Chapter 1213 – Evaluating Feedback

Jake woke up a few hours later, having gotten in a good nap to recharge his mind. He still felt oddly tired, but he reckoned things would return to normal sooner rather than later. One thing was for sure: teaching that lesson had taken far more out of Jake than he had expected, and he definitely found life-and-death battles far less stressful.

But, Jake also had to admit that he felt proud of himself for having gone through with it. He even felt that it had gone better than expected, though he had definitely messed up by going overtime by nearly two full hours. Now that he had time to think about it more, he really hoped that none of the students present had other classes planned that they missed and only stayed out of politeness.

As the Chosen of the Malefic Viper, he also knew that no one dared to act normal around Jake, especially not regular students of the Academy and members of the Order. Even if they had other pressing matters, they would have likely stayed out of pure politeness, a thought that only made Jake feel even worse.

The more he thought about it, the more he dreaded looking at the recording he’d made of the entire auditorium. It was taken with the objective of allowing Jake to review if he had made any mistakes, but also so he could see the genuine reactions of the students after he left.

Jake took a deep breath as he checked his token and saw that the recording was still ongoing, as Jake hadn’t stopped it. As a side note, lessons usually couldn’t be recorded, as teachers didn’t want them to be spread illegally, but Jake had easily broken this rule with the Viper’s help to set up so he could record the entire auditorium at once.

Checking the most recent part of the recording, Jake saw that a few new students he didn’t recognize were now in the auditorium, making him realize they were there for a new lesson that was about to begin shortly.

Stopping the recording instantly, Jake began scrolling back. He had to focus to take everything in; the recording wasn’t anything as simple as having a camera on the wall, but was instead a full three-dimensional scan of the entire auditorium, picking up every sound and movement made by every person present. It was a lot to process, but with the mind of a C-grade, it wasn’t that bad.

After a couple of minutes, Jake was finally back to the time right as he left the auditorium. He watched himself say his final words- cringing at the sound of his own voice all throughout — as he mentally prepared himself for what the many students would do once the teacher left the room.

If he went by his own days as a student, half of them would be gone within thirty seconds, storming out the door to freedom. Jake halfway expected to see something similar, but instead, no one seemed to do much for several seconds after Jake left.

The entire auditorium was oddly silent as the majority of the students even had their eyes closed. A few had movements of mana around them, while others had small magic circles summoned on the ground right in front of them.

It took nearly a full minute before the first person spoke. It was two scalekin who entered each other’s sections and began speaking while isolating sound – something Villy’s incredibly intrusive surveillance technique effortlessly ignored.

Jake nervously listened to their words as the first one asked the other about his thoughts. To his relief, the second scalekin expressed that while he didn’t believe what was taught fit into his Path, he’d still found the experience incredibly enlightening, something the other one instantly agreed with.

Still feeling nervous, Jake focused on the second conversation that took place, this one between three different students. They discussed the contents of the lesson, and one of them even began bragging about how he totally understood exactly how to do it, but just lacked the necessary stats. Nothing negative about Jake, though.

He continued peeking, and despite feeling a little creepy for doing so, Jake kept watching the recording for another hour to see all the reactions he could. To his genuine surprise, no one said anything negative at all, with many even mentioning how the lesson turned out to be a lot better than expected, with even more excitedly clamoring at the fact that it had dragged out.

Of course, it was entirely possible some of them were feeling less than positive, but just kept it to themselves. Jake expected this to be the case for a few, with the main suspects amongst those who left the earliest.

Not everyone had acquaintances in the auditorium or made fast friends during the lead-up, so they left pretty quickly, many of them with looks on their faces Jake couldn’t quite tell if represented a good or bad experience.

Overall, as Jake reached the end of the recording and everything he wanted to see, he felt even more proud of himself for how well the lesson had been received. Seeing them actually discussing the subject of the lesson itself and not just that Jake was the teacher, though there was still a lot of that, told Jake he had done something right. Hopefully, they had all benefited greatly and would look back on it with positive memories in the future.

However, Jake did notice one small potential problem. He noticed that every single person he’d given a reward token during the lesson was approached afterwards with placating words and big smiles. They all seemed to have the same goal in mind, too:

To buy the token Jake had gifted.

In his defense, Jake had seen something like this coming, which was why he had settled on those tokens as the rewards. He wanted the rewards to be meaningful but also not too valuable to make others want to rob them, which was also why he had the Viper ensure that the second the recipients got their tokens, all the points within would instantly be absorbed into their Academy Tokens.

This would, at least in Jake’s mind, mean that the tokens were more or less useless. He still wanted the tokens for the theatrics of handing them out, as just waving his hand and saying something had received a bunch of tokens would have looked lame.

What Jake hadn’t taken into account was that the people wanting to buy the tokens didn’t care that they were now inert but wanted the physical objects themselves. These tokens were just small circular stones with a diameter of a finger with a carving on them, nothing more.

Yet people were hounded to sell these useless tokens… which only made Jake feel weirder when not a single person agreed to sell, but held onto the weird stone as if it were a priceless heirloom.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Alright, sure, Jake had guessed some people would still care about these tokens and keep them as souvenirs, but he’d definitely underestimated just how much people cared. Granted, it didn’t help that Villy had insisted on carving a unique symbol on each that belonged only to Jake within the Order, but still.

He just hoped people wouldn’t be too weird about the tokens… or get into unnecessary trouble because of them.

—

“It didn’t disappear,” Vendoli said with wide eyes as he stared at the object in the female beastkin’s hand.

“No,” Chalette said, a massive grin on her face as she held the small token the Chosen of the Malefic One had personally handed her.

“Have you-“

“Hundreds of messages already,” Chalette answered, already knowing what Vendoli wanted to know.

“You can’t really blame them,” the human sighed. “I take it you’re keeping it?”

“My dad would literally kill me if I sold it off, and I’m pretty sure he’s already bragged to all extended family by now,” the beastkin grinned as she kept admiring the token. It didn’t look that impressive, but it had a unique design with the motif carved on it, like the robes the Chosen had worn.

Vendoli was a little surprised at hearing how fast her dad had moved, seeing as it was only a couple of hours after the lesson had concluded, but then again, he understood the excitement, and he would probably also have called everyone he knew to brag if he’d been given a token. Not that it would have been that many, as he wasn’t exactly close to his family.

“I haven’t even asked you yet!” Chalette suddenly said as if she’d just remembered. “Did you get anything out of the lesson? I’m not gonna lie, I’m pretty sure I only managed to succeed because of my high Perception.”

As the descendant of an avian beast that focused on Perception, Chalette naturally had a high stat, and coupled with her already being pretty good at formation in the first place, Vendoli couldn’t help but agree that she had been particularly suited for this lesson.