All the rank one class students were corralled for an essential lesson in the library. Lok held a book open in his hand as he paced about in front of some board. Kyrion sat down in the back of the class, watching intently.

“Children, do you know why we have classes like this in such a small country? Why do we teach those of you at fledgling rank? Any ideas?”

A kid with white hair and glasses raised their hand. “I have read that it is important that we start practicing young, because fledgling is the most important period of development. If people with potential slack off, then the potential growth is wasted.”

“Good answer, nearly textbook even. Nico was it? To reword it, studies have shown that when you’re young, the fledgling stage of mana is one of the most influential at this point. The reason we teach those at your age is to form a strong foundation, before sending you to a major academy to further shape your abilities.” Lok scanned the crowd, taking mental notes on who was engaged in class.

“Next we discuss the differences in what the 3 tiers we go over are. To be blunt, you aren’t considered a true spirit master until the expert realm of power, and that’s for practicality. Fledgling is where you build your foundation, your center, core, or sea, whatever you want to call it. It’s done by shrinking it as much as you can, before using the gained quality as a baseline, and refilling your pool with only that quality. We normally want it around the size of a grape by the time you graduate, as it allows you to continue to rank three, or continue compressing. What you need to know is that compressions past that point can be dangerous if ill prepared.” Lok looked down and turned the page.

“Practitioner however, is harder to define, there are thirty stages, every ten requires the integration of a spirit core to continue on. Natural progression in this stage is rapid and slows down around twenty five. Those who are diligent in their training may even reach the expert ranks before their twenties. While fledgling focuses on creating a foundation, practitioner shapes how you use your spirit manifestations.”

Kyrion’s eyes glossed over as he listened to better absorb the information. Finally, his gaze stayed on the professor as his consciousness faded slightly, but not completely.

Lok continued. “For example, someone with a fire based spirit, can use fire magic to a degree even in fledgling rank, its nature being set by the default spirit. However, by absorbing a spirit core belonging to a fire snake, their flames would be liquid in nature and venomous, though the temperature of the flame won’t change. On the other end of the spectrum, let’s say you’re lucky and manage to get the spirit core of a fire dragon. Your fire will be a lot hotter and be more destructive in nature. But it would also lose some of its natural precision and flexibility as you try to readjust.”

Lok eyed the half-asleep Kyrion curiously and walked across the room, noticing that the gaze seemed to follow, but it wasn’t precise, and he wasn’t taking any sort of notes. Though, to be fair, very few were doing that.

“As you master your abilities, your spirits will grow in power. And while I’d love to continue, you’d need to learn to stand before you start running.” He paused as he looked down at the half-asleep Kyrion.

“Can anyone tell me why we don’t consider anyone who hasn’t reached the expert tier a true spirit master?” He looked at the unresponsive boy. Nico raised his hand up first, and there were no other volunteers.

“Kyrion?” Lok asked carefully.

Kyrion blinked a few times rapidly before he looked at the teacher with a grim expression.

“The answer is, I don’t know.” Kyrion said unashamedly.

Some of his classmates seemed to laugh. Others managed to keep a straight face. Nico looked dumbstruck by the answer. Lok appeared to have an unreadable expression on his face.

Lok pushed up his glasses and looked at the child. “Fair answer.”

He observed Kyrion closely before addressing the class again. “The reason is simple. The expert ranks are ill defined at best, just like the term, spirit master. Each country has its own terminology, and each continent its own method. Our small country uses it as a catch all, as many who enter the expert level of mastery in this kingdom, don’t manage to make it further. Expert tier has five main ranks and around twenty sub ranks, and by that point, things are measured in magnitude. Two expert rank spirit masters can fight each other but by no means will the fight be a fair one.”

“With that I leave you to your compressions.” Lok opened a different book and started reading it.

The children worked on their compressions until they were released for lunch. The year had just begun, and most of the students in the rank one class were pretty much lost. They had two students reach rank two within the first week, but that was about it. Kyrion’s progress started to stall at around 20% of its original size, which was the size of a watermelon. Pushing past that point, Kyrion was significantly more challenging for him.

During recess, Kyrion went to find one of his two friends still at the academy. “I wonder how Other Guy, is coming along since he’s already in the rank three class.” Kyrion felt an arm go over his shoulder.

“Hurtful, talking about other guys when I’m right here?” Everest shot him a cheeky grin before releasing his friend.

“Finding you isn’t hard, you kinda stick out, like a sore thumb.” Kyrion made his way to a circle of dirt in the courtyard used for training.

“Is that so?” Everest said, his grin souring as he got a good look at the boy in front of him.

“Where you get your clothes?” Everest asked.

Kyrion stared at Everest for a long moment before scratching his head. “Mom, made a few, though I got what I’m wearing now from my grandpa.”

Everest smiled a real cheery smile. “That’s good, very good. Now let’s go see the sword user.”

“Yeah... Ok!” Kyrion had no idea why he felt like he dodged an arrow. His silent friend used to train, leading the two towards the sparing circle.

In the circle was, Other guy. Kyrion had yet to get his name, let alone a verbal response from him. He didn’t seem to talk much. A silent swordsman, it seemed. He swung his sword in a rhythmic-like motion as though he was dancing to a song only he could hear. Slashing and thrusting fluid spinning. His style was beautiful to Kyrion, and he aspired to learn all he could from his silent friend.

When his friend stopped practicing for a break, Kyrion called out, “Other guy!”

Other guy looked up, finally noticing his friends. He waves his hand but looks away soon after.

Everest approached, “It’s been three weeks. When can we get a word out of you?” Everest asked, frustrated.

Other Guy, opened his mouth to speak and seemed to mouth off a few words.

“What was that?” Everest asked.

He took a deep breath, and this time, they heard, “My name is Damian Guy Tilonias, and and..” As he spoke, they listened to a very soft voice that seemed to get quieter the longer he went on.

“Huh… I got something right.” Kyrion stated as he scratched his head.

“Speaking of things you got right. I know for a fact that you fell asleep in class. How you manage to do so with your eyes open, and blink periodically is confusing. Yet when the teacher called on you, you managed to answer. What did you do?” Everest asked him.

“Years of practice, well maybe two years of practice in what I call sleep mode.” Kyrion stated, remembering all the times he used to fade in and out of conversations. The talent was a necessary one.

Everest looked aghast but nodded, and the trio went off to play for a bit. After recess, the group had lunch and split for their afternoon classes and training.

Kyrion looked into himself, pushing down on his mana with no response. Finally, he got frustrated and decided to feed all that remained of the watermelon-sized core into the seed in his center, which caused its roots to grow significantly more, to the point that the fox and egg were connected. Kyrion felt his body change slightly as the consciousness in the egg began to stir some more. The seed was now a sprout, and his fox cub was bigger now. But with his mana mainly used up for the day, he was done.

Kyrion began throwing his disk at the dummy again, forcing the wind to make them return. After an hour of practice, Kyrion got nowhere.

Asela and Wura approached, the former with tears in her eyes. The latter was stoic.

“Why don’t you talk to me anymore!?” She whined.

“We talked this morning.” Kyrion replied bluntly.

“That wasn’t a talk. You said hi and kept going.” She stated.

Kyrion couldn’t recall the exact words he used, but that sounded like him. “So?”

Had Kyrion been a wiser man, he would have known he was being sat up for something. Had he looked at Wura, he would have seen the, I’m sorry expression.

“As punishment, you’re going to play with us. For one hour, no running.” Asela decreed, so it will be.

The day ended with another attempt to make Kyrion and Kiara friends.

Out of spite, he told his roommate Edwin about the whole thing. Edwin wrote down everything, listening intently. Which was something odd as they weren’t really friends.

The next day was Saturday, which was, in fact, a free day for Kyrion and his friends. So instead, he spent that time in his center doing compressions. He found that the compression process was much more manageable when he tried again. As he pushed down, he managed to shrink it to the size of a standard melon. Before he felt that resistance again, along with a large amount of stirring from the egg in his center. Followed by a tapping sound. After a while, the progress slowed, and Kyrion tried to feed it mana to make it go faster. Finally, it worked, and the creature gathered enough strength to break through its shell, and a new consciousness lay in his mind. It felt docile and quiet compared to Jala, but it also felt masculine in nature.

He manifested the newborn spirit, visibly shaking in anticipation. What he got was a tiny bluebird, almost duck-shaped. He tried to pick it up but got pecked for his trouble.

“Ow!” It was more of a reflex response than a painful one. It didn’t really hurt enough to yell.

Edwin stirred at the shriek of pain but made no moves to wake up, so Kyrion snuck out of the room and headed to the library. Where he encountered a certain know-it-all student from his class.

“Hey Kyrion. What brings you here?” Nico asked.

Kyrion held up his bird. “I have a duck. I want to find a book about them.”

“Is it a duck? Why do you even have a bird like that?” Nico asked.

“I’m not quite sure. Books need fast.” Kyrion was in a bit of a hurry.

“Fine, I’ll lead you to where the bird spirit compendium is.” Nico leads the young Kyrion towards a hefty tome.

“That’s a big book.” Kyrion said matter of factly.

“Of course, most compendiums are, there are so many types of spirits, the same with monsters, ores, and plants. This book was made 200 years ago, so some information may be outdated.” Nico explained, getting ready to go.

“Wait… C-can you help me some more? I’m not that good at reading yet. Do they have pictures?” Kyrion asked, acting timidly and mimicking something he’d seen Illanda do when she needed help.

Nico’s jaws dropped. “What are you ten?”

“Eight..Do I look ten or something?”

“Oh. You’re kinda tall for eight. I’m nine and you’re dwarfing me.”

“Hi, nine.” Kyrion’s self-control wavered.

“I’ll just be going then.” Nico said, turning back around.

“I’m sorry, can you please help me with this?” Kyrion pleaded.

“Fine, but you’re gonna need to up your vocabulary quite a bit. Do you know what a dictionary is?”

“No. Sounds evil, can I burn it?”

“Sounds about right.” Nico walked off into the depths of the library and returned with a book.

“Every Saturday, come here after reading through an entire letter category. It’s a catalogue of words with their definitions. Write down the words you don’t understand and I’ll go over them with you.” Nico said bluntly.

Nico informed Kyrion about the importance of knowing complicated words and how it goes into trying to go through a compendium. Finally, Nico leads Kyrion toward a collection of blue birds.

“The Blue Jay, Azure phoenix, Azure chicken, Emperor Sky Penguin, Viridian duck….” Nico muttered as he looked through the book. The entries went on for a while longer. Luckily for Kyrion, they had pictures with most creatures in both chick and adult forms. After the search, they had gotten it down to five other birds.

“So we have the Demonic Canodighan Geese, Moon- touched Seagull, Azure duck, Violet raven, and a Cerulean Swan. Does it have teeth on its tongue?” Nico asked.

“Nope.” Kyrion stated as he pried open the bird’s beak.

“That’s good, it doesn’t look much like a seagull or raven. Which leaves duck and swan… They may have to grow a bit more before we find out and their powers start off being very similar. I hope it’s the duck option, while the swan will be bigger, it’s a more beauty based spirit. The kind that women would kill for. It also lacks combat efficiency, for a while unlike duck, which tends to learn tons of weak abilities first.” Nico said.

“Thank you for your help. I’ll come find you again when I need some more help, or our…Reading time.”

Kyrion did not know how to feel. He had never been a vain person, so the swan option wasn’t good for him. He wouldn’t turn it away, but it seemed impractical. His only way to attack so far involved wind, which didn’t even do much. So he took a piece of candy and popped it into his mouth and tried to focus on other things, like his compressions, followed by reading the dictionary thing Nico gave him. It was pretty different from the methods Charles gave him to practice, but both seemed practical in their own ways.

Kyrion was within himself as sweat poured from his face. He had chosen to take up residence under a large shady tree. As he squeezed his mana pool, he started to feel a dull pain; as he pushed it further, the pain grew stronger, and the mana in his body began to fight back. He pushed, fought, and willed it to stay in one place, imagining an egg-like casing going over it. Finally, the pain stopped, and Kyrion had a new feeling. So much energy in his body, and he felt as though he would explode.

He ran around the courtyard for about thirty minutes and didn’t get tired, and there was only a slight dip in his energy. His mana had been reduced slightly, however.

“This feeling is weird.” Kyrion tried to summon wind, and unlike the previous times, it seemed to come faster, but it was still wild. He called the mist, and as it appeared, it began shifting colors rapidly, and he lost control of it.

“I take one step forward and two steps back.” He mumbled in irritation. Kyrion fed the higher quality mana towards the sprout, and it absorbed it all with fervor. “Well now what.” Kyrion said to himself. The first test was still two weeks away.