22 Spending Points

\"Well, I think you're putting way too much mana into your visualizations Rika.\" Luke replied.

\"I used to be like that when I was born, but I was told that you have to pour in a small fraction of mana that what you actually visualize in order to get the result that you want.\" Luke said while holding a small ball of fire in his hand.

Listening to what Luke has just told me, I poured in a tiny bit of mana to fuel a small ball of fire onto my hand. When the ball of fire was on my hand, it resembled a very tall bonfire with a small base rather than the small ball of fire that Luke was holding in his hand.

It was better than the day before, but there was still something really strange about this 'small ball of fire'. I quickly erased the large ball of fire in my hand as I sighed.

\"Since your mana is very large, try putting only a drop of your mana instead of pouring your mana into your visualization.\" Luke suggested.

So I put only a drop of my mana to produce a ball of fire and I finally succeeded! A small ball of fire that was about the size of Luke's was on my hand! Wow. Luke was actually useful for once.

I quickly erased the fireball to create another one to make sure it wasn't a fluke. Sure enough, it wasn't! I hugged Luke in thanks and let him return to the library while I practiced until it was time to go to bed.

************

It was Monday today.

During this past week, Luke wasn't dragging me to his extra study sessions because he knew how hard I was practicing in order to control my mana for the exam.

I was getting better and better at controlling my mana, as Daniel started to move on from the mana control classes as I was improving.

Today was the day of the exam as this would be an nice opportunity to earn some points! After smoothly finishing the theoretical part of the exams after absorbing all those books, we moved on to the practical part of the exam.

As usual, I aced the physical education part with Luke as we were having a flying race resembling track and field from my past life.

Now it was time for the mana control exam. The exam was relatively simple. I had to pour in enough mana to make sure it produced a wanted number on the machine.

Daniel called out, \"Five thousand\".

So I imagined putting only five drops of mana into the machine. The machine showed a number of nine thousand. Well close enough!

\"Well done! You didn't break the machine this time, so I'm going to specially reward you 50 000 points for your first success.\" Daniel said proudly.

When all the exams came to a close, the results came out on the monitor. Strangely and very oddly, everyone almost fainted in surprise of the results.

The monitor displayed:

Helena and Alex: 25 000 points

Rika and Luke: 400 000 points

Michelle and Allan: 19 000 points

The reason why the other pairs received low amount of points was because Luke and I got first place for every single subject. This was how the point system was extremely bias towards the already wealthy students with the most points. Sigh.

I did feel sorry for Ellen and Shelly, but I guessed I could buy them food as they have done for me previously. Now let's move to a better room with actual beds inside them!

Luke and I returned back to our cosy room. \"See~. I told you I studied really hard this week.\" I playfully said to Luke.

I grabbed the tablet and happily upgraded the room to a big room with a turning wall splitting the room in half. It was a large twenty meter white room with luxurious bathrooms with both a jacuzzi and a shower. The closets were wide as it was three meter squared with already twenty hangers inside each closet. The best part was that all this cost 90 000 points!

It was nice being rich with points for once. After I upgraded the room, I passed the tablet onto Luke. Luke decided to buy two luxurious king sized beds packaged with things like pillows and blankets. Another thing I saw Luke buy were some necessities that we both needed like pyjamas, toothbrushes, cups and the list went on.

By the time we finished buying all the stuff we thought we needed, we were still left with 95 000 points!

So this was how it felt to be rich with points~.

Currently both Luke and I were mentally exhausted after the long dilemma of what to buy. So Luke soon left the room to go to the cafeteria for dinner ahead of me, while I decided to take a short break inside our new luxurious room. Another reason that I stayed was to get the chance to open the dimensional library to start preparing for the next exam to earn more points.

I grabbed a book from the library covering this month's material and tried to absorb the material. However, I couldn't absorb the material! \"Why isn't the absorption working?\" I asked the guide.

\"You can only absorb a maximum of two books per day for one week once a month.\" The guide replied.

\"However, if you absorb one book per day, you can keep absorbing books for two weeks straight every month.\" The guide added on.

Of course there was a setback! I knew it was too good to be true. Now I actually had to study for my exams. Sob.

Thankfully, the school didn't announce any exams coming up soon or else I would have been doomed.

Ever since they started the partner switching thing, I knew that even though they didn't announce it, there was a 99% chance there was a exam next week. Sigh.

How was I going to explain to Luke how I got these marks when he figures out I've haven't been studying?

Sigh. Time to make a plan!

Plan A: 5% chance of working - I could get Shelly and Ellen cover for me

Plan B: 50% chance of working - Tell Luke the truth

Plan C: 95% chance of working - Tell Luke that I cheated in a very unique way

Plan D: 70% chance of working - Do nothing and hope that Luke makes decent assumptions on his own

Yup. Plan D seemed the best!

Now that I was finished with my plan, I headed towards the cafeteria and ordered something cheap while trying to not look suspicious.

I ordered a small sandwich that cost about 40 points as I didn't want to spend extravagantly because we had a high chance of earning minus points next time.

\"Hey Rika!\"

\"Hey Shelly! Why isn't Ellen with you?\"

\"She's studying with Alex to earn more points next week.\"

I started to feel kind of guilty using my cheat, but you have to do what you ought to do in order to survive.

\"By the way, why are you ordering that small sandwich when you have a lot of points?\"

How do I explain that I'm sure I'll earn minus points next week?

\"I'm just not feeling that hungry today,\" I replied back with a awkward smile.

Shelly stared at me for a while as her eyes narrowed and oddly smiled back, \"Ok.\"

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After I finished eating my small sandwich I got up to go to the library.

Maybe I could cram all the materials somehow into my brain (even though it has never worked before without Luke)?

I entered the study room and opened my laptop to start going over the class materials ahead of time.