"I think - if we weren't going to die at all, then it'd be entirely reasonable to make us have broader horizons. But as it is - what are broader horizons worth if you get eaten in the graduation hall with a fantastically comprehensive understanding of the world. So insofar as the school's pushing us any direction other than 'well equipped in four years', it's - shaped for some kind of fantasy world where the scouring equipment still works. Which it would be, since when it was designed, the scouring equipment did work."

"Yeah, it's totally possible the school is doing the wrong thing because it failed to adapt and it should be skimming less mana and letting us optimize our schedules for useful combat stuff instead of homework effort. Or it thinks it's better at forcing us to learn the optimal set of stuff than we would be if we got to pick all our own classes, which it totally might, it's hundreds of years old and a school."

"Or it has its own goals which only sort of have anything to do with us. Most intelligent powerful creations hundreds of years old would."

"Are there other hundreds of year old intelligent powerful creations that haven't turned into mals?"

"I think some enclaves have golems but I don't know how old they get. And unlike the school you can destroy a golem that looks like it's going bad."

"It's kind of impressive, really, that they were sure enough of an enormous intelligent independently-mana-sourcing installation to send their own kids there - well, sure enough or desperate enough, I guess. Though two hundred years ago there were meaningful alternatives that worked well enough, it wasn't like now."

"I'm less surprised that they trusted it and more that it worked out. Enough people still make mals to this day, trusting that it'll turn out fine. Now that we're talking about it I'm really curious why the school turned out - not fine, but with different problems."

"...maybe other places have tried things like this but when they turned out student-eating monstrosities they decided not to advertise internationally. Maybe maw-mouths are just very confused schools and that's why they like this place so much."

That gets a chuckle, if a slightly grim one.

"I don't know but when you put it that way I'm glad this place worked as well as it did, broken cleansing and all."

One of the other Bostonians, the one Marcy introduced as Kevin when they all sat down, pipes up. "Yeah, it's impressive! It probably helps that there were dozens of people working on it; most created mals are made by one or a few people without a lot of other options."

"You think it - balances out? If it has lots of peoples' input on intent then maybe it can correct for weird directions it's getting tugged in? I would've naively expected it to work the other way around, that things - naturally want to stop doing what they're told, and the wider the range of inputs they've got the more ways they have to stop doing what they're told."

"Maybe it's just - they've been taking better care of the school? It's never actually been mana-starved, has it? Constructs usually go mal when they get hungry and their usual food source isn't available."

"So we're back to the importance of making sure we feed it our homework."

"In some ways, that's even more motivating than 'otherwise it'll eat you'. And also explains why the school doesn't care if you cheat."

"... Does it? I can see why it doesn't care if you get someone else to do the work for you, but it can't be happy about copying an essay instead of doing the work to write your own."

"I know you have to copy it into your own handwriting; maybe the physically writing it down is enough? If it was important not to do that someone would have told us not to."

"It might not be able to tell? Some kids find writing essays really easy, maybe it has no idea whether you find the essay easy because you're pretty much just copying it or whether you find it easy because the subject matter is easy for you."

"Ugh, does that mean if we all took our homework more seriously the school would be better at keeping mals out?"

The thing that jumps immediately to Annisa's mind which she would not say aloud under any circumstances is that everyone knows the Sinosphere kids work harder than the Anglosphere kids, and are selected by a test to get a slot in the first place, and are pulling more than their share of keeping the school functional. Aside from not saying this because it'd be incredibly unstrategic it also seems false of Marcy, though, who seems to have every intention of working relentlessly to turn her massive advantage into a sure thing.

"That seems like a really important thing to know but I don't know how we'd find out unless we got a whole bunch of people to go really hard on homework for a term and made an attempt at systematically counting mals, and we couldn't possibly ask that of people without a lot more to go on than a nice-sounding theory." She's not even allowed to go for valedictorian, herself; her parents made it very clear that going for valedictorian is only the optimal strategy if you need it to get a graduation alliance.

Maybe there is a way to say her clever idea without offending Marcy. "In some parts of the world everyone gets in and in some you have to test in. If adults wanted to check if it mattered they could vary how many slots get assigned in each way - probably for a decade at a time, telling people way in advance so they can time their kids - and see which way produces student populations with more survivors, which is probably something of a proxy for how bad the mals are and how resourced the school is."

Ways to test the theory don't seem that important to Malak because even if confirmed there's nothing to be done about it.

"Even if somehow someone did prove it, nobody who's cheating on their math homework is going to decide to stop because doing it would give the school marginally more mana to protect other kids with."

"I'm not sure that would be a good test? Making people test in probably gets you individually stronger freshman but they'll be used to competing against each other instead of being a team, so that's two other things that could affect survival rate apart from whether directly doing homework helps. It's probably worth trying anyway, just as a direct experiment in what gets you more survivors, because that's what you want even if you don't know why. And separately I think there are people who would put more effort into their homework than they do now if they really believed it would help the school keep them safe."

Malak noticed the natural experiment that Annisa was talking about. She feels a twinge of annoyance at it, but does her best to suppress it because there's no point in being annoyed at how the world is and if third-world enclaves and independents want their place at the table, well, they'll just have to get strong enough to take it.

It does in fact suck that they can't just let everyone in, but it seems stupid to say that when she has neither a plan to fix it nor the resources to even try to come up with one.

It makes perfect sense that people try to protect their own kids and not random strangers; you'd have to be an idiot to expect them to do otherwise. And even if you were a bizarre psychological alien who for some reason wanted to maximize survival, well, Americans are richer, so their children are more likely to survive, so it makes sense to let more of them in than weak groups from poor places. ...is there a way to say that which won't offend Marcy. 

"Places that let everyone in wouldn't stop that, nor should they, but places that do tests might do something else, if the tests weren't measuring the right thing. You could just auction all the spots, if it turns out parental investment matters more than actual quality as a student. Or ...sell points on the test, at some price, if you figured out how much parental investment counts for how much homework ability."