"Why do you have to head over to the headmaster's office?" Ritchard asked with slight confusion in his voice. He hasn't heard of many people going there during his very limited time there.
Dirin shrugged as he pulled out his phone and fiddled with it till the email from the headmaster came up and showed it to Keith and Ritchard. It was a very simple and formal email from the headmaster stating that he would like to meet with Dirin to discuss his path formally and run some things between them. It had the room number for the headmaster as well as formal regards.
Dirin then put his phone away after showing them. "Well... I guess that explains a little bit of it. You aren't exactly going down a normal path, so I guess having the headmaster ask some questions is a good thing." Keith nodded after he read the email.
As Dirin put his phone away, he heard someone clear their throat behind him. He turned around and saw Tillie standing there with some lighter fluid and an electric lighter. She started to sit things down and saw the padding and weapons. "Seems I'm a bit late, huh?"
Dirin shook his head. "I plan to be here till seven in the afternoon, so you're still early, actually." Dirin looked at his phone to check the time and saw it was noon. "If you plan to stay here as long as I do, then you aren't late."
After hearing what Dirin said, Tillie nodded and excused herself to check in for attendance. The moment she was out of earshot, Ritchard went to him and whispered very aggressively. "You idiot! You have the number of a girl like that, and you are the one waiting to make a move! If you aren't the most foolish man, I know, then someone must've slipped my mind!"
"Shut up! If she somehow catches what you hear, it'll be super awkward! I'm not going to focus on dating right now, so I refuse to make any moves." Dirin said half resolutely and half quietly. It wouldn't take much convincing to get him to do something, but the only person who knew that was Keith, and Dirin was sure that he wasn't going to do anything.
Not too long after Dirin found himself back in the padding and with a spear in his hands as he defended from Ritchard, who was using a rapier. It was a bad matchup in Dirin's opinion, but he was pretty sure it was due to Ritchard's experience over his.
If there was anything Dirin learned from all of his time fighting Ritchard, it was that he knew how to dodge well. Ritchard wasn't landing many hits on him and was only able to not get hit himself because Dirin wasn't too familiar with attacking while defending. Ritchard thrusted his rapier towards Dirin's side after causing Dirin to block an attack from above, catching him off guard with his spear still up. Dirin side-stepped suddenly and hit Ritchard in the head with the shaft of the spear, causing him to stumble backwards and ultimately lose this session.
Dirin heard Keith clapping, and even Tillie gave a small applause to his victory. Winning in front of one person was fun, but winning in front of two people was even better, in his opinion. He slowly helped Ritchard up and received a mischievous wink from him, which caught Dirin off guard. Dirin was surprised at first and thought that Ritchard let him win in front of Tillie, but then figured that Ritchard was just doing it to save face.
Dirin smiled and decided to play along for his friend's sake. Since Keith and Tillie already knew the truth, he saw no reason to let Ritchard have his own imaginary win. Tillie walked over and wrapped some oil-covered wrappings around Dirin's spear and lit it on fire. "See how confident he is with attacking when you're waving that around."
"Are you also trying to use fire as a form of support?" Dirin was slow to the reasoning, but he figured it out and got a nod from Tillie, who went over to Keith to figure out what he was doing. "Want to come after a guy with a burning spear?" Dirin smiled as he started to wave the spear in front of Ritchard.
Ritchard looked at Dirin with a bored expression as he felt the heat of the flame. "You would burn yourself before you hit me with that. You had to resort to using the shaft of your spear, so since the shaft isn't on fire, I should be fine." Ritchard picked his rapier back up.
"It's all that experience with using the quarterstaff, Ritchard. Some weapons translate over to each other quite well, from my experience." Dirin went forward and swung downward, causing the wrappings to fall off and land on Ritchard's mask, who then tried to grab it but forgot he didn't have much wrapping on his hands other than his knuckles and the back.
Dropping the rag to the ground after scalding his fingers a bit, Ritchard looked up to only see the spear gently push him on the chest. Ritchard looked down at the tip of the spear that was resting on his chest before looking back towards Dirin. "That has to be the dirtiest win you have against me."
"Dirty wins are often what actually win." Dirin smiled and nodded as he slowly saw he was getting a rise out of Ritchard. "You think I won't throw fire at someone if I could? Just be happy I didn't decide to hit you hard with the spear."
Ritchard took the spear and placed it to the side as he grumbled to Dirin's satisfaction. This caused Dirin to be even happier as he slowly handed the whip over to Keith, who looked at him in confusion.
"Okay, Keith, it seems like you have a lot already figured out." Dirin overheard Tillie and openly listened along with Keith. "It also seems like you've been fiddling around with light to create shadows as well, which is something that most wouldn't think of, at least someone who is only doing the bare minimum. Like that one guy who already became a Rank 1."
"Did he really only do the bare minimum, though? I took notes from him, and he seemed to have a lot of things he already knew before coming here." Dirin said, which made Tillie look at him thoughtfully.
"I guess it's not entirely impossible for him to already have some background knowledge," Tillie said after looking over the notes. "He definitely isn't doing what we are doing, though, but to each their own, I guess. Some of these things do seem like they would take more than just a couple of days to actually research, let alone practice."
Dirin let her keep on looking over the notes as he proceeded to run laps around the training field with Ritchard. Sadly, doing this part of his training was the most boring, so he tried to fill it with talking with Ritchard, but it was more like talking at him since he was too busy breathing correctly as he ran.
They did multiple laps around the training field until Dirin collapsed at the feet of Mr. Till, who simply reminded Dirin to visit the headmaster after all he was done with his training. Dirin decided to do a couple of more sparing sessions with Ritchard with a couple of weapons to knock them all out now, but he would still spar with Ritchard for his training.
Dirin went over to Keith and Tillie, who were doing their own individual experiments by the time he was done with Ritchard. Keith was now trying to make shapes with things outside of his body, like a puppet doing shapes with its shadow instead, while Tillie held a clipboard and had a datasheet printed off and held a thermometer in separate fires, and listed them in different categories. Dirin leaned over to see what was different between the fires and saw multiple variables.
She had things like fuel, wood type, amount of lighter fluid used, how long the lighter was used, and how many small fires she started in the wood. She had multiple results over to the side as well, like time, temperature, color, and size. She was very meticulous compared to Keith. She was studying the element itself and every variable she could manipulate to find different outcomes, while Keith was finding things out through playing around with it.
After hanging around them for a bit more, Dirin went over to Mr. Till to conclude his training for the day and said bye to the others before setting off to the headmaster. He started to predict what the headmaster looked like and how the conversation was going to go as part of his mental training. He predicted he had some explaining to do. Which was something he was having to do often as of late with people, it seemed.