Here is the edited passage with corrections only to spelling, grammar, punctuation, capitalization, and minor consistency issues (no changes to style, content, wording, or plot):

  When I woke up, the old man was sitting in the corner staring intently into my eyes.

  "It looks like you went through quite the fight," he said to me. I sat up slowly, feeling my muscles scream in pain. "Would you mind telling me what happened? I hear much of what is going on, living down here."

  I nodded my head and started to tell him all about the fight I had had with the Dark Beast. He seemed shocked by my audacity to let it out.

  When I talked about how I had taken power from a mountain, the old man seemed straight-out shocked.

  "You just took the power from the mountain?" I nodded my head and explained to him how it had felt like a great well of power that was mine for the taking.

  "That is incredible," the old man said. "You see, with Dark Matter you can only take so much, and finding some in the first place is not easy, but with this 'matter' as you like to call it, your consciousness seems to adapt and stretch to accommodate for the extra power."

  I nodded my head. That about summed it up.

  "However," the old man continued, "I don't want you to get too cocky. When you fight the Dark Lord, he will have infinite dark matter with which to kill you. You will have to have more skill than him and pray that somehow you succeed. How long can you stay down here to train?"

  I thought about it for a second. I figured that most kids were probably not going to get back to the academy for a few days. Plus, if I showed up super late it would make me look less suspicious. I bet they were expecting the 'golden warrior' to show up right away.

  "I'd say maybe three or four days," I said and was rewarded by the old man's smile.

  "Good," he said. "Then I'll put you through the ringer. We'll start with some mental stuff."

  The old man started by getting me to squish some matter into a tiny speck for him. I did so, and then he had me double the amount that I was squashing.

  I did better than the last time and got it closer to my goal before I passed out. When I woke back up, the old man decided that it was time to put me through a workout.

  I was on the ground doing push-ups and sit-ups in no time. He pushed me well past my usual stopping point, and I was seeing stars in the sky before he told me to stop.

  He brought me some food from who knows where and told me to get some rest. I took his advice, wolfed down the grub, and went right to sleep.

  I opened my eyes and there was darkness. Immediately, I started to thrash back and forth, but I found that my hands were bound. I thrashed out of instinct for a minute or two before settling down.

  I was surprised that my captor hadn't come to check on me. It took me a second to piece together that he had probably left me in some room. Although, it felt like I was still lying on the bottom of the cave.

  "Help!" I yelled into the air. Nobody responded. I sat there for a second praying that somebody would save me, but then I figured that I was on my own.

  I reached deep into the core of my soul and grabbed some Dark Matter. I was about to let it out in a wave, but then I remembered what the old man had told me: the greatest defense is a strong offense.

  I took the matter that I had pulled out and compressed it into a little speck. At one point it felt like I was going to pass out, but I managed to hold it together and push the speck through the shield. It immediately dropped, and I was looking at the old man.

  "You did very good," he said with a smile. I stared at him, anger welling up within me. That was really not cool.

  I pushed my speck at him as fast as I could, and the old man simply caught it with his own dark orb. I staggered back as the matter dissipated.

  "You think you can take me?" the old man said. I fell to the ground in shock. "You still have much to learn, Wyatt."

  When I went back up to the surface after the old man's grueling training, I was worried that they would single me out as the one who was missing from that class, but as I found out, they had a lot of kids trickling in over a couple of days.

  The thing that I was worried about was that they would just kill off the kids that came back to the academy. Thankfully, they didn't keep very good records when it came to who went to what class, and kids were coming in and out of the academy all the time, so all in all I just waltzed right in as a student of Titan Academy and nobody got hurt.

  When I got into the academy, I bolted to our dorm rooms, praying, hoping that Harper and Michael would be waiting for me inside. When I opened the door, nobody was there.

  My brain went into panic mode, but then I realized that they were probably just in classes. I considered going to class for a minute, but figured it would be suspicious, so I took a nice long nap until I heard the door to our dorm squeak open.

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  I was instantly out of bed and rushing to the door, giving Harper and Michael a big hug. Harper gave a little squeak and said something about her ribs, so I let go.

  "You're okay!" I said, grinning from ear to ear.

  "Where have you been?" Michael asked me. "Did it really take you all this time to get back here?"

  I shook my head and told them the story while we sipped hot chocolate on the couches in our common room. It took a little while to get the whole story out, but once I did, Harper and Michael just looked at me in awe.

  "So you're saying that you were like the most powerful person around for like a minute or two because you took the power from a mountain?" Harper said. I nodded my head as Michael started to speak.

  "I highly doubt it was a mountain," Michael said. "You say that you can only get your power or whatever it is from living creatures, right? So I think that you probably took your power from a Behemoth."

  I nodded my head. I had faintly recalled him mentioning Behemoths. Something about a creature the size of a mountain that eats floadons.

  "The other observation that I have to point out is that the size of the creature directly correlates to how much Matter you can take out of it," Michael said. The way he said it had me screaming 'nerd' in my head.

  Still, I had been subconsciously thinking that in my head the whole time. Michael was just voicing what I had been thinking aloud.

  "I wonder why that is?" Harper wondered aloud. I thought about it for a second and then realized that I would probably never be able to figure it out. This Matter that I was working with was bordering on magic.

  "Even if you don't know what it is, at least you have a mentor to teach you," Michael said. "Someone you can confide in and trust."

  "Yeah, it's nice."

  "Do you even know where he came from? Because the whole thing is kinda strange, you have to admit. I've been wondering, so I figured I'd ask."

  "I have no clue, but, speaking of wondering," I said, "what classes did I miss?"

  Michael started to talk about some things while I listened with one ear. Though I was certain I heard something about having a two-day weekend starting tomorrow, and I could just watch the recording for the classes then.

  For now though, I wanted to sleep. All the power that I'd been exerting had really taken a lot out of me.

  The next day was really just me watching two boring videos recorded by our teachers to talk about their classes and what they would do. By the time the videos were done, the day was pretty much over even though I had played them both at two times speed.

  The day after that I had fun hanging around with Michael and Harper. We decided to play cards again, and I was so freaking close to winning, but Harper managed to take it home.

  She wouldn't stop rubbing it in my face for the rest of the day.

  The next couple of days were boring if you asked me. Just our teachers talking more about stuff. I only found a couple of tidbits to be interesting.

  In the one class that we got to manipulate Dark Matter, I was an epic fail every time. I could only make it wobble, and even then it was such a tiny wobble that my teacher didn't even see it.

  Other than that epic letdown, the only interesting thing that happened was some boy asked Harper out on a date.

  She passed him up of course, but I couldn't help but feel worried: what if she would have said yes to that?

  That was what I was thinking about as I walked up to our Darkling Defense Class. What was there shocked me.

  In the middle of the clearing where we were supposed to meet was a beautiful young lady, not much older than me, dressed in a black jumpsuit created out of pure Dark Matter.

  Our class gathered around her, and she started to speak.

  "I am the replacement of that teacher that got himself killed," she said. "I will be your new teacher. Call me Emelda."

  Emelda looked right into my eyes and smiled at me in a way that made my stomach start doing butterflies. She really was pretty.

  I felt Harper kick me in the shins and scowl at me. I grimaced. I bet she was thinking just what I was thinking when that guy had asked her out.

  "You," Emelda said, pointing at me. "I want to see you after class."

  I shuddered at the look she was giving me. Something wasn't right here. Not right at all.

  "Anyway," Emelda said. "I am your new Darkling Defense teacher, and my job is to prepare you for what pure Dark Matter will feel like. You might be wondering what I mean by this, but the truth is that Dark Matter itself is deadly, but if you collapse in its mere presence then there will be no chance of you being able to fight it."

  I saw Michael wink at me. I could tell he was thinking this class would be a piece of cake for me. I could already do what she was saying no problem.

  "Of course the only way you can do this is with practice, so if you will follow me that would be amazing." Emelda started to walk further into the meadow that we were in, until we came upon a small cave. She pointed at it.

  "I will be waiting for you guys in there," she said. "You come with me."

  She took some poor soul into the cave, and when he left he was shaking and only barely managed to say who was next before he collapsed onto the ground. I watched in fascination as kid after kid went in and then came out before collapsing into a heap.

  A little pile was even forming from all the kids. Still, time went by and I was not called until finally the last person went and it was only me left over.

  Then I saw her at the mouth of the cave, gesturing for me to come in. I followed her into the cave and blanched at what I saw. There was a candle-lit dinner table in the middle of the cave.

  I looked back over at Emelda and she was wearing a gorgeous, jet-black party dress. Her eyes were even jet black, and a horrible evil hung in the air.

  "What's all this?" I asked, confused.

  "This is our date," Emelda said, gesturing at the table. "You are the only one that isn't scared by the Dark Matter, so I figured you should be my boyfriend."

  I slowly started to back up towards the exit of the cave.

  "Is that pure Dark Matter that you're manipulating?" I asked her. She nodded her head. Then I realized: I was face to face with a Darkling, and the darkling wanted to DATE me?

  "Doesn't manipulating that stuff in its pure substance, like, make you insane and try to kill everybody?" I asked, starting to feel the nearby mountains for a source of Matter.

  "No," Emelda said, smiling. "I am the one in a billion person that can resist the pull that is exerted when Dark Matter is being used in the purest form."

  I hadn't heard about that before.

  "So you want to go on a date or something?" I said. "Because I already have..."

  "NOOO!" she screamed. "ANYTHING BUT THAT. ANYTHING BUT THAT!"

  I cringed at how desperate she sounded. Like her life depended on it. I took another step back as I saw a little storm of Dark Matter start to form above her head.

  "...to go to a movie with a friend," I finished, scrambling to think of something else. "He and a bunch of my guy friends are going."

  Emelda nodded her head like she understood and gestured for me to go. I got out of there in a real hurry and ran for our dorm. That darkling was fighting real hard to not lose herself, I could tell.

  Sadly, I had a sneaking suspicion that if I didn't start dating her, she might lose control of whatever was looming inside her.

  It was time to prepare.