Ning returned back to the palace to teach the little princess more about summoning.
The princess wanted to fly for a bit so Ning took her on a tour of the sky.
"Wow! I can see the city. Can we go to the city?" She asked.
"No, you can go with Joann after you are done learning for today," Ning said and brought her down.
"Aww~" the girl was dejected a bit. "I want to fly like you too."
"You will," Ning said.
"I want to ride Occy again," she said.
"Not for a long while," Ning said. "You need to be a good girl and learn for now. When your hair color changes to Red or Orange, I will let you play with Occy."
"What if it is green?" she asked.
"Green? Sure that's better," Ning said.
"Yay! I can become just like a mother," the little princess celebrated.
"Your mother has green hair?" Ning asked.
"Yes," she said.
"Then as her daughter, you need to have green hair too," Ning said and started teaching her again.
As sensing Spiritual energy would take time, he wanted to teach her about how summoning worked exactly.
He told her about how you could summon the beasts, or just summon their powers. He told her how summoning changed once hair color and how that affected a person's summoning when the entire beast didn't come.
"Are you summoning a beast right now too?" the girl asked. "Is that why you can fly?"
"Yes," Ning said. "I'm summoning a beast's powers which help me fly."
"Why not just call the entire beast and make it fly you?" she asked.
"That's inconvenient," Ning said. "If the beast is here and I want to fly, I will have to tell it to lift me, fly me up, then fly me somewhere. It's annoying right?"
"Maybe…" the princess said. "But aren't you not getting to fly very fast, teacher?"
"Huh? What do you mean?" Ning asked.
"Well, you said red hair is bad right?" she asked.
"Ah, yes. My red hair is indeed making it hard to use all the powers of the beast's skills," Ning said.
"Then why not just summon the monster?" she asked.
"Well, sometimes the monster doesn't want to come, but you still need their power so you just have to accept their skill," Ning said.
"Why won't they come?" she asked.
"Well, there are a few reasons," Ning said. "First of all, as the beast become stronger and have more spiritual energy, they started getting more intelligent."
"So, at some point, they that they just don't want to go all the way to some other place to fight for some random human when they can just stay where they are and just give away their skills," Ning said.
"While some start to believe that what the humans give them in exchange for summoning just isn't worth it for them," Ning said.
"Not worth it?" she asked.
"Yes, beasts require a lot of spiritual energy to increase their rank, so they just don't think the little energy they will get is worth it to go all the way there," Ning said.
"Also, humans get quite cheap with their energy once they reach a higher rank," Ning said.
"Cheap with energy? What does that mean?" the princess asked.
"Do you remember what I told you to say when I asked you to bond with the fish?" Ning asked.
"Um… no?" the princess said.
"Didn't I tell you to say that you would give the beast all your spiritual energy?" Ning asked.
"Yes?" the princess said.
"Well, humans don't do that why they get strong. Instead, they say they will give just a little bit of their energy," Ning said.
"What? No beast will come to them that way, will they?" the princess asked. "Stupid humans."
"They aren't exactly stupid for doing so," Ning said.
"But they don't even use their spiritual energy to summon. Cheap, cheap humans," she said.
"That's not their fault really," Ning said. "You will understand as you grow stronger, but at some point, it will take a really long time to fill your body with all the spiritual energy, so you need to be careful of what you spend."
"Really? But they are still cheap right?" the princess asked.
"Sigh. Yes, they are," Ning said. There was no point in telling any of this to a 6-year-old girl, was there?
After a while, Ning started having her focus her mind on her spiritual energy, but the energetic princess kept getting distracted and another day ended without any result.
A few more days passed with Ning teaching the princess fruitlessly. The 'easy 5000' he wanted to make was now turning into one of the hardest tasks he had done in a while.
The day came for Ning's next match in the Arena. This was the match that he himself had challenged. As for the one where he was challenged, that wouldn't happen for a while.
Ning's opponent was an above-average fighter with a good ratio of wins and losses.
She summoned a giant bird to fight him, while Ning simply summoned a cat-sized spider.
Ning himself was surprised when the spider came out, but given his demands, this was a very strong beast for sure.
"Begin!" the referee said.
The bird immediately took to the sky while the spider simply watched it fly around with all of its 4 giant eyes and 4 smaller eyes.
White webs oozed out from the spider's behind, and instead of pooling around on the floor, it started flying up towards the sky.
The spider had full control of its webs as if it was its own legs as long as it was attached to its own body.
The bird flew around to evade it, but the spider caught it very quickly. Once it was caught, it couldn't fly anymore and fell to the ground with a loud crash.
The bird disappeared and Ning was pronounced the victor. Once the spider disappeared too, Ning went to get his earnings.
