"The most immediate purpose is to help you reexamine yourselves. The school believes visualizing academic performance can effectively help you recognize your own capabilities and stimulate your potential."
Mashima Tomonari's tone sounded quite official. "As for specific applications, I can only tell you for now that it will play a crucial role in your future school life."
His explanation explained nothing, making many students silently criticize their homeroom teacher for being cryptic.
However, Mashima Tomonari soon captured everyone's attention again.
"Besides introducing the OAA today, you have another Special Exam. Through this exam, you'll likely gain deeper understanding of the OAA's significance."
Just days into the new semester, another Special Exam had arrived!
Only a few students showed distress, while most remained expressionless.
They were, after all, the Class A, possessing more confidence than other classes.
Even Sakayanagi Arisu perked up at this point, still contemplating how to pay back Kaoru double.
"Like the OAA, this exam incorporates unprecedented new attempts by the school." Mashima Tomonari said, "Starting today, you will be taking exams together with the first-year students. The format is similar to the previous Partner Exam."
"We're taking exams with the first-years!?"
Someone exclaimed in surprise.
"You've got to be kidding! They've only been here a few days. They probably don't even understand the school rules yet!"
Someone expressed strong doubts about the first-years, "Is it really feasible to take exams with them now?"
Back when they were in their position, they were still struggling to uncover the truth about the school, completely unaware of things like Special Exams.
"This is reality. Do you think every boss and coworker you'll encounter in society will be good people who'll help you?"
Mashima Tomonari's words left everyone momentarily speechless, and the person who had been speaking closed their mouth.
"While I understand your concerns about the first-years, they're currently receiving explanations about the exam as well. I don't think it will affect you."
At this point, the room fell mostly silent as everyone listened to Mashima Tomonari's words.
Seeing this, Mashima Tomonari continued explaining the rules of this exam.
The exam content would be written tests.
Students from both grades would form teams of two. Once teams were formed, they couldn't withdraw for any reason.
On exam day, five subjects would be tested, each worth 100 points, for a total of 500 points.
After the exam, the school would conduct settlements in two main parts.
First was class victory/defeat.
The final average score would be calculated based on the entire class's scores and all partners' scores.
Classes would be ranked from highest to lowest average score, receiving 50, 30, 10, and 0 Class Points respectively.
Second was individual victory/defeat.
By combining one's own score with their partner's score, the top five pairs would each receive a special reward - 100,000 Personal Points.
The top 30% of pairs would each receive 10,000 Personal Points.
Beyond rewards, the punishments were even stricter.
If the combined score was 500 points or less, second-year students would be expelled.
First-year students wouldn't have their Class Points affected, but they would stop receiving Personal Points for three months.
In other words, second-years faced expulsion while first-years only faced minimal punishment - just no Personal Points for three months.
"Finally, you should understand - the key to this exam is students with high academic ability."
Mashima Tomonari smiled faintly, "The team formation function is in OAA. You can start forming teams now."
The implication was that they could now check first-year data through OAA, directly answering Katsuragi Kohei's earlier question.
Kaoru had already opened the first-years' OAA, noticing several familiar names.
Clicking on their profiles revealed not just team formation functions, but also private messaging.
Yes, OAA had a chat function.
Although Kaoru had requested the school add this feature, it essentially integrated the previous official forum - he had moved the forum here.
Kaoru believed the previous forum environment was terrible with anonymous posting, so he suggested the school integrate it into OAA while removing anonymity, requiring real-name registration to prevent rumor spreading.
In addition to the forum, Kaoru specifically requested the addition of private and group chats.
Every student could send a friend request to others through the OAA, and once the request was accepted, the two could chat.
This approach further prevented students from drifting onto networks outside the school.
Kaoru had always thought the school's past practices were foolish.
Since students were prohibited from contacting the outside world, it would have been simpler to create a local area network.
Instead, the school allowed students to continue using social media apps.
Under the guise of the Student Council, Kaoru had the school add these features.
Of course, it wasn't about forcing everyone to delete their social apps—he simply wanted to gain as much control as possible over the school's online social interactions.
The forum was a place for students to indulge in their own interests.
Many things that couldn't be posted on social media were shared on the forum, making it the exclusive social platform for Koudo Ikusei students.
Now, with the ability to freely add friends, the OAA would quickly become a crucial social platform for students, especially since there were many things that could only be posted here.
For instance, most of the rumors about Kaoru started spreading on the forum, attracting a lot of attention.
However, everyone now had to use their real names online.
He was curious to see who would dare continue spreading rumors and causing trouble.
This was also one of the oversight measures Kaoru had mentioned earlier.
Just then, Kaoru's OAA suddenly popped up with a friend request.
[Komiya Kaho has added you as a friend!]
Along with the message, she immediately sent him a team invitation.
[Producer! Producer! Let's team up together!]
It seemed the first-year orientation had ended, and Komiya Kaho's first thought was to team up with him.
Kaoru first checked Komiya Kaho's data and noticed her academic ability was C+.
He couldn't help but feel a bit relieved.
Who said idols had to be airheads?
A C+ indicated that Komiya Kaho's exam results were quite good—at least she could pass!
Kaoru accepted her invitation.
Team invitations were limited to one per day, and if he refused, she might not know who else to team up with.
If students failed to find a partner, the school would forcibly pair them and deduct 5% from both their overall scores.
[Hehe, please take care of me, Producer!]
Reading Komiya Kaho's message, Kaoru typed a line.
[Here, you should call me "Onii-chan" or "Kaoru-senpai."]
[Okay, Producer Nii-chan!]
The address had become even stranger.
Kaoru put away his phone just as the homeroom meeting ended.
The entire class was now discussing how to form teams.
If they ended up with a weak partner, they might face expulsion.
Although Class 2-A could scrape together another 20 million Personal points if pushed, it was better to avoid trouble altogether.
At that moment, Sakayanagi Arisu suddenly spoke up.