Jeremy slowly turned to look at Lucius, the corner of his lips turning up, his voice dropping low, carrying a distinct level of determination: "I refuse. You go and sit in this captain’s seat yourself."
"No way." Lucius lightly shook his head, his enchanting phoenix eyes sweeping over the three people sitting on the stone steps, his tone half-joking and extremely rogue: "In short, it’s decided like this, does everyone have any objections?"
The three of them simultaneously kept silent as clams, the atmosphere so quiet that even the sound of the wind blowing through the treetops could be heard clearly—an absolute tacit agreement to push this heavy burden onto someone else’s shoulders.
Jeremy shot a sharp glare at the young man possessing a harmless, angelic appearance next to him, sneering inwardly.
He thought he was a docile white rabbit, but it turned out he was a bewitching demonic fox.
The captain’s seat?
Alright. Jeremy also wanted to see if these seemingly innocent teammates of his would, on some future day, regret having personally handed the power of life and death over to him.
Jeremy shrugged, decisively accepting the offer: "Since Lucius insists on trusting me so much, then I have no choice but to obey respectfully."
"..."
Seemingly not expecting an arrogant young master who had just had his engagement broken off to accept this position so easily, a flash of contemplation flickered in the depths of Lucius’s eyes. He quickly withdrew his emotions, curving his lips into a smile: "Thank you, Captain~"
Two hours after finalizing the captain’s position, the five of them, under the guidance of an instructor in charge, had to stride around touring the entire core area of the academy, while simultaneously being forced to listen to the recitation of thousands of harsh disciplinary rules...
It wasn’t until the sun had completely set that they finally escaped the exhausting string of procedures to return to the dormitory area.
Each freshman combat squad was granted independent use of an entire floor, and the various living amenities were fully equipped to the point of luxury. The allocation of private rooms was arranged internally by each squad, with the area of each room being about fifty square meters.
After completing fingerprint and magic power binding, these rooms would become the students’ absolute personal fortresses. Before graduation, only the owner could use their mark to unlock the magic lock and step inside. This was the highest level of privacy protection this aristocratic academy offered its students.
Jeremy randomly chose a room at the corner of the corridor and strode inside. The biggest difference between this place and high-end modern apartments was that all the interior equipment was integrated with extremely convenient automated magic tools.
The room was arranged neatly and masculine, featuring a living room, a bedroom, a separate bathroom, a small kitchen area, and a spacious balcony overlooking the clock tower. All spaces were completely soundproofed.
Although living on the same floor, the entrance to each person’s room maintained a certain distance. Jeremy was extremely satisfied with this privacy. No one bothered anyone else, life was easier to breathe that way.
After taking a shower and washing his hair, Jeremy threw on loose, comfortable pajamas and dropped onto the soft bed. Just as he closed his eyes preparing to rest, the magic ID card placed on the headboard suddenly lit up, automatically projecting a screen floating in mid-air.
He glanced over.
A notification to join a communication group?
Jeremy reached out to pull the pillow propping his back, sat up, and tapped on the chat frame that had just popped up. The group member list displayed six people. Aside from those four bizarre teammates, there was an unfamiliar account named "Griffin Heillman".
The group name was concisely set: [Class 659].
So it was a class group...
Right then, a message was sent.
Griffin: [I am your direct guiding instructor for the next six years. The training schedule has been sent to the group, anyone is forbidden from being late tomorrow morning.]
Jeremy rummaged through the information from the novel. Indeed, according to academy regulations, every special squad would be assigned a separate guiding instructor to supervise practical combat.
But there was a massive discrepancy: In the entire content of the book he had read, neither these four teammates nor this instructor named Griffin had ever been mentioned even once.
If he remembered correctly, there was no aristocratic family in the capital’s high society bearing these surnames. It was highly likely they were just declining aristocrats from remote borders or the empire’s colonies.
The other members in the chat group quickly spoke up. As if having colluded beforehand, those four simultaneously sent exactly two words: [Received].
Jeremy typed out a similar confirmation message, then casually opened the schedule file Griffin had just attached to check the times.
The first line displayed: 06:00 AM, the entire squad gathers at training ground number 4.
Six in the morning... The time was a bit early, but still within his tolerance level. After all, in his previous life, before being dragged into an exhausting cycle of overwork at the company, he had also gone through a grueling university entrance exam preparation period where he had to crawl out of bed at five in the morning to grab his books and head to school...
Jeremy slid his finger downward, intending to skim through the daily schedule before turning off the device to sleep.
However, the very next moment, the lines of text with horrifying content hit him right in the eyes, making his movements stall completely:
[06:00 - 08:30: Maximum physical endurance test.]
[09:00 - 12:00: Agility reflex training bearing 5 times gravity.]
[13:30 - 16:00: Pressure challenge to break through spiritual power limits.]
[16:30 - 19:00: Physical tempering in extreme elemental resistance environment.]
[19:30 - 21:30: Practical survival combat in the Slaughter Illusion.]
[22:00 - 23:00: Summary and actual magical combat sparring.]
Line after line tore apart the definition of a normal learning environment, flooding his vision in a way that made one doubt life.
Jeremy’s sleepiness vanished completely in a single beat.
This... was this insane pile of things really the class schedule for first-year freshmen?
If his memory of the novel wasn’t distorted, the freshmen belonging to the male lead Amber’s Zenith faculty during their entire first week of enrollment only had to sit in air-conditioned rooms listening to basic magic theory lectures.
Why was it that upon switching to the Anima faculty, the schedule became this perverted?
Could this be the difference between a direct combat faculty and a theoretical faculty?
Jeremy stared fixedly at the schedule projected on the virtual screen, carefully calculating: The training time extended continuously from six in the morning until eleven at night, practically suffocating all human resting gaps.
Even at the bottom corner, there was a warning line attached in bright red text: [Students failing to meet the daily quota will be forced to increase night training duration indefinitely until the requirements are met.]
It seemed the classic saying "cram-style education to death" was perfectly suited to apply to this class. He thought escaping clinical death in the old world to transmigrate into a book was stepping onto a new page in life, who would have expected it to be stepping straight into the gates of hell...
Jeremy rubbed his face, calmly turning off the virtual screen. He lay down, pulling the blanket up to his chest, crossed his hands over his stomach, slowly closing his eyes to prepare to enter sleep with a mindset ready to embrace death tomorrow morning.
Forget it, no matter how much these trivial physical training exercises tortured someone, at least they wouldn’t cause immediate death on the spot.
"..."
Wait a minute... how exactly did the character Jeremy Valmont end up dying in the original book?