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?"
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.
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!"
