I CHOSE to be a VILLAIN, not a THIRD-RATE EXTRA!!-Chapter 225: Mana Control Training(4)

"Without any further questions…" Frederick dragged out the word, his tone carrying an edge of amusement, "…let us begin with the test."

The smile on his face widened, the kind that discouraged anyone from even thinking of raising their hand again. 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚

Frederick's eyes briefly lingered on Adlet.

Truth be told, he had fully expected that scheming brat to be the loudest protester, perhaps even the one to push back with clever words.

Yet since stepping into the classroom, Adlet hadn't uttered a single word. That silence irritated Frederick more than open rebellion as this unpredictable nature different from the other students was what it irked the most.

'So, this over-smart brat thinks he has me figured out,' thought Frederick, amusement glittering in his eyes.

'Just because he swindled me once, got his grubby hands on some trinkets[a Silver Pass and a few credits(originally meant to be given to students with the highest performance not to be barter with some tales)] he believes I'm someone to toy with.

Hmph! That arrogance will not last. It's about time he learns a proper lesson on how to respect elders.'

His lips curled into a knowing smile, and to everyone watching, it seemed warm. To Ashok, however, it was anything but.

'Ugh, if this were my previous world, I'd have already called the police on this perverted geezer,' Ashok thought sourly, eyes narrowing.

'That smile… it's no different from those wrinkled old men ogling at college girls from park benches while commenting on their clothes. The exact same creepy and lecherous energy.'

Frederick, of course, only basked in his own thoughts, enjoying the unease that radiated through the room. He tapped the armrest of his chair then said, his voice slow and deliberate, "The first question is…"

His eyes roamed across the five students, carefully weighing their reactions, letting the tension build before the test even began.

"Why did you choose this class?" Frederick asked.

"Each of you will answer on your own. Don't bother with the obvious rubbish—'to improve my mana control' or 'to raise my mana sensitivity'—save me the boredom."

Then he fixed them with that calculating look.

"You're all mages, so I expect at least a sliver of common sense. You know as well as I do that improvement in Mana Sensitivity and Control, especially, Control aren't things you pick up overnight. They don't bloom from a single lecture or two.

If it was some short term growth it is better to pick some elixirs from the market believe me, of all the students who have attended this class show signs of basic improvement by one or two years and this was something mentioned in the Manuals of your class Selection." His tone sharpened.

"So spare me the platitudes. I have very little patience for nonsense."

Frederick's face hardened. "If your answers don't meet the standard—if they're foolish or shallow—the least I'll do is remove you from this class. Permanently." He paused, and the classroom chilled at the implication.

Then, without finishing the sentence, he lifted a hand in a slow, deliberate motion.

At the center of his palm a small furnace of flame erupted. Around the blaze, thin arcs of electricity crawled and braided into the shape of a snake, writhing between his fingers.

Tiny sparks spat and hissed where the currents met the air, and the faint crackle of power made several students flinch.

The sight of fire and lightning merging into that living serpent was enough to freeze the room.

The two Wyrd students at the back trembled, their lips twitching as if they wanted to cry out but couldn't.

Even Althea and Isolde, who were usually calm, flinched as the faint memory of last night's storm echoed in their minds. The rolling thunder, the blinding flashes raging down in the garden area of the dormitory—it was still raw.

And now here was Frederick, smiling with that cruel calm, as if he had bottled the storm itself just to toy with them.

"Let's start with you," Frederick said, his voice almost casual.

The fiery snake that had been coiled around his hand suddenly leapt forward, its hiss sharp enough to make the hair on the back of necks stand.

In an instant it grew larger the moment it left Frederick's hands, flames licking against scales of crackling lightning, until it started circling around the neck of one of the Wyrd students.

The poor boy froze, eyes wide, as the serpent hovered there, not choking but pressing close enough that every breath reminded him of how fragile his throat really was.

The student squirmed in his seat, twitching like a pig waiting for the butcher's knife, while Frederick simply watched, amused.

Ashok bit his lip barley holding back the urge to laugh out aloud. 'This old man… when it comes to tormenting students, he really is unmatched compared to all the other teachers even Griselda lacks in front of him'.

Watching the Wyrd boy twist in terror was almost too much; if Frederick had dragged him into an empty room, Ashok was sure the kid would already have pissed himself.

"I don't have all day," Frederick snapped, his tone sharp and unforgiving, dragging the student's mind back from the brink of panic.

The student flinched, his breath catching as the reality of the moment crashed down on him like a tidal wave.

"Um… Um… I… I… M-My name…" the student stammered, his voice barely more than a whisper, trembling as he struggled to form coherent words and started from his introduction.

The serpent—forged from crackling lightning —slithered languidly around his neck, its body pulsing with electric energy. Each movement sent a jolt of terror through the boy's spine. The snake's eyes glowed like twin embers, and its presence was suffocating, a constant reminder of the danger he was in.

The student's fingers twitching as he tried to summon the courage to speak, but the words came out fractured, broken by fear.

"I don't need the name of someone who's moments away from death," Frederick growled, his voice low and venomous. "Just. The. Answer."

The command was absolute, and the pressure intensified as the serpent tightened its grip, sparks dancing across its scales.

Frederick's silhouette seemed to loomed larger in his mind.

"I… want… I did… I picked…" the student's thoughts spiraled into chaos, his mind unraveling under the crushing weight of expectation and fear.

He couldn't think, couldn't breathe, couldn't remember why he was even there. Forget about giving the answer he at this point was regretting even coming to this class.

Every time he tried to focus, his gaze was drawn back to the serpent—its fangs ablaze with fire, its body a living conduit of thunder.

The creature's blank stare was hypnotic, paralyzing, erasing every coherent thought from his mind.

The student's eyes darted frantically between Frederick and the serpent, his pupils wide with desperation, silently begging for mercy.

His lips moved, but the sounds that escaped were fragmented—half-formed syllables drowned in panic, barely audible over the low hum of the thunder-serpent's coils.

Frederick, unmoved, his gaze sharp and unrelenting.

He offered no comfort, no reprieve—only a subtle tilt of his head, urging the student to speak faster, to comply. But the pressure was too much for the first studnet.

The serpent's body constricted again but still did not touch the neck, and with a soft gasp. His consciousness slipped away like sand through trembling fingers.

As the student collapsed, the serpent ceased its circling, hovering just above him like a storm cloud frozen in place as it twirled it body.

The boy hit the ground with a dull thud, limbs limp, eyes rolled back into his skull.

Silence fell over the room, broken only by the faint crackle of residual electricity dancing along the serpent's scales.

Every student watched the unconscious student, even Althea and Isolde felt pity for this student after all they had already realized that it was not their fault that this crazy man was their teacher.

Both of them could feel the intense amount of mana coming from the Snake formed under the mix of Fire and Thunder Element and they still fail to understand just how did a Meditative type class turn into something like this.

Then came the sigh—soft, deliberate, and unmistakably disappointed. Heads turned toward its source.

Frederick now held a thick, leather-bound book.

With a fluid motion, he drew a straight line across the page using a pen that glowed with a cold, blue flame.

"Failures, Year after Year only failures," he muttered, his voice devoid of emotion, as if pronouncing a routine verdict.

The book vanished in a flicker of light, and with a snap of his fingers, so did the unconscious student—erased from the room as if he had never existed.

Frederick's gaze shifted, now settling on the Wyrd student seated beside the one who had just been dismissed from existence. The remaining student sat rigid, his face pale, his hands clenched tightly in his lap.

"On your way back, make sure to remind your friend in the Infirmary that he need not appear in this class anymore." The words hung in the air, heavy and irreversible.

"Though I wonder how will you relay the message if you wake up after your friend," Frederick said, his voice low and deliberate, slicing through the silence like a blade through silk, "because it's your turn next."

The words hung in the air, heavy with finality, and before the student could even part his lips to respond, the serpent had already moved. In a blur of crackling light and sizzling energy, the thunder-snake leapt from midair and started circling itself around the student's neck with terrifying precision.