The Arrayist

Chapter 10: Failure

The next day

After the first class ended, Lia was feeling blue. She found out things about their teacher Dina from a friend within the Martial faction.

Of course the well informed Windle knew it from the very beginning. He wanted to take Dina's class because she was also the teacher for elementalist class. He secretly dragged his two friends with him without their knowledge and had no clue what he did.

"I wish I knew earlier.. Why did we have to pick that class" Lia was full of regret

Even though it has only been 2 classes so far she had heard all of the rumors that went around within Dina's classes. Monthly tests, extra lessons if you scored below 90%, bullying and harassment of the students if you kept the class back, even some mandatory classes during the weekends. It was too horrible.

Before they attended the academy, their lives were mostly free was a bird, they had all the free time in the world for themselves and now, with this extremely "motivated" teacher, they might even lose more free time

"Ugh..." Lia was despondent


"Its not all bad, cheer up" Teo tried to cheer her up


"That's right, as long as we don't slack off, it should be easy getting 90% even 100%" Windle joined in


"We are 3 people, if we work together, I'm sure it'll be easy" Teo reassured Lia


Lia's eyes became watery, she was feeling despair but her two friends were there for her "You guys..." She was touched. She had a new found hope! She will not get below 90!


....


As Lia separated from them to attend her other elective class, Windle and Teo started heading to their elementalist class


As they walked, people along the way seemed to be whispering things while staring at Teo

"Look its him, hes the one right?"

"I'm not sure, from the description it might be him"

....

Once they arrived at the elementalists class, they suddenly had the attention of everyone in class.

"Look its the purist" someone whispered

The arrogant blonde Kristofer suddenly smiled in disdain.

"Ha Ha Look who it is, its the most famous man on campus" Kristofer said loudly, not bothering to hide his ridicule for Teo

"Is he even allowed to be here? Isnt he just a non-elementalists? He he" Ash, the brown haired youth within the group also followed

"What a failure!" the blonde young lady Erin added

Some laughter erupted among the students

Teo was unaffected, it was like he was in his own little world.

Windle knew what the other kids were implying, but after seeing Teo unaffected, he also didn't show any reaction.

They moved towards the same seat they had last class.

The mockery eventually died down. Only the arrogant group was still laughing, opening mocking Teo. They had a bad impression of Teo from the very first day. Teo stole the limelight that they were suppose to have but it turns out that he was trash

Seeing the unmoved Teo, their disdain increased more.

But soon, Dina walked into the center of the circular auditorium

"Looks like everyone is here, I hope everyone brought their elemental stones. We will be starting the exercise on feeling the energy from the stones"

"Everyone bring out one elemental stone and place it in your hands"

After everyone had one in their hands, Dina continued "Okay now close your eyes and try to feel the pulse coming from your hand"

Dina saw her students closing their eyes and trying to sense the elemental energy, while she was looking through her students she saw that some of the students were already at the Gathering stages. In particular, Grifford, Zachery, Kristofer and Erin.

'As expected, they have some skills to be arrogant' She then looked at Ash from the group. She could sense that although he was still in the Sensing stage, he was not too far off to move to the next stage

Teo closed his eyes and tried to feel the pulse of the elemental stone

With his eyes closed, seeing only darkness, he could smell the grass in the surrounding area, he could hear the wind blowing through his hair and skin. Slowly one by one he tries to focus on his pulse, eventually blocking sounds that coming from his ear and the wind that is touching his skin

-Badump- -Badump- -Badump-

He could hear his heart beating. He was feeling his heartbeat through his flesh, feeling them through his veins and blood..

The sound started soft and eventually gets louder... it became clearer as if nothing else existed in the world besides his heart beating

-Badump- -Badump- -Badump- -Badump- -Badump- -Badump-

Suddenly, another pulse appeared...

'Is it this easy to feel its pulse?' he thought as his mind wandered

-Badump- -Badump- -Badump- -Badump- -Badump- -Badump-

The second pulse continued, and got louder and clearer but he suddenly noticed something was wrong

He could easily tell where the source, One pulse was coming from his heart, the other was a few inches away from his heart...

-Badump- -Badump- -Badump- -Badump- -Badump- -Badump-

'Is it the Mr Cien's pulse?' he figured

How can this possibly be? Wouldn't listening to the elemental pulse become so much harder with another pulse here?

He continued to listen, 5 minutes passed... 10 minutes passed... 1 hour passed... nothing.. The two pulses were too loud he could not hear anything else

Cien recalled back what happened last night..

.....

"100 questions, lets see if you can answer any of them" that smile on the old man's face was full of confidence, it was as if he already won

"Lets start with an easy one. What symbols are related to using fire elemental energy?"

Teo was speechless, he thought it was a 1 question 1 answer format, he didn't expect that this old man was so shrewd that he wanted a list of answers for 1 question.

Teo started drawing on the ground 18 different symbols then looked at the old man

"Not bad, your memory is pretty good. Next which set of shapes are compatible with these 4 symbols" ...

"What is the meaning of this shape"....

"What would you do if this symbol was placed in the lower part of the array...."

"What does this symbol do?"...

He kept asking questions more and more. After the 74th question Teo had gotten 3 wrong, and 71 correct.

The questions kept getting harder and harder all containing information on the first quarter part of the book. The first quarter of the book consisted on the introduction of the flow of energy and a complete set of shapes and symbols. It even had symbols not known to modern world, such ancient symbols could unlock a whole field of study within the empire.

The old man Cien was getting flustered. He didn't expect that this 10 year old youth's memory and comprehension to be at this very high level, but in reality, only Teo's comprehension was outstanding; memorization was not his strong suit, the only reason why it seemed like his memory was top tier was because he repeatedly continued to re-reading the content. Since he could not bring any other books into this world inside the shell, he just kept re-reading it over and over again. His persistence and concentration with his comprehension made him answer all these difficult questions that Cien brought up.

"Which pattern would you use if you had to use these specific symbols?" Cien was desperate, he needed 18 wrong answers while Teo only needed to answer 9 questions correctly.

"I don't know" Teo said

"HA! finally got you!" Cien was ecstatic, he after consecutive correct answers he finally found a question where Teo was clueless with

"But Mr. Cein, there are no mentions of patterns in the first quarter of the book" Teo quickly rebuked

When Cien heard this his face fell, he quickly grabbed the book and flipped through the pages. It was exactly as Teo said, the section on patterns was on the next section of the book. His face turned red with embarrassment, Teo didn't know that the one who wrote this book was Cien himself. He actually forgot the contents of the thing he authored.

After a while Cien calmed himself and turned to Teo -cough- "Good, I see you were paying attention. It was an intentional trick question and you pointed out very well as expected! Now lets move on to the next question"

He quickly directed Teo's attention to the next question but soon the tests was over.

The final results was not a surprise. Teo answered 80 questions correctly while only have 5 wrong answers. Cien lost to Teo and failed miserably.

....

After 4 hours the class ended

Teo had no luck at feeling out the pulse

"Teo how did you do?" Windle beside him with a brow full of sweat

"No luck today, I'll try again later in my cave. How about you?" Teo replied

"I could sense it quiet a bit, I guess I'm luckier than you" Windle said jokingly. He knew the reason why there was a difference in results. It was because he was a specialists with very high growth rate, while Teo was at the end of the other side of the spectrum.

'Mr Cien do you know a way to easily get through these stages?' Teo mentally sent a message to the old man Cien. Since he had won the test last night it would be a waste not to take advantage of it.

The old man within the inner world had a face of regret 'This is gonna be a pain in the ass' he thought to himself