The young man Daniel looked truly frightened. He was so surprised by his thorough loss that he had forgotten about the fact that he had been challenged for both of his stars, one of which he had lost.
The teacher walked up to him and took away the star and gave it to Ning. After that, the teacher changed and another teacher came up to referee the match between the two elites.
Even though Daniel wasn't prepared at all, the teacher got ready to begin the match.
The crowd around the arena watched the man with pity in their eyes as well as some hidden glee at his misery.
The young man stood in front of Ning with a dumb look on his face and only reacted when the teacher told the two to summon their beasts.
He had summoned a weak monster last time around for the exact reason of summoning something better this time around, so even though he didn't have the motivation to fight, he pushed through the reluctance and moved his spiritual energy to summon.
However, just as he was about to go into his little world of darkness to find his monster, he realized that Ning hadn't started summoning yet.
In fact, he was smiling at him with his hands crossed on his chest. Waiting. Waiting for him to summon first.
'That bastard wants to counter summon!' the young man realized. If he wanted to go through with the fight, he definitely needed to do the blindfold summoning that was enforceable in this scenario.
"Teacher, I demand blindfolds for summons," he shouted.
The teacher looked at him briefly and nodded. "Very well," the teacher said.
"No," Ning said from the side. "We don't need it."
"You will have to if either one of you requests for it," the teacher said.
"What if he doesn't want it either?" Ning asked.
"Then we can take it back," the teacher said.
"I'm not going to agree to that. I want a blindfold," the young man said.
"But what if I summon first?" Ning asked.
"No, I still— wait what?" Daniel looked confused.
"I will summon first and then you will summon. Do you still want to be blindfolded?" Ning asked.
"N-no? If that is true, then no," he said. If he had the chance to counter summon, why would he not take the chance?
"Good," Ning smiled, and then he brought out a knife.
The teacher got alert all of a sudden and Daniel backed off a bit. Who knew what someone with a knife could do during a duel?
Ning smiled and suddenly flipped the knife before catching it by its sharp edge. Immediately, his hand started bleeding and the blood dropped to the floor.
The crowd went silent as they tried to figure out what he was doing, but it was impossible for them to figure it out.
After all, this sort of thing had never happened in this world before, and would most likely never have happened for at least a few hundred years more.
"Student? What are you doing?" the teacher asked.
"Nothing, just teaching everyone the other side of summoning circles," Ning said. Then, using the blood that was flowing out of his body, an unnatural amount to boot, he started drawing a summoning circle.
More and more people had gathered to watch his match by now, and the old woman was there too. She looked at the blood on the ground that Ning had started to form a circle.
She watched him add symbols to the circle, a rank for now and her eyes went wide when she saw that he had drawn the symbol for the 9th rank.
While she tried to understand what he was trying to do, Ning drew more symbols on the ground, symbols that she had no idea about.
Never in her life had she even seen these types of symbols. Not even in old historical books.
She understood some of course. For example, she could tell that the summoning circle he drew was for a beast with powers of fire and earth. Also, based on the circle, she could tell that the beast had to have a very strong physical body.
"What is he doing?" Tessa asked from the side with a worried look on her face.
"I don't know," the old woman said.
Ning drew up more symbols for another few minutes and finally stopped. "Phew, that should do it," he said as he stored the knife. His hand mysteriously stopped bleeding while he checked the circle to make sure he didn't make any mistakes.
He hadn't.
"What is this?" Daniel asked.
"Can't you see? It's a summoning circle," Ning said.
"Why are you drawing it right now, I mean," the young man said.
Ning smiled as he looked at him. "Didn't I answer that earlier? I'm going to teach everyone here the other side of summoning."
Ning put his arms outward and suddenly the spiritual energy in his body went into the summoning circle.
All of it.
At first, it looked like nothing was going to happen, but then the bloody circle shined white and immediately the symbols on the shining circle changed to one that belonged to a creature.
The new summoning circle became so wide that it covered half the arena.
Suddenly, a hand crawled out of the circle, reaching for the sky, before it slammed down on the solid ground.
The hand looked like claws with red scales on it that seemed to be of that color because it was red hot from the lava that coursed through the splits in the skin.
Another similarly large hand crawled out and smashed the other side of the arena, shocking everyone there.
Then, the creature slowly pushed its way out of the circle.
A burning hot draconic face with a large silver horn on its nose and two glowing red antlers growing on either side of its head popped up from the summoning circle.
Just the head alone was twice as large as Daniel.
