Shadow Slave novel Chapter 406

Chapter 406 Educated Guess

A couple of hours later, Sunny was ready to claw his eyes out.

Not because the lessons taught to Rain in school were boring, but because he had to watch a bunch of entitled kids exist in an enclosed space and make it as hard for everyone to learn anything as possible.

The elite school seemed like a place of learning, but in fact, it was more like a battlefield. The hidden politics among the students and the hierarchy of numerous cliques they formed were more complex than the ruthless strife between the factions in the Bright Castle, and judging by their behavior, just as dire.

…But it was not.

No one's life was at stake, no one was going to be exiled and starve to death if they did a wrong thing. All of this was simply about prestige, vanity, and standing.

It was utterly stupid!

However, once Sunny thought about it a bit more, he realized that it was not. Not to them, and maybe not at all.

These kids were put under immense pressure, assigned a numerical value, and forced to compete with each other. As the result, they inevitably developed a fierce sense of resentment toward their rivals, which was only made deeper by the deep sense of insecurity this system instilled in them.

No wonder they were at each other's throats.

The school was, in fact, not only meant to teach the kids the skills necessary to survive and thrive in the real world, but also to destroy the very same softness Sunny had pondered about a few hours earlier.

It wasn't hard to imagine that, at the end of it all, the best and most resilient students would become harsh and jaded, while the rest would simply be broken and discarded.

A wasteful system, and one of very questionable effectiveness.

Sipping tea in the quiet cafe, Sunny shook his head.

'Rich people…'

Luckily for him, Rain seemed to be unaffected by the vitriol her classmates seemed to be more interested in than the actual studying. She sat calmly at the back of the class, avoiding getting embroiled in any drama, and dutifully learned everything the teachers explained to the students.

…The lessons themselves, surprisingly, turned out to be very interesting. Sunny even found himself enjoying these hours very much. There had not been any combat lessons yet, but he did manage to catch this school's version of the Wilderness Survival course, as well as listen to a rather intriguing lecture about the early exploration of the Dream Realm. He also saw a lesson dedicated to various Nightmare Creatures, their biology, capabilities, and weaknesses.

If he had known that much during his first months on the Forgotten Shore… well, it would not have changed much, really. No matter how much a person knew about these things, no Sleeper was meant to face challenges of that magnitude.

And yet, he couldn't help but feel a bit wistful. He had been denied access to this treasury of knowledge as a kid. Who knew how his life would have turned out otherwise? It would have been a lot more interesting and enjoyable, at least.

By then, he had some idea of Rain's depth of knowledge and overall readiness for the Nightmare Spell, but he still did not know how well she was really being trained. He had to see her during a lesson in combat for that.

After a while, Sunny had become a little bit bored. Listening to a lecture about spelltech absentmindedly, he looked around the cafe.

At this hour, there weren't a lot of people there, but that was swiftly changing. The white-collar workers from the surrounding buildings were now on their lunch break, as were senior students of the school. Several noisy groups were occupying tables near him, so he couldn't help but catch bits and pieces of their conversations.