Keith waited with anticipation for Mr. Young to answer his question. It wasn't a complex answer for Mr. Young, but it was hard to phrase for others. He tapped the armrest of his chair thoughtfully as he thought about it.
"When you become a Rank 1, you get access to abilities and traits. Now you need to find out how to make those abilities split into more. An easier way to say it is to do the same thing you did for Rank 1, but use your abilities and find out how to make them vary. How dark can you get a shadow while it is in sunlight? How can you control a shadow and make it stand like us? There are a couple of ways to do it and many ways to go forward."
"I, for example, used a transparent jelly to make my shadows look like they are actual objects. This allowed me to make my shadows actual objects. Like my mug." Mr. Young reached out, and multiple shadows rose from the ground, gathering into the shape of the mug again.
At this point, even Zack was paying attention to the display. He was still being trained by his master, but he was really looking for a second opinion on how to keep progressing. After all the training he went through, he was really starting to doubt if his master knew everything. Sadly, at the rate it was going, it looked like he did.
Both of them listened as he kept on listing off more examples of how people progressed to get more traits and abilities. As they heard more and more, they both realized how hard a task they were going to go through. Keith was kind of hoping for an escape from all of the practice, but it looked like he was going to have to do even more. He didn't even want to know what Dirin was going to have to do when he got to Rank 1.
After a bit more talking, they left Mr. Young and went towards a couple of mages for Zack to get information out of them. The only reason he was here as well, instead of with his master, was to gather his own information to study as a form of test. He needed to gather everything he could here, and he would train in it himself and show his progress to his master.
Keith tuned the professors out as they went around and heard from them. He was interested in magic for a couple of seconds before, but then they started to explain it, which made all of his interest disappear almost instantly. He didn't know formulas, paths, or what a flow was, and he didn't care to figure it out either.
He looked at Zack a bit and saw him taking a bunch of notes. It was a big change compared to what he saw during his brief encounter with Dirin. He seemed calmer compared to then. Though he didn't know how calm he was before.
Ritchard was on the other side of the room. He was walking around with a group of four other people. They all were part of different paths, but they were here to have an easy class and relax a bit after turning into Rank 1s. Ritchard looked around with amazement at the others who had the same idea but were freely showing off their abilities.
Advisory seemed like a popular class amongst all of the students who reached Rank 1. He liked it because it wasn't like a normal class, and he could leave whenever he wanted, which made it slightly more bearable in his mind. It was also popular because they used many abilities without restraint, mainly because they wouldn't do much harm with how many Rank 4s and Rank 3s were present.
They kept walking and glanced around at the many tables and small areas that were reserved for some professors. Many were actively lecturing multiple students, while fewer were taking a more personal approach to teaching and giving each student personal tips and guidance. These had varying effectiveness in the students from his immediate glance.
He already had an idea of how he wanted to go to Rank 2 in his head. It was just being finalized and made reasonable. He was going to start using multiple weapons at the same time, focusing on weapons that shouldn't be put together. His first thought was a bow with a spear. He came up with many scenarios where that would work. He could use his aura to make his arms stronger, along with the string to send the spear flying, but he would have to first make the spear something he could notch to begin with.
These were only how he was going to progress in weapons. One of the many things he was going to do for training for life energy was sprinting normally till he couldn't, and then using his aura to make him go faster till he was burnt out. He was going to do the same thing with working out. He also wanted to try similar things to what Mr. Till did and make his aura be able to expand further while still being attached to him, so he could have a more ranged arsenal. He also wanted to have something similar to telekinesis with it as well, so he could use weapons with his aura alone.
I wonder if I could somehow give my aura properties to cut things. That should be feasible as long as I find ways to make my aura thin enough to cut or bruise something. A funnel would do the trick, and I can practically do it already; I just need a medium. So how do I get rid of the medium?
As he was thinking to himself, he spotted over in the distance and saw the headmaster with Mr. Till. They were discussing something to themselves in a corner, but they weren't being really quiet about it. It didn't take much strain to overhear their conversations.