This is my Reaper. There are many like it, but this one is mine

Compliments? Showing skin? Being touched? Maybe only the last one served to leave Keiko, in various senses, unsettled. But, never as much as the earnest recognition of her work and talent. Ulv's praise had redness flash over the girl's cheeks and nose, and a shy expression of her head put down, but her eyes turned up.

"O-oh, r-really? Thanks."

Admittedly, other people complimenting her in this manner didn't get as much of a reaction. Usually, the same people praised her over and over that it was more difficult to take what they said to heart. She hadn't built that same resistance up against Ulv yet.

"Does that mean I can learn all those things tonight? Like the Dragon Tiger Gate, and the Flow Control, and Ursa Takkyeon?"

Someone might typically be exasperated by all the steps it'd take to learn these techniques. It was a daunting amount to learn, and an even more daunting amount of time necessary to dedicate to learning all these things, let alone the difficulty in mastering any of them at all. Of course, these realistic considerations wasn't really applied to Keiko. As usual, the fact that the paths to learning and mastering them were already laid out only served to increase her confidence.

"Great! Sounds great, I just have to learn all those things, and then I'll be able to learn those three techniques too, right? And learning all these foundations will help me learn even more special techniques. How much of all of that could we learn tonight?"

Keiko's eyes were drawn to the bead of sand, Ulv's words being taken to heart. Of course, it wouldn't be like Keiko to not have anything to say about words of humbling when it came to training. Her eyes stayed on the grain while ideas were flying by in her head, and once she figured out what to say, she brought her eyesight back to stare straight into Ulv's.

"There are places where a single days becomes many, right?"

Keiko didn't get this one. It sounded like a type of riddle, or an analogy with a demonstration, but what the girl meant was very literal. Like the precipice world, where time moves at a different rate. Or the Sugiuran Realm, which does likewise, though the latter was now inaccessible from what Keiko had heard. That said, the girl's focus from what Ulv was saying drifted a bit, attuning to the movement of the apple instead. Again, the delicacy and smoothness of the movements, the change in speed of movement was almost like time was skipping frames, and it reminded Keiko of the movement performed during hoho.

By instinct, Keiko was mimicking the movements, though she had no apple on her. Instead, she moved her hand in similar pacing to the apple, accelerating her hand moving side to side with the help of her reiryoku, then slowing to almost a halt, and then shooting by so fast it was like she was using shunpo on her hand alone. Her concentration broke when Ulv tossed the apple normally, and Keiko's hand slammed into the table with a loud thud. Her face winced in pain, and she shook her hand at the wrist as if to cast the pain away.

"I don't get it, Auber-sama. But, what I meant to talk about, was going to a different realm maybe? Or if you know someone, then a time accelerating kido? I've heard about some people on Earth who are experienced with that sort of thing, like the Yuudeshi."

"Oh..."

She didn't really piece together that time moving faster in other realms still meant that she had to go through the whole day, months, or many years of training for things to work out as such. It didn't mean she could spontaneously learn everything at an accelerated rate. The more she thought about it, the dumber she felt as the more it made sense. If that could be done, wouldn't everybody go to the Dangai to train quicker and get more work done, with less effort?

"Itadakimasu."

Keiko said her blessings and partook in the food, the shame showing a bit of solemnness on her face. She took a few bites while working things out in her head.

"Then, how long do you think it would take me to learn all these things, Auber-sama? How long did it take you?"