Advisory was a class where students would go to instructors inside a large classroom to ask for more tips on how to continue forward. Keith was currently in the class to see if there was anyone who could help him with his path. Now that he was Rank 1, he was going to need to practice and learn more abnormal things compared to what he had already learned.
The classroom was in a chaotic mess from the looks of it, with most of the students showing off their abilities and powers to their friends instead of the teachers, who just watched from the sidelines. Keith was looking through the sheet of names he was given. It had the list of every professor and what there and what they specialized in. All of the teachers wore nametags with their names to make it easier for them as well.
He was here with Zack, who finally reached Rank 1 and seemed a lot calmer compared to when he first met him. They only agreed to walk around with each other because they didn't have anyone else they knew here. Well, Keith knew Ritchard, but he had his own group of friends, apparently, that he was hanging out with, and Keith didn't want to tag along with a preexisting friend group.
There were many different types of abilities on display. A guy was shapeshifting into other people and acted like a mirror for laughs. It looked like. Another was playing rock-paper-scissors and didn't lose at all despite how many rounds he was playing. Someone else was also floating in the air while having multiple different small objects orbiting him. There were many different things that required just a little bit of looking to find.
Overall, Keith was amazed by everything he was seeing, but was also disappointed as he looked through the names and only found a couple of people who had anything related to what he wanted to know. Only when he got towards the bottom did he see a name that made his eyes widen in excitement. Mr. Young. He was a teacher who specialized in shadows. It was the discovery that he had been looking for this whole time.
He quickly looked around to find Mr. Young. He didn't know what he looked like, but he was very determined to find it. Zack saw the sudden change, but he didn't say anything and just mentally prepared himself to move. Keith walked to one teacher and read nametag after nametag. Some professors just smiled at this, while others didn't react to it. Keith had already made a reputation for starting after all.
It didn't take too long for him to find an old man in the corner of the room, sipping on coffee despite it being early afternoon. He was a bald and short man with only a couple of wisps of hair on his head. He wasn't staring at anything as he calmly drank from his mug and sat cross-legged. Keith was excited and approached him, but stopped as he felt a fleeting feeling and looked at the mug.
It was a pure black mug. He couldn't make out the material as he looked at it. He narrowed his eyes and slowly extended his will towards it and felt a connection. The cup was made out of shadows. His eyes widened as Mr. Young's narrowed and kicked Keith's will out quickly before casting a glance at him.
When Mr. Young's eyes met Keith's, they narrowed a bit again as he seemed to mumble something under his breath that Keith couldn't hear. After a couple of seconds, Zack leaned in on his tiptoes and said, "He just mumbled about your rank. I couldn't make out anything other than that."
Keith would've asked him how he knew that, since he couldn't hear the grumbles at all, but he held back and just chalked it up to him being a mage. He probably used some spell to help him hear better or something.
They approached the man who was still mumbling under his breath, and only by the time they got close enough to hear anything did he finally stop. Keith was about to ask a bunch of questions, but he got hit with a couple for him to answer instead.
"How did you get such a strong connection to shadows already?"
"I... uh..."
"You almost made me spill some coffee with how sudden you did it as well. Next time, let someone know." His words were deep and firm as they came out of his throat with an authority that Keith didn't expect to come from an elderly man.
Keith mumbled an apology as he looked down a bit. Mr. Young rolled his eyes a bit before he sat up straighter than he was and gestured for them to come closer. They did so, and he took another drink from the mug before a stool made of shadows manifested from several other people's shadows. "How much can you do?"
A little caught off guard by the sudden question, Keith threw a glance at his own shadow before making it move with great effort. Mr. Young seemed unimpressed with this and just finished his coffee while looking at the shadow that was walking around on the ground. He looked up and noticed the struggle on Keith.
"Putting in a bit of effort. Either you are conning me, or you simply have weak control over it. That wouldn't make sense after what you attempted to do to my mug, though." He raised his mug before making it unravel and fall back to the ground with the shadows fading quickly. "Show me the rest. You must've done some other things for your progression in that aspect to be so weak in that regard."
The shadows on the ground stirred a little before some of them started to cover Keith. With each inch getting covered by the shadows, his control got easier, and the shadows became more fluid in their movements. This caused Mr. Young to raise an eyebrow as he saw this. "Do you become stronger in things only dealing with shadows, or does only your control increase? Don't nod, boy. It wasn't a yes or no question." Keith released his control on the shadows before agreeing to the former. "Interesting. You must've worked out while in the shade often. Deliberately as well. You also figured out quickly that the mug was shadows as well. So that shows a form of connection. In just a couple of minutes of meeting you and I already figured out a couple of things. This should be an interesting conversation."
They went back and forth for a bit, discussing things about shadows. It didn't take long for Mr. Young to see the eagerness in Keith's eyes when it came to learning more. He did withhold a bit of information at the beginning to see how much he would pry and how much he would assume. The more he did, the more promising he was.
"So, you control shadows with difficulty. When you are covered by shadows, you get an overall increase in everything. You can move shadows into broad daylight. You can feel a subtle connection to every shadow within ten yards of you. Interesting. That's a lot of things." Mr. Young complimented after he listed off all the abilities.
"What do you think? Is it a good path?" Keith was curious and hopeful as he asked. It took forever to find someone who used shadows, so he wanted to find out as much as he could from him.
"For individual abilities, these wouldn't be good, to be honest, but the fact that you are only Rank 1 makes up for that and actually makes it the opposite. They will be built upon the farther you progress. These will be a solid foundation for you to use."
Keith didn't hide his grin at what he felt. He was a little worried that he might've become Rank 1 too early. He saw how much work Dirin was putting in and was a little concerned, but that feeling eased greatly after hearing Mr. Young's assessment. He started to ask a couple of questions about how to keep progressing now that he was going to be heading to Rank 2 soon.
"The difference in training isn't that grand. Now you just need to use your abilities and find out what isn't possible yet. Then you need to try to use outside sources to make them possible. An easy way to explain this for you would be how far you can sense shadows. Try to see how far you can push your sense, then use various artifacts or other things to extend it. Then stop using the artifacts and try to retain it. It's like working out. That will help increase your current abilities for when you go to Rank 2."
"Then what about getting more abilities related to shadows? How would I do that?"