Editing Failing Witch:Volume1 Episode4 (section)

===7===

Let’s work together so we can all pass.

Arbamini, Holibre, and Lampans once had a friend they could smile and say that with. They would always gather in the same place to study. They would quiz each other on memorization questions. When they didn’t have enough money, they would buy a single textbook and share it until it was falling apart.

One day, they made a great find in a flea market. The wooden talisman was about the size of a playing card, but Arbamini noticed how unusually smooth the reverse side was. The surface had been covered by a thin layer of wax and an incantation was sealed within using the same concept as a phonograph. The discovery had excited them all. It resembled known incantations, but something about it sounded different. They speculated the gaps of the challenging musical scale had been filled in to reduce the difficulty. And if that was truly possible, it was bound to be useful in their practical lessons.

The practice exam was approaching. Everyone was desperate to earn even one more point.

They had all discovered the talisman together.

But it had only taken an instant for one of them to steal it away.

She had smiled as she walked all over Arbamini, Holibre, and Lampans, taken it away from them, used it to confidently attempt he Maleficium entrance exam, and vanished to heights beyond their reach. All that trio had left afterwards were the deep physical wounds and the humiliation.

The exam results were everything.

No one had listened to their pleas.

They had effectively been exiled to the worst of the prep schools, where the students and even the instructors told them it was their fault for letting a phony friendship blind them like that.

That set them on their current path.

Doing the right thing no longer mattered to them. They had just one goal left in mind: become even stronger than the stolen talisman, pass the rigorous exam, and make that bitch pay once they arrived in Maleficium.