Awesome / I'm In Love With the Villainess

• It's a romance novel of the yuri variety, but it's still set in a Academy of Adventure and a kingdom full of monsters, dealing with crazed revolutionaries and insidious plots. There's going to be a lot of awesome to go around.
• The aptitude duels really show off just how creative people can get with elemental magic in the setting. Three powerful pairings are shown duking it out with incredibly tough magic, leading to some insanely epic fights.
  • Thane and Yuu show off creative uses for magic, with Yuu proving to be a master at controlling the battlefield while Thane continually manages to overcome and overpower whatever zany scheme Yuu could come up with using water - by using air to punch people. Using almost nothing beyond martial arts and some speed boosts, Thane manages to pull out a victory against a clever opponent, even using Yuu's ice against him to blind the hydromancer briefly so that he could get right up behind him.
  • Rod and Misha follow up the previous battle with a true battle of wits against endurance. Misha, out of respect for the royal family, refuses to actually fight to win, but that doesn't mean she just lets Rod walk all over her - she continually figures out counters for every attack he makes using her wind powers to control sound, even beating back unbearable heat with wind currents. It takes everything Rod has to overcome Misha, and she wasn't even trying. Still, props have to be given to Rod for utilizing the fact his fire magic sucked up oxygen to eventually deprive Misha of it entirely.
  • The stand-out, of course, is Rae against Lady Claire. Until now, the narrative has portrayed Rae as always being a step ahead, and the reader would be forgiven for thinking Lady Claire would roll over and fail immediately. It turns out not to be the case at all - while it's eventually revealed Rae has an instant-win trick via making a hole to drop Claire into, she's forced to use this trick because Claire continually proves to have even stronger magic than what Rae herself could put out - including a medieval laser beam that effortlessly destroys a rock wall made out of material discovered centuries in advance back in Japan. This is somewhat mitigated by the fact it's revealed that Rae could have easily overcome given her water magic acted as a natural counter to Claire's fire spells, but until Rae decided to take the fight seriously, Claire continually had control of a fight against a very clever, very strong mage - one who even knew of Claire's full capabilities going in. That Claire performed so well was a testament to her status as The Ace of the noble students.
• Claire and Rae end up fighting a chimera when the commoner rebellion at the school reaches a fever pitch. Rae thinks the fight is impossible without the army backing them, but for the first time, Claire acts as the moral compass, explaining how running to get the army would put numerous students in danger of the bloodthirsty chimera. The two then work together using all the magic they'd shown to posses up to that point to buy Claire time to prep and fire off her laser spell, which reduces the chimera to dust in the wind.
• During the 'Summer Vacation' arc, Rae, Claire, and Misha square off against Louie, corrupted by a necromancy ring into an undead monster that is immune to magical harm. At first it looks like Louie has everything he needs to deliver a Curb-Stomp Battle to the heroes; he is a mercenary with insurmountable skill in melee weapons, and the people he's fighting are three mages who have no obvious physical skills to speak of. Then it turns out that the three women are considered some of the best in their academy for a reason - they use the environment to tear into Louie, abusing the fact his immunity to magic does nothing to protect him from dressers, chandeliers, and rushing seawater propelled his way by magic, and the fact he's only immune to magical harm; Misha's wind spells manage to hold him down easily. He only scores one solid hit that would have sidelined Rae if not for a sanctified pendant because he got into Claire's head regarding how he was effectively forced into his fight with the trio. In the end, he's beaten by being bludgeoned to exhaustion by gushing seawater before getting skewered with several holy blades that turn his undead nature into a disadvantage.
• After Rae's arrested following her involvement in the plot to give Yu the body she identifies with, and the King subsequently decides that she's worthy of induction into his Secret Service, she casually mentions that her food had been poisoned as a reason not to join. He gives her a frown and asks why she's still perfectly hale, and she blithely mentions that she simply counteracted it, cementing his decision yet further.