This was not the first time he had used the Anima Energy, and his understanding of it was already far stronger than those previous times, and he now felt more control over it.
A red light that did appeared before seemed to be intertwined with his fingers as he punched out.
Thomas suddenly felt as if the entire Space around his fingers was crumbling. An unforeseen sense of danger caused Katherine to use a crystalline wall made of light blue Anima Energy to block the incoming attack.
However, even as her powerful crystalline wall appeared, the center portion of the milky wall began to crumble under the massive hands' punch.
But before she even even mobilized more energy to black the hand, she saw it disperse in the air as Thomas knelt with one knee on the floor.
Seeing that sight, Katherine was reminded of a person that wasn't any less strange than the boy in front of her. "Alright, we are done for today. Let's go to the coffee shop on 7th street two blocks from here, I still have many things to discuss with you.
Arriving in the coffee shop, Katherine paid for a private room on the second floor and they both found their seats.
After staring at the table for a few moments, a small screen was in the middle of the table where she could use to send their orders.
Katherine didn't seem to notice how nervous Thomas felt as she was looking at the menu. "Why will you want? I will take a strawberry cake and some black coffee."
"I will want the coffee pie and one latte."
"Alright." Katherine picked their choices and sent the order. Magically one strawberry cake, the black coffee, pie and latte all appeared on the table almost immediately.
It was one of the miracles of the Anima Era, despite humanity not discovering how to teleport living beings, inanimate objects were no problem and it was used in several establishments.
"Now let's get to business." Katherine said as she took a bite of the cake.
"How much do you know about adepts?"
Thomas didn't know why she would ask him this now. "Not much, only what they told us in school."
"Not much then, so let me help you understand some. Firstly as you must have already guessed not all Adepts are the same. The official ranking made by the association on earth uses four ranks to differentiate the Adepts."
"Adept, Elite Adept, Master Adept and Adept King are those four ranks. Each one is further divided into three small levels, being 1-star, 2-star and 3-star. I just advanced to 2-star Elite Adept. Right now, you are barely counted as a 1-star Adept. "
"First you need a adept manual to practice, and fortunately I have a beginner manual with me." Saying that she drew her phone and sent a document archive to him.
[Beep]
Looking at his phone, he saw what he just received: [Beginner Adept Manual: Thirty-five Mystic Rotations]
[System Alert: A compatible technique has been detected, do you wish to learn it? Y / N]
"..." Thomas was staring at the notification in front of his eyes. The system could help him learn such things?
Then his hers rose his eyes to meet Katherine's gauze, all the previous negative thoughts he had about her when she attacked him were gone. It could be seen to a poor boy like him that only had his mom by his side, it has been long since others had done so much for him and Thomas was highly moved by such an act.
He couldn't help but speak the question he had in his mind. "Thank you, but why are you doing all of this?"
Katherine smiled sweetly which was a bit scary given the highly menacing muscles she had and stern face her as she replied. "I will tell you. Since I first saw you, I could see you were different from the other kids there."
"Truth is that not all adepts had advanced through common means, some advanced through drugs, energy transplant and even by consuming the blood of dimensional creatures. When I saw you for the first time, I immediately knew you were one of those that advanced through uncommon means. Don't worry, I'm not going to ask how you did it, everybody must have a secret or two or they stop being interesting, right?"
"I guess so, still, thanks a lot." Thomas could see the type of person she was from her actions. Katherine didn't beat around the bush and was straightforward when dealing with things, not the schemer type.
"There is no need for that. You want to become an true Adept right? In five weeks the Association will start recruiting new members. I already sent a message to the Dexia Institute's Dean and he let me borrow the installations to train you until you can officially enter the Adept Association. You can leave now, and remember to train in the Manual I just gave you. Tomorrow I will be teaching you about the basics."