Once Eini had finished her breakthrough, Shiba also finished his meditation.
Eini had reached Rank 1, but her strong foundations plus the enlightenment on two Laws made her reach directly to level 17 instead of just level 10.
That was absolutely an explosive increase in strength, but it was within Lina's expectations. Even if Eini reached level 19, the peak of Rank 1, in one go, she wouldn't have been surprised.
After all, Eini had been suppressing her own level for a lot of time, and she had a lot of talent. Once she made a conscious attempt to advance, all her effort the previous years had made her advance a lot.
Of course, she advanced in level, but her body and mind were far from reaching the limits. They had also improved a lot, but that wasn't enough to reach the limit.
Of course, it was a different case for the principal. He felt that he had already been surprised enough, but Eini reaching level 17 in one go was far too abnormal for his standards.
Usually, the most talented ones in the academy would at most jump to level 11. He could believe that a real monstrously talented student might reach level 12 in one go despite having never seen it, but level 17 was far too much.
Eini wasn't the only one who advanced. Shiba had reached level 9 after waking up from meditation despite having just recently advanced to level 8. However, he barely reached the level and was far from the peak.
Anyway, that had been a crucial breakthrough for Shiba. He had less than two years left before being sixteen, so he wasn't absolutely confident in advancing two levels, it was only possible, but he was sure that in that time he could advance one level to reach Rank 1 as long as he continued training hard like he always did.
Soon after Shiba woke up, a teacher went into the Dueling Room and asked about what happened.
The teacher already knew, but it was just a formality.
There were strict orders from the principal to win Shiba's favor, so the teacher couldn't punish him. He wouldn't have done it anyway. The guy who died had broken the rules first, and what Shiba did was to save the other students, so the teacher had a good impression of him.
Thus, the teacher felt that there wasn't anything strange with the principal's orders more than the fact that the principal paid attention to the matter. However, the teacher knew that Shiba and Eini joined with a recommendation letter of the principal's grandfather, so he attributed the principal's interest in Shiba to that.
The principal's grandfather giving a recommendation letter was a big matter for all the teachers, so they all knew about it.
The principal was observing the situation, so he sighed in relief when Shiba and the rest of the students left after telling everything to the teacher.
After observing Shiba and Eini, the principal didn't want them to leave the academy due to being angry.
After all, it was just an academy, the students could leave it if they didn't like it. They would also lose the academy's support when doing it, but he didn't think that Shiba and Eini cared about it.
At most, he felt that they wanted to use the academy as a cover because it would feel more natural if students of an academy advanced quick than two kids roaming the world alone.
As for why hide their background, he didn't know, but he didn't care.
"It is good as long as the academy benefit from them. Given their talent, it would positively affect our reputation."
The greater the students of an academy, the greater the reputation the academy got.
An academy that had produced a lot of experts would be far more popular than one that didn't.
At that moment, the principal noticed something strange in his pocket.
He put the hand inside and found that there was a piece of paper on his previously empty pocket.
"What is this?"
He was sure that there wasn't anything in his pocket earlier, but suddenly that piece of paper appeared.
He quickly unfolded the piece of paper to see if there was something written.
"If something happens to these two, this planet will disappear. A puny bug like you shall know how to behave."
There were only those two sentences on the paper, but the principal felt sunken in fear.
The words seemed ordinary, but once he read them, both of his arms had been frozen.
He could feel that there wasn't any killing intent, it was just a small threat, but he would still need at least a day to melt the ice, and about a week to recover completely.
"I need to protect these two. Their background is far more powerful than I expected. From a mere piece of ordinary paper, my arms ended up like this, and this is without having the intention to harm me."
That piece of paper was absolutely normal. In fact, it was the type of piece of paper that he usually used to take notes.
He knew that the expert behind Shiba and Lina had barged into his room, picked up one piece of paper, wrote it, and put it on his pocked without noticing at all.
Not even those at Rank 9 would be able to do that without him noticing.
Lina had indeed acted as the principal guessed, but she controlled the pen and the piece of paper from far, she didn't need to enter the room at all.
She could enter without being noticed, but she didn't feel that she needed to do it.
Lina could feel that although the principal wasn't an evildoer, he was also far from being a merciful person.
If he someday stopped caring about Eini and did something bad to her, Lina feared that her father would come to annihilate the whole planet.
It wasn't a joke, her father had done such things before when Lina was young, so she felt that it was better to make the principal fully aware of how serious the matter was.
If someone powerful really used superior strength to harm Eini on any way, it would be easy for Eini's father to destroy the planet and move Eini to another one.
She added Shiba because Eini would go mad if something happened to him. It was clear how much Eini loved Shiba, and as long as they restrained themselves until both had become Essence Gods like the rules stated, she wasn't planning to separate them by force.
However, it was hard to say what her father would think of the matter.
At that moment, Shiba and Eini were unaware that their principal fared them more than his grandfather's enemies.
However, at the same time, he could feel that as long as those two were grateful for the academy, the expert behind them would also protect the academy.
After all, if the academy were to be assaulted, Shiba and Eini would be affected no matter how much the principal tried to protect them.
His grandfather's enemies would turn into a problem once his grandfather died, but there was another problem neat them.
He had noticed that a religious cult had expended on the cities and towns surrounding the academy. Although they seemed to purposely avoid the academy, he felt wary since that cult was the type that used words to brainwash others.
If his students were to fall into that cult, they would easily betray the academy for orders of the Goddess or something like that. It would be even worse if some teachers fell to those tricks.
At that moment, Shiba and Eini were returning to their room.
Both of them looked quite happy, but it wasn't without reason.
Eini's improvements were obvious, and with her bit of understanding of two Laws, she could easily kill those at Rank 2. As for killing someone at Rank 3, it wouldn't be impossible, but it would be really hard unless the other party didn't have any intelligence.
Shiba's improvement wasn't so big on the surface, but the truth was that his overall improvement in strength was similar to Eini's improvement.
Due to the resonance, Shiba had acquired several skills.
One was Minor Healing, which should have been impossible to learn with his power and talent, but with the bit of understanding gotten of the Life Law from the resonance, it was naturally learned.
He also obtained a skill called Self-Recovery, which was far stronger than Minor Healing but could only be applied to himself.
Both were just natural healing, so they couldn't heal wounds that wouldn't recover naturally, but at least he obtained some healing skills.
He had tried to learn Water Healing from Eini before, but he had failed. However, if he mastered those two skills, he was confident that he might succeed if he tried to learn it again.
From the bit of Death Law, he obtained Poison Claw, Poison Blade, and Poison Arrow. The three were quite direct on what they did, but Shiba had yet to test their power.
However, the most important skill he had gotten was the one reconstructed by the system after devouring the soul fragment.
Its name was Hyper Strength Boost, and technically it could increase Shiba's strength without limits.
However, that was just in theory. If the skill were used to reach a point superior to what the body could endure, Shiba would die.
It also had a huge requirement for mental fortitude, but Shiba didn't need to worry about them after the system reconstructed it.
Shiba could only use the skill withing his limits due to the system's limitation, there was no way for him to use more to enter a berserk state.
Still, Shiba's body and mind were really strong for his level, so upon using Hyper Strength Boost, he would be on par with those at Rank 2.
The only inconvenience was that he wouldn't be able to last too much using the skill.