Companions and Enemies

"Come on, no matter how much you study, you'll still be the same."

"Big Dumb is gone, so Second Dumb gets promoted to Big Dumb. You can change your name to Second Dumb now."

"Hahaha..."

Several students in ornate robes gleefully taunted Suye.

Suye ignored them, but thought to himself, "Little brats, you'd better rein it in. Don't piss me off."

He couldn't be bothered to argue with them and kept his head down, reading.

The others craned their necks to see Suye's book, found he had it in privacy mode, curled their lips, and continued their jeering and horseplay.

But their gazes kept drifting to the girl on Suye's right side, who was reading with her head down.

To Suye's left was Hote. Even when called Big Dumb or Second Dumb, he didn't get angry, just kept smiling cheerfully.

The main reason they didn't dare mock Hote too much was that the upperclassmen at school had all been his former classmates.

Seeing Suye ignore them, one male student reached out and flicked Suye's head hard.

Suye frowned and looked up, recognizing the grinning boy. His name was Horton, and he'd often mocked Suye before.

Horton shook his light blond hair, his smile looking harmless.

The boy who'd dropped out had been thoroughly humiliated by Horton.

Suye remembered that when he'd walked into class late that morning, it was Horton who'd first called him "Third Dumb."

"Stop pretending. Everyone's having fun, what are you reading for?" Horton said, smiling at Suye.

Suye replied calmly, "My grades were bad before, but now I want to study. We're all classmates, there's no need for this."

With that, Suye lowered his head and continued browsing the new semester's curriculum.

Horton and the others found it boring. They stopped openly provoking Suye, but kept subtly disrupting him, whispering about his embarrassing moments from last year.

Due to the interference, Suye's emotions wavered a bit. It wasn't until the second class began and the teacher appeared that he could quietly keep reading.

During this class, he kept categorizing the remaining courses.

The foreign language courses were all too difficult. Suye wasn't ready to touch them yet and directly put them into "Uninteresting and Difficult."

Magic Mathematics and Magic Geometry seemed related to math and geometry, but actually required a lot of magical knowledge—two comprehensive subjects. Suye flipped through them and put them straight into "Interesting and Difficult."

His eyes lit up when his gaze landed on the table of contents for Meditation Class.

Meditation was a core course! It was a common path for both mages and warriors to increase their power, though mages needed longer meditation time since they didn't refine divine power and bloodlines.

Suye already had plenty of meditation experience and believed that after learning Plato Academy's meditation methods, his progress would far surpass his classmates.

He quickly skimmed the meditation content, and the disappointment on his face grew heavier.

It turned out that, excluding the precursor of magic—witchcraft—humans had only mastered magic for less than three hundred years.

One hundred and twenty-six years ago, Thales, known as the Father of Magic, discovered the secret of meditation. It had been passed down since then, but compared to other systems, it was still rather thin.

Most magic could be traced to fixed patterns. Different people using it only varied in power and detail, with no qualitative difference.

Meditation was different. No one had found a meditation method that suited everyone.

So, the content of Meditation Class was particularly unsystematic, full of vague and ambiguous statements.

Suye was very disappointed.

Back when he'd studied meditation, he'd first learned "mindfulness" from psychology. While mindfulness couldn't be called strictly scientific, it was definitely the most scientific approach within the meditation system.

Building on mindfulness, Suye had continuously learned other meditation techniques, and his meditation ability grew more and more solid.

After his disappointment, Suye felt it was understandable. After all, this world's meditation history was too short—only a little over a hundred years. On Blue Star, the meditation system had developed over at least two thousand years, aided by technological research. Even so, Blue Star's understanding of mindfulness meditation wasn't fully comprehensive and was still deepening.

Though the meditation class content was mediocre, Suye still put it into "Interesting and Easy."

Finally, Suye assigned all the new courses to the four quadrants. The result was clear at a glance, exceptionally organized.

The courses belonging to "Interesting and Easy" were Basic Magic Study, Talent Study, Magic History, Sacrifice Study, and Meditation Class.

Basic Magic Study and Magic History were the foundation, mostly knowledge that needed memorization, giving a comprehensive understanding of magic. Suye was very interested.

Talent Study and Sacrifice Study were closely tied to the Ruined Space, and Sacrifice Study involved the gods, which also fell within Suye's interests.

As for the other courses, some he was very interested in, but they were too difficult and would need focused study later.

Take Magical Beast Study, for example. It seemed simple on the surface, but was actually a very complex system, with a mountain of specialized terms that gave Suye a headache.

In the end, Suye decided to focus on Mathematics, Geometry, and Greek in the near term, while also finding time to study Basic Magic Study, Talent Study, Magic History, and Sacrifice Study—at least enough to keep up with the teacher's lectures—and to keep practicing meditation.

After making his choice, Suye began to think about whether he should pile on more burdens. After all, he wasn't just behind; it was as if he'd never studied at all.

"Can't be greedy for too much. Take small steps iteratively. If I find these things easy, I'll gradually add more courses. If I try to learn too much at once and run into difficulties or psychological pressure, even if I don't give up entirely, it'll waste a lot of time and energy."

Just then, the bell rang for the end of class.

The classroom immediately grew lively.

Suye did one final check, confirmed his choices were solid, and decided he'd make a detailed study plan later.

Feeling a bit tired, he stood up, stretched long and hard, and broke into a broad smile.

Slap...

Suye felt a faint ache at the back of his head, stars swimming before his eyes.

He had been sitting for so long that his blood circulation was sluggish—even standing up normally could make him see stars. Now, caught off guard by the attack and startled, it was even worse.

"Haha, Three Idiots, finally getting up?" Horton's voice carried across half the classroom.

Suye took a deep breath, slowly turned around, and looked at Horton, who was half a head taller than him.

Horton grinned, arms crossed over his chest, with two equally burly male classmates standing behind him.

Seeing the three of them arrayed like this, Suye suddenly understood—after that other student had dropped out, he had become their new target for bullying.

A flash of a boy crying crossed his mind.

One day last semester, that boy named Pelius had been cornered against a wall, sobbing, and Suye had glanced at him before hurrying away.

Suye couldn't forget the dead leaves Pelius had clutched in his hands, and he now understood why he had dropped out.

Struggling to stay calm, Suye said, "Horton, we're all classmates. I've never offended you, and if you joke around occasionally, I really don't mind. People, after all, just laugh at others and sometimes get laughed at themselves."

The nearby students looked at Suye in surprise when they heard this.

Even the blue-eyed girl lifted her head and glanced over from the side.

Suye met Horton's gaze directly. "But chasing me with mockery after every class, even getting physical—that's really unnecessary. We're classmates at Plato Academy. The teacher said the reason we share desks is so we can become partners, moving forward together in the future, united against outside enemies. We're partners, not enemies."