It didn't even take Ning 10 crystals to reach the Essence Manifestation realm. With just 9 crystals in a little over a month, he reached the Essence Manifestation realm, reaching the required rank to enter the Interschool competition.
He had done it the night before his day off, so he was free the rest of the day to do whatever he wanted.
And there was nothing he wanted more than to learn a skill.
As soon as he woke up and ate something, he rushed to the Skill shop in the academy, where one could purchase skills using their credits.
Ning had managed to amass a total of 45 credits by now, so he really hoped he got something good with that sort of money.
He had prepared for this moment also by studying what was possible and what he could do.
The most important thing he realized was the advantage that he had against every other Essence user out there. That was the fact that his Essence was incredibly pure, with almost no elemental alignment.
This made it so that if he wanted to, he could go for any and all elemental skills. He could even go for the rarest Essence skills and easily use them while someone with an elementally aligned core could not.
Of course, there were also a few problems with having pure Essence. Since Pure did not exist as an element, Pure Essence also couldn't be turned into anything directly. The Essence had to first go through a small change within the human body to change its element before coming out as that element.
For example, if he wanted to use a simple skill like a wind slice, he would have to first turn the Pure Essence into Wind Essence, which took some time since his body wasn't aligned with Wind, and then the wind essence turned into a Wind Slice.
This change in Essence caused a delay in time which caused an opening that any skilled fighter could take advantage of.
Ning wasn't yet sure just how much of a delay there was, but he would have to make sure to train a whole lot so he could somehow remedy this delay with something else.
He arrived at the Skill shop and was more than happy that he didn't have to pay to get it. He knew he already had to pay for the skills, so having to pay for getting into the room as he had with the library would have been annoying.
The skill shop was in fact a massive room with multiple shelves all around the wall and the center of the room.
Ning looked around with a surprised look at just how massive it was. He wondered if they had destroyed the walls of 3 classrooms to prepare this room.
He walked in slowly and looked around the room. There weren't many people in here, but there were still enough to consider the place crowded.
Everyone was going around the shelves looking at the various books that were on there.
Ning walked up to the shelf that was closest to him and picked a random book off it. He flipped the book and read the name of the skill.
"Water Wrap?" he thought with a curious expression. He flipped a page to read just what the skill did.
"Creates two puddles of water at the distance that wrap around whatever is above them. Once wrapped, the water freezes and creates a hold that your enemy can't get out of easily," he read.
He closed the book and put it back before taking another one out.
"Raining Arrows. Creates rain in a limited location where the water pours down with each droplet falling in the shape of an arrow."
Ning put the book back as well and pulled out another one.
"Water Heal. Wrap a wound with water to cover up any wound and improve its recovery."
"Why is it all water?" Ning wondered and looked around the shelf for a bit before noticing a small board at the top of the shelf that said 'Water Skills'.
"Oh," he thought. "I'm in the Water Section."
He looked around at the various shelves and wondered which section he should go for.
"What do I need?" Ning wondered for a moment. As far as he was concerned, he needed 4 different skills.
An Offensive skill, a Defensive, skill, a skill that helped with movement, and a skill that helped him escape should a problem arise that he couldn't handle.
"Offensive… should be fire, right?" he thought. "Defensive can be earth. Movement is probably Wind, and Escape… I don't know. That can be anything."
He walked away from the water shelf and went over to the other shelves to check what else there was.
He came across a shelf that surprised him for a moment. "Right, there are more than just those 4 elements," he thought. "Stupid me, I should consider the others too when looking for skills."
Very quickly, Ning found a skill that was going to be his Offensive skill. It cost him 12 Credits, which he was not happy about, but it was what it was.
He then went over to another shelf and got a Defensive skill from there. The skill cost him 10 credits which he understood because of how good it was.
Next, he searched for a movement skill. However, he found his Escape skill before the movement one.
The Escape skill cost him over 18 credits by it alone. Ning was a little mad that it cost so much. However, given just how good it was, he didn't want to not get it.
In the end, he was left with 5 credits only for the movement skill. Ning went around the room looking at cheap skills, but the only one he could find for 5 credits was a wind skill that made him slightly less resistant to wind.
Once he got all four books, he went over to buy them. After spending all the credits he had, Ning left the skill shop to go and earn some more.
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