"This should be the end of the first part on efficiency," Gale said, "but I guess that would depend on how well you all did on your papers."
His students took a deep breath, exchanging nervous looks as Gale transferred one of the graph papers from the table to the whiteboard for everyone to see. The student who created the design cringed, as though he had eaten a rotten lemon.
"It's yours, Darren, I guess," Gale said. Previously, he hadn't bothered with who designed what, but this time it mattered more, as he would be evaluating them. "Would you like to explain your design?"
The dark-skinned student nodded and stood up. "As you can see, it's a Tier-III design involving four kinds of runes," he began, not great at selling his work. "The script is focused on defence, so it can be applied to shields, armor, or other similar broad guards.
In its full capacity, the formation contains 298 runes, a third of which are Shock Absorption, followed by Empower, Restoration, and Amplification."
"This is a better design than what you did in the last couple of days," Gale announced, causing Darren to stand a bit straighter at the praise. "Even though you went ahead to make sure it has a lot more utility. I'll give it a B+ overall."
"Thank you!" Darren was glad. After all, it was his first B. Throughout the last couple of days, he mostly got Ds with an occasional C. A B grade was something only Aki and Jenni had managed, and that too not consecutively.
"Next," Gale moved on to the next design.
"It's mine," said the oldest of the adepts. Perhaps he wasn't older than Elder Ming, but he sure looked like it with his grey hair, beard, and wrinkled face.
Gale put the design up for everyone to observe.
"Why does this look so odd?" Jenni muttered with a thoughtful look.
Aki narrowed his eyes. "It only has two kinds of runes, Empower and Amplification, but the number of runes..."
"There are 512 of them," the old man said, causing many to gasp.
If 298 was a good number for a Tier-III script formation, 512 was a monster of a number. The only problem was that there was no creativity in play, just runes designed to give the most efficient result.
"If you were to make an artifact with this design," Darren added, "I don't believe it would last very long."
"Perhaps a month or two," the old man agreed, fully aware of his design's flaws.
"If the evaluation was based on creativity or utility, I wouldn't even give it a D," Gale commented.
"I did evaluate it as a Tier-IV design," Gale nodded. "Alright, the class is dismissed. I'll do a remedial class on efficiency some days later, but from tomorrow we'll go over utility. Your homework for the night is to show me your best design, applying all the teaching I covered on efficiency, while also keeping utility in mind."
One by one, the adepts left. Some had a few questions, which Gale addressed within a quarter of an hour.
"Do you need something?" he asked Jenni, who looked like she wanted to say more.
Jenni nodded, as a bunch of runic graph papers appeared in her hands. "Evaluate all these."
Experience exclusive tales on мѵʟ
Gale raised an eyebrow but took the designs. "You made all these?"
Jenni nodded. "Half of them are bad. But I'd be glad if you showed me what they lack."
Gale counted to find there were twenty-seven papers. Most of them had original designs that weren't among the norms of what they teach to adepts in the military or schools.
"Bring your chair," Gale said, taking a deep breath. "It's going to take a while to go through all this."
Jenni worked first, carrying her chair to his table to sit across from him.
"All this had the application of my designing technique," he said. "How did you manage all of them in a short few days?"
"The designs are old," Jenni answered. "I have made them over the last few years... I just applied your designing techniques in the last couple of days..."
Gale nodded, taking in a slow breath. "Remember when I told you that you had a talent for runesmithing?" he said. "Perhaps I didn't understand the whole scope of it back then... You're not just talented, you're gifted in this aspect, especially in the creative part."
Jenni's cheeks turned a tad bit red at the compliment.
He moved on to check the design. "If I were to evaluate this on efficiency, this gets an A-..."
"Give me numbers instead of grades," Jenni said. "That will give me more ideas on how much I need to improve."
"Fine," he said. "My evaluation system is pretty simple. Anything above 60 is an A, A+ for above 80. Minus for those that have obvious problems. For this one in particular, I guess it scored about 68 points, with an obvious flaw in implementation.