It was a sunny day at the Grant Academy, the weather was warm, and one could feel the cool breezes blowing by from time to time when walking around the campus. But at this time there were hardly any students around in the campus, and the reason was simple: it was the time of the finals, and due to the incidents that happened not too long ago, all the students here were here for their finals, and right now it was just a little over halfway through most of the examinations and tests.
"Alright, next up - Ms. Caroline Baker, please come in." A middle aged woman came out of a closed up chamber near the student training ground and spoke with a raised voice to the students waiting outside: "Ms. Caroline Baker, please come in."
"Here." Caroline raised her hand and came into the room.
The door was closed behind her just like the previous students, and three teachers from the academy were sitting in front of Caroline behind a long table. In front of the teacher sitting in the middle was a small china jar. Caroline could recognize one of the three teachers, because she substituted for one of her courses' Professor for two sessions. The chamber was pretty empty, and aside from the table, there was a separate small side room blocked off by a wall of transparent glass. Inside this side room, there was a hanger attached to the ceiling close to one side, and a long metal pole protruding from the other side of the wall.
"Alright, Ms. Baker, please come forward and take a marble from this jar. It will tell you what you should do as your construct. You have fifteen minutes to present to us your construct. You can take more time if needed, but it's going to take points away from your final result." The middle aged woman said to Caroline: "Don't be nervous, it's not gonna be anything out of the ordinary."
"Thank you." Caroline went ahead and grabbed a marble from the jar, and when she raised it in front of her to take a look, the marble lit up and projected an English word in the air: "Armor".
"Looks like you're going to make an armor piece." The teacher sitting in the middle smiled with her right hand extended towards the side room: "Okay, it's a more complicated piece, so you don't have to worry about crafting a whole suit of armor. The basic requirements will be as follows: one, you will need to craft at least one armor piece, be it a chest plate, a gauntlet, one single greave, or a shoulder pad, or even a ring mail. We will judge it by the complexity of design and its strength. For the test of strength, we will launch a series of standard test strikes from that standardized test equipment against it. Any questions?"
"Um… no questions."
"Alright, you may proceed. " The teacher sitting in the middle nodded at Caroline: "Also, just a reminder, don't take too much time thinking about what you want to craft."
Caroline nodded and took a deep breath, then she started concentrating her Xuanli on her hands. And in her mind, she began to remind herself of the lessons she learned from Jianmen and discussions she had with Jason, who was clearly better at making constructs, and not just because of the nature of his Xuanli.
"You see, Caroline, to make a construct is not so simple as to say putting your Xuanli into a shape. It will need to stay that way, so it has to 'understand' what you want it to do. Your Xuanli should be an extension of your thoughts and carry some of your ideas with it, just like - just like programming, no?" This was Jason's tip.
"Caroline, you have a good instinctual understanding of your Xuanli. Fire? It burns, and if it burns too fast, it explodes, and if it burns slowly, it heals. And win? It blows, it circles and it enriches. And one mistake I see you make often when making constructs is that you try way too hard to force your power into a shape and way of your liking, but that's a very sub-optimal way of using your dynamic and explosive power. You should tell your power what to do and let it get to work. Don't micromanage." This was Jianmen's suggestion.
The power of wind and fire concentrated around Caroline's hands, and as she infused her power of mind and will into the power, they gradually took shape and turned into a pair of gauntlets on her hand. The fire energy formed into the metallic plates on the backs of the positions for hands and fingers, while the wind energy formed into a softer layer for the palm and the finger sockets. Two simple circles were carved into the backhand sides of the gauntlets, which would function as simple defense arrays that can be activated on demand.
It took just about thirteen to fourteen minutes for Caroline to finish the gauntlets and hand them to the teachers. The teachers passed them around, examined them from different angles and even tried them on for a few minutes.
"Alright, Ms. Baker. Your gauntlets are quite comfortable, the energy structure is very stable. For the purpose of the test, you only need one. But you actually crafted a pair with similar qualities, so we'll take that into account." The teacher sitting on the left said: "Now, we will put them to the tests."
"Go ahead." Caroline was quite happy with the quality of her gauntlets so she nodded with a smile on her face.
The two gauntlets were placed inside the side room and on the hanger. After the teachers sealed off the side room. The tip of the long metal pole started lighting up in light blue.
"Bang!" An energy blade shot from the tip of the long metal pole against the gauntlets, which just bounced to the side upon impact. The gauntlets flickered and shook, but there was no visible sign of damage.
"Okay, they did very well in the first strike!" The teacher sitting in the middle said: "No observable damage to the structure. On with the next tests."
The metal pole ended up releasing five more energy blades against Caroline's gauntlets each with increased strength, all of which were blocked or deflected, and one of the gauntlets ended up taking most of the damage and was closed to being completely shattered, while the other one was missing the armor on three fingers.
"Very good! Very good." After the test, the teacher sitting in the middle stood up and extended her hand towards Caroline: "Congratulations, Miss Baker. You did very well in this test."
"Thank you!" Caroline let out an exhale of relief, then shook all three teachers' hands.
"Ms. Caroline Baker?" When Caroline walked out of the chamber, a faculty member was already waiting for her outside: "You have a message. It's from Mr. Jianmen Yu."
"A message?" Caroline asked: "What was it?"
"Here." The faculty member handed her two envelopes: "The other one's for Mr. Jason Lin, Mr. Yu told me that if I couldn't find either of you I could entrust the delivery to one of you. "
"Alright - thanks…" Caroline took the envelopes and opened the one addressed to her, confused.