"Hey, _."
"Hi, _."
"Morning, _."
"Hey there, _."
"How's it going, _?"
"You doing okay, _?"
"Good morning, _."
"Good to see you, _."
"Hey, _—how are you?"
"Hi, _—everything good?"
"Hey, _, _, _, _, and _."
"Morning—how's your day going, _?"
"Hey, _—ready for class?"
…
This social maintenance is profoundly taxing.
The sounds of conversation dwindled and ceased by the time the clock read "08:00".
"Welcome back, Honor Class."
"We commence with an assessment. Clear your desks. Begin immediately upon receiving the material."
His two aides traveled through the aisles, placing six sheets of paper, each filled with lines of text, from top to bottom.
"You are allotted twenty minutes."
Arthur's eyes scanned, for moments, the papers as they were served on his desk. And the peaks of where lies spill, moved in opposite to his eyes, devilishly.
The voice in his head was absent as he flew through the papers.
A rudimentary assessment. Entirely free-response, and statistically elementary. The initial section was mere repetition of previous data, while the latter focused on yesterday's lecture.
Will this be a daily metric? An inferior intellect might struggle, but this poses no threat.
Assuming Dunwell and I secure flawless marks, a daily quiz structure will systematically isolate my ranking at the apex.
He shifted his gaze upon hearing something like a "snap" sound.
Though his eyes knew they were looking for a broken pencil, likely held in one's hand, he became distracted by a bright red ball; no, a bright red head of hair.
Using manual override, he looked where he planned, and as it turned out, the pencil was broken and held in his hand.
With this manual override, and his surplus of time, he found that the people around him changed, and that he only needed to turn his head lightly to the left to see him fully.
Vulivar. He entered last and deliberately minimized his interaction with me.
He was definitively not seated in that proximity yesterday; my spatial memory is absolute. The seating is unassigned, yet a distinct anomaly has occurred.
Why are the only vacancies adjacent to me?
Am I being actively ostracized? Cedric's social data indicates universal positive relations.
This localized behavioral shift is illogical. Their mean intelligence quotient is slightly elevated, but insufficient to deduce my true identity.
What variable am I missing? They are closer to Cedric. Empathy.
They are actively manufacturing physical distance to mirror what they perceive as my emotional distance.
Fascinating. They are behaving exactly as inferior, emotionally compromised subjects should.
This is empirical evidence of my successful manipulation, not a threat.
Still, I must monitor this hypothesis. Control over this collective requires absolute certainty.
His eyes continued to function in silence while his mind fermented in absurdity, but he was so taken aback by the continued absurdity, that he was forced to:
Vulivar... how does a mind so fundamentally deficient continue to function?
The papers on his desk were laid out openly, neither obstructing another, as if it was being presented to a standing reader to read. But there was no one there.
Every single recorded response is factually incorrect.
Arthur quickly turned back to his own test upon recalling the memory of a scene familiar to this.
His solo neutralization of an intruder was a statistical outlier for a Rank 9.
However, if he consistently achieves a score of absolute zero on all academic metrics, yet maintains a top-ten placement, his combat parameters must be extraordinarily high.
A martial genius entirely devoid of intellectual capacity. The absolute optimal pawn.