Currently, Maria has come to the central city to help her friend, focusing on the person who is sitting in front of her. That person is her friend and he is currently going through the process of breaking through to the next grade
Suddenly you can find red steam coming out from his body. Not just show me that he is also in great pain right now but he is enduring all that pain and focusing on breaking through.
Maria is present there to help him anytime if something goes wrong. In the end with her help you can say he came to a conclusion and with that, he finally decided to see if he was right or wrong.
Patrick is the name of that person and after coming to the conclusion he finally decided to advance to see what happened. As you know, he is the first person to research those techniques of the meta guardians and able to improve that technique which helped him break through to soldier grade.