Ning looked at the storage artifact with a curious look on his face. He would have to use some Essence to bond with the item so that he could use the space inside of it.
From what he could judge based on what he knew and saw, this thing was large enough to hold an entire room's worth of items in it. While nowhere near impressive for Ning, he was still quite happy to finally get something where he could store his sword.
"For the second reward," the headmaster reached into his own storage artifact and pulled out. "I will hand you these Essence crystals."
He brought out a bunch of crystals, each one as large as the largest one that Ning had seen, all amounting to nearly 30 in total.
Ning's eyes widened in shock as such an amount of crystal would take him forever to acquire on his own.
"Do I deserve this?" he asked, trying to see if there was something else going on than just rewards. Was the headmaster trying to give him these things to try and make him feel like he was indebted to the academy?
"No, no, that's your reward. It's what you deserve for getting into the top 16," the headmaster said. "You will love them. Each one of them is extremely pure. I had to buy them off of the Light Dance academy to give them to you."
"Well, then thank you," Ning said as he gathered up all the Essence Crystals.
"As for the third one," the headmaster looked through his storage artifact. "Hmm, wait for a bit. I hadn't planned for this one, so I will need to search for a bit. I wasn't prepared to give anything to you other than those two today."
Ning let the headmaster search for whatever it was while he checked the Essence crystals. As the headmaster had mentioned, it was indeed quite pure and would help him a lot to improve his Essence to the next level.
He couldn't wait for the day when he too formed an Essence soul of his own.
After a while, the headmaster finally spoke. "Aha! There is it. I knew I had it here, somewhere," he said and brought out a small, thin book.
The headmaster gave him the book, which Ning took, and started reading to see what it was. As soon as he read the title, his eyes immediately widened and he quickly looked back at the headmaster in shock.
"Is this… real?" he asked.
"It is," the headmaster said, amused at his expression. He liked to see youngsters get surprised at what he was giving them.
"Then… this essence exists as well?" Ning asked.
"Haha, yes," the headmaster said. "I had decided on giving you armor to protect yourself from the ones that I had. However, now that I learn you can create any type of Essence, I see no reason to not give you this as it is obviously better."
Ning nodded without much thought. He could only look at the book in absolute awe.
It was a technique book, another skill that he could learn if he had the time. Judging by the size of the book, he could most likely learn it over the course of the night itself, if he was willing to lose some sleep over it.
"Thank you so much, headmaster," Ning said with genuine glee on his face for gaining such a thing.
"Alright, go now and rest. You'll need the time to gain back your Essence," the headmaster said. "Now that you're in the top 16, you have 4 more fights to go. It is unlikely you'll go even past the next one, but if you do… ho ho, I will find you something even way better than this.'
Ning excitedly thanked the headmaster and placed everything inside the returned back to his own room.
Everyone was focused on their own task, so Ning went over to his own bed and took out the book to read it.
The book itself was quite short as the skill for the most part was simply creating the Essence and then launching it directly at the target.
It was akin to a fireball skill, except the ball would be made up of a different Essence entirely.
'I wish I could do the same thing with Void Essence as well,' he thought. 'Just attack someone with a projectile made up of Void Essence and cancel whatever technique they are about to use.'
Unfortunately, that wasn't really possible as of now without any technique of his own. Ning wondered if there were ways to create techniques, to do what he wanted with them.
He would have to try out in the coming days once the tournament was over.
Tomorrow was the last day, so Ning had to prepare for that as well. He brought out the half-used Pure Essence crystal from his drawer.
Then, he started absorbing it with his eyes closed while trying to remember the technique he was learning at the same time.
He tried to do two things at once and somewhat succeeded in it. Even though the book was small, there was still quite a lot to learn, remember, and apply in such a short time, so Ning had to bring his full concentration into the job.
He fell into some sort of trance where he unconsciously absorbed the Essence while mentally learning at the same time. Also at the same time, his body got the rest it deserved as it stood still without Ning's movements.
It was only after midnight that Ning woke up from the trance and realized that the Essence Crystal in his hand had vanished. He had absorbed it all and was back to having a full core.
Then, he was free to learn the technique all he wanted.
When the morning came, Ning was asleep on his bed after a long night of training and had to be forcefully awakened by the others around him.
Once he was up, he got dressed up and got ready to leave for the arena, for the final day of the competition.
