“Now that you know what would happen when you awaken your spirit next week, you will need to know how to progress once you awaken your spirit.”

Trying to ignore the previous scenario, the instructor continued on with his explanation.

“Firstly, you will have to learn how to gather spiritual energy and to implement your spiritual energy into your Spirit and Spirit Ability.”

“Secondly, you must learn to upgrade your ranks. Fortunately for you, you are part of the Frie Clan. The teachers here are superb and you guys breaking through to the Spirit Apostle realm is basically guaranteed.”

The Instructor casually tossed in a self-praise comment into his speech but the majority of those listening ignored it.

“And lastly, you must learn how to use your spirit abilities in combat. Being the hardest, it would take the longest amount of time to master. Each Spirit User has a different spirit and hence, a different way of fighting. For instance, Junius has a water sword spirit. Which means he is the most suited for the frontlines. On the other hand, Lia has a Cyan Hyacinth spirit. Do not look down on that spirit of hers. There was once a spirit master who was able to use the Cyan Hyacinth to create an endless maze in which no one could escape from. If she grows her spirit the right way, she could be a force deadlier than Junius and Ryner combined.”

The Instructor was trying to demonstrate that even the most innocent spirits had a deadly side. But as the others pictured poor Lia who was ‘encouraged’ by the Instructor earlier, they could not picture her spirit posing a threat to anyone.

Seeing that the audience were losing interest in his speech, the Instructor wanted to liven things up again.

“Now Junius, show them your second ability!”

Junius gave a simple nod as he closed his eyes and started gathering spiritual energy again.

“Junius is gathering more spiritual energy than before!”

Emma exclaimed as she saw an innumerable amount of blue spirit particles congregate around Junius.

After gathering enough energy, Junius opened his eyes and focused on a distance no more than fifty metres away. Once finding his target location, Junius pounced.

Enhanced by the spiritual energy enveloping him, it took him less than four seconds to reach his location. Once there he swung the spirit sword in his hands until it made a full circle.

“Water Ring!”

The swing that Junius made formed a ring filled with water. The sharp aura that was present in the sword was transferred into the ring as the ring stayed in place around Junius. The water in the ring started flowing at a high speed as if it was part of the rapid currents of the world’s fastest flowing river. As the water in the ring was reaching the peak of its velocity, Junius muttered a word.

“Expand!”

The water ring which was surrounding Junius started to grow in at breakneck speeds. The ring passed through trees and boulders cutting through them all. When the ring reached twenty meters in diameter, the amount of water faded as the ability disappeared. If one ignored the destroyed terrain, it would be hard to guess that Junius used his ability.

“Wow...”

Shin, Ella and Emma looked at Junius with a different light. That kind-hearted big brother of theirs had such an ability that made him look so barbarous.

The Instructor laughed loudly as he said:

“Hahahaha! Why are you so surprised? The battle ability of myself is much greater than that senior brother of yours!”

The orphans looked at the instructor with weird eyes. Half of them could not believe that the Instructor was so shameless while the other half did not want to bother with him.

“Well it’s obvious for you guys to be ignorant of my greatness but that’s not the point! Every time you reach a bottleneck, which is at the peak of rank 9, 19 and so on, you would have to learn a new skill. Most of the time, you can get the new skills from your mentors, which mean me or the first elder. Of course, if you have the insight, you could develop your own skills. But that is extremely rare and most spirit users just learn skills that were passed down. For instance, this water ring ability of your senior is a variant of my very own second ability ‘Fire Ring.’”

With a thought, the Instructor summoned his very own spirit. Red spirit particles began to gather as the Instructor summoned a gigantic club which was around a hundred fifty centimetres. A hulk of a man deserves a hulk of a weapon.

The orphans uniformly thought that with his unkempt facial hair and humongous club, the Instructor looked like a prehistoric caveman. However, they were not going to voice their opinion lest the Instructor decides to hit them with that beast of a weapon.

“Now you guys must be thinking now, why must spirits have elements?”

Of course, none of the orphans were thinking of that. They were still distracted by the caveman look of the Instructor. But none of them were going to admit that.

“Yeah of course!”

“Teach me, exalted Instructor!”

“Why are there spirits with elements, big strong man?”

The orphans bombarded the Instructor with questions.

Pleased by the compliments and obedience of the children to listen to his lecture, the Instructor continued his explanation.

“Elements are all around us. The ones that are easily harnessed are the five main elements. Fire, Water, Earth, Wind and Lightning. Majority of the spirits users have contracted a spirit which has one of the main elements ”

“In fact the Frie Clan has roots with an ancestor who first contracted with fire elementals. Hence, the majority of the descendants all have fire elemental spirits.”

“Next would be the rarer elements which are Light, Darkness and Mind. These elements are omnipresent and in theory, should be the most common elements. However, the elementals are hard to contract and it is much rarer to see a spirit user which has one of these elements. One such spirit user is the recently ascended Spirit Immortal Dream. She was a Mind Spirit User and legend has it that she annihilated an entire country by casting an eternal slumber spirit ability. Therefore, although they are rarer, it does not mean they are by any means weaker.”

All the orphans shuddered at the thought of the might of Spirit Immortal Dream. Just by casting a single ability and she was able to destroy an entire country?! They made a mental note to themselves to never be on bad terms with a Mind Spirit User.

“And lastly, the rarest of all spirit users are the spirit users who contracted the elements of Space and Time. Not much is known about such spirit users. In fact, there are only five recorded instances of spirit users who contracted space or time elementals.”

“With the explanation of the elemental types finished, time to explain why spirits must be aligned with an element.”

The Instructor intentionally paused to create dramatic tension.

“““...”””

Shin, Ella and Emma sat patiently waiting for the instructor to finish his explanation.

The Instructor looked at them and with a straight face said:

“I don’t know.”

The three of them fell down. Shin clenched his hands into a fist and had to hold himself back from punching the detestable face in front of him.

Ella and Emma were flabbergasted while holding each other hands.

“Hey don’t blame me! Even the top scholars in the capital of Himmel do not know! I mean there are multiple hypothesis on why it is but none of them are actually confirmed. If you are so smart, go and figure it out and tell me!”

Now even the older orphans who have heard this story before want to punch this old fart. Thankfully, their wish was about to come true.

“LOU!!! WHY DID YOU MAKE LIA CRY?!”

A booming voice could be heard in the distance as a streak of red light flashed through orphan lodgings and landed right in front of the Instructor.

The red light disappeared revealing four characters. Firstly, poor Lia who was mentally traumatised by the Instructor. Next was Lily, who was probably the listener of Lia’s troubles. Standing by Lily’s side was a red-haired little girl with freckles and Lily’s good friend, Ariel. Hearing about the situation from Lia, Lily probably went to complain to Ariel. Ariel, being a good friend, decides to punish the man who made Lia cry and therefore, she brought the only person who could reign him in.

“Eekk! First Elder! It is a misunderstanding! I didn't mean to make her cry!”

“But you did! Lou, you better have a good explanation for this...”

Gathering spirit energy onto his fist, the first elder decided to give a knockout punch to the man who made an eleven-year-old cry.

Seeing this, the orphans present, including Shin, gave a thumbs up to Lia. For allowing them to somewhat vent their frustrations.