Once Ning returned back with the queen, he went back to the arena to finally get some rest.
The next few days went by normally as he fought in the arena once and spent most of his other times just teaching the princess.
Since the princess was Rank 1 and already knew how to summon, he didn't have anything about summoning itself that he could teach. However, since she was his student now, he was going to make sure she would become the strongest summoner in the world by the time she was barely an adult.
As such, despite her reluctance to study it, Ning started teaching the princess about Summoning Circle. By now, he knew almost everything there was to know about the summoning circle.
He started teaching her what each aspect of a circle that appeared beneath a beast when they were summoned was.
Ning told the princess to summon a beast, any beast. He watched carefully as she summoned a bird from it.
Ning remembered the circle that appeared beneath it and started drawing it again on a piece of paper.
"Look here," he told her as he pulled out a giant book and flipped over to the page that taught about the circles that showed a beast's rank.
"Can you find the matching circle from the book?" he asked.
"Hmm… here," the princess pointed to one of the circles on the book.
"Can you read what it says?" he asked.
"Okay," the princess leaned up to the page and read it out loud. "This part of summoning circle denotes that the beast in of Rank 1."
"See? It told you what rank this bird is. How useful is that?" Ning asked.
"What? But I already knew what rank this bird was," the princess grumbled as she thought the teaching pointless.
Ning sighed. He closed his eyes and suddenly a summoning circle appeared on the bed where the princess was.
Out of it came a beast with a furry little rodent that left wisps of black smoke behind as it walked.
Ning quickly called it to stand on his shoulders and then asked the princess, "Tell me about this beast."
The princess looked in confusion. "I don't know what that is. You're never taught me before," she said.
"I know, but I want you to tell me whatever you know," Ning said.
"Uh… it's a rat. And uh… it's small?" the princess said.
"What rank is it?" Ning asked.
"I don't know," the princess pouted.
Ning quickly drew the summoning circle that came from the rat and gave it to her. "Now tell me, what rank is it?"
"Oh," the princess understood what she had to do. She looked through the book and cross-matched the outer circle with the images in the book.
"Oh! Rank 4," she screamed happily. "Is that is, master? Is it Rank 4?"
Ning smiled. "Yes, it is rank 4. See how easily you knew that even without being strong enough to sense the beast?" he asked.
"Yes," she said.
Ning continued teaching her more, going away from Rank and moving towards elements. The princess easily figured out that the rat had a shadow element to it once Ning showed her what to look for.
The task of remembering only got harder as the information about the circle reached broader fields such as strength, and mental capabilities as well as other properties such as how many limbs, eyes, ears, etc the beast may possess.
While the princess found it hard to remember, Ning still taught her everything he could.
Everything, except for perhaps the most important aspect of the summoning circles.
He did not teach her how to use the circle to summon the desired beast.
There was a single reason as to why he chose not to teach her, and that was because summoning a beast required blood, and more times than not, it required sacrifice for that.
He did not want her to go through that at such a young age.
A week or two passed and the princess was considerably more learned in the ways of the summoning circle.
By now, she could tell every rank and element of a beast just by looking at the circles. There was more for her to learn, but just this much was already a lot better than most people could do.
Ning doubted there was anyone in this very country that was more talented than her in the subject of the summoning circle.
As Ning continued teaching her, he came across a problem with her that he wasn't sure was a blessing or a curse.
The princess was taking a lot of time to reach Rank 2. While this was normal in every case, he still felt it was too slow given how fast his own progress was.
'Is there any way I can help her?' he wondered. Spiritual energy had no absorption techniques or stuff like that to aid one by increasing their speed. However, Ning wondered if he could still help her.
He knew that creating an absorption technique was impossible since, unlike Qi or Aether, Spiritual energy didn't move around one's body at will.
It simply tried to connect one person with other beasts. However, there had to be a way to improve the speed even without using any absorption techniques, right?
As such, Ning asked the system for help and the system delivered him in the perfect way.
"Huh? I didn't think it would be so simple," he thought.
He turned around to the princess and smiled. "I have good news for you," he said.
The princess's eyes shined brightly at the sound of that. "Good news? What is it, teacher?" she asked.
"I have a way to get you to Rank 2 as quickly as possible," Ning said.
"Oh… how?" she asked.
"Here's what you will do from now on. Every night before you sleep, you will summon something to empty the Spiritual energy in your body. Then, have some pearls next to you as you sleep," Ning said.
"If you do that, your body's capability to store spiritual energy will increase by a great amount and you will enter Rank 2 before you know it."
