"I am the world's hand?" Shang asked in surprise.
"Not literally," teacher Niria said. "That would make no sense. I was only trying to make sense of everything."
"Does the dean know?" teacher Niria suddenly asked.
"Yes," Shang said. "He is the one that allowed me to unearth my Affinities in the first place."
"That makes sense," teacher Niria said. "From what I can tell, you have absorbed four different Pure Mana Sources, and I don't think you have the money to buy even one of them. Additionally, Light and Darkness Mana Sources are very rare but also relatively worthless. There simply is no demand for them, which means that whoever happens to carry some of them with them doesn't even remotely have to worry about Commander Stage beasts."
"What are his thoughts?" teacher Niria asked.
At that moment, Shang felt a bit uncertain.
Yes, he had decided to trust teacher Niria, but he also hadn't forgotten how the dean had acted.
The dean valued honesty greatly, but he also didn't betray his friend, Duke Whirlwind.
"I don't want to say," Shang said with a sigh. "I don't think it's my place to say what the dean thinks."
Teacher Niria nodded. "That's a good quality to have. If you had told me what the dean has said, my trust in you would have diminished."
"Anyway," teacher Niria said as she walked closer to Shang. "You said you needed two pieces of Middle Rank Two Darkness Affinity ore, correct?"
Shang nodded. "Yes. As you have seen, I have four Affinities, and I want to keep everything balanced. My sword needs seven pieces of ore, which means I need two of each."
"And how do you plan on creating that weapon?" teacher Niria asked. "I don't believe that any blacksmith would know how to fuse four different kinds of Pure Affinity ore together. Additionally, creating weapons out of Darkness and Light Affinity ore is already something nearly no blacksmith can do."
"I have a solution to that, but I can't tell you," Shang said.
Teacher Niria only looked at Shang for a bit.
"Fine," she said. "1,000 gold per unit."
Shang took a deep breath.
1,000 gold?!
"That's a lot," Shang commented.
"It's what you have," she said. "Don't think that I am extorting you. If you were to pay the actual price, you would need to pay over 10,000 gold. I am essentially gifting the ore to you at that price."
"Furthermore, if you acted intelligently, you should have received 2,200 gold from the Curio Trinket."
Shang sighed.
"Thank you. I will accept," he said.
Teacher Niria nodded. "Let's go."
"To where?" Shang asked.
"To your room," she answered. "We can't make such a trade in public. I can hide the effects of the ore, but you can't. If you openly walk around with the ore, you will be caught sooner or later."
"Wait! Does that mean that you already have the ore in your possession?" Shang asked in surprise.
Teacher Niria nodded.
Shang was a bit surprised that teacher Niria already had the ore with her, but he didn't complain.
The two of them walked back to the main building under the gazes of a couple of students.
Hadn't those two already talked to each other a couple of days ago?
What was going on?
Shang felt uncomfortable under the gazes of everyone, and he hoped that they didn't misinterpret teacher Niria's intentions.
But Shang was worrying over nothing.
It was forbidden for teachers to get into a relationship with students, and that rule was ironclad.
If teacher Niria didn't want to be fired, she would never start a relationship with a student.
Because of that, basically no one suspected the two of them of hooking up.
When teacher Niria entered Shang's room, a couple of suspicions appeared in the students' minds.
Maybe teacher Niria was giving Shang a private lesson? Maybe, after taking a look at one of the corpses Shang brought back, she took him under her wing?
Or maybe teacher Niria was trying to deal with Shang's obvious problems? After all, Shang had nearly killed a student recently.
As the two of them entered the room, Shang pointed at his two big sacks of gold.
SHING!
The two sacks vanished, and a small, inconspicuous sack appeared in their place.
Shang immediately felt Darkness Mana coming from them.
"Keep the Light ore and the Darkness ore at separate parts of the room," she said. "You don't want them to consume each other's Mana."
Shang did just that, and after he was done, he looked at teacher Niria again.
"Thanks," Shang said.
Teacher Niria only nodded before she sat down on Shang's bed.
This surprised and confused Shang. "You want to stay?" Shang asked.
"If I leave right now, everyone will get suspicious. I need to appear like I'm giving you a private lesson. I'm already under a lot of scrutiny based on my Affinity, and I can't be careless," she said.
Shang nodded. "That makes sense."
After that sentence, silence returned to the room.
Teacher Niria was seemingly looking at a random wall of the room with concentration in her eyes.
She was probably thinking about something.
Shang noticed that she wasn't interested in talking, and soon enough, he became bored.
'I can't just sit around,' Shang thought as he pushed the bloody face out of his vision again. 'I need to distract myself.'
Shang glanced at teacher Niria. 'However, it would be awkward to train in front of her. The ventilation in the room is horrible, and if I start sweating, it will stink up the entire place.'
'Isn't there something else I can do?'
Shang thought back to what he had thought about while being in the northeastern forest.
'Right! I wanted to try if I could concentrate my Affinity Abilities! If I can manage to release a concentrated beam of fire or ice, I have another way to attack my opponent.'
'Speaking of, do Darkness and Light have something similar?'
'How would I even go about training it?'
And at that moment, Shang glanced at teacher Niria.
"Is there a way to change the way I can use my Darkness Affinity?" Shang asked.
Teacher Niria looked away from the wall and at Shang. "You want a lesson?" she asked.
"No, no!" Shang quickly said. Teacher Niria had already helped him a lot, and he wouldn't want to impose. "I only want to know if it's possible."
Teacher Niria furrowed her brows and looked back at the wall.
"Well, I need to appear like I'm giving you a lesson. Might as well actually give you one," she said.
"I'm sorry," Shang said.
"It's fine," teacher Niria answered. "You are in the academy to learn, and you don't really have any way of learning about the Darkness Affinity without my help. I'm basically the only one that can teach you, and it's my job as a teacher to help you."
"Sit on the ground in front of me," she ordered.
Shang nodded and sat down.
"Concentrate on the Darkness Affinity ore in the corner of the room. Try to feel it, but don't try to manipulate it," she said.
Then, over the next minutes, she slowly guided Shang into a state of meditation.
Over the next three hours, she told Shang how to train his Darkness Affinity and what he could do with it.
