Ning looked at her weirdly. "You can?" he asked. He thought she was joking, but without answering, the girl closed her eyes and started summoning.
Ning fully expected her to fail. There was no reason for her to be able to summon the giant octopus after all.
However, to his surprise, a summoning circle formed right in front of him as a beast emerged from it.
Ning looked at the beast with a blank look on his face. "Occy!" the princess shouted and the beast answered.
In front of him was in fact an octopus. However, it was not the octopus that he thought she was talking about.
"This is not Occy," Ning said while pointing to the small octopus that was climbing the side of the princess's bed.
"It is!" the princess said. "I named him Occy yesterday."
"Yesterday?" Ning asked when he realized the first beast she had bonded. It was in fact this very octopus. To think she had given it the same name as the one that Ning had summoned.
"I summoned Occy. Can I go drink now?" the princess asked.
"Huh? No! You cheated. You didn't tell me you named this one Occy too," Ning said.
"What?" The princess exclaimed. "But you just said I could if I summoned Occy."
"Listen here, missy. You don't get to cheat the system here. If you can summon the giant Occy, then you can go drink."
"But I can't do that," the princess started throwing a tantrum again.
"Then wait and keep training. If you train, you will be able to do it very soon," Ning said.
The princess continued throwing a tantrum, but Ning simply ignored her and she was forced to go back to studying. If not, there was no chance of her obtaining anything she could ask for.
After she had calmed down by a considerable amount, Ning finally decided to tell her something.
"I talked to your uncle today," he said.
"My uncle? But he's at the Arena," she said.
"Yes, and I live there too," Ning told her.
The princess's eyes went wide. "You live in the arena, teacher?" she asked.
"Yes, I am one of the fighters there," Ning said.
"Ooh, can I go fight sometime, now that I am a summoner too?" she asked.
Ning thought for a bit. He was about to refuse, obviously, but there wasn't much reason to refuse, at least not after a little while.
After all, most of the novice fighters were all Rank 2 or 3. If she reached that rank soon, she could very well try and fight there.
And so Ning told her. "You can once you reach Rank 2," he said.
"Oh, that's much easier than Occy, right?" she asked.
"Very much easier," Ning said.
"Yes! I can do that then," she said.
"Anyway," Ning returned back on topic from the tangent he was just forced to go on. "Your uncle is going to come to celebrate your first summon very soon. Just like for your mother today, he will celebrate for you too."
"Honestly, I'm just surprised your parents didn't celebrate you becoming a Rank 1 summoner. I would think that was a big deal for most," Ning said.
"Oh no, we already celebrated," the princess said. "We had a big party last night."
"What?" Ning looked at her with a dumbfounded expression. "Then why the hell were you angry earlier?"
"Because my parents won't let me continue partying," the princess said.
Ning slapped his own face in frustration. He hoped that if he ever mistakenly had children in the future, they were more understanding than her.
"Sigh, so you have nothing really to be angry about. Just continue learning please," Ning said.
"Okay," the princess said and continued playing with the octopus. He asked her to make the octopus do something to see her level of control with the beast.
After about an hour into the training, the princess was just about to run out of things she wanted the octopus to do. Aside from that, the octopus itself had trouble being on land.
While a spiritual beast, it was only Rank 1, so it was just slightly better than a regular beast one would find in the wild.
"Unsummon it," Ning told her.
"Okay," the princess said. "Go back, Occy. I will call you later if I need you."
The weak octopus, that had been out of water for a long time, happily agreed to being unsummoned.
As the summoning circle appeared and disappeared, the beast was gone as well.
"Good," Ning said. "Now go sit by some pearls so that you can regain your spiritual energy. It shouldn't take more than an hour for you."
"Okay," Janice said and went up to Joann to get some pearls. Once she did, she placed them on the bed and sat beside it.
Since she had nothing to do, Ning gave her a book to read instead.
Just then, there was a knock on the door. A servant walked in and bowed before Ning. "Her highness wants to see you," she said.
"The queen? Where?" Ning asked.
"Please follow me," the servant said and left the room.
"I'll be back soon. Keep reading," Ning said and left the room as well. He followed the servant through the many hallways of the palace, almost making Ning think that they were made for the sole reason of getting someone lost in it.
He was then led down a flight of stairs and then through another dozen hallways with twists and turns.
Finally, at the end of the hallway, he saw two women standing next to a glowing, white room.
He tried to look inside, but suddenly he saw someone jump at him from behind with a dagger in their hand.
Ning quickly turned and grabbed the attacker's wrist before pushing it aside to punch at them.
The attacker vanished from his arm and arrived a few meters behind him. "Not bad. I was certain you had the reflexes in you," a familiar voice said.
"Your highness?" Ning asked.
The queen undid her hood and looked at him. "Come, we have a lot to talk about."
