Madam Augury' and everything she had done to Aurora, whether it seemed childish or not. After all, the woman had even dared to ignore Aurora's ribbon. But that would have to wait till her teacher returned.

The rest of the class had probably already reached the hall for 'Physical Combat' class, though the two of them should still be able to get there in time.

The little girl tried her best to cheer her up. "Y-You don't have to take her words to heart! She's just a mean lady! Un."

Evelyn smiled as she squeezed her hand back. "Thank you. You're such a sweet kid."

Amber looked away, feeling a little embarrassed. "W-We're the same age!"

The pink haired girl chuckled. "Right. By the way, did those strange people that Augury focused so much on attend the last class as well?"

The orange eyed girl nodded. "Un. She introduced them as a group, though I don't know their names. Uh, I think they were called 'The Champion's Club' or something?"

Evelyn couldn't help but be curious. "Oh?"

Amber nodded. "Yep, Madam Augury looked very proud when introducing them, and said that compared to worthless trash like us, her champions are a thousand times better."

The pink haired girl nodded. 'Going by their skills in manipulating elements, it looks like she's been training them for a while. And none of them look like they have spirit physiques either, which is just strange.'

Evelyn felt a little regretful that she hadn't managed to probe them before Augury cast that restriction on her to make her shut up, thus also preventing her use of spirit power for the rest of the class.

'Well, doesn't matter. Since they are more or less the same age, it shouldn't be possible for them to be higher level than myself. In fact, they should be at a significantly lower level. I don't believe many people have artifacts that can block my skill, and if my guess is correct… I should be able to see what's so special about them soon enough.'

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 

~ To be continued ~

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━