Karl focused on his mental spaces, which seemed to have settled a little now that Hawk had advanced. They were all at the same Royal Rank standard, and he could feel the possibility of adding another, but as he focused on all of the things that made up his mindscape, he found something new.
There was a simple white cloth bag there.
Karl stared at it for a moment, wondering where it had come from. He didn’t recall getting a bound storage bag.
“Hey, does anyone else have a bag in their bound items? Like a piece of gear, but just a white cloth bag?” Karl asked.
There was a moment of silence as everyone checked, and then Dana’s surprised gasp. “Where did that come from?” “That’s why I asked you, I don’t remember getting a bound bag. Was it from the trial?”
Morgana sighed and shook her head. “Was nobody else paying attention? There were three chests and a bag for everyone. We opened the chests, then got distracted by the big shiny box, and the bags vanished into our bonded items. I’ve already moved my backpack and spare essentials into it, the bag holds much more than it looks like it should.”
Karl went back to his hammock and grabbed his backpack, then focused on tossing it into the bag he was bonded to. The whole pack vanished, despite being three times the size of the white bag when it was outside his mind, and Karl could see from the top that he still had nearly half the space left.
“That bag is brilliant.” He called to the crowd on the ground as he realized that no longer would they have to lug around backpacks when on patrol, or risk the packs getting damaged during a fight, or trampled as they were forced to move after taking them off for a battle.
Plus, Karl could now store his own personal items, and not just things that were useful to one of the beasts. He would be able to actually carry useful everyday items without worrying about the weight or pack space.
Well, with half his bag already taken by the essentials in the backpack, he would still have to worry about space, but not to the same extent.
The outsiders were still distracted by Hawk as Karl slid down the ladder to rejoin the others in congratulating Doug on his advancement.
Hawk came back as the sun climbed higher in the sky, and Karl realized that they had caused too much of a spectacle to have a quiet breakfast alone in the fort. They were going to have to join the guests for breakfast, but they could play the guessing game, and see how long it took for someone to realize that Doug’s aura had changed, and he was now a Royal Rank Priest of the Green Dragon, the Nature God.
The camp was busy by the time that they came back, as everyone had realized that Hawk had advanced, and it was the talk of the Academy that morning. He was their eyes in the sky, and everyone knew that Karl was relaying scouting information from him to the rest of the students. So, the fact that he was now Royal Rank, and most likely even more capable than he had been at detecting enemy movements in advance, was bound to get the students excited.
The soldiers were just happy to have anything Royal Rank along the line. They didn’t care if it was an Elite, a foreign mage, or a friendly monster. It just had to be on their team.
Most of the visitors were already packed up, with their bags sitting beside them, and the cargo crews were loading the equipment into buses for the ride back to the closest safe helipad. Even with the extra confidence in the safety of the area, they still weren’t going to risk public figures flying this close to the border conflicts when they could safely send them by bus for the last hour of their journey.
The dining hall was packed with Elites about to go on shift, and everyone was too engrossed in stories of yesterday to be paying any attention to other groups outside their table, so Karl was reasonably certain he would have to wait for someone to notice.
And wait, they did. By the time that the meal was over, nobody had noticed, and then the group was off to one of the training tents with Morgana while Bob went off to teach a class and Doug went to help with the healing corps. There were always ongoing injuries, so all of the clerics who had downtime went to help out, and Doug had just gotten a new regeneration ability that seemed like it would be quite powerful.
Lotus followed behind him, ready to take notes, while Karl prepared to take his geography lessons, and Dana was dragged away by the Magical Knights to practice their new skills.
“You don’t need to practice your new skills, do you?” Morgana asked as she brought out the textbooks.
“I’m good enough with the armour already, and the other skill is once per beast. I am not going to use it on them until they hit an absolute dead end. If they get to a bottleneck, and they simply can’t get past it, even after the others have, then I will use the skill to let them evolve and advance, to hopefully move them far enough forward that they can rejoin the main group.” Karl explained.
Morgana nodded. “Good, then you can continue lessons on schedule. Now, we just need to actually get through a lesson once the rest of the students arrive with questions for you.” “It’s not easy being famous. Just wait, you’re about to find out. I can feel that you’re at the bottleneck already, so you’re almost certainly going to make Royal Rank now that you have new skills.”
Morgana looked curious. “What do skills have to do with it?”
“It’s a theory that the beasts and I devised. One of the things that all Royal Rank creatures have in common is that they have a skill that is not common to their race. The same seems true of the Elites I have met at Royal Rank or higher. They all have a skill that is not part of their basic kit. So, now that you’ve gained some new skills from the Trial, it should be much easier for you to make the transition through the bottleneck.”
The students came in as they were talking, and remained silent so they didn’t interrupt this vitally important discussion. Everyone wanted to know what it took to make the Royal Rank, and Karl had just dropped the equivalent of a nuclear bomb on their understanding of Rank Advancement. Most of the mages in the class had assumed that it was just a matter of potential. That most of the Elites got stuck at Commander Rank because that was as good as they were. But what if it was a matter of lacking a skill that was compatible with their new Rank? If what they needed to advance was a Skill that could move to the Royal Rank, then the whole strategy behind their training would have to change. Or perhaps not for all of them. One of them was a Lightning Element Mage, and he now had [Chain Lightning], thanks to Karl donating it to the Inscriptionists.