The Ranker Academy, for 4 months, was in full bloom. Many people went for the courses as the academy became a major hit. People seeing their peers wielding strange skills and powers they had only dreamt of, was enough for them to enthusiastically learn at the academy.

Many people tried to learn directly from their friends who had gone through the courses but without the supervision of higher Ranks available they ended up in failure all the time and some people lost their lives in the process.

The courses that grew the slowest were the Magic and Karma is a Bitch courses. Their prices being higher than the other courses, was a factor but also the stringent prerequisites made people avoid them. The first investors in those courses were the Rank 6s currently know as the ‘Big Powers’.

The Big Powers recruited Rank 0s and 1s who hadn’t evolved to become superior intelligence High Humans – intelligence superiors. Those who hadn’t evolved as of now were usually wimps so Magic was a good option for them. The major winners of the Magic course were those who were already intelligence superiors. There was now almost no intelligence superior that hadn’t been recruited by the Big Powers.

Only Jola’s company knew about the energy superiors and they kept it as a company secret and only made those they could completely trust into energy superiors. Jola’s company was also the major winner in the Magic race as they already studied it and recruited a bunch of people before distributing the manual.

Karma is a Bitch had investments from the Big Powers apart from Funmi’s Karma Company. The Karma Company was the biggest winner for the Karma is a Bitch course followed by Jola as she had recruited most of the high agility build rankers and trained the highest number of high agility builds while Jola’s company had gotten people to learn about it before hand.

Mistura and Samad’s company still invested; it wasn’t like all the high agility build rankers had been recruited by Karma before hand and it wasn’t like they didn’t have high agility builds working for them already.

Mira’s course was the most dreaded as people heard rumors of how close some people were to dying and how in some rare cases they did. In truth, some people did die as the course hadn’t been perfected but as they made mistakes they learnt. 76% of those who failed to acquire High Mind on the first lesson never came for a second lesson.

After the second lesson worked for some, others would try again. Mira learnt that not everyone had the same talent for High Mind and that her talent was extremely high in that regard.

Mira didn’t need a week of constant fear to activate it; all she needed was a moment. The same could be said for all most of those who discovered skills on their own; they were extremely talented at the skill they discovered. No one could rival Funmi at Karma is a Bitch same for Mira at High Mind and Lekan at aura.

The teens were an exception as their talent only showed after being exposed to a dangerous environment for a prolonged amount of time. Lekan didn’t have such an environment yet he discovered aura hence his talent was extremely unique.

The courses were refined as the students who had learnt took over from most the original skill or technique discoverers. The students understood a lot more about acquiring the skills than the talented pioneers who had discovered the skills by talent and sheer luck.

As the teachings went on some pros and cons were noticed. For the cons; it was extremely challenging for Rank 5s to learn High Mind and Aura even if they had the talent for it. This was because these skills required challenges to unlock and it was hard finding a challenge for a Rank 5 with very high stats and no skills.

The Rank 6s could barely learn any of the two skills as only Funmi and Mira were Rank 6s because of their skills and not their stats. The other Rank 6s just couldn’t be threatened by the same things that threatened a Rank 4. Only Samad managed to learn the Aura skill.

Also a trend was discovered; those who learned High Mind or Karma is a Bitch could never learn Aura manipulation and vice-versa. So a trend began; those that found learning High Mind or Karma is a Bitch hard to learn would switch to Aura manipulation. This learning strategy worked for most people but there were a few who it didn’t work for.

On the pro side learning skills like High Mind and Aura was a way of the sanctuary getting people to fight for them without paying them… in fact the people were paying to fight for the sanctuary. Some people voiced concerns about this but no one was going to stop learning the amazing skills because the sanctuary was profiting as a whole.

A special event happened that caused the amount of people who were afraid of the High Mind course to return and for those who had completely avoided it to try.

There was a group of 8 individuals now popularly known as ‘The Protagonists’. Lanre, Durojaiye, Samantha, Florence, Sayid, Glory, Amaka and Chisom, they had kept coming back for the High Mind lessons and on their 13th lesson they all unlocked aura.

The most special thing was that 5 of them unlocked white aura and 3 of them unlocked black aura, which had never been unlocked in the short history of the Aura course, not even the original aura discoverers had gotten it, people thought it was impossible since there were no monsters that had white or black aura in the history of the sanctuary’s raids and campaigns.

After the event the members of The Protagonists group were actively recruited by the Big Powers, they were on the verge of fighting for them. The Protagonists were of different Ranks ranging from Rank 3 – 5; regardless of the Rank every Protagonist was considered a gem.

The Protagonists had formed a strong bond over the course of their ordeal of repeating the course for 13 weeks straight, they had become each other’s motivation. So when the Big Powers were fighting over who gets who they decided that they would form a team that wasn’t affiliated with the Big Powers, they formed Shadeless, the team of elites.

Shadeless was lauded as a special team that would one day become a Big Power by many people. Shadeless was very attractive as the members stated on media, Karma’s Magazine and the regular newsletters, that one had to be special to be eligible to join the team, special how? That was for those who wanted to join to show them and not for them to decide.

The team maintained an air of elegance and people desired it greatly for that, it was like one had to be a chosen one to enter Shadeless, and who didn’t want to be a chosen one?

Many people rushed to the High Mind class and soon realized that the achievement of Shadeless was not a small one. Those who had done the lesson before were swiftly reminded of how hard their previous ordeal was and vowed to never try again. Those who had never done it before were wondering what kind of monsters the Shadeless members were for doing this for 13 weeks without therapy.

The biggest gain of the 4 month period was the general stat increase. Many people had taken the High Mind and Aura lessons which had low requirements but put those who learnt in dangerous situations, this lead to an astronomical increase in the stats of the general public, very few people now had Low average stats; most people now had Intermediate stats on average.

The number of Rank 3s, 4s, 5s and 6s sky rocketed as many campaigns were carried out and with the skills people learnt they grew at a much quicker pace and many people were not satisfied with being Rank 2 anymore as Rank 3 was where one could learn a skill.