When Ning opened his eyes, there was a summoning circle in front of him that appeared out of nowhere.
Since he had formed a bond, the beast he had bonded to would appear here.
After a second, a spirit beast appeared in front of Ning and the other children.
A turtle.
It was a green turtle with a jade-like head and had nothing special about it.
The man looked at the beast and then back to Ning. "A rank 2 beast huh? Not bad," he said.
The man somehow recognized Ning's beast faster than Ning did his own. While he had the talent, it didn't stand in front of the man's years-long experience.
"Control the beast a bit," the man said.
Ning nodded and did what he was told. "Turtle, throw out the water," he ordered.
The turned suddenly opened its mouth and sent a gush of water towards a nearby tree and shook it so hard that the tree nearly fell down.
"Create a water bubble!" Ning shouted.
The turtle once again sent out water, but this time the water gathered around Ning like a barrier.
"Send out—"
"Enough!" the man said. "You've passed."
"Oh, thank you," Ning said. "So I can send him back?"
The man nodded.
"You can leave now," Ning said.
The turtle surprisingly made a saddened face, but it was bonded to do whatever Ning told. As such, a circle appeared below its feet and the turtle disappeared.
The man quickly took out a note and wrote something on it. "Hand this to the clerk," he said and gave it to Ning.
"Thank you," Ning said and left the area. He went back inside and found Saph and Taron to have already sat down by a large table and seemed to have ordered something.
He wondered if Saph made the order using what little words she had learned in the last few days or if it was Taron, whose AI, Wendy, could easily translate the language for him.
Whatever it was, they were self-sufficient and Ning liked that. He didn't want to chauffeur them everywhere as that would be very annoying.
Ning went to the clerk and handed her the slip of paper he had gotten from the old man.
"Rank 2, huh? Not bad for a young man like you," the clerk said as she prepared something.
Ning waited and she finally handed it to him. His Summoner's card. Now he too was part of the Summoning Circle.
While the Summoning Circle wasn't that big in this corner of the world, it would someday be very useful for him.
"You can only accept 1 quest at a time. The quest you accept cannot be higher than your own rank. And finally, you will have to pay a fee if you take the quest and do not complete it in the given time."
"You can read the rest of the rules next to the quest board. If you like a quest you want to take, just bring it here and I will approve of it," the clerk said.
"Thank you," Ning said and took his Summoner's card.
The info on the card had his name, age, sex, and rank.
"Should I have summoned something better for my rank?" he wondered, but he didn't really find that necessary.
But, just in case, he asked the clerk.
"If I ever do manage to summon a higher-ranked spirit beast, what should I do?" he asked.
"You can just take an exam at a certain price. It's all written in the rules over there," the clerk said as she pointed back to the quest board.
"Thank you," Ning said again and finally left.
He went to the table where Saph and Taron were sitting and sat down on the empty seat next to them.
"Hey, look, I did it," Ning said and showed them the card.
"Let me see?" Taron said and snatched the card. A blue light emerged from his eyes and went over the entire card.
Ning quickly snatched it back and tried to see if there was any problem with it. "What did you do?" he asked.
"I'm just scanning it just in case I want to ever replicate it," Taron said.
"You want to replicate the card? That… " Ning thought for a moment. "That should be possible. There shouldn't be too advanced technology to determine the real from the fake."
"There is," Taron said. "The paper had trace minerals that are usually not found in the paper. Under a certain wavelength of light…"
Taron made a bracelet out of his nanomachines and produced a purplish light and shined it over the paper.
"… it sparkles like stars," he finished. "If people don't copy that aspect, they will instantly be found out."
"Oh, Wendy is quite good, isn't she," Ning said to Taron.
"Yeah, she's the best," Taron said.
"So, can you replicate it?" Ning asked.
"Umm… it will take some time. I will have to find those minerals too. If I can do that, I should be able to," Taron said.
Ning could simply create some for them, but what was the point even considering Taron's hair color didn't even match. Plus, he couldn't even summon, so there was no point.
"Alright, sit around for a bit. I will go check out the rules of this place for a bit," Ning said and left the table again.
He went to the quest board and read through the rules on the side of it.
Most of the rules were normal ones that told the summoners to not summon inside buildings, to not get in the way of other summoners, and to always value the customer's life before anything.
So on and so forth. Ning finished reading the rules is not much time and decided to take a quest right now.
He picked up the one with the Hybrid Hyena since that was a Rank 2 beast and returned back to the clerk.
"I can take this, right?" he asked.
"Of course," the clerk said. "Let me give it to you."
