"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?'
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?"
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.
