Ning quickly filled up the form he was handed and was taken to the back area which was a massive training ground where many different people and beasts were fighting each other.
"Woah, this is huge," he said as he was made to stand in a line. He looked to his left and saw another line next to him.
"Hey, do you know what there are two different lines?" Ning asked the girl in the line before him.
"Those are for people that are newbies or looking to upgrade their color. You must be here to change your rank. Since you are still only red, you get to skip your hair being washed," the girl said.
"Oh," Ning said as he realized it all made sense.
He looked around while waiting for his turn and saw the different beasts. 'They are training, huh? I should probably get in tune with the beasts I summon and train with them too,' he thought.
Just because a beast was strong, didn't mean it was going to absolutely go to win every battle. As long as there was a chance it could lose, one would have to minimize the chance.
The training was the best way of doing so.
For 15 minutes, Ning watched a bunch of people succeed and fail at summoning a monster above the rank that was written on their card.
Finally, it was his turn. Ning handed over his card and the tester saw it.
"Summon any monster that is above rank 2," he said.
Ning nodded and closed his eyes. The moment he did so, he disappeared into the darkness and saw the many bright spots of light all around him.
He searched around for a bit and saw a very bright star in the distance. Ning grabbed it and spoke, "Come to me and be tamed by me. In exchange, I shall give you 20% of my Spiritual energy."
He waited for a few seconds but nothing happened. When he opened his palm, the light wasn't there anymore.
'Did I fail?' he thought. 'But why? Was the bond conditions not good enough?'
Ning wondered why it happened, but there wasn't much thinking he could do. He didn't have the time.
He grabbed onto another bright, but dimmer than the first one, light and attempted to say his bond condition.
Before he did so, he made sure that the conditions were most suitable for the beast was would be summoned.
"Bond with me and be controlled for in a danger-less area for 5 minutes. In exchange, you may have 50% of my spiritual energy," he said.
The beast took a deceptively long time to consider the conditions. So much so that, Ning thought he had messed it all up again.
However, just as he was about to try again, he was brought out of the darkness and a summoning circle appeared in front of him.
Ning looked at the summoning circle and before the beast even came out, he knew a few things about the beast just based on the circle.
Given the thickness of the outer lines, the beast was a Rank 6 beast. It was a beast of the lightning attribute and was also a carnivorous beast.
Between being a Physical, Elemental, or Mental focused beast, this one was mostly elemental with not bad physical capabilities.
That was all Ning managed to figure out in the split second it took for the circle to send out a beast.
In a crackle of lightning, a majestic fox with azure fur appeared in the midst of the summoners. Its eyes were glowing orbs of white that shined as if they were a source of light.
The fox had a long, furred tail that crackled with electricity as it moved around. From time to time, the electricity crackled around its body too.
As if it had intelligence, it looked at the humans around it in disdain and turned to the sky to cry like the fox it was.
The surrounding grew darker for a moment as clouds full of lightning began to gather in the sky, which turned away a moment after the fox stopped crying.
"Holy shit!" a man shouted from the side.
"What rank is that?" another girl asked.
A bit of murmur began with the fox as the subject of the conversation. People kept wondering what it was and what rank it was.
"D-did you summon this thing?" the tester asked.
"I sure did," Ning said. He knew that he had to have the fox do something to prove that he had control of it, so he decided to ask a few things about the fox.
"Run in circles around me," Ning said.
The fox grunted a bit but quickly followed the orders as it was bonded.
"Now, jump over me," Ning said.
The fox obeyed, albeit reluctantly.
"Now attack that rock with your lightning," Ning said.
"Grrr," the fox looked toward the rock. In the next second, the fox's entire body was covered in lightning that in a single instant shot at the rock and broke it into a hundred pieces.
"Good," Ning said with a proud face. He then turned around and looked at the tester. "This means I pass right?"
"Wh- yeah, yeah. Absolutely, you passed… but…" the tester didn't know how to bring the next sentence up.
"But what? Is there something wrong with the beast I summoned?" Ning asked.
"No, nothing is wrong on your end," the tester said. "I… I just don't know what this beast's rank is."
"Ah," Ning said as he understood. The tester himself was only a Rank 4 summoner, so anything above his own rank would be vague at best for him.
"He's a Rank 6 beast," Ning said.
"Is… is that so?" the tester asked.
"Yes," Ning said.
The fox was unsummoned very soon and Ning was sent back into the circle.
"Did you do it?" Saphandra asked.
"Yeah, I'm just waiting for the card to be updated," Ning said.
5 minutes later, the card arrived, and to Ning's surprise, he got Rank 5.
