"Hello, I'm back for my quests. Have they been verified?" Ning asked as he walked up to one of the registrar.
"Ah, Mister Ning! Yes, both of your quests have been verified. Let me look up your stuff. You can choose two of the new quests if you want to," the registrar said.
"Thank you," Ning said and walked up to the board and looked for easy quests to do.
Thanks to his Intermediate Alchemist rank, He could now do 2 quests at once instead of just the single one. The number slowly increased until 5 as he went up the rank too.
There were 6 ranks in the Alchemy guild. They were Novice Alchemist, Beginner Alchemist, Intermediate Alchemist, Advanced Alchemist, Master Alchemist, and Grandmaster Alchemist.
The way you could rank up was by buying ingredients from the guild, selling pills and ingredients to the guild, and complete quests that were hung up on the board.
Each of these things had a certain point assigned to them, and as long as you did them, you would gain that point.
Ning had spent the last two weeks making pills and buying ingredients for his beasts. He had gotten quite good at the whole alchemy thing and was still very certain that he could get better.
After gaining a lot of points, he had managed to reach the Intermediate Alchemist rank where he could start taking two quests at once. Also, he was starting to get 50% discounts on everything, so that was quite a surprise for him.
"Hmm… I don't see that many quests that I can just answer outright to solve," Ning thought as he looked at the list.
Suddenly, from the back of his body, he saw a person quickly turn around as soon as they saw him. That brought Ning's attention towards the person, so he turned around to get a clearer look.
"Oh, hey Ender, Where are you going?" Ning asked.
The person who was trying to quietly hide away from Ning's sight was Ender. Ender awkwardly turned around and looked at Ning.
"Uhh, hello, Teacher Ning," he said.
"Hey, you don't have to call me teacher. Haha. What's up? How's your study going?" Ning asked.
"Umm, it's fine. I'm doing quite good," Ender said with an awkward smile.
"Oh, good. By the way, how come I didn't see you in my class even once? I thought you would be the first one to join me," Ning asked.
"That's…" Ender really tried to not answer anything, but couldn't in the end and gave up. "Sigh, it's because my sister told me not to," Ender said.
"Your… sister told you not to come to my class?" Ning asked. "Why?"
"She… She says that you are a fraud and a liar," Ender said.
"I… am not a liar though. I don't remember lying about anything exactly," Ning said as he thought back to their conversations.
"What about you not knowing about Alchemy?" Ender asked.
"Oh that was just me not knowing how good my knowledge was. Only now do I know it's quite good," Ning said.
Ender was also quite sure that Ning wasn't lying at all, but his sister was never wrong about someone, so he would rather believe his sister than his own guts.
"Sigh, alright. You do what you feel like doing. I won't blame you for not showing up," Ning said. "Why are you here by the way?"
"Oh, to make some pills," Ender said.
"Alright, have fun," Ning said his goodbyes and went back to the board to choose his two quests. He quickly found two that he could answer right here and brought them to the registrar.
He first got 250 spirit stones for his 2 quests, and then answered the questions on the two new quests. Once that was done, he left.
He looked around at the many guilds and wondered if he should become part in them too, but those could wait until he learned about them.
After all, he was just two days away from getting his silver badge. 'A month goes away so quickly, huh?' he thought and walked up the stairs. Starting from the day after tomorrow, he could fly up and down the mountain like the many different teachers.
'Still, getting 500 students is quite hard. Not even another lecture helped, and the students keep dropping. What should I do?' Ning wondered.
He had gotten a burst of 700 new students after his 2nd lecture, which was on Grim leaves that one could find just about anywhere. The students stayed behind for a day or two, but it quickly dropped to 300 again.
'I should be just a few students away from reaching 500, right?' he thought. 'Just what am I doing wrong? Is my teaching method not very good?'
Many doubts appeared in Ning's mind, but they were soon gone when he realized what tomorrow was.
'Sigh, that barbarian still isn't stopping his fight. What does he want me to do? Why is Nilo so important to him?' Ning wondered. He had tried asking Nilo himself, but never got a straight answer.
He would either make up stuff like 'the teacher really likes me', or 'I'm just that good with beasts I guess', never giving an answer that Ning was okay with.
"Fine, whatever. I will just beat that damn barbarian at whatever game he wants to play with me and be done with it," Ning thought angrily and walked back to his room.
He spend the entire night preparing for the fight tomorrow in any way he could. It took him some time since the system wasn't there to aid him automatically, and he had to do everything by himself.
Finally, once he thought he was ready, he started cultivating.
Early in the morning, he woke up and went to his class. Today, he had less than 300 students in his class. He really was doing something wrong.
He quickly finished the class and walked out.. However, instead of going to the staffroom, he went to the back of the academy and down the mountain where the duel between the two of them was going to take place.