The young lord looked stumped and had absolutely no idea what to do. He didn't care about Ning or even the fact that he was blocking traffic for that matter
He only worried that his beast, Bong, was going to go wild if he didn't do wild. When that happened, the beast was most likely going to kill many before. With how strong the beast was, it would take his entire garrison to stop the beast.
And he absolutely did not want that to happen.
"Young lord, what do we do now?" one of the guards asked.
The young lord really only had one choice. "Call my sister," he said. "She'll know."
"Yes, young lord."
The guards quickly run away to call the young man's sister.
Ning picked the sword back up and put it into his sheath. Then, he moved to the side and let the beast follow him to the side.
He wanted to make up space for the rest of the people to walk by.
People slowly started trickling away one by one, forming a small path around the happy beast that kept sniffing.
Ning wondered if he should give the fruit to the beast, even if just one, but he gave up on the idea. There were too many problems that could happen with him just doing that.
Instead, he leaned close to Sophie who was still plastered by the wall, and asked, 'Am I going to be in trouble for being a gang member?'
He whispered as quietly as he could so that only Sophie could hear it. Given the noise all around, it would be hard for anyone to hear him speak unless they were listening to it.
"What?" Sophie was too distracted to register what was said to her. She quickly shook her head after understanding what he meant and answered him.
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'Thank god,' Ning thought. Now, he only wished that he could get out of this quickly.
"You can leave if you want," Ning told her. "I will be fine."
Sophie hesitated a bit, but in the end, she had no choice. She was truly very tired to keep up with whatever was happening there. She wanted to be there for Ning since he was so new to everything, but her head ached from the lack of sleep.
Also, with the lord of the fortress involved, she wasn't sure there was anything she could even do.
"I'll leave for now," Sophie said and walked away as well.
Ning watched her leave and quickly turned back at the beast that was still sniffing him. He slowly reached out his hand to pet it.
"Don't touch my little Bong!" the young lord cried out, making Ning stop and sigh. He crossed his arms and sat on the floor, waiting for the sister to show up.
He knew the girl was there when there was a commotion far away. He could hear hurried footsteps of people that quickly stepped aside to make way for whoever was coming.
He waited until the footsteps were close enough before turning to look who it belonged to.
A blond woman in a guard's armor walked out from the crowd with other guards following behind her. Everything aside from her flowing golden hair and her beautiful face was behind an armor.
Her armor itself was quite unique as well. There were various parts to it, each of which was made with a different element.
Ning could see air, water, fire, and earth in a single glance. When viewing more, he noticed some cloud and ice potions to the armor as well. Not only that, there was even something that looked like lava, surprising Ning.
The woman, before even looking at her brother, looked at the Essence beast and by association, Ning. She saw the beast sniffing around him and got curious.
"What's the issue?" she asked while finally turning around to her brother. She looked about the same age as the young lord but somehow had a much more mature stance while appearing stronger as well.
"Jenna, this man is trying to steal my little Bong," the young lord complained.
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"What?" the girl quickly turned around back to look at Ning. "How is he planning on stealing your dog?"
"That sword of his," the young man pointed. "Bong likes it for some reason, but we can't take it from him because it's very heavy. Can you do something about it?"
The girl frowned a bit. She looked at Ning, but he had barely any Essence in comparison to everyone around him. Why would someone like that try to steal an Essence beast?
Even if he did, why would he do it in broad daylight in the middle of the street with a lot of guards around?
"Take the beast back home first, we'll talk later," the girl said.
"I can't," the young lord said. "Bong doesn't move away from that sword of his. Unless we take the sword with us, we can't leave."
"And you can't take the sword?" the girl asked.
The young man shook his head. "I had the guards try it out, but it seems to be made up on some heavy rock. They can't pick it up. Only he can."
"Ah!" the girl said. "Then why not have this young man bring the sword home so the beast can follow him?"
"Oh!" the young lord said. "I didn't think of that."
"You, come with us," the woman gestured NIng.
Ning sighed and got up before following the woman who was already marching away.
"Grab him. Makes sure he doesn't walk away," the young lord said while he followed.
"Stop being stupid and just follow," the girl said. "Why are you treating a random person like a criminal?"
"S-stupid? Did you just call me stupid?" the young man's eyes went wide. "Did you forget I am your lord?"
"Yes, lord Jan," the girl said as she walked through the streets. "I'll try to be careful next time around."
"Good," the young lord said.
The girl nodded. "I'll make sure to not voice my thoughts out."
Ning walked up steep pathways and stairs to arrive in front of the main building in the fortress. The lord's mansion.
The mansion itself had rocky walls with a giant metal gate. The guards standing outside it quickly opened when they saw their leader return with the beast.
"Follow me, and don't move a single step out of line," the girl said.
"Understood," Ning said as he followed the girl.
Jenna immediately turned left, walking toward one of the corners of the mansion. The beast's living space was outside the main mansion, so Ning followed her there.
A massive wooden gate was opened to let the beast in, but the beast didn't go in at all. Instead, it remained around Ning outside, scaring everyone who believed it had gone wild.
"Do you have any idea why it likes your sword?" the girl asked.
"I sometimes cut fruits with this sword because it's sharp. I think that's why," Ning said.
The girl shook her head. "Toss your sword inside so we can contain the beast for now," she said.
Ning hesitated a bit.
"What? Do you think us Tales are a thieving bunch who will steal from you?" the woman asked.
"Oh, no, no," Ning quickly said. "I'll put in the sword."
He tossed the sword into the dark room. It reached quite deep into the room, and the beast followed behind it.
"It will most likely calm down in a bit and fall asleep. We will let you know and you can take your sword back," the girl said.
"Thank you, uhh… miss Jenna," Ning said respectfully.
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"Don't thank me," Jenna said. "We should be the ones thanking you. Thank you for coming with us."
Ning nodded. "Sorry for being a problem. I had no idea my sword would cause such reactions from the beast," he said.
"Don't worry about it," Jenna said. "We will let you know when the beast goes to sleep so you can take your sword and leave. For now… you can stay in the mansion."
"Thank you," Ning said and followed the girl. The young lord ignored the two of them and went over to check on the beast first.
"What's your name?" the girl asked as Ning followed her.
"Ning," he answered.
"Where are you from, Ning?" she asked.
"No idea," he replied. "I have missing memories, and I'm going around trying to see if I can reawaken them."
The girl asked a few more questions, obviously trying to figure out about him, but Ning circled around the truth, never revealing that he was now a member of a gang. He was still not sure how the lord would react to such news.
The girl couldn't find any information about the sword from Ning and was forced to stop asking questions to make it any more obvious.
"You said you came to the city just a while ago, right? Then you must not have eaten anything yet," the girl said.
"Actually, no," Ning said. "I was on my way to some restaurant when the beast found me. I'm famished right now."
The girl smiled. "Come, I will ask the servants to get you something to eat."
Ning nodded and followed her into her home.
He was taken to a living room where the walls were covered with moving images that were certainly made up of light capture from the day when these pictures were taken.
There was an older man with a long mustache shaking hands with someone in a fake wig. The old man had features that were similar to the girl that had brought him in and the man that had tried to capture him.
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'Must be their father,' Ning thought. He looked around and judging by how the photo was next to a woman that was obviously the girl's mother, he guessed that the father was dead too.
He ate the food that was brought to him and waited. With nothing else to do, he simply sat around doing nothing.
A few minutes later, he heard multiple footsteps coming in his direction. He peeked a glance and saw that it was the young lord.
"You," the young man shouted the moment he saw him. "I want you to sell that sword to me."
"I can't," Ning said. "It's an important sword for me."
"I'll give you whatever money you want," the man said. "Just let me have that sword."
Ning frowned. "You can't even pick it up. What's the point?" he asked.
"I want it for little Bong. He is very happy with the sword around him," the man said.
Ning shook his head. "I can't do that," he said. "I will take my sword and leave."
"I will pay you any—"
"I don't need your money," Ning said. "I have no intention of selling it at all. You can't put a price on something of mine that I don't want to sell."
The young man frowned. "Don't even think about leaving this place then. Guards, make sure he never gets out," he shouted in frustration and walked away.
The guards looked troubled as keeping Ning here without his consent when he hadn't done anything wrong was not something the guards were used to doing.
They were guards of this city and were under the young lord, but in the end, they were really just the guards of the Empire itself. No matter what their young lord wanted, if the Empire's law was against it, they couldn't do anything.
They thought for a bit and discussed something on their own before sending away one of the guards.
The guards returned with Jenna in their tow. "He did what now?" the girl asked when she heard the arrangements her brother had prepared for Ning.
"You idiots! Shouldn't you have helped him?" the girl shouted at the guards.
The guards apologized immediately, so Jenna couldn't find a person to vent her anger on. In the end, she sighed.
"I'm so sorry about my brother's actions," she said. "I will make it up to you somehow."
Ning was woken up in the middle of the night by someone. He saw the guards uniform on the man's clothes and yawned for a moment. "What is it?" he asked while looking around to figure out what he was doing.
'Oh right, I was waiting for the beast to fall asleep and fell asleep,' he remembered.
"The beast is asleep, please come to retrieve your sword," someone told him.
"Oh, great," Ning said as he stretched. "Finally."
He walked with the person over to the place where the beast was kept at. Even before getting close, he could hear the deep breaths of the beast. That thing was definitely sleeping.
'Try not to make any sound,' the guard told him.
'I won't,' Ning said as she slowly walked toward the beast. The door had stayed open for him, so he went into the room slowly and picked up his sword.
Getting the sword wasn't the hardest part at all. What was harder was making sure the sword's scent didn't alert the beast as it left the room.
He stepped back one step at a time while making the least amount of noise. After a while, he finally managed to get out of the room, at which moment the doors were shut immediately.
"Thank you," Ning whispered as he put the sword into his sheath before getting out of the mansion. He left through the front gate, without caring about what time it was.
The two moons were out in the sky on either side and there was enough light for his walk around the fortress.
He was high enough that he could see most of the city from up here. "Wow, the city is asleep," he thought. "What time is it exactly?"
He didn't even know where to look to find the time at all. With no answer, he shook his head and walked down the road that led to the mansion.
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As he did, he heard some movements from close by. He paused for a second and looked in the direction of the sound. "Who's there?" he asked. He wondered for a second if the young lord had put someone up to kill him so they could take the sword.
However, before he could understand, a man came out from the shadows.
"What were you doing in there?" he asked.
Ning frowned a bit before realizing he had seen him before. "You're Erman's man?" he asked.
The man nodded. "Now, please answer my question," the man said.
"I was doing nothing," Ning said. "They threw my sword to the beast, so I had to wait until I could retrieve it."
The man looked at Ning for a moment before turning around. "Follow me," he said. "I'll take you to the safe house."
"Ugh, finally," Ning thought and followed him.
After walking through the various interconnecting pathways, they arrived in front of a small house and went in. However, after walking in, he realized that the house wasn't actually that small at all.
Since this location was below the plateau, the house was actually built onto the walls of the mountain itself. It was dug all the way in and as such it could hold a lot more people than it originally seemed to be able to.
"Thanks for bringing me here," Ning said to the man. "I'll go get some rest."
He left for the room he was assigned and immediately fell asleep. He was still tired, despite already sleeping fo a while, so he couldn't help but fall asleep.
pαпdα Йᴏνê,сòМ He was woken up by the door swinging open rather loudly.
"Urgh, what time is it?" he asked as he got up from the bed.
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"It's early morning," Sophie's voice said. "I'm glad you're back already. Nothing happened to you, right?"
"No, I'm fine," Ning said. "Were you worried?"
"A little," the girl said. "The lord of this place isn't known for his best."
"Oh, is he that bad?" Ning asked.
"He's an insecure brat from what I hear," Sophie said. "His father was the previous lord and was a good one at that. However, he died due to some health complications."
"The royal family did not bother with deciding on who was going to become the next lord and simply gave a decree that the late lord's son would be the new lord. The new young lord was inexperienced and immature, but he still realized what sort of opportunity he had in his hand."
"So, he's trying his best to keep it to himself," Sophie said. "He's worried about a lot of things, the most important one being that he believes that if he doesn't appear strong or if the royal family finds out that he's useless, he will be replaced."
"That's why he goes on his little walk with his beast all the time, to remind people that while he may not be the strongest, he had someone else to rely on," Sophie said.
"How did he manage to tame such a strong beast?" Ning asked.
"He didn't," Sophie said. "If I'm not mistaken, it was the late lord's beast."
"I see," Ning said as he thought about what he experienced yesterday. "Everyone must already know that he's useless, but they still let him lead, huh?"
"Well, he was made the lord by the Royal family themselves, so there's nothing the people can really do," Sophie said. "Still, the idiot fears being replaced so much that he messed up the normal stuff. He should just try to learn and become a better person instead."
"Well, at least he has his sister," Ning said. "She seems mature and talented."
"Yeah, but what can she do? She doesn't have as much authority as her brother. She somehow managed to get herself to become the leader of the guards though, so that's something."
"I see," Ning said. "Well, I hope the two siblings have good luck, but there's nothing for us to do. Right now, I'm just very hungry and would like to eat something."
"Ah, sure," Sophie said. "Let's go have some breakfast."
Ning didn't leave the safe house for the next 5 days. With the possibility of having to meet the beast, he simply didn't want to risk it at all.
He used whatever he could to wash the blade of his and even went as far as to use some other fragrance on it to hopefully mask the scent of the fruit.
However, since he had to drink the fruit regularly, he himself smelled of the fruit now more than his sword.
He was in a room, reading about the world and its powers when someone walked into the room.
"You've gotten stronger in just a week," the person spoke.
Ning turned around with a surprised look on his face. "Oh, hey B— Clara," he spoke. "When did you get here?"
"Just this morning. You can speak your mind," the girl said. "I have concealed the room so no sound will escape."
Ning looked around, but he didn't notice any such possibilities. "How did you do it?" he asked.
"I have my ways," the girl said as she sat down on a chair next to him. She leaned against the table and stared at him openly.
"What are you looking at?" Ning asked.
"Your Essence," she said. "It is so… pure. Have you been using the Twin Moon absorption technique?"
"Every moment I can get," Ning said. He hid the fact that he was also drinking the juices of the fruit he had, but since he had barely enough for a month more, he didn't find the need to explain that.
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"Your talent must be truly terrific for you to have improved this quickly," she said.
Ning simply smiled, not wanting to tell her that his talent was barely above average at best. It was the fruit that was helping him more than anything.
"I heard you killed the leader of the bandits on the way here," she said.
"Oh yeah, I did," Ning said. "But these people seem to not trust me, and still think I'm here with some malicious intentions."
"It's hard to trust someone when they arrive just as the attacks begin," Clara said.
"Attacks? There were more?" Ning asked.
"Your group wasn't the only one that was attacked," Clara said. "Three other groups had people that had contacted others to say I was there."
"What do these people actually want from you?" Ning asked. "Are they that desperate to take over the mercenary and merchant business?"
Clara looked at him and hesitated for a second. "There is a reason, although I cannot tell you about it yet," she said. "Some people are trying to kill me because my existence threatens their standings. Fortunately, they think I'm a guy, so I've been safe for now."
"Rich people?" Ning asked.please visit
Clara nodded. "Powerful rich people," she said.
"Let me know if I can help," Ning said. "While I don't have much strength in me right now, I will surely grow stronger with time. I can be of help by then."
Clara smiled. "That's why I am here right now," she said.
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"Hmm?" Ning was surprised. "What do you mean?"
"Do you want to get stronger faster?" she asked. "I can help you."
Ning hesitated a bit. "How exactly can you help me?" he asked.
"You have the talent, but you have nowhere to learn. I want to send you someplace where you can learn to become stronger and gain skills. One of the best places in the entire continent," Clara said.
Ning's eyes went wide. "Wait, what do you mean? What place?" he asked.
"The Blackhawk Academy, the biggest school in the entire Blackhawk Dominion, one of the biggest schools in the entire continent, and certainly the place you want to be if you want to grow as an Essence user," Clara said. "That place is dedicated to helping you learn about Essence and its intricacies and I want to help you get in there."
Ning paused for a second. "I get that you think I'm talented, but why me?" he asked. "Surely you have other more trusted subordinates who can make use of that."
"It's easier to get better when you're just starting out, and you are one that belongs in that category," Clara said. "I want to sponsor your study there, to help you grow. In return, I want you to help me in the future when you get stronger."
"Help you with what?" Ning asked.
"I will tell you when the time comes," Clara said. "I just want you to promise that you will help me."
Ning thought for a bit. "I promise I will help you to the best of my ability," he said. "But are you fine with me? Do you even trust me just yet?"
"I trust you a lot more now than I did just a week ago," Clara said. "Of course, I still have some doubts about if you're faking it all, but I can tell that one thing you're not faking is your Essence rank. You've truly only just started your Essence journey and as that, it makes the other implausible things possible."
"Also, this is a leap of faith from me. I am choosing to trust you despite not knowing if it is the correct thing to do or not," Clara said. "I hope, you won't let me fall to my death in the end."
Ning smiled. "Don't worry," he said. "One thing I don't do is betray people who have been nice to me. You have chosen to help me, so I shall go my whole life in this world trying to pay you back a hundredfold. That I can promise you with utmost sincerity."
Clara smiled. "Great," she said. "Then prepare for it. I hear the school's admission starts in a month, so you will have to be there in the next 3 weeks."
"Blackhawk Dominion," Ning thought to himself. "That's quite far. Can I even make it in time?"
"Don't worry about the distance," Clara said. "Travel in the south is much faster than here in the north. You will be there before you even know it."
Ning went into the Frolane Empire from Grandfort city, and then took a carriage to go across the Frolane Empire.
He completed the journey in about 10 days, using 3 different carriage rides.
To his surprise, people toward the south used weaker Essence beasts to help with the travel. These beasts were much stronger and faster than normal horses and didn't tire as easily.
They also didn't need as much food, making them perfect for transportation.
Clara hadn't lied when she said that travel in the south was faster. The Essence in the south was also quite thick, compared to the Crowler Empire.
Ning crossed the border of the Frolane Empire, going into the Blackhawk Dominion.
The Blackhawk Dominion was internally separated into 5 different regions, all of which were controlled by a major family.
The main region, the Blackhawk Region, was controlled by the Blackhawk family, who the other 4 families reported to in the end.
For all intents and purposes, they were the royalties of this piece of land.
The school Ning was supposed to go to, the Blackhawk Academy was in the very same Blackhawk Region, in a city known as Arandale city.
The Arandale city was located at the base of a massive mountain range that separated one half of the Dominion from the other. The city was massive, holding upto 3 Million people in the city alone.
The city was very advanced when compared to the rest of the cities in the Glacien Continent, and had the best of the best Essence users here.
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In fact, Ning even heard rumors of Essence Soul realm fighters being easily found in this city. That was something the Crowler Empire, or even the Frolane Empire and the Oseger Empire could not brag about.
Essence Soul realm was quite difficult to reach there after all.
When Ning finally arrived in the city, he couldn't help but be shocked by everything he saw. Over his life, he saw many things that were far more prettier and amazing than what he was looking at, but for some reason, he could easily dissociate himself from those memories and fully enjoy what was before him.
He saw the light boards that lit in front of various shops and stores. Ning looked at his own sword and hilt and knew he needed to enter one of those stores very soon.
He could put that for later, however, since there wasn't much time before the academy began taking new students.
He and Clara had spent the last month preparing for this very moment. Now that he was here, he wasn't going to mess it up.
Ning didn't waste any time and walked straight out of the city, going to the base of the mountain range. After all, that was where the Blackhawk Academy was located.
The Blackhawk Academy stood proud at the base of the mountain, right outside the city, and was massive enough to be a small city on its own.
Ning found a line of people waiting outside the academy and was surprised at just how strong everyone looked.
He hadn't entered the Essence Sense realm, but he could still tell that most of them were stronger than him.
"Hi, did I arrive late by any chance? Have the tests already started?" he asked the person at the end of the line.
"Oh, no no. You're in time," the person said. "This line is so you know when your test is."
"My test?" Ning was a little surprised. "Each person's test is individual?"
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"No, no, we find out the date of the test, that's all," the man said. "These people take tests in batches as there are too many people joining each time, so we are here to find out which match we're in."
"Ah, I see," Ning said, finally understanding what was happening in front of him. 'I hope I don't accidentally end up becoming a teacher. Until that time, I have no good set of knowledge regarding the topics at all.'
He waited in line for at least 3 more hours before he was finally allowed into the academy to find out when his test would be.
However, before getting that, there was a small set of questions he had to answer.
There were 3 people in front of him, each in their 60s, and they all started asking questions one by one.
What is your name? Where are you from? Do you think this place is for you? Do you have the money to learn?
These sorts of questions were asked one after another, so Ning gave some truthful answers. The old people didn't give much response to the answers, other than a stamp of approval so he could take the actual test.
Ning looked at the information he was given. 4 days.
He had to stay out for 4 days before he could take the test? He was fine with that. There were times he had waited for worse. This was nothing.
Ning had to remain indoors for the rest of the days, as he couldn't go out to just as he pleased.
Unlike the Crowler empire, the Blackhawk Dominion held many beasts that could easily latch onto his scent, making it impossible for him to work here at all.
In fact, because of his sword's scent, the journey until here had been something that caused nearly major problems for him.
Thankfully, he had the brilliant idea of using his sheath as the thing that held the scent, so that the beast wouldn't go for his sword.
The beast that pulled the carriage got used to the scent, and some while later, Ning got rid of it. That way, he had finally been able to come back.
On the day of the test, however, Ning couldn't take any chances. So, he cleaned his sword and himself to the best of his ability, and finally went to the Blackhawk Academy.
If Ning were to pass these tests, he could easily become one of the strongest powerhouses in the whole world.
Ning arrived in front of the academy gates and waited along with many others to enter it. There wasn't much time before the tests would begin, so he was quite excited about it.
"Please grab a token from the side when you enter. Your turn will be based on the number in the token," a person from the academy said.
Everyone got into a line and entered while taking one of those tokens. Ning took one as well and got in.
'243,' he thought. 'Isn't that going to take some time?'
He knew a little about the tests that would be conducted in the academy, so he knew how long one would take on average to go through them all. Given his number, he doubted it could leave before 3 in the afternoon.
The first test was a written test to test one's knowledge and intellect. Ning had learned quite a bit on the way to the Blackhawk Dominion, so he wasn't as worried.
He wrote down the answers just as he remembered. As for the ones that required creative thinking, he did his best.
The written test ended an hour later, and they were taken away for physical tests.
The first of the physical tests was one where they simply tested their ranks. Everyone had different ranks, and as such everyone would have different results. The academy was trying to determine the rank of everyone that had gotten in, while also determining just how well the rest of their results were when compared to their ranks.
He had to wait quite a while before he got to take the test at all. Being 243rd on the list didn't help at all. It took nearly 3 hours before it was his turn to be tested.
Ning was still in the 5-Sense-Improvement realm, so he let them know as such. The examiners still tested him and noted it down as such.
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Once he was done, Ning moved on to the next test. The physical strength test.
Fortunately, people were already taking the test, so he didn't have to wait much for his turn to come. Half an hour after arriving, he was already punching and kicking at the training rock.
The examiners showed some rather surprised expressions when they saw Ning's nearly 25 times strength. That was already surprising for even Essence Manifest realm Essence users to begin with, not to mention a 5-Sense-Improvement realm person.
After the physical test, Ning was sent to the Sense test.
He was sent into a dark room that was devoid of all light and sound and forced to locate various things that were in the room.
He had to use the limited light to see what was where and use smell to locate a few things. He also had to use sounds to determine if something was in total darkness or not.
All in all, he completed the test relatively quickly and was let go.
The examiners were once again surprised, only this time Ning wasn't sure how surprising his results were. Was he once again better than an average Essence Manifestation realm user? Or was it a little less impressive than that?
After he was done there, Ning was taken to the Essence Sense test. However, due to not being in the Essence Sense realm just yet, he was forced to skip the test and go on to the next one.
The next test was one for Essence Manifestation. Only, you could use conduits to use Essence if one so pleased. At first, Nign was a little surprised and confused. Just how could one use conduits when each conduit was bonded to a single person?
They hadn't even let him bring his sword into the academy, so there shouldn't have been a way for him to do anything.
However, fortunately, there was.
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On an irregularly shaped staff, there was a large, uncut, blue gem that seemed to be created from the ocean itself. The gem was the conduit, and would not require one to bond with it at all.
After all, it was a natural conduit.
Ning grabbed the staff and felt the conduit trying to devour the Essence in him. He smiled a little, surprised at the fact that he could actually sense something like that.
'You want my Essence? Take it,' Ning thought and started pouring his Essence into the staff. The blue gem devoured his Essence as if it had never seen something so good before.
Then, Ning focused on the target before him. He could tell that the blue gem could produce water, so he decided on what water skill to use.
He landed on a single answer. Water Blast.
He pointed his staff in front of him and suddenly a gush of water shot out from the staff like it had been coming from a pressurized nozzle. It didn't lose steam all the way until the end of the training field when it struck the training rock.
The examiners looked surprised once more and they quickly recorded everything before sending Ning away.
Now that he was done with most of the tests, there was a single one before he could go back to his room in the city.
The final test was a simple one. The test involved having one of the examiners test one's Essence purity.
The examiners were talented in recognizing how pure the Essence was for any source, so they were more than qualified to test everyone's Essence.
Ning waited until his turn and walked up to the man that was testing his Essence. He placed his palm on Ning's abdomen and asked, "please use your absorption technique if you have any, otherwise just breathe normally."
Ning nodded and used the Twin Moon absorption technique just as the examiner requested. He breathed in and out as the Essence in his body started moving.
After a minute or two, the examiner finally left his abdomen. However, in doing so, Ning could see an absolutely shocked expression on the man's face.
"So pure," the man murmured to himself before looking up. "Are you from a big family by some chance?"
Ning left the academy, damn near sure that he would be selected. Although nothing was set in stone yet, so he had to wait a week for the results to be out.
There were thousands of people trying to get in and only a hundred or so would enter, so Ning still had chances of failure, however little they may be.
He returned back to the city to spend the next week on his own. He returned to his hotel and immediately went to sleep.
Not only was he tired, but he also needed to sleep so he could be awake at night when the moon was out. That was the only time he could absorb essence after all.
He woke up late at night and drank the juices from one of the few remaining fruits. Just 4 more and it was over.
As soon as he drank the juices, his hunger, and drowsiness all seemed to fade away immediately. Once his mind was refreshed, he started using his absorption technique by the window where the moonlight was brightest.
He continued with it overnight and only stopped in the morning when there was no longer any visible effect from the absorption technique.
He got up and stretched a little. "It feels like I'm close," he thought. "I wonder if I can do it in a few days."
In a month's time, he had started getting close to reaching the next rank in his Essence journey. The Essence Sense realm.
There wasn't any major improvement to his abilities in that rank, unfortunately, but he could start sensing Essence more clearly so that was a big help.
"I will be needing more materials once I run out of the fruits," Ning thought. "Will that be enough?"
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He took the bag that was in the corner of his room and put it on the bed. He opened the bag and pulled out a few clothes and set it aside on the bed. Quite a bit deep in his bad was a pouch full of coins that he was given by Clara to pay for the academy.
He put that aside as well and reached for something that was below that.
He brought out a small box and opened it up to find a white crystal inside that was similar to the Essence that he and Carlos had brought over to Clara.
She had sent two of such crystals with him to use and absorb and had said that she would send 2 such crystals every month so he wouldn't have to worry about running out of Pure Essence at all.
His absorption technique wasn't the best at getting strong fast, so he had to use such crystals to make up for it.
"I'll use you guys once I'm done with the remaining 4 fruits," Ning spoke by himself and put everything back inside aside from the coin pouch.
He took the coin pouch and left his hotel room.
After learning about the cost of the academy, he realized that he would have quite a few coins still remaining, so he wanted to use the remaining coins to buy a proper sheath for himself.
The one he had been using was still working, but there were already way too many cuts and it was just one wrong move away from being cut open.
This time around, he wanted a sheath that was made using actual essence.
Ning walked around the city looking at the new stuff. There were so many things he could spend his money on, so many things he wanted to spend his money on. In the end, he was forced to stay his hand as he didn't have that much with him.
Hopefully, Clara would keep to her promise of sending him some pocket money starting next month, or he would be totally broke.
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He arrived at what looked like the place where weapons were made per request. He walked up to someone who looked like a clerk and spoke, "hi, I'm looking to make something cheap. Do you happen to know the prices by any chance?"
"Price of any conversion depends on the object of conversion, the size of it, and the element behind it. May I ask what your criteria are on this aspect?" the clerk said.
"Hm, I need a sheath that I can keep my sword in. I don't have any requirements other than the fact that it has to be as cheap as possible while remaining moderately durable," Ning said.
"Hmm, then you should have one that is made with air. A room full of air should be enough for good durability too. Since it's just air, it is also very cheap. What do you think about it?" the clerk asked.
"That… sounds fine. May I know how much that will cost in… Water coins?" Ning asked.
"Water coins? Hmm, it should be around 40 water coins," the clerk said.
"40, huh? Can I have one made please," Ning said.
"Let me write up an order for you," the clerk said and quickly wrote a few words in a piece of paper and handed it to Ning. "Please take this to Converter Frey in room 14. He will do what is remaining and take the pay there."
"Thank you," Ning said and took the piece of paper with him.
'Converter, huh?' he thought. He hadn't realized that was what the artificers would be called in this world.
These people's job was to convert real-life materials into weapons and armor, which was why they were called Converters.
Ning didn't really like the name, but who was he to judge others' naming skills anyway. His cousins had made it pretty apparent that he wasn't the best at naming things.
Ning found the Converter Frey as mentioned and handed the paper. The old man that was working quickly read the paper and asked for the money.
Ning hesitated to pay before seeing the item but gave it to him in the end. "I will come later to pick it up then," he said.
"Later?" Converter Frey asked. "Just wait and watch. I'll be done in 10 minutes."
Chapter 1128 Creating the Sheath
"Oh, you can do it right now?" Ning asked the converter Frey.
The man gave a smug smile. "I'm one of the best Converters here, and this task you've brought me is barely any trouble at all," he said. "Now, stand back. I need as much space in the room as I can get to work with."
"Yes," Ning said and stepped outside the door, while still watching everything.
Once he was out, the old man moved his wrist, and instantly, everything in the room disappeared.
'Hmm? Storage artifact?' Ning thought as he realized that the items in the room had been moved away somewhere. 'Something like that exists as well?'
The north truly wasn't that useful in terms of helping Ning get experienced with Essence. 'I wonder why I even arrived so close to the north,' he thought. 'Wait, no. That's not right. I must've arrived somewhere good, but then the damn turtle took me north. Yes, that must be it.'
The old man looked around the room and nodded to himself. "Good, I have enough space now," he spoke out loud. Then, he lifted his arm and did something.
Ning couldn't see what was happening at all, nor could he sense the Essence being used. However, his improved senses still told him a few truths that a normal person couldn't have learned at the moment.
'His hair… it stopped moving,' Ning noticed. 'So did his clothes.'
He waited for a few seconds and he sensed the flow of air in the corridor he was standing in. 'Nothing is moving in and out of the room. It's like someone has put a barrier on the door,' he thought. 'Is the air in the room completely cut off from the outside?'
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Ning could also no longer hear any sound from inside the room. It was almost as if the air that was supposed to move to transfer sound no longer did.
'So weird,' Ning thought. He was trying to make as little sound as he could so as to not distract the converter.
He continued watching as the converter suddenly took a deep breath and stopped.
Ning felt the rigidity in the air last for a second and then, the air glowed a bright white.
The old man made a gesture of grabbing onto the air and started pulling it. As he did, the glowing air started converging at the center as per the old man's intention.
As the air in the room disappeared, Ning felt the air outside move into the room like a typhoon. His clothes were whipped by the sudden suction that was created inside the room as the air moved in.
The old man continued compressing the glowing air into the center and as he did, more and more air filled the room.
About 2 minutes later, the old man had completely taken the air in the room and had moved it onto a single ball of white light.
He then took out a hammer and anvil from somewhere and started hammering the glowing ball of light. His hammer seemed to have no rhyme or reason as to where and how he was hitting the ball with it. However, even so, the ball somehow warped into the shape the old man wanted.
The old man quickly took out a piece of paper to refer to the overall dimensions of the sheath that Ning had requested and worked the next few minutes to get that exact.
He hammered for the final time and stopped. When he moved away, Ning could see a translucent, white sheath on the anvil. The sheath he had asked for had in fact been prepared for him, and it had taken even less than 10 minutes.
"Wow!" he couldn't help but say. "That was amazing, sir. How did you do it so quickly?"
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The old man rubbed his nose in pride and smiled. "I could've done it in just 5 minutes if I wanted to," he said. "But I still need my Essence, so I couldn't waste it just like that."
He grabbed the sheath and looked it over one last time before throwing it in Ning's direction. "Take it and test it. See if your sword fits," he said.
Ning nodded and pulled his sword out from the metal sheath. Then, he slowly inserts it into the Air sheath.
The sword slid perfectly into the sheath, surprising Ning as to just how accurate it was. What was even more surprising was how easily the man seemed to have made something so perfect.
'I can even use this sheath to use Wind attacks now, can't I?' he thought. It was seriously quite good.
Ning looked at the man and greeted his farewell respectfully. The man deserved the respect as even without direct experience, Ning knew that not just anybody could've done what the man had done today.
Even if the item he had made wasn't of any note, the craftsmanship behind it was. It showed just how much the man must've trained over the course of many years to come to this level.
Ning thanked him one last time and left the place. He walked out of the building with his hand on his sheath.
He poured a little bit of Essence into it and created a small breeze in front of him that made him feel like it was springtime, despite being some of the hottest days of summer.
Ning couldn't help but smile at the breeze and moved on. "With this, I'm all set," he thought. Now, all he had to do was wait for the results to be posted.
A week later, the results were out.
Ning went to the academy gates with the token that he had gotten when he had taken the test. As soon as he reached the gates, he saw a crowd of people gather around the wall.
Ning could see bits of names and numbers on the paper that was stuck to the wall. "There's the result," he thought.
He pushed through the crowd and walked right up to the wall. Then, he checked for his name on the list.
Chapter 1129 Registering
"Ning… Ning… Ning… Ning… Ning… Ah! There it is," Ning said when he saw his name on the poster. "I knew I could do it."
He was still a little happy that he made officially made it. He looked at his name for a few seconds more and walked away from the crowd.
He could hear shouts of cheer and cries. There were definitely more cries than cheers. Given how many people have taken the test, it was obvious that more people would've failed.
As he was wondering what he was supposed to do now, a person from the academy walked out and posted another piece of paper. Then, he spoke out loud.
"Everyone who has passed, please register as soon as you can. You will have to register and move into the academy by the end of the week. Any later, and you will be rejected from joining the academy," the man said before disappearing.
Ning saw that the post on the wall said the same thing as well.
'Did I bring my money?' Ning thought and grabbed onto the pouch on his back. "I did. I should get registered right now."
He walked to the open gate and handed over his token. He mentioned his name and the guard there looked through the list to find him.
"Head over to that building over there. You can already see a small crowd gathering, can't you?" the man said.
"Ah, yes. Thank you," Ning said and walked away. He went into the academy, slightly surprised at the fact that all the testing locations that had been set up had already been stripped away, leaving behind empty land on the ground.
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Ning stared ahead at the massive building that simply towered over everything. He couldn't see what was beyond it, except for the barren mountains that occasionally flashed with some colors.
There were most likely people there that were learning or practicing with their Essence, which was what he was seeing.
'Why is one of the best academies of the continent so gloomy?' Ning wondered. 'There's barely any color anywhere. I can't even see that many trees at all.'
He arrived at the registration building and waited for his turn. He could see the ages of the people that had passed along with him. Every single one of them was a teenager or in their early 20s from what he could see.
The rare exceptions were younger people, but never older ones. The academy didn't trust an older person to have the talent required to make it big as an Essence User.
Ning went into the registration building when his turn came and started filling up information when he was asked.
Clara had already helped him come up with a fake identity, so besides keeping his name the same, he had new backgrounds that he needed to remember.
They were rather easy, so he wrote them down.
Ning was now from a small noble family in the eastern region of the Frolane empire. He was born to a loving father and mother and had 2 elder sisters. His father used his hard-earned money to buy him the best crystals, which he had diligently used to practice Essence.
As a result, from a very young age, his Essence had been quite pure. That caused the problem of his having to improve slowly, but Ning's father was fine with it, and so was Ning.
However, now Ning had grown and very soon he would have to take over for his father. So, to improve himself even further and learn more about being an Essence User, he had come to the Blackhawk academy which was one of the best in the world.
Ning wrote down everything the piece of paper asked for and brought out a pouch to pay the required fee of 250 Fire coins.
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That was just the entrance fee too. Every 3 months, he would have to pay another 50 Fire coins if he wanted to continue his practice.
After Ning paid the cost of admission, he was admitted into the academy and was made to quickly return with his item by the end of the week.
After that point, leaving the academy would also be prohibited for him, with some exceptions. After he moved to the academy, he was going to have to stay in the academy for months at a time.
Ning had no choice but to agree to those terms. He wasn't particularly unhappy with them either, but he would've preferred being a little freer. Maybe the teachers here hated their students having freedom.
Ning left the building and walked out of the academy. He could still hear the cries of those that hadn't managed to make it into the academy.
He could swear that he almost tasted the salt in the air with how many buckets of tears were being shed today.
He had to walk amongst the disappointed people back to the city, but their mood never affected his own. He had made it into the academy after all.
After this point, Ning planned on becoming as great as he could with Essence. If he could, he would help Clara with whatever her problem was.
After that, he would spend a few more years gathering enough energy, and then at some point, he would leave this place too.
'I hope I have enough adventure in the next few years to last me a while,' Ning thought. 'I need to go find a planet with a corrupt Constellation so I can drain it.'
The system didn't care whether a constellation was corrupt or not, as it did with humans. While Ning was punished if he intentionally hurt someone innocent, there was no such thing as a Constellation.
Even then, Ning preferred going after the bad ones anyway just so he didn't feel guilty at all.
'I can ask System for a bad one,' Ning thought. 'After that, I should find a few planets to put into my world.'
He wanted to give his daughter some actual friends, and partners for his beasts. Those were after all the only reasons why he was even bothering with everything.
Ning arrived at the academy with a massive bag full of clothes and other necessary items. He found his way to the dorm room that was on either side of the academy where he was going to have to stay for a long time.
The academy's main building was nearly 800 meters wide, and he had to go around to even see the dorms.
"Wow, and it actually extends for so much longer too," Ning thought when he saw the sides of the academy that went on for another 800 meters or so.
"What's inside of it, I wonder," he thought. "There's so much Essence there that it can't be something natural at all."
On the right side of the academy was the male dorm room, and on the left side of it was the female dorm room.
Ning walked on paved stone roads that were conveniently made for the students to walk on. Letting them walk on the barren land itself wouldn't have been many problems either, but it seemed the academy at least wanted to look good on that front.
'Why the hell do they not just plant a bunch of trees at least? It honestly can't be that hard. There are trees growing all around in the city,' he thought. He could sense the Essence too and they would definitely help grow some plants here.
He arrived at the dorm and showed his token to the person in charge.
"2nd floor, room 5. Here's a student handbook, don't leave without reading it all. Your classes will begin next week," the person said.
Ning looked at the person who handed him the items. 'So strong,' he thought. 'This man is definitely higher than just Essence Manifestation for sure. He might even be in the Essence Soul realm.'
"Thank you." He took the book and key and went over to room 5 on the 2nd floor. He tried to use the key to unlock the door but found out that the door was already unlocked.
'Someone's here?' he thought and sensed the Essence inside of the room. Someone was definitely there. He slowly opened the door and looked at the room he would have to spend quite a bit of time in the future.
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The dorm room Ning was to stay in was quite small. It was about 4 by 4 meters in size, with only 2 beds and 2 closets. Ning couldn't find anything else in there at all, not even a chair.
'Best academy, my ass. Bastards can't even afford chairs for their students,' he thought as he walked in.
The bed to the right was occupied, and the young man who was sleeping in it quickly got up when he noticed someone walking in.
"Who are you?" the young man asked, half-asleep.
"Oh, Hi! I'm Ning, your roommate," Ning quickly introduced himself.
The young man tried to open his eyes the best he could to look at Ning. The young man himself was quite good-looking with long curly hair that covered his ears.
"I'm Kaleb Hass," the young man said. "And you are weak. Don't disturb me."
He slumped back in his bed and fell asleep.
Ning stood there, slightly surprised at what had just happened. 'Weak?' he thought to himself. 'How am I weak when I have already entered the Essence Sense realm 2 days ago?'
He stared at the man for a few seconds, but the young man had already fallen asleep from what he could see.
Ning sighed in the end and looked away. 'Fine, Kaleb Hass. I won't bother you again,' he thought to himself and started setting up his bed.
He put the bag down and was dusting off his bed sheets when he stopped.
'Kaleb Hass?' he thought for a moment. 'Hass… I know that surname, don't I?'
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He thought for a moment and remembered. 'Wait! They are the nobles that rule the Greendove region of the Blackhawk Dominion, aren't they?' he thought for a moment.
The longer he thought about it, the more sure he became. The Hass family was in fact the ones that ruled the Greendove Region.
'Wow, they put me with a nobility huh?' Ning thought. After his curiosity had been fulfilled, he got back to work.
He put his clothes into the empty closet and safely stored the two crystals he had. He was debating on whether he should leave the crystal in the closet or not. He did have his own interdimensional storage after all.
Still, in the end, he decided to leave it be. Since he was trying to experience new stuff, even if it was a bad experience, he would welcome it.
However, that did not mean that he was going to leave it out in the open.
Ning took his sword off its sheath and placed it on top of the clothes where the crystal was. Now, anyone that wanted those crystals would have to first pull away his sword.
With how impossible of a task that was, Ning felt fairly confident that his crystals wouldn't be stolen so quickly.
'Still, I should use it as quickly as possible,' he thought.
Once he had set up everything, he sat on his bed and sighed deeply. He looked around in the room and lay back on his bed. Then, he took out the student handbook and started reading through it to understand more about the academy.
There were quite a few rules in the academy that Ning would have to be careful about. For example, he couldn't use Essence outside of classes or the training area.
He couldn't leave the dorm at night after 8 pm. He had to be present in every class unless pardoned beforehand.
Ning read through the rest of the rules and moved on to the rest of the information.
The book mentioned various facilities and buildings around the academy that Ning would be allowed in so long as he was a student.
This included something that Ning had been looking forward to learning in the future.
'There is it, the skill library,' he thought. 'I wonder what sort of skills I will get from there in the future.'
1131 Classes
The Blackhawk Academy has a credit system. Everyone started with 20 credits and gained more by doing activities that were called 'mission' assigned to one by the academy.
The missions were normally something simple as 'Help clear the pond', or 'Help move desks from one classroom to the next', but they could also be quite complex sometimes.
Of course, the harder the mission, the more credit one got for completing it.
The credits could be used for the extra functions of the academy other than just normal classes. From buying Essence resources to being allowed inside a library, everything used credits.
So, everyone worked extra hard to gain as much credit as they could.
On the other hand, not attending a single class, unless one had previous clearance, made one lose credit for it. If they missed a whole day, they could easily lose anywhere from 5 to 8 credits depending on the number of subjects they had to go through.
If your credit went down to 0 at any point and you lost even a single credit afterward, you were immediately expelled from the academy.
That was all written in the handbook that Ning was given.
Ning read the handbook one more time after he got ready for his first day of class.
"Did you not bother learning about the academy before you came? Why are you reading that stupid book so much?" his roommate, Kaleb spoke while he got ready.
"I thought I was too weak for you to interact with," Ning said. "Do you want me to answer your question?"
"On second thought, no. Forget I even asked," the young man said as he put on his uniform.
Ning ignored him and simply waited for the time when the bell rang. After the first ring, he would have 5 minutes to get to his class.
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He had already been given a schedule as well as all the resources that would be necessary during his time in the academy, so he had to carry those around in a bag as well.
Ning heard the first ring of the bell a few minutes later and left the room. He and Kaleb walked out of the door at the same time, but Kaleb quickly ran away, leaving Ning to lock the door behind him.
Ning did so as soon as he could and walked to the academy.
His first class was in classroom 14 on the 3rd floor on the right wing of the academy. It was the wing closest to his dorm, which was why he had waited until the bell rang to leave.
He walked up the stairs and saw the inside of the academy finally. As he had expected, the inside of the academy was barren as well.
However, it wasn't simply left barren like the outside, and was instead turned into a training area with multiple platforms to fight in as well as a large pond at the center which also had a platform on top of it for students to train or fight in.
He followed the platforms and saw that there was nothing stopping the students from leaving the area as aside from the 3 wings of the academy, the backside of the academy was completely empty, allowing anyone to go to the mountains as they wished.
As it seemed, as long as the students didn't leave the academy ground itself, or returned to the dorm by 8 pm, they would be fine.
The number of students that walked into their classroom was massive, but Ning still managed to make it to his classroom with enough time.
To his surprise, the classroom only held 35 or so students, despite clearly accepting over a hundred.
'Are we separated into groups?' he wondered.
He looked around at his classmates and realized almost all of them looked either of the same age as him or younger. He wondered what their actual age was.
'Quite a few girls too,' he thought. 'Good to see no discrimination of any sort.'
The teacher arrived a minute later when the next bell finally rang and the class started.
The teacher introduced himself and introduced the class as well.
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The first class was language studies, which Ning had prepared for, but still ended up hating it just as much. He struggled to follow the teacher through the entire class and was only rejuvenated when the bell rang once again.
The 2nd class for him took place in another room which he had to go to. This time, it was a maths class.
This was much more enjoyable to Ning, merely based on the fact that he didn't have to use much brainpower for this part. He was a little good with numbers too, simply because he had spent hundreds and thousands of years.
On top of that, the math being taught was nowhere near as complex as it could be. He had taught more complex math to his own daughter while she was growing up.
The class ended once again, and Ning moved on to another class.
One after another, from 10 am in the morning to 3 pm, he went through 6 different classes, each of which was around 40 minutes long.
Science, Essence Theory, Geography, and History were the next 4 subjects that Ning had to sit through before he was finally allowed to go have his lunch.
From 3 pm to 4 pm was the free time for them to rest before the intensive classes began.
From 4 pm onward, the practical lessons began. There were 2 different classes for this one, each one of which took place on one of the many platforms and went on for an hour each.
The first one was Essence training. The class taught the students how to improve their Essence rank, how to use their Essence, how to minimize their Essence usage, and improve efficiency.
The second one was Battle training. This class taught the students how to fight practically and involved a lot of direct fights in order to train.
These last two were the classes that Ning loved the best.
I am going to write another story for the upcoming WSA contest, which most likely means I will have to make compromises with my other books. Unfortunately, this book's upload schedule will end up being that compromise.
I will still write chapters for this book, but they will be slow and infrequent. I hope you guys understand.
1132 Essence and Weapons
The Essence training class was quite simple.
The students were made to bring their own conduits if possible. If they could not, they would have to buy a simple conduit from the academy for a few credits.
Ning brought his wind sheath as he didn't feel comfortable bringing the sword to this class. Not only did he have to keep the Sword itself a secret, but he also had to keep it in his closet to stop anyone from going through it.
"Everyone, gather in a line and try to knock the metal plate in front of you using your Essence," the teacher told them.
The class full of students looked at the several metal plates that were kept upright. They all used their essence and one by one knocked the several plates.
Ning knocked his own plate with relative ease since he had a room full of air to work with when using his wind sheath. Any other tasks may cause a problem, but that simple task was of no trouble to him.
"Now go and put it back up," the teacher told them.
Everyone quickly went over to their plate and put it upright before returning.
The teacher walked in between them and looked at them all with his lazy eyes. "Should I congratulate you for doing something so simple?" the teacher asked.
The students looked at each other and quickly shook their heads.
"Good. That's not worthy of any congratulations. A monkey could do what you do if it can use Essence," the teacher said. "What is worthy of congratulations is if you can do the same thing you did but with a 10th the amount of Essence. Or maybe even just the 20th. Do you think you can do that?"
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The students looked puzzled. Using such little Essence to knock the metal was doable in their mind.
A few of them nodded.
"I see," the teacher said. "Why don't you try it then?"
All the students prepared their conduits again and targeted the metal plate. Only this time, they made sure to use just a 10th of what they had used previously.
The first student, who was using a fire conduit, attacked his metal plate in the distance. A very tiny ball of fire flew out of the shield in his hand and crossed the area to go for his metal plate.
However, not even halfway through, the fire faltered in the wind, nearly going out. At the same time, the wind caused the tiny fire to go move out of the direction it was moving in the first place, completely destroying any semblance of accuracy in the young man's attack.
"What?" the young man shouted in surprise. He had fully expected his fireball to not be strong enough to make the metal plate drop, but losing the trajectory of the attack had not even been a concern in his mind.
The other few tried it out as well, and only 2 of the 35 people managed to drop their metal plate at all, and that too was only because one of them used too much Essence.
The other person that did the task perfectly was a young girl with bright red hair and a cold attitude that went by the name Yorsha Ulyrus.
As a daughter from the Redraven family, no one dared say what she had done was a fluke at all.
Ning frowned at his own attack as he had too little wind to use when he shrunk the Essence required by 10 times. He had already been using a rather low amount of Essence due to how hard to gather his own Essence was, so the task was quite hard for him.
"Everyone, keep trying until you make it," the teacher said. "If you do end up making it, try with less Essence again. Do it until you have no more Essence."
The students frowned, but no one dared say no. Everyone tried their best, and by the time the period was over, a lot of them had managed to drop the metal plate a second time too.
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After Essence training was the Weapons training.
Ning arrived on the platform where he was to train and was surprised to see that his roommate Kaleb was also in the same class.
By now, they were in 3 of the same classes throughout the day.
"Come on, gather around and choose whatever you like," the weapons teacher said as he looked at the 30-some different students that were here for the weapons training.
The students gathered around the pile of wooden weapons and started choosing one after another to practice with.
"Don't bother choosing a weapon just because you happen to have that Essence weapon, choose one that you actually like," the teacher told the students.
The students stuck to basic weapons for the most part. Sword, Spear, Axe, Hammer, and Bow were the ones that were picked the most.
Ning wanted to pick a spear, but with how irreplaceable his sword seemed, it was better for him to choose a sword. Besides, there wasn't really any point in choosing a spear as he was very good with that.
"Did everyone get a weapon of their own?" the teacher asked as he looked around. "Good, since you all have something, your task for the day is very simple."
The teacher pulled a sword from his hip and revealed that it was an icy white sword. He used his Essence, and immediately various ice blocks appeared around the platform. When Ning quickly counted, he realized that there were exactly the same amount of ice blocks as there were students.
"Hit the ice until it is destroyed completely," the teacher said. "Hit too weak and the ice won't break. Hit too hard and the weapon will break."
"You will need to find a good compromise between your strength and your weapon's durability. Once you destroy the ice blocks, you should have a general grasp of how you can keep your sword lasting for a long time and not breaking very easily," the teacher said.
"Begin!"
1133 Mission
3 days later, Ning had his first day without any classes. There would be another one after 2 more days too, giving him 5 days of total study days in a single week.
Just because he had no class, however, didn't mean that no one had classes at all.
A free day meant Ning did not have to study at all. However, he still had to remain in the academy ground, so he needed to do what he could do to pass some time.
There were 2 things every single student did during these days when they were bored of just sitting in their room.
The first was earning credits. They would do the missions that were given to them and earn credits.
The second thing they did was spend those credits. There were libraries, restaurants, conduit shops, clothing stores, and even an entertainment hall on the front wing of the academy.
Since this was Ning's first week, he decided to earn some credit. Otherwise, he wouldn't feel any good spending the 20 credits he had.
He made his way to the mission's building and quickly looked around for whatever missions were available.
There were papers on a board where one could take a piece to accept the mission. Ning looked around and found quite a few different types of missions.
It went from cleaning to picking trash to clearing the fields of any growing plants. There were also other missions such as helping in the academy cafeteria, helping a teacher with something, and other various things.
Ning decided to start off with something slow and easy, so he took the job to get rid of plants around the academy.
He took a piece of the paper and handed it to one of the many students that were working there. His request quickly went through and he was handed the mission.
"Get a shovel from the shed and you can start working. For every 20 sizable plants you manage to unroot, you will get 1 credit," the man said.
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Ning nodded and walked away.
He no longer questioned why they were so gung-ho about removing all the trees. During one of his previous Essence lessons, a teacher had exchanged the reason behind the bleak and desolate landscape.
Apparently, trees, like any other thing in this world, required Essence to grow. So, if they let trees and other plants grow here, they would definitely steal the Essence from the air, reducing the amount available.
Given how many different students and teachers were here that relied on the Essence they could get to improve themselves through the rank, any little Essence they could save would go a long way for all of them.
Ning went to the shed and grabbed one of the shovels there, along with a basket to carry what he unearthed on his back. After all, he would need to show his 20 plants to gain the credits.
He walked around the barren land searching for any sort of plants, however, there weren't any there at all.
"Sigh, do I really have to go up in the mountains?" Ning thought as he looked in the distance where various students were either working or training. He sighed one last time and made his way there as the mountains were part of the academy as well.
In a well-lit room on the highest floor of the academy, 3 students were sitting around a table with drinks all around the table.
"Haha, it's been a while, hasn't it? Since we all sat around drinking," a bald man with a thick beard said.
"It sure has, headmaster," an older woman with short hair said.
"I can't believe you actually managed to convince us to drink when it's only late afternoon right now," the last man with a burn scar on his right cheek said.
"What else can I do?" the headmaster said as he took a swig from his cup. "We can't go around teaching students while hungover, so it's better to drink early and be sober by the time morning comes around."
"I'm not complaining," the man with the scar said.
"Anyway, stop talking and drink," the headmaster said. "You two suffered quite a lot during this year's student admissions. How many people was it? 5000?"
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"Probably," the woman said. "It was so many that I didn't even bother counting."
"It was exactly 5492 participants in the tests," the man with the scar said. "Over the course of a week, we had to go through nearly 800 different people each day. There were days when I had to work until midnight."
"Alright, let's stop talking about the hardship," the headmaster said. "How is this batch of students? Any good seeds?"
"Umm, I would say a few," the woman said. "The daughter of the Redraven family is definitely someone we need to keep an eye on. She could turn out to be one of the best students given how trained she already is."
"There's the son of the Whiteowl family, the one named Tenn. He's close to ranking up from the Essence Manifestation realm, despite only being 16 years old," the man said.
"Kaleb Hass of the Greendove family shows potential as well. I've taught him for 3 days, and he seems to absorb information like a sponge. Although… his attitude could use a little work," the woman said.
The man nodded. "I hated dealing with him too in my class," he said.
"So, these 3 are the ones we should keep our eyes on, huh?" the headmaster asked.
The two nodded.
"Oh right, there might be another one," the man suddenly said.
"Oh, who?" the headmaster asked.
"There's one kid named Ning. He's a little old and has only recently ranked up to the Essence Sense realm," the man said. "However, he has something that everyone could only hope for."
"Oh? What?" the headmaster asked curiously.
The man got closer and whispered, "his Essence is barely tainted at all. It's almost as if it is fully
pure."
"Pure Essence?" the headmaster thought. "It's been a while since anyone with that sort of Essence direction has come to the academy. Things might turn fun very soon."
Ning had made his way halfway up the second mountain to the left where there were fewer people around. He hoped people simply didn't want to come here because it was far away. If the reason for it lacking people was because there was nothing to unroot here, he would have wasted his time.
A few minutes later, Ning saw a small plant growing next to a rock and walked over there. He grabbed the plant by the stem and pulled it as hard as he could.
Despite the hard soil of the mountain, the plant came out relatively easily. Ning threw the plant onto his basket and moved on.
He had collected about 8 plants by now, and he still needed 12 more if he wanted to get a credit.
He looked at the sun going down and realized that he had 2 hours of sunlight at best to work with.
'Damn it, I shouldn't have wasted half a day sleeping,' he thought. Although, he had been absorbing one of the crystals the entire night, so he couldn't help it.
He walked up the mountain and found another plant. This one was small and couldn't just be ripped out. So, he took his shovel and dug into the soil.
With how strong he was, the shovel went into the soil as if he were digging up sand. The entire plant came out of the ground, root and all, and Ning tossed it into the basket on his back.
As he walked around, the dirt would come loose and fall through the cracks of the basket, leaving only the plant behind.
'I found 2 already,' he thought. 'Maybe I can find them all here.'
He walked around the mountain searching for more and more plants and indeed found quite a few. In just an hour, he found exactly 9 more of them.
ραпdα--nᴏνa сom With the previous 10, he now had 19 plants.
The sun was already red and the sky was slowly changing to red as well. Soon, it would turn to purple and he would lose all light.
His vision was good, but it was not so good that he could see easily at night unless there was a bright moon in the sky.
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He walked around for a bit and found the last plant. 'Finally,' he thought and walked up to it.
He pulled out his shovel and was about to dig when he heard something.
A young man had arrived close to him, making little to no noise at all. Ning was surprised at first, but he quickly grew suspicious.
"Who are you? And why are you sneaking up on me?" he asked.
The young man had stopped in his tracks and gave a grin when he heard the question. He had a basket on his back too with quite a few plants on his basket. A lot more than Ning had.
"I want that plant," the young man said. "Leave and find something else."
"I found it first," Ning said. "Go find your own."
"Come on," the young man said. "I'm 1 away from reaching 40. I need that plant."
"And I'm 1 away from 19. I need it more than you," Ning told the young man. "Besides, I found it first, so it is mine."
"Hehe, your name isn't written on that plant and it wasn't in your basket. So you can't say it is yours just yet," the young man said.
"Oh, then I'll just put it in my basket," Ning said and turned around to dig.
"Stop!" the young man rushed forward with surprising agility to his steps. It was as if the wind itself was helping him move forward.
He put his shovel in front of him to stop Ning's own shovel.
Ning realized that he was being attacked, so he quickly spun and used his shovel to strike away the incoming shovel.
The young man was surprised, but he wasn't caught off guard. He had been trained way too often for something to catch him off guard enough to be a problem.
He stopped where he was attacked and brought the shovel around to strike at Ning's own shovel.
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Ning turned the shovel in his hand and like a spear, shoved the shovel head onto the incoming shovel. He hit the shovel right at the base of the shovel head, knocking it back.
At the same time, he stepped forward and swung the shovel toward the young man's neck.
The young man was surprised and tried to step back, but Ning moved again, following him.
A sudden gust of wind appeared out of nowhere, pushing on Ning with a lot of force. Ning used the shovel to cut through the pierce through the incoming wind and arrived in front of the young man, pointing the shovel head at his neck.
"Stop, or I will hit you for real," Ning said.
The young man dropped the shovel and looked in surprise. "How… how did you do that?" he asked.
"My physical strength is stronger than whatever skill it was that you used," Ning said. He dropped the shovel and glared at the young man. "Now, go find your own plant before the sun sets and stop disturbing me."
The young man watched in awe for a moment before realizing that Ning had turned around to leave.
"Wait!" the young man shouted.
"What now?" Ning asked. "You still want to fight?"
"No," the young man said. "What's your name?"
Ning looked at the young man weirdly for a moment before speaking. "Ning," he said.
"Ning," the young man shouted. "Big brother Ning, my name is Tenn Foreman. Would you like to be training buddies with me?"
"Training buddies?" Ning asked.
"Yes," the young man said. "I've been looking for people to train with me, and you seem like a capable fighter. Would you please train with me?"
Ning thought for a moment. "After class?" he asked.
"After class," the young man said.
"Sure," Ning said. "But I leave if it's not worth my time."
"Understood," the young man said. "Please meet me outside of the dorm after the class ends. I will leave you alone for now, bye."
month passed pretty quickly for Ning as he didn't have much to do in the academy.
For now, he simply went to his classes, joined Tenn for some training, and spent his free time earning some credits.
He had spent his credits a few times in the academy restaurant to eat some good food, but aside from that, he hadn't been able to use it much.
With what he was taught in the classes, he didn't find the need to immediately go to the library either.
Ning's improvement in his Essence rank had slowed down a lot as well. With the absence of the fruit and the crystals, he could only rely on the moonlight to aid him in absorbing pure Essence, and that was never really that helpful at all.
With how slow the Twin Moon absorption technique was, it would take him forever to reach the next rank which was the Essence Manifestation realm.
Fortunately, he wouldn't have to continue absorbing the moonlight forever.
Ning heard a knock on the door of his dorm room early in the morning one day. "There's someone by the door, get it," he said half asleep.
He had been absorbing essence all night and had only fallen asleep close to dawn, so he was still in deep sleep.
However, after the knocking lasted more than a few times, he got up and looked at Kaleb who was snoring in his bed.
Ning felt the urge to choke him right then and there but quickly shook his head as the person outside continued to knock.
"Goddammit, this is my day off. Let me sleep," he spoke to himself before going over to open the door.
Outside was a middle-aged man that seemed to be from the academy based on the man's clothes.
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"Is your roommate around?" the middle-aged man asked.
"Yes," Ning said, half awake without even turning around to look at Kaleb who was still snoring. "Do you need me to wake him up?"
He really hoped that was the case as that would give him permission to ruin his sleep.
"Yes," the man said. "You guys have a package waiting for you in the parcel room. Make sure to relay the information to your roommate."
"Alright," Ning said and closed the door.
He walked back into the room and looked at Kaleb with drowsy eyes. Without hesitation, he kicked the bed as hard as he could without breaking it.
Kaleb felt the bed shake like an earthquake and quickly got up.
"What? What?" he shouted as he looked around, only to find the disheveled Ning standing over him.
"What?" he asked.
"We have packages," Ning said. "It's in the parcel room."
After saying that, Ning went over to his bed and fell asleep. He woke up sometime later around noon and found the room empty.
Kaleb seemed to have gone to his class. Their breaks never overlapped so one would always be in class while the other had a free day.
"Gosh, I'm hungry," Ning thought. The cafeteria would still have food, but for some reason, he wanted the tastier food from the restaurant this time around.
He looked at his student card which had a number written on the back.
eαglesnᴏνel 32.
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That was the number of credits he had gathered in the last month, including the 20 free credits one got at the start of the academy.
He had performed multiple types of tasks to reach that number in just 8 free days he had had until now, so he was quite proud of it.
"I should treat myself to something tasty," he thought.
As he opened the door to leave, he remembered the package he had gotten. "Right, must be from Clara," he thought and left the dorm.
The package could wait, so he instead went over to the restaurant. He really wanted some rice this time around, so he got himself a bowl of rice with a variety of sides. It all cost him just 1 credit, so he was quite happy about it.
He took his time eating the meal and only left nearly 20 minutes later when he was finished.
By now, it was close to 2 from what he could tell. He wondered if he should go to get some mission so he could earn some credit to balance out the one he spent today.
'I'll decide that after I see what sort of package I've been sent,' he thought and went over to the parcel room.
"Ning… Ning… Ning… uh, here you go," a girl who was working in the room found the package that was for Ning. The package he was sent was wrapped in some nice-looking paper and was hard to the touch as well.
Just from holding it, Ning could tell that it was most likely some sort of wood on the inside.
Not only that, he could sense some Essence on the inside as well now that he was holding it. However, that wasn't very important from what he could tell as almost all of the packages in the parcel room had some sort of Essence in them.
Almost everyone who had a family member studying here wanted their child to have an easy time, so they sent some sort of essence treasure to help them.
Ning looked at the package in the room for a bit before noticing something weird. "Excuse me, was this how it was when it got here?" he asked, pointing at a portion of the package that seemed to have been ripped off.
"Hmm? Oh, the teachers open everyone's package to check if there is something on the inside that may be harmful to the student," the girl explained.
"Ah, I see," Ning said. 'Hope those bastards didn't steal anything inside.'
He went back to his room where he finally was free to open the package. He tore open the outer layer and revealed a wooden box inside, just as he had expected.
He opened that too and finally saw the contents of the box.
Inside the wooden box were four crystals and a single piece of paper. From how orderly they were in the box, Ning was certain that the teachers had looked through the content and placed it all back accordingly.
He picked up the four crystals and looked at them. From what he could tell, they were all of the same quality as the last two crystals he was sent.
'4 this time huh? That's going to be a lot of help, honestly,' he thought. While nowhere near as good as the fruit he had gotten, the 4 crystals would last him a month and would help him improve his Essence rank quite a lot.
If he got these crystals every month, he could reach the reach Essence Manifestation realm in just 2 more months.
Ning quickly opened his closet and pulled out the earthen sword from within. Once out, he placed the four crystals into his bag and placed the sword right on top so that no one could steal from it.
He was starting to learn that he was maybe worrying a little too much about it all, as it seemed that people found these crystals all over the place in all of the Glacien continents, but he still wanted to be safe with his items.
Once he placed it all inside, he took the box and pulled out the letter from inside. It was a rather large letter with two pages entirely filled with words.
Ning was surprised at how much they had written on it and just how long it was overall. "The hell did they even write?" he wondered.
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'Hello, Son.'
"Son?" Ning was surprised for a bit and kept reading.
'I hope you're doing well with your studies in the academy. We are very proud of what you've been able to achieve. Don't worry about back home, your father is still plenty capable of taking care of himself.'
Ning continued reaching through the first paragraph of the page and nodded to himself. 'I see,' he thought. 'They are still playing the role that I come from a small noble family in the Frolane empire, huh?'
Of course, that wasn't all there was to the letter at all. 'If they are going so far as to write this all, they must've used the secret code Clara was talking about,' he thought to himself.
"How did the decryption go again?" he wondered for a moment and started decrypting the code that was the letter.
"That's… F and an I, then an N and a D. FIND, that's the first word." Ning got one letter at a time, reading through the entire letter to find the actual letter that was sent to him.
Nearly 15 minutes later, he was finally done with decrypting the entire letter, and the real letter became apparent to him.
"Find out about the internal political situation in the Whiteowl region. Find out exactly why the Foremans haven't taken over the region just yet."
"The Whiteowl region?" Ning wondered for a bit.
There were 5 regions in the Blackhawk Dominion. The region he was currently in was of course the Blackhawk region. To its right on the map was the Bluesparrow region, and to its left was the Greendove region.
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They were both ruled by great families. The Bluesparrow region was ruled by the Aurelus family, while the Greendove region was ruled by the Hass family, the one that Kaleb was from.
The three regions were separated from the rest of the two regions due to the massive mountain range that went between them. Beyond the mountain range lay the Redraven region to the left and the Whiteowl region to the right.
Ning knew that the Redraven region was ruled over by the Ulyrus family, while the Whiteowl was, while not officially, ruled by the Foreman family. However, it seemed that there was some reason why they weren't official yet.
'Damn girl, give me more information if you want my help. Stop hiding stuff,' Ning thought. Since she had asked, he would now have to help her as he had promised.
"The Foreman family, huh? I could ask Tenn, but that might be too direct," Ning thought to himself. "No, I need to be more informed about everything before I even try to find out anything from Tenn."
Ning decided to go visit the library for a change. He hoped there would be something in the books in the library regarding the Whiteowl region of the Blackhawk dominion.
His history classes talked about the way in the past and had yet to teach him anything about the current day at all.
Ning quickly went to the library where he had to spend a credit to read anything he wanted for the rest of the day. It didn't matter if he was going to be staying for 2 minutes or 2 hours. Everyone paid the same entry fee.
He went in and started looking for books that had to do with what he was asked to do. Unfortunately, there wasn't any book that had what he was looking for.
However, after asking the librarian there, she pointed him toward the back of the library where they kept stacks of newspapers. Reading those would give him a perfect idea of what sort of history had transpired in these places in the last few decades.
He got to the newspapers and started from the ones that were created 25 years ago. From the librarian, he understood that it was that time that the Whiteowl region went through a lot of changes.
As he started reading through the newspaper, he picked up one thing after another about the region and soon enough, he got a vague idea of what had happened.
One day, the Grazer family that used to rule over the Whiteowl region, all died in a fire that razed their house. From the article that Ning read, including the servants and caretakers, not a single person managed to survive the fire at all.
"I see, so the ruling family just died one day, huh?" Ning thought as he read the newspaper. "Then why haven't the other families taken over?"
He wondered if there was some sort of competition between various houses in the Whiteowl region that was stopping the Foreman from becoming the official ruler of that domain.
He went through the newspaper in chronological order and read up on the rest of the news regarding that incident. There wasn't much in the news after that and all it said was that the Foremans haven't officially taken over the Grazer family's place as the ruler despite already doing so unofficially.
The journalists that wrote the news wondered if there was a reason why they were doing so since the Foreman didn't say anything themselves.
'I'll need to understand a bit more,' he thought to himself. He would try and ask Tenn as well as he could, but he was sure he needed to ask someone else as well.
'Maybe Kaleb knows,' Ning thought. After all, he was from another one of the ruling families of the Blackhawk Dominion.
He looked at the time and realized that it was close to sundown. Tenn would probably be training right now, and despite his day off, Ning decided to go train with them.
He arrived at the furthest platform which was free for people to train on now that the classes had ended. There were about 20 people already on there, each of whom was fighting with wooden weapons.
Ning walked up and took a sword for himself before waiting for someone to leave or come so he could join in.
He looked around the platform, but he didn't find Tenn at all. 'Is he working?' he wondered. They did apparently share their day off so it was possible.
As he was wondering that, he heard someone shout his name from nearby. Ning turned around and saw Tenn who had a basket full of small plants.
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"Brother Ning, did you come to train? I thought you would be doing missions today," the man said.
"I was going to, but I had to go to the library quickly, so I skipped for today," he said. "Now I'm here to train."
"Oh, wait for me. I will get these checked out and return after I'm credited," Tenn said and ran off.
Ning waited 10 minutes before Tenn arrived once again. He quickly pulled out a sword from the pile and jumped into the platform.
"Let's go!" he said and rushed toward Ning.
Ning smiled and blocked the strike with a simple parry. He moved the sword to the right and slid it down Tenn's sword before going for the chest.
Tenn jumped back at the sudden reversal and jumped back in with a horizontal swing. Ning placed his sword vertically to the left and blocked the attack once again.
He pushed the sword and made a stabbing motion. Tenn swung his own sword and redirected the stab to not hit him. At the same time, he spun and came back with a diagonal swing.
The two fought each other for a while before they slowed down in their intensity and just attacked for the sake of it.
"What were you doing in the library? Were you studying on your day off?" Tenn asked while laughing.
"Kind of," Ning said. "I got a letter from my father today telling me to learn as much as I could about the nobilities of this dominion, so I went over to the library to learn what I could for now."
"Oh, and what did you learn?" Tenn asked curiously.
"Nothing," Ning said in an annoyed manner. "There's literally nothing in there aside from some newspapers that barely hold any information at all."
"I'm probably better off asking a random person about it than reading about it in the library," he said.
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"Those newspapers rarely get the full picture, so you should ask people instead," Tenn said as he swung his sword.
"Ooh, do you know much about the political structure of this world, Tenn? Can you tell me what you know?" Ning quickly asked.
"I know a few, but I don't involve myself with such matter to be of much help to you, I'm afraid," Tenn said.
"You should know a few stuff that doesn't get mentioned in the newspapers, right?" Ning asked. "For example, if we were to ignore the Blackhawk region, which of the other four regions would you say is the strongest one?"
"That's obviously the Whiteowl region that my family rules over," Tenn said proudly. "No other region is as safe as the Whiteowl region if we don't count the Blackhawk Dominion."
"Oh? Is that so?" Ning asked. "Why is it the safest?"
"Because of the Blackrock mountain here. They go all the way to the east and wrap around the eastern part of the Whiteowl region, forming a natural barrier against any invasion that might happen."
"It is also geographically the farthest region, not counting the Blackhawk region of course from either the Springwind Continent or the Blueflame continent, making it that much safer," Tenn said.
"Woah, I see," Ning said. "I really should have studied the map more. So, does that give you a political edge over the other 3 regions or something?"
"It doesn't," the young man shook his head. "What does though are the many Essence crystal mines that can be found in the Whiteowl region."
"What?" Ning asked rather loudly. "There are many Essence crystal mines in the Whiteowl region?"
"Hmph, where else do you think the 'White' comes from in the name?" Tenn asked smugly.
"I see," Ning said. "But wait, if the Whiteowl region is that good, and your family is definitely the strongest, then why aren't your elders officially becoming its rulers? I can't seem to make any sense of that at all."
"Who knows what's going on through that old brain of theirs? I swear it must have rotted already," Tenn said. "We all tell them to just make it official already, but they all keep saying just a few more years."
"I swear they are scared of the ghosts of the Grazer family haunting them or something."
Chapter 1138 Another Test
Ning tried finding more information about the Foreman family, but he couldn't succeed at all. Unfortunately for him, there wasn't anyone that had the exact information he had.
So, he wrote an encrypted letter and sent it to a location in the city, which was a safehouse of the Paradise Hunters. With this bit of information, Ning hoped they would be satisfied for now.
Time continued passing and day after day, he improved. He was sent 4 more crystals the following month and 5 more the month after that as Ning had written normally in his letters that he was close to reaching the Essence Manifestation realm and would reach it in just a few months if he got more pure Essence.
Ning continued with his studies for the time being and also continued his training with Tenn. He slowly improved his Essence rank as well, getting closer and closer to reaching the Essence Manifestation realm.
One day, after the theoretical essence class was over, Ning stood up to leave. It was lunch now, so he wanted to go eat some food.
However, before he could get out, the teacher walked in front of him and blocked him. He was a little surprised and looked at the young middle-aged man.
"Teacher Hayan, how can I help you?" Ning asked.
"Student Ning, how are you doing these days? How's your essence training going on?" the teacher asked.
Ning got a little confused, but he answered honestly. "Everything is alright, I suppose," he said.
"Do you mind following me somewhere? It will take an hour or so," the teacher said.
"Uhh… an hour? But I will miss my lunchtime," he said.
"It's fine, right? If you're very hungry I can meet you after you have some lunch," the teacher said.
"No, I'm not particularly hungry, but I would like not to go without it if possible," Ning said.
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"Then you don't mind having lunch afterward?" the teacher asked.
"Not necessarily, but I don't see how I can have lunch when not in my lunchtime. If I miss my class, I will have to give up credit, so there is that problem," Ning said.
"If you come with me, I will give you 5 credits," the teacher hurriedly said. He was starting to get annoyed by all the useless talk.
"Oh, where are we going, teacher?" Ning asked.
"To the training hall," the teacher said and took Ning along.
Ning still didn't have any idea what was happening exactly, but he was more than happy to go to a training hall. It had been over 3 months since he had come to the academy by now and had yet to test himself.
He hadn't even tested himself since the test to enter the academy so he was curious to see how much he had improved in time.
The teacher took him to the training hall and started with the physical tests. He tested his physical strength and senses.
Ning realized that while he had definitely improved in those regions, he hadn't improved as well as Instead of being as strong as 25 humans, he was now as strong as 27 humans. While an increment, Ning didn't care about this increment at all.
he should have. Or at least, the improvement wasn't as drastic as it was early on.
His senses were the same as well. While improved, they didn't improve as well as he would've hoped they would.
'They did say the improvement got worse and worse as we got stronger,' Ning thought.
Then, he moved on to the Essence sense test. Ning hadn't taken this test before, but it was rather easy.
All he had to do was see if he could tell the differences between the various different elemental essences at various different sizes and distances. They used all the information to formulate just how strong one's Essence senses were.
The teacher's eyes went wide when he realized that Ning had nearly as good an Essence sense as him, and he was a bloody High Essence Soul realm ranker. He couldn't believe it at all.
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"Pure Essence sure is amazing," he spoke softly to himself before turning to Ning. "What Essence Absorption skill do you use? Did your father get you anything special?"
"Absorption skill? I use the generic Twin Moon Essence Absorption skill, teacher," Ning said.
"No way!" the teacher said. "You can't be this good with such a shitty skill, pardon my language."
"Well… I am," Ning said.
"Can I… test your Essence?" the teacher said.
"Test my Essence?" Ning was a little confused for a moment. "Oh, you mean the Essence in my core? Sure."
The teacher nodded and placed his palm on Ning's abdomen where the core would be and closed his eyes to get the best sense he could.
He sensed the pure Essence floating around in Ning's core and slowly his eyes widened. He didn't just sense the purity in his core either, but the strength as well.
"Wait… you're close to breaking through to the Essence Manifestation realm," the teacher said.
"Yes," Ning said.
"That's amazing news!" the teacher shouted all of a sudden, surprising Ning. "That was exactly what I was worried about and now I don't have to worry about it at all."
"Uh? What do you mean?" Ning asked.
"Oh sorry, I was supposed to tell you this before I celebrated," the teacher said. "Say, you know about the Interschool competition that is held every year right?"
"I'm aware of it, although not entirely," Ning said.
"Good! You see, the next one is being held in about 2 months and we are looking for students to take part in it, and I think you are a perfect choice," the teacher said.
"Hmm, I don't know teacher, I'm not even at Essence Manifestation realm, so wouldn't that be a big problem?" Ning asked.
"Don't worry," the teacher said. "I don't need you to fight or anything. All I need you to do is show up and show off just how pure your Essence is, and with that, I think we are set for quite a few points this time around."
Chapter 1139 The Competition Details
The Interschool competitions took place between 10 major schools in the continent, 7 of which was in the Blackhawk dominion with 2 in the Frolane Empire and 1 in the Oseger Empire.
Each year, the schools were ranked based on how well their students performed in various different categories of tests and challenges.
Ning was chosen to take part in one of the tests which is the one where the student showed that they had the purest Essence in all of the 10 major schools.
Ning thought for a moment if he wanted to do this or not. It would definitely be something fun for sure, so he didn't find any reason to refuse the offer.
"When did you say it was being held?" Ning asked. "2 months?"
"Yes, 2 months later," the teacher quickly answered.
"And… I have to reach the Essence Manifestation realm to be able to participate in this right?" he asked.
"Yes," the teacher said excitedly. "Do you think you can do this?"
Ning gave a thoughtful look. "I don't know," he said. "I would love to take part in this competition, teacher, but I'm not sure I can reach the Essence Manifestation realm with just 2 months left. After all, I come from a not-very-rich family, so my father can't afford to send me too many pure crystals to cultivate it."
"And unfortunately, without those crystals, my improvement slows down a lot. Unless there is a way to improve my Essence without those crystals, I'm not sure I can do it, teacher," Ning said with a sad look on his face.
"How many crystals will you need?" the teacher asked.
"Sorry?" Ning looked up innocently.
"How many? I will request it on behalf of the school to get you ready for the competition," the teacher said.
"Is… is that alright?" Ning asked. "What if I end up failing? I don't want to owe the academy anything."
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"You won't," the teacher said. "It's an investment, and it's an investment the school will be willing to make. Just tell me the number?"
"But it will take me hundreds of thousands of years to reach the peak of what is possible with 23:16
Essence in this world. Do I spend all those years normally?" he wondered.
"10," Ning said. "If I have 10 very pure crystals, I'm sure I can do it."
"Are you absolutely sure?" the teacher asked. "You need to do this."
'Shit, should I ask for more?' Ning wondered. 'This idiot might just give me more if I ask for it. Wait no, he might see through me if I get too greedy.'
"No, teacher. 10 is enough. With what my father sends me each month, it will be more than enough to reach the Essence Manifestation realm in just 2 months," Ning told the teacher.
The teacher excitedly smiled. "Good," he said. "Wait here, I'll bring you your crystal."
'Right now?' Ning looked at the teacher with surprise, while the teacher rushed out of the door.
He waited in the training room, looking around at everything.
'Should I give the turtle a visit?' he wondered. That would honestly be the best way to improve right now. However, doing so would definitely put a dent in the 'normal adventure' he wanted to have.
"But it will take me hundreds of thousands of years to reach the peak of what is possible with Essence in this world. Do I spend all those years normally?" he wondered.
He considered the idea of cheating, just using his real body to enjoy it all. However, a few moments later he paused.
"Why do I need to reach the peak?" he thought. It was not like he had put a goal in his adventure or anything.
Just because he could reach the peak, didn't mean he had to. He was here for an adventure, and there was more than just one way to have those.
"That settles it then," he thought. "There's no need to get those fruits."
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"Get what fruits?" the teacher suddenly asked.
"Oh, nothing. When did you come back?" Ning asked as he turned toward the teacher.
"Just now," he said. "The crystal is kept nearby. Here, take it."
He handed over 10 pieces of crystals, all of which were about the same size as what Clara sent him each month.
With this many crystals, he was bound to reach the next rank easily. "I promise you, teacher, I will make it to the Manifestation realm before the competition starts," he said.
"I'm counting on you," the teacher said. "You can leave now. You should at least make it to your weapons training class after you have your lunch."
"Thanks, teacher Hayan," Ning said and turned around to leave.
"Actually," he stopped and turned around. "One more question before I leave. How many days will the competition last? And if I will have to be there for the entirety of it."
"The competition lasts… well, it somewhere between 10 and 15 days depending on how it all goes," the teacher explained. "As for if you will have to stay there for the entirety of it, I will say yes."
"The competition ground is always the academy. If it was taking place here, you wouldn't have to worry about staying for the entirety of the competition, but since the competition is taking place in the Lightdance academy, I'm afraid you will have to stay there the entire time," the teacher said. "I hope you are okay with missing a few weeks' worths of classes."
"I'm okay with that," Ning said. "Lightdance academy… where is that exactly? The Oseger Empire?"
"No, it's in the Blackhawk Dominion. It's south of the Blackrock mountains toward the east," the teacher said. "It will take us 3 days to reach there."
"I see," Ning said. "South… east?"
His eyes narrowed a bit as he realized something. "It takes place in the Whiteowl region?" he asked.
"Oh yes, it's a few kilometers outside of Whiteowl city," the teacher said.
"I see," Ning said. "Thank you for the information."
Ning left the area with a curious expression on his face. 'What a coincidence,' he thought. 'Clara really wants some answers, so I should be able to get some for her during this time.'
He then looked at the crystals in his hand. "Time to put you to good use."
It didn't even take Ning 10 crystals to reach the Essence Manifestation realm. With just 9 crystals in a little over a month, he reached the Essence Manifestation realm, reaching the required rank to enter the Interschool competition.
He had done it the night before his day off, so he was free the rest of the day to do whatever he wanted.
And there was nothing he wanted more than to learn a skill.
As soon as he woke up and ate something, he rushed to the Skill shop in the academy, where one could purchase skills using their credits.
Ning had managed to amass a total of 45 credits by now, so he really hoped he got something good with that sort of money.
He had prepared for this moment also by studying what was possible and what he could do.
The most important thing he realized was the advantage that he had against every other Essence user out there. That was the fact that his Essence was incredibly pure, with almost no elemental alignment.
This made it so that if he wanted to, he could go for any and all elemental skills. He could even go for the rarest Essence skills and easily use them while someone with an elementally aligned core could not.
Of course, there were also a few problems with having pure Essence. Since Pure did not exist as an element, Pure Essence also couldn't be turned into anything directly. The Essence had to first go through a small change within the human body to change its element before coming out as that element.
For example, if he wanted to use a simple skill like a wind slice, he would have to first turn the Pure Essence into Wind Essence, which took some time since his body wasn't aligned with Wind, and then the wind essence turned into a Wind Slice.
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This change in Essence caused a delay in time which caused an opening that any skilled fighter could take advantage of.
Ning wasn't yet sure just how much of a delay there was, but he would have to make sure to train a whole lot so he could somehow remedy this delay with something else.
He arrived at the Skill shop and was more than happy that he didn't have to pay to get it. He knew he already had to pay for the skills, so having to pay for getting into the room as he had with the library would have been annoying.
The skill shop was in fact a massive room with multiple shelves all around the wall and the center of the room.
Ning looked around with a surprised look at just how massive it was. He wondered if they had destroyed the walls of 3 classrooms to prepare this room.
He walked in slowly and looked around the room. There weren't many people in here, but there were still enough to consider the place crowded.
Everyone was going around the shelves looking at the various books that were on there.
Ning walked up to the shelf that was closest to him and picked a random book off it. He flipped the book and read the name of the skill.
"Water Wrap?" he thought with a curious expression. He flipped a page to read just what the skill did.
"Creates two puddles of water at the distance that wrap around whatever is above them. Once wrapped, the water freezes and creates a hold that your enemy can't get out of easily," he read.
He closed the book and put it back before taking another one out.
"Raining Arrows. Creates rain in a limited location where the water pours down with each droplet falling in the shape of an arrow."
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Ning put the book back as well and pulled out another one.
"Water Heal. Wrap a wound with water to cover up any wound and improve its recovery."
"Why is it all water?" Ning wondered and looked around the shelf for a bit before noticing a small board at the top of the shelf that said 'Water Skills'.
"Oh," he thought. "I'm in the Water Section."
He looked around at the various shelves and wondered which section he should go for.
"What do I need?" Ning wondered for a moment. As far as he was concerned, he needed 4 different skills.
An Offensive skill, a Defensive, skill, a skill that helped with movement, and a skill that helped him escape should a problem arise that he couldn't handle.
"Offensive… should be fire, right?" he thought. "Defensive can be earth. Movement is probably Wind, and Escape… I don't know. That can be anything."
He walked away from the water shelf and went over to the other shelves to check what else there was.
He came across a shelf that surprised him for a moment. "Right, there are more than just those 4 elements," he thought. "Stupid me, I should consider the others too when looking for skills."
Very quickly, Ning found a skill that was going to be his Offensive skill. It cost him 12 Credits, which he was not happy about, but it was what it was.
He then went over to another shelf and got a Defensive skill from there. The skill cost him 10 credits which he understood because of how good it was.
Next, he searched for a movement skill. However, he found his Escape skill before the movement one.
The Escape skill cost him over 18 credits by it alone. Ning was a little mad that it cost so much. However, given just how good it was, he didn't want to not get it.
In the end, he was left with 5 credits only for the movement skill. Ning went around the room looking at cheap skills, but the only one he could find for 5 credits was a wind skill that made him slightly less resistant to wind.
Once he got all four books, he went over to buy them. After spending all the credits he had, Ning left the skill shop to go and earn some more.
:)
