Man, this chapter is ass. It's so heavy handed with the exposition and characterization. Or maybe it's just that, so far, all these characters fit into tropes that I'm so tired of. For instance, why is Will this weak-willed, beta ass loser when it comes to his bullies, when he could snap their fucking necks before they called him a f*ggot for the fifth time that day? Do writers and mangaka seriously keep expecting us to buy this character archetype? The "absolute weak-willed loser socially, but also somehow has the force of will necessary to stick to strict physical training" character. It just seems so unrealistic. There's a difference between being gentle and pacifistic and just being a harmless doormat cause you don't have a spine.
Same goes for Theon, the "incredibly elitist prick who for some reason feels so strongly about the protagonist's presence in whatever institution that they constantly put themselves and their friends in danger through harebrained schemes to get the protag expelled" character. Seriously, does anybody in real life care that much? I'd expect for an elitist to just despise people who don't meet their standards, not actively conspire to remove them from anything without good reason. Maybe I just don't get the trope cause I've never met anybody in real life who was an elitist and actually disliked people of a lower caliber than themselves; all the people I know who I would call an elitist were mostly just dismissive towards people they perceived as lower, not outright vicious towards them, and certainly not so pressed by their presence that they'd trouble themselves to oust them to such an extent as characters like Theon and Malfoy. Sure, "he's a dick", but I've never met anybody who actually exists who cared so much about the F students in my real life school days that they would actively want to have them expelled just on the basis of them being an F student.
Characters specifically aside, man, the dialogue is so heavy handed I can see the imprint of the writer's fist in my screen. "In this world, magic reigns supreme!" Yeah, wanna tell me that I'm reading a manga next, Mr. Manga Character? Seriously, it's like the characters know that they're speaking to a reader who is used to fantasy worlds in manga having both a mix of physical and magical fighters, and that for the reader, it's somewhat rare for there to be a world with mostly pure mages. But like, for the characters, this is the status quo, ain't it? So why do they keep mentioning it? The character's have an obsession of talking about things in this weird tone, as if they're, well, explaining these concepts to somebody who just started reading a manga, which is weird when you think about these conversations and monologues from the character's point of view, obviously. I don't start explaining the economic system and how capitalism is as a system when I tell my bro that I got a part-time job for some pocket money, I just tell him I got a job. Cause we, as people within this world that we live in, already understand such things at a basic level, so it would be weird for us to mention it when we're talking about it casually. It's the same for exposition, if you don't do it right, it sounds like somebody explaining thermodynamics before they start cooking something; it's weird and pointless for the character to do it, and it's a writer showing their hand way too much, and it takes me right out of the story.
tl;dr Maybe I'm just jaded, but I think the mangaka sucks at naturalistic characterization and exposition.