Noel and Anna looked at each other.

“Are we going to circulate our energy between each other?” Noel and Anna asked at the same time.

“That’s obvious. You two will control your Spiritual Energy, then circulate it to each other and continue to the level where your element will be circulated as well.” Old Ru nodded.

“Won’t this be dangerous?” Noel frowned.

“Of course, it will be dangerous. If you don’t trust each other, then you will be fighting back against the energy whether consciously or subconsciously. However, I do think that you can do that, right?”

Noel and Anna looked at each other. It might be a challenging task for them, but it might not be as well.

Noel hated Anna in the past. He might still hold some grudges, but it didn’t change the fact that he trusted her enough to gamble his life. Anna, on the other hand, had a complicated emotion because of what happened during the adventure as well as what Old Ru said yesterday. She felt like she couldn’t treat Noel the same way as before. But she also trusted him and even dared to sacrifice her life to help him.

Noel and Anna took a deep breath as they made a decision.

“I…” Noel and Anna opened their mouths before correcting their words, “No, we will do it.”

Old Ru smiled. “For now, your training will be to control your Spiritual Energy in your hand. Try to decrease the amount of energy and form an outer layer that will stop your Spiritual Energy from flowing outside. Then, make it as thin as possible so that it will become like another layer of your skin. Once you reach that stage, you can begin circulating your Spiritual Energy to each other.”

Anna nodded with a serious expression. Although she hadn’t done it before, she had a good foundation and experience to do so. In fact, she was most likely to be the first one to succeed.

Meanwhile, Noel didn’t want to lose to her. However, he completely understood that her talent far surpassed him. Even if his talent was above average, it wouldn’t be enough to follow the rate of her growth. Hence, Noel prepared one more thing that could allow him to bypass the gap in their talent.

‘Ardagan. You should have heard about the challenge. Since this is a task that I have to complete as soon as possible so that Anna and I can begin tackling the same problem at the same time… I think I don’t need to ask for it, right?’ Noel tried to negotiate with Ardagan inwardly.

And it seemed that his prediction was correct. Ardagan’s response came in the form of a mission and a repetitive training task.

[Mission: Keeping up with Anna]

[Description: The training is supposed to be taken by two individuals at the same time. You have to keep up with Anna. Hence, prove yourself by creating an outer layer of Spiritual Energy.]

[Reward: Spiritual Medal.]

[Penalty: Time depending on the progress speed.]

Training: Maintaining the outer layer of Spiritual Energy for 1 second.

Reward: Spiritual Energy Sensitivity +0.1% (Accumulation: 0%)

Noel couldn’t help but smile. He had also received the Fighter Medal and Rune from completing the previous mission to meet the hermit. With this, he had prepared everything to tackle the problem.

Still, he only expected a mission from Ardagan. To think that Ardagan would go one step beyond that and give him a training task.

He knew that the training task would continue to become harder and harder, but it didn’t change the fact that the accumulation would definitely help him. In fact, he began noticing the difference in the amount of Spiritual Energy whenever he used medals to increase his Spiritual Energy. And if he just looked at the amount he had accumulated, he could roughly guess the amount that had increased due to the training.

Noel checked a few other training tasks and realized that it had become too hard that a new training task had to be given.

Training: Run 3,000 km

Reward: Stamina +0.25% (Accumulation: 7.20%)

Push Up: 120,000 times

Reward: Constitution +0.25% ( Accumulation: 6.95%)

The ridiculous amount was impossible to fulfill in a short period of time even if Noel used all his abilities to complete five push ups in one second.

Noel took a deep breath and changed his medal.

Medal: Best Rival

Effect: Learning and Teaching +10%

Medal: Elite

Effect: Sword Mastery +5%, Spiritual Energy +5%, Rune Mastery +5%

Noel took a deep breath. With this, he had done everything to increase the odds of his success.

Noel began shutting his eyes and circulating his Spiritual Energy around his body. After that, he tried to move all that energy into his hand, causing his right hand to emit a huge amount of energy.

Noel concentrated his focus on the flow of Spiritual Energy, trying to decrease the amount that seeped through the pore.

At first, the amount of energy felt like there was a blazing fire engulfing Noel’s hand, but after one minute of trying to decrease the amount of Spiritual Energy, there was a total of fifty percent reduction.

‘Good. A bit more…’ Noel muttered inwardly while controlling his Spiritual Energy.

Anna had been doing the same, but as one would expect from a regressor, the amount of energy around her hand was minuscule. If this continued, she might grasp a perfect amount of energy within thirty minutes to an hour.

Despite his partner being able to reach that level in a short period of time, Noel remained calm.

Noel emptied his mind and focused all his instinct on his hand.

“Good… slow down…” Noel kept muttering as if he was talking to his own Spiritual Energy.

Old Ru was stupefied when he saw their talent. With Anna’s experience and knowledge, this kind of result was to be expected. But he was completely surprised when Noel reached this level all of a sudden.

Old Ru didn’t know that Noel had been training his control so that he could master his fire. Although the concept was slightly different, the training was still effective for this challenge.

It seemed that he had to re-evaluate their training.