The professor of Life Energy was Mr. Till from Elemental Manipulation. Despite being primarily focused on the elemental side, he was still someone who studied life energy as well. Dirin saw Ritchard sitting over on the side and debated on whether to sit with him.
They were acquainted with each other, sure, but Dirin only met the guy once. He only sat with Tillie because he spent the whole morning with her, and he was confident that she didn't care if he sat by her. Dirin gathered his courage and sat down next to Ritchard. It was odd to him that he was having more difficulty sitting next to a fellow guy compared to a girl.
Ritchard glanced at him and nodded, to which Dirin returned it before looking back at the board. "I thought we agreed that I would give you the notes for this class. Did you change your mind?" Ritchard asked as he spun his pencil.
"We agreed that you give me the notes for Aura, though, and the half of the weapons you're learning. I don't think we said anything about Life Energy." Dirin specified while looking at him with a tilted head.
Ritchard's face froze as he looked at Dirin before bursting into laughter, which caused some other people to look over. "Dirin... Life Energy is Aura. It's just a more formal way to say it!" Ritchard was still laughing as he looked at Dirin before taking a bit to calm down.
Dirin thought they were different things, but he slowly started to piece together some things, but it still didn't make sense. I guess since it's a formal name, I never learned about it. This explains why I couldn't find anything about Aura through the classes. I thought they were simply not being taught this week.
Mr. Till was setting some things up with a Transparent Anatomical Manikin. Despite seeing them multiple times in biology, Dirin was still confused about its purpose here. As he looked closer at it, though, he noticed thick vein-like things flowing through the fake body. They looked somewhat opaque with a red gel in them.
Mr. Till then picked up a chalk and stepped a couple of steps away from the board. After standing about ten feet away from the board, and brought the chalk into the air and brought it down quickly as if he was striking the air, but to Dirin's surprise, he felt a thick presence and the chalk appeared on the board.
Some of the chalk in Mr. Till's hand was gone as he set it down and shook his head. All the conversations in the class were done as everyone had their attention on him. He turned around and addressed the students. "What that was, was one of the basic applications of Life Energy, or Aura, as the youth call it. I don't particularly care much for the name myself, though."
"Everything living has Life Energy, even if they haven't become a Rank 1. Even as a normal person, you have Life Energy. Even an unhatched egg has Life Energy. This is why this path is very progressed and simple. To exercise is simple; all you have to do is work out and build your body. A basic diet helps as well. Up here is a sheet with an app that can help you with your diet and workouts. It was helpful for me and could be helpful to you, too."
He went on to describe basic routines to strengthen your muscles. "Life Energy could be called a phantom muscle. If the muscle that is being enhanced with Life Energy is stronger, then the Life Energy will strengthen it more than a weaker muscle. This is helpful, but it also requires daily routines, which mages don't have to worry about as much." He then started to draw a poorly made figure of an arm holding something.
"To do what I did with the chalk, you need to have enough spare Life Energy to extend it. Once you do, you can hit things without actually hitting them. This is helpful since a lot of people like to fight at a distance between them. It is almost essential for later combat. It is possible to get it within Rank 1, but that requires intense training, and most of you will progress before that. So, those who do want to know can come to me later to find out for themselves and get personal advice."
"Life Energy is simple." Mr. Till said as he pressed his hands on the desk and put his weight on them. "If you want to be better than others, then it is just like everything else: train. That is the one thing that will stay with you as you progress. It has been said many times by many people, but training will never be a thing you won't do. If you don't train, your power will fall off, and people of ranks below you could be stronger than you. It's simple and fair."
The lesson went on for a bit more, going over muscle groups and in which order you should study them in a broad sense. He talked about rest days and how cardio was actually something they had to do, which caused a lot of groans from the left side of the room. Even Ritchard seemed a little put off by that. Dirin was caught up in the excitement and grumbled to himself. His grumbles weren't words and just sounds, though, since he didn't know what to grumble about.
This caused Mr. Till to chuckle before he dismissed the class. "What is so bad about cardio?" Dirin leaned over and asked Ritchard.
"Depends on why you hate it. Some people think it makes gains worse, while I simply hate running. It's too boring, and I much prefer swinging a sword or something. I like hitting things. So much so that now I'm going to ask Mr. Till about Life Energy. I'll text whatever I learn."
Dirin left the class and finally checked his phone after six hours. Keith messaged him multiple times and was still messaging. Dirin looked down and was about to mute him before Keith mentioned lunch, which Dirin agreed to.
Dirin and Keith were off campus and sitting on a bench outside. Keith was eating a sandwich while Dirin was eating pasta. Keith was having Dirin guess people who would come out of stores, and Dirin was failing very often, but he would get some features correct as time went on.
"That's about thirty percent correct. Nice!" Keith was happy as he took a big bite of his sandwich. "At this rate, you'll be done with this training before you know it. I personally still need to start casting shadows and make cool shapes, well, that's the training I'm planning on doing. Along with shadow puppets, that is."
Keith put his sandwich down and tried to make a bird with his hands in the shadows. He was good with it, and it looked nice. Dirin softly applauded as he took a cheesy bread and took a bite. Keith held his hand out, and Dirin put a small piece of the bread in his hand. Keith then gave Dirin a couple of chips.
They wanted Markus to join, but he was busy with the blacksmithing class that took up four hours itself. Dirin and Keith didn't know anything about blacksmithing, so they didn't know if that was a long time or not, but from what Dirin knew, this was actually a very short time for people who were still learning, and it was learning and practicing at the same time.
They both were doing their random practices, and people were giving them weird looks until they saw the star that they held onto their person. Falem students had a reputation for practicing in public. "Tomorrow, I plan to do a bunch of practice in the training field," Dirin told his plans to Keith as he checked the weather for tomorrow. "I have a bunch of things I need to train, and it's starting to pile on. I'm currently thinking of supplies that I need."
Keith nodded. "I'll come as well. I need to start making shadows and using shapes to make them look like something. There are practically no classes for me as well, so I'm having to do a bunch of self-study, but there is this one girl that keeps annoying me."
"You got a crush already? I thought Markus was the only one." Dirin smiled as he teased Keith, who just looked at him with bored eyes. "Don't look at me like that, the only times you mentioned a girl was when we were in middle school and how crazy you were about them."
"Why are you always painting me as a creep?" Keith was done with his sandwich and was now eating his chips. "You really are going to give me a bad image-"
"KIETH!" There was a voice in the distance, and both Keith and Dirin turned around, and Dirin turned deathly pale as he started to have flashbacks of a wet feeling on his hand.