This was a tiered classroom that could accommodate a hundred people.
Dark wooden benches were arranged in arcs, sloping slightly backward, and were currently filled with first-year freshmen in uniform dark-blue robes.
He swept his gaze around. There were nearly seventy faces—sixty humans, with members of other races scattered among them like sparse flecks of color.
Two Half-Elves with long pointed ears sat ramrod straight. Three petite Halflings sat on specially raised chairs, stretching their necks to look toward the front.
In the same row as them was a Dwarf.
He had simply stood atop his chair, his head only barely level with the others who were seated, yet he wore an expression as though this were the most natural thing in the world. Amid this sea of dark blue, two isolated islands stood out with particular prominence.
Princess Aislin sat by the window in the middle of the classroom, with a vacuum zone formed around her.
Her back was straight, her ice-blue eyes calmly fixed on the lectern, or occasionally lowered to the heavy tome spread before her. Every so often, she jotted down a keyword or two in her notebook. One seat behind and to her side, Ston Ironcrown sat with his eyes closed, resting without expression.
He Xi's gaze passed over the classroom as he rapidly calculated in his mind.
There were seventy freshmen in total. The first-year cohort numbered around two hundred and twenty, making it the second-largest year in the entire academy.
The largest was naturally the second year, with roughly three hundred students.
After all, the basic requirement for advancing to the third year was becoming an official "professional." That threshold barred the vast majority of students, leaving many with no hope of promotion stranded in the second year.
Thus, by the third year,