After hearing that this would be their first exam, everyone immediately began to take it seriously, including Cecily, who was forced to go with that girl.
Meanwhile, Ryan and Alaric joined them on the way.
"How much do you know about Professor Sara?" Alaric asked suddenly, as soon as he caught up with him.
Ryan thought about his question. In his memories of the novel, there wasn't much mention of this woman, although she did appear a few times. Unlike Professor Sawyer, she was a professor dedicated to the subjects of Magic and Spirituality for Walkers.
"She's good at Spiritual Magic and teaches Spiritual Protection, right? She also has a decent level of Spiritual Projection, being one of the only ones in the kingdom to be good at both categories," Ryan replied.
"That's right. She currently specializes in Protection and Projection, which is why her tests are almost always based on those two. Did you enroll in any of them this time?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Do you know anything about them?"
"A little. Do you think her test will be based on that this time?" Ryan asked.
"It's not that I think so. What she taught us in the first year in both majors is just that. Many enroll in numerous subjects when they become Walkers and then turn out to be incompatible." He said, but he didn't finish what he was going to say because he couldn't find a way to do so, so he remained silent to think about it.
Ryan understood what he meant, so he nodded.
"She does it to help students know if they're compatible with those two, right? That way, they don't waste too much time making the change."
Alaric nodded, grateful that Ryan was so understanding. And since he understood so easily, he took an object out of his inventory.
"We'll train with this," he said.
"Target practice?" he asked.
He nodded. "I need to teach you a lot in one hour."
"And that will speed up the learning process?" Ryan smiled. Alaric wasn't good at talking; he could see that now. The question he asked was one that Alaric wanted to say, but he couldn't find the right words to say it, so Ryan helped him.
And as expected, Alaric nodded. He was really grateful that Ryan could understand him so well.
Then he was silent for many minutes, until they reached the training yard. He spent all that time thinking about what he would say to Ryan and how he should help him.
When they arrived at the training yard, Professor Sara finished organizing the other groups and once again told them what they should do.
Alaric didn't need to hear it again; he already understood. The problem was that he didn't know how to explain it.
He looked at Ryan, bent down, and took out a blank sheet of paper and a pencil.
"Spiritual Projection... It's not really complex," he said. "It's just spirituality coming out of your body, you understand?"
Ryan, of course, understood what spirituality was. But what was this terrible way of explaining it?
Even so, as he explained, Alaric was also drawing. The drawing was too impressive; it even seemed to come directly in 3D.
'Is it a reflection that spirituality is part of the inner life of the body and that for a Spiritual Projection to form, it is necessary to take it out of the body?' he thought.
"This is you," Alaric said. "You have spirituality inside you, which is all of this," he said, pointing to the inner chaos he had drawn.
As Ryan had already understood, he continued.
"To get it out, you need to raise your body temperature and then direct it to where you want it to come out. That's projection," he said.
It was the first time Ryan had heard such an explanation about spirituality and projection, but it made perfect sense.
It is known that Spirituality is in a passive state. When activated, it heats up if it is for Spiritual Projection, Primordial Alchemy, or Illusionism. It cools down if it is for Spiritual Protection, Inanimate Destiny, or Spiritual Animation.
In this context, Healing Spirituality is unique because it needs both heat and cold, making it the most complex of the specializations.
They are all different concepts, but they go hand in hand because they are activated through the use of Spirituality in a specialization of it.
And they were activated following the same characteristic of spirituality, whether hot or cold.
Ryan nodded. "You mean I should warm up the spirituality in my body and then try to project it somewhere, right? But I understand that to project, I must train my spirit," he said.
Alaric blinked a couple of times, staring at him. "Don't you know?" he asked.
"What?"
"By heating or cooling your spirituality, your spirit is being trained and molded. You just need to use spirituality to project what you need. Although technically useful, the knowledge of having to train the spirit for projection to take effect is a bit outdated; it was used in the days of the Heroes, 50 years ago."
Ryan frowned. 'I see. So the magic of spirituality has really seen a breakthrough in this time, one that wasn't in the novel,' he thought.
In fact, he would be lying if he said that it had never occurred to him that this was possible, but he would also be lying if he said that he had not tried.
There were many attempts and even more failures, so he concluded that it was impossible at that time.
Ryan finally nodded.
"So I just need to keep in mind heating and cooling spirituality. And mentally control it to form the shape I want?"
Alaric nodded.
'That's very convenient,' Ryan thought.
"To heat or cool your body, you just need to have a certain accumulation, depending on what you want. For example, a 50% accumulation is cold and 100% is hot," said Alaric, pointing to his drawing.
Ryan completed what he wanted to say, in the part he couldn't say for lack of words: "You don't need to manage other levels of accumulation, because the mind and spirituality do the rest, right?" he said.
Alaric smiled. "You're very good, Ninth Prince. I don't have to say much for you to understand," he said.
Ryan smiled, sincerely pleased. He didn't think he could compare himself in genius to great minds like Alaric, Brandon, or Cecily, but he wasn't bad either, and he had a lot of knowledge about the past and the novel, which helped him.
'Well, now this is interesting. Part of the strengthening process involves training a rebellious spirit that doesn't want to bend easily, and that's where your life as a Walker goes. For those of us who aren't talented, it was torture,' he thought.
But this way of presenting it to him was much easier and less torturous, which allowed him to focus on the plot and leave aside so much boring training.
If this worked, it would solve his life because facing Brandon, a native of this world, and his allies while having to spend so much time training at something he wasn't good at would surely be an impossible challenge.
"Do you want to try?" Alaric asked, pointing to the target in his hand.
Ryan smiled. "Okay."