Ning dodged a sword coming from the front. He twisted his incredibly strong physical body in midair and did a backflip to get out of the range of the short sword.
Jamie dashed forward once again to close the gap and hit Ning. Ning immediately turned around and imagined a rocky wall between him and Jamie.
The wall started forming from the ground, but before it could fully form, Jamie had already stopped and maneuvered around the wall to attack Ning.
The sword came at Ning's throat and stopped right before it could hit him. Ning had lost the match.
He sighed. Fighting with only Aether was really hard. "Good fight," he said to Jamie and wiped his sweats off.
Jamie nodded and sheathed his sword before walking away. The young man never spoke, or rather he couldn't. He was also a dud when it came to Aether, as in he wasn't able to use Aether at all.
Ning felt a little salty when he lost to someone with no Aether, but Jamie was seriously one of the strongest people he had seen on this planet.
Ning didn't doubt that if he was fighting against an Invoker that was Aether King, or maybe even Aether Emperor, he would surely win.
Since Enchanters could control the opponent's body, Ning wasn't sure how well Jamie could handle that.
He could've won his bout against Jamie just now, but he found that it wasn't very helpful during training since he would learn nothing.
He left the place to go take a shower before leaving the palace. After all, he didn't want to go to his first day of class with a sweaty body.
After wearing a robe-like outfit that only the people from Aether Towers wore, he left the palace.
It took him 20 minutes, and despite being able to use carriages, he walked his way to the tower.
Ning looked at the clock in his pocket to learn that it was 13:48 when he reached the tower.
The classes started at 14:00 and went on until 20:00 for 6 hours a day. He didn't know what he was going to learn, how he was going to learn, or anything else in between, but he was still feeling somewhat enthusiastic about it all.
Ning showed his new student ID at the gate and walked in.
He wasn't sure where he had to go exactly, so he went around looking for his class.
Along the way, he saw a statue of a female with a tall slender body, long flowing hair, a beautiful pair of eyes that only held majesty in them.
She held a wooden staff in her hand and wore a rather revealing set of robes. The statue itself held no names to it, or any denotation of when it was made.
All Ning could tell was that it was a beautiful piece of art.
He looked away from the statue and quickly went to find his classes. He couldn't do it on his own, he had to ask someone for help.
He quickly went to an elevator and rode it to the 5th floor where his class was being held.
He found his class soon enough and entered it. When he did, he was surprised at the size of the class.
It was very small. He didn't think the class was small when compared to the classes he used to teach in Kumia that could hold nearly 3 thousand different disciples.
No, this class was smaller than even the most normal of classes he could remember.
He looked around at merely 12 desks that could hold 3 students each, set up in a 3 by 4 row in the small room, facing a blackboard in front of them.
When he looked at the students in the class, he was even more surprised. There were about 30 students in there at the moment, and only 4 of them were barely any old.
The rest of the students were all kids that didn't even seem to be 10 years old yet. "No way, am I studying with actual kids?" Ning thought.
Ning walked in and went to one of the desks with one of the 4 older students and sat on it.
The one sitting there was a young girl with slightly brown hair. Ning looked around and saw that she was the only girl amongst the group of 5 adults.
"Hello, nice to meet you. I'm Ning," Ning introduced himself to her with a hand put forth for a shake.
The girl turned towards him but didn't shake his hands. Instead, she nodded a little towards him and said, "Hello, I am Rachel."
Ning put his hands down as it didn't look like he was getting a shake. He looked around at the classroom and was still confused as to why the kids were there.
"Sorry to bother you, but am I in the right place? I'm a new student of the tower and am starting today. Someone told me I was to come here, but I'm not sure if this is it or not," he asked.
"New student? Yeah, you are in the right place," the girl said. "I am a new student too."
The girl seemed pretty comfortable with speaking to him, despite not wanting to shake his hands. Ning wondered what that was about.
"Eh? Then why are there all the kids here? That seems really weird," Ning said.
"Huh? What do you mean the kids are weird?" Rachel asked. "It's us who are weird."
Ning was confused. "Sorry, what do you mean by that?"
"Do you not know much about the tower or what?" she asked.
"You could say that," Ning said.
"Oh, then I guess that makes sense," the girl said.
"You see, the tower's objective is to teach kids how to use Aether from a young age. They go around searching for capable kids and bring them here to teach them."
"Teaching us adults is not their primary focus at all.. That's why you see so many kids and so few adults."
