THIS IS VERY LONG. I hope it's as helpful to you as it is long!
Storytelling
This chapter has several really interesting things going on. There are a few factors, though, that undermine those interesting things.
Interesting thing #1: Val's first "battle"
You did a great job presenting this as an Interesting Thing, by putting a big establishing shot of the zero-class in the room as Val and the instructor enter. The couple of panels that lead up to it are a great touch.
The short action sequence that follows is a little confusing, though. It's visually cluttered, and the part where the critter tosses Val's weapon over the wall was unclear. At first, I thought her weapon was disappearing into thin air as it got tossed, so I was very confused when I saw Val running out of the room. I thought she was running away in panic, instead of going to retrieve her weapon.
I think a big part of this visual clutter/confusion comes from the way you frame the characters. When you want to show the weapon materialize, for example, you focus very heavily on the weapon, and include the character's faces since they're talking. When you want to show Val taking a step closer, you focus on her feet. When you want to show the critter spitting the weapon out, you focus on the mouth of the critter. etc etc.
All of those are the bare minimum details. For very unimportant moments, it's okay to show the bare minimum; but it gets too confusing if you keep doing this and not show enough of the visual context.
Specific examples:
In the panel where the zero-class is shaking the weapon... I can see the entirety of the weapon and its arc, which is good; this is a positive example. Now, imagine you zoomed in onto the critter's mouth, only showed like half of the weapon being shaken. The bare minimum information is still being communicated, but 1) it's not as clear, and 2) it's visually suffocating. I'm glad you didn't do that here. Consider giving more breathing room to other panels, too. Not just by adding empty space (although empty space CAN be used for that purpose), but also by showing additional things, such as the character's lower body, or more background.
Weapon swinging/thrusting involves the muscles of the entire body, ESPECIALLY THE LOWER BODY. That's where the force is generated; the upper body simply transfers that force. Now Val is a beginner, so she probably doesn't know how to use her legs to generate force. That would've been interesting (and adorable!) to see. A full body shot of the striking, and/or of Val holding the weapon pre-strike, would've done the job. We don't need to see her legs to know she's thrusting her weapon... but it helps to show that anyway.
Interesting thing #2: Being gifted post-birth, and the implications
The most intriguing part of the chapter IMO, yet the most downplayed, unfortunately. The dialogue is fine; all the downplaying elements are visual.
See, this part feels SUPER IMPORTANT, but you're not giving it enough space for it to communicate its importance. The panels are too small. Smaller than some of the less important panels. The "ten minutes later..." panel, for example, doesn't seem important at all, yet it's huge.
And although the text is interesting, the visuals are not. It's just the guy standing around and thinking. I'm not saying you should make him do cartwheels and flips (XDDD). He can keep on standing around... But you can do other things to make it interesting to look at. For example, you showed Val in the "which means... she was gifted post-birth!" panel, which makes that panel a little more interesting than it would have been with just the guy. You could have done that with the previous panel, though, which I see as a big missed opportunity. You could've made the "her mother doesn't know she's gifted" panel bigger, and showed some random gifted babies with marks to show what he's talking about.
The text in the final, "if they kew about this..." panel carries a lot of weight, but again, it's way too small. It might be also too bright to communicate the ominous feeling? What if you made the background black, or filled it with some kind of a dark texture, etc. You could even use the shading to really push the character's feelings of dread (e.g. do the light-coming-from-below shading, even though realistically, there is no light coming from below).
Interesting thing #3: The critter's transformation
The transformation itself isn't actually very interesting by itself, but the instructor's reaction is. The fact that you chose not to show what exactly happened afterward between the instructor and the critter makes me even more curious. And the way you DIDN'T show the instructor's face when he says "oh, it ran away"? That's very clever and effective. Really makes it feel like he's lying.
But as I mentioned earlier, the "ten minutes later..." panel is unnecessarily huge. It visually gives it more importance than it needs. What if you broke that up into two panels? The first one showing Val walking back with the weapon, and the second one showing her bumping into the instructor?
The last panel seems important, but 1) it's small (it doesn't need to be huge, but yeah, right now it's pretty small), and 2) I don't know what's going on in there. That's more of a pure artistic thing than a storytelling thing. Is that a crack in a wall? A broken rock? Or something else?
Miscellaneous
This may not be important, but it's still something you did very well, so I thought to point it out. The panel where Val is looking out the window, at the magical girl club dealing with the critters? You made that whole thing grey, which separates that panel from the present and makes it clear that it's a flashback. That's great! Val looks like she's looking straight ahead, though; turning her head a little more to the window would have helped.
Alignment (Horizontal)
The tops and bottoms of the panels that belong to the same row don't align. I would avoid this, unless you're intentionally breaking off the alignment for specific visual impact. If you're doing it intentionally, 1) it's probably a good idea to only do it occasionally, and 2) the alignment shouldn't be just a little bit off... It should be clearly off, so it looks intentional rather than accidental.
The split panel where Val closes and opens her eye right before approaching the zero-class, that's a good example of intentional misalignment; the top of the split panel is clearly above the top of the next panel, and the bottom is clearly above the bottom of the next panel. The rest of the misalignment throughout the chapter looks accidental.
Sorry if this bit comes across as being nitpicky. But this type of stuff can make a huge difference! It's like the difference between wearing a nice, professional outfit with flip-flops VS a pair of shoes that complement the outfit.
Alignment (Vertical)
Unlike horizontal alignment, vertical aligmnent across different rows should be AVOIDED unless you're going for a specific effect.
See how the interior gutter space in the left example forms a + shape, because of the alignment?
Vertical alignment is a strong visual cue. It makes the reader mentally connect panel A with C, and panel B with D. If there is no storytelling-related reason for those panels to be connected, don't make them align.
In the example I gave you, it's not AS bad because the gutter between the rows is a LOT thicker than the gutter between A&B and between C&D. Imagine that gutter was thinner!
So yeah, the gutter space is a very powerful tool. Use it to create mental connections, to separate things, to give breathing room, etc etc etc.
The vertical alignment is a part of the problem that downplays the mystery of Val possibly being gifted post-birth. The unnecessary mental connection waters down what's necessary/important. Help the readers focus on the important stuff by removing the distractions (while giving them enough breathing room... yes, it is a very difficult balance).
Readability
Those speech bubbles in the very first panel!! Nooooooo!
My eyes have to travel up-down-up-down to read them in the correct order. Please don't do this! Don't make the eyes travel up to read the next bubble. The "I see..." is the biggest offender in that panel. I know exactly when within that panel she says it, but only because there is only one spot in that dialogue where it fits.
When you have more than 2 or 3 bubbles in a panel, try changing the font to a dingbat. See if the speech bubble order still makes sense. That's the easy version of the exercise. There is an even harder version, which I suggested to another person earlier:
Open a new file for a new page.
Before you draw anything on it, just type out all the dialogue. Move the text around as to determine where the speech bubbles will go. You can tweak this after the art is done, but try to figure out the gist of the text placement during this step.
Change ALL of the text font to some kind of a dingbat or a foreign language font. This will render the text illegible, while the placement remains the same.
Take a look at what you've got. See if you can figure out the correct order in which the text is supposed to be read.
Can you figure it out? Instantly? After trying a little, at least?
If it's really hard to figure it out, rearrange the text placement to make it clearer. Keep doing this until the order becomes clear without the help of any other visual element and/or the context.
That variation is harder because not only is the font rendered illegible, you don't have any of the visual cues (such as characters or even panel borders) to fall back on. It's a very helpful exercise, though!
Background
Some of your panels don't have any background in them, and that's okay. Not every panel needs to show the environment. However, when the characters are supposed to be in a dark place (e.g. the room? alley? with the zero-class), a stark white backdrop doesn't really fit. Even just grey would keep the lighting consistent.
I feel like I haven't explained things enough, but it's already getting too long. Let me know if you want me to further explain anything in this post!
