The king was disoriented for a while before he was pulled up by his people.
"Your highness, I suppose I am eligible for your request now," Ning said.
"My request?" the king asked. He still wasn't done with the shock it seemed.
"To teach your daughter about summoning," Ning said.
"Oh, yes. Yeah, you-you can do that now," the king said. He slowly walked back to his throne and gestured for one of the servants to go call the princess.
Ning waited for a bit as they brought the princess. He couldn't help but wonder if the princess too was going to be big and buff like her father.
He imagined a young lady that was jacked up and was immediately reminded of Merasi.
'Nah,' he thought. 'Given my luck, she's bound to be a pretty young thing.'
"The princess is here," someone said and Ning turned around just in time to see the beautiful teenage girl walk into the room.
Her skin was fair and her orange hair long. Most of all, she was thin, unlike the men around her.
'Oh thank god,' Ning thought. The princess wasn't buffed up unlike what he expected.
'Rank 2 already huh? She has plenty of spiritual energy. This should be in the bag,' Ning thought.
However, just then he realized something was odd about this princess.
'Orange hair?' he thought. That was weird. How could the princess possibly have orange hair? Wasn't she only now going to learn about summoning?
"Young man, this is my daughter, Janice. She is the one you will have to teach from now on," he said.
"Janice, come forward," the king said.
Ning watched the orange-haired princess, but she didn't move at all. Instead, he saw someone else move.
From behind the young woman, a black-haired child moved forward.
Ning looked at the little girl that was barely 6 years old walk forward.
The timid little girl barely came up to his waist.
'I'm supposed to teach her?' Ning thought as all of his plans about immediately finishing the summoning and getting away with his 5 thousand Pearls came crumbling down.
Ning analyzed her a bit and realized that she was barely 6 years old and didn't even have enough spiritual energy to obtain a rank yet.
'What the hell? This will take a lot more time than just a few days,' he thought. When he remembered that he was supposed to teach her until she summoned a Rank 2 beast, Ning started frowning.
'That's going to take forever,' he thought.
"He-Hello," the princess spoke up in her cute little voice.
"Um, hello, you must be Janice," Ning said even as his head was thinking of a million different things. It was a good thing he had good control over his emotions at the moment.
The girl nodded but said nothing else.
"I'm Ning, your new teacher. Do you want to learn how to summon?" Ning asked.
The little girl's eyes immediately widened as if she heard something amazing. "Yes!" she exclaimed.
"It seems she doesn't hate you, so I will let you teach her as you wish. Joann will be there if you need anything," the king said.
"Joann?" Ning turned around to see the orange-haired girl bow toward Ning.
"I'm at your service," the girl named Joann said.
"Okay, I will go start teaching her then," Ning said dejectedly and left with the princess.
'Goddamit that clerk. He should've told me the princess was actually a goddamn child. I would've never taken this job otherwise,' he grumbled to himself.
"Are you okay, mister?" the girl asked.
"Oh, I'm okay," Ning said. "Right, I wanted to ask, who exactly are you to this girl?"
"I'm her main maid," the girl said.
"Oh," Ning said.
"Teacher," the little girl called out.
"Yes?" Ning said, a little surprised the girl was already calling him teacher without his prompting.
"When will I be able to summon?" she asked.
"Uh… do you know anything about summoning?" Ning asked her.
The little girl shook her head.
'The basics huh? Well, she is a child,' he thought. "Before we can summon anything, I will need to teach you a bit about summoning and how it works."
"What? Can't you just show me how to summon it? Please?" she asked.
"I—"
"Please, just once. I want to see you summon a biiiig monster," the little girl said.
"I don't think I can do that. We are in the palace, so I can't summon anything big," Ning made an excuse. "So, let us just get straight to the—"
"We can go to the water," the little one said. "Right Joann? It will be fine if we go to the water, right?"
"Um," the maid didn't know what she should say so she looked toward Ning to look for permission.
"Do you mean the beach?" Ning asked.
"Yes," the little girl said. "It's big and wide and you can summon the big monster there."
"Well, if there is enough room…" Ning was getting roped in by the girl's request when he realized what he was doing and shook his head.
"No, we are going to learn about summoning and that's it," Ning said. "You can summon a big monster yourself after you learn how to."
"Oh," the girl made a curious face. "When will I do that?"
"Uh, maybe a few weeks," Ning lied.
"What? A few weeks? I want to see it now," she said.
Ning got frustrated. "No!" he shouted. "For now, we're going to learn about summoning. Let's go."
Ning started walking ahead, but he heard no sound of footsteps. Instead, he heard sniffing coming from behind him and turned around to see the princess with eyes full of tears.
As the tear flowed down her cheeks, she started crying loudly. "Meanie! The teacher is a meanie," she shouted.
"Hey, hey, hey. Don't cry," Ning said, but he couldn't stop the princess at all.
"Please stop crying princess," Joann said as she wiped her tears but Janice still kept crying.
In the end, Ning had no choice at all. "Fine, come I will show you a big summon," he said.
"Really?" the girl's tears ended in a split second as a wide smile took over.
"Come on then, let's go," she said as she took charge and walked in front.
Ning started to fear what sort of life he was going to have in the foreseeable future.
