The next day.
“Aaaagghhhh!” Nathan was screaming while writhing on the ground. His right hand was scratching his neck while his left hand was clutching his chest.
The Dragon King said, “Good. It seems you are able to endure this kind of pain without getting knocked out. This will be an important lesson for you. The more pain you can endure, the more you will be able to focus in a fight. You should know that getting injuries in a fight is inevitable, so you have to keep going. Don’t you dare to pass out!”
Nathan gnashed his teeth. Vivian said it would be fine even if he passed out, but this Dragon King wanted him to maintain his consciousness by saying it would be more effective for the training.
Even though he wanted to beat this Dragon King so much, Nathan had no other choice but to comply with his condition this time.
Currently, he has about 1,300 Ena. To reach the next grade, he needed to have 1,500 Ena.
He managed to absorb the mature class core last time and received 186 Ena from it, which surprised him. But he expected that with his current talent, he could only receive less than 150 Ena for one mature class core.
And he managed to get fifteen mature class cores from the Dragon King. He roughly calculated that he would at least have 3,000 Ena by the time he absorbed all those cores.
He only planned to sacrifice 1,000 Ena for the next summoning and give the excess point to Fenrir. This should be enough for Fenrir to be close to having 1,000 Ena himself, while Nathan could maintain his Ena at 1,500, allowing him to retain that quality not only for the absorption rate but also for the upgraded soul contract.
He wanted to get more cores in the next several missions until Fenrir, Anubis, and the third familiar had 1,000 Ena each.
This was his goal before the next even started.
The reason he wanted to maintain his Ena above 1,500 was because he wanted to keep his trump card. After experiencing a lot of things outside his prediction, Nathan surely knew he had to always have a trump card at his disposal, no matter how much he wanted to make his familiars stronger.
That was why he kept enduring the pain.
The Dragon King was quite surprised that Nathan had this much willpower. He was exhausted and kept complaining, but he continued.
It took the whole day for Nathan to absorb all the cores. Selena kept glancing at him while training by herself on the side.
Selena would probably only need two mature class cores to get the same result as Nathan. That was why she respected Nathan from the bottom of her heart for enduring all the torture and pushing himself forward.
For Nathan, he could only get 2 Ena per proto-class core, 18-20 Ena per juvenile class core, and 150-180 Ena per mature class core. That was why he had to suffer a lot more.
As if the fatigue caught up to him, as soon as he finished swallowing the last core, he passed out.
…
The next day.
“Kh.” Nathan let out a small groan as he remembered yesterday’s torture.
“Oh? You woke up?” The Dragon King was sitting next to the fire, grilling a pig.
Nathan hurriedly rose from the hard ground, but he noticed something was dragging him down. When he lowered his head, he saw Selena still sleeping, using his arm as her pillow.
“That girl is worried about you because I torture you so much.”
“And you are aware you’re torturing me?”
“Yep. Whose fault is it to be a daring brat?” The Dragon King grinned.
Nathan sighed. “So what am I supposed to do for today?”
“It’s better for you to summon your familiar first because the training will be quite harsh. Like after you’re done, I’ll immediately ask you to run 10 laps around the mountain.”
“Geh.” Nathan’s eyebrows twitched. “Don’t tell me. You’re going to make me train like mopping the floor or something like that until I doubt them and suddenly tell me that everything is a part of the training, right?”
“Why do I need to do that? To use the Dragon Fist, you need to develop your body a bit more. The medicine is there to strengthen your body, but to utilize your muscles, you need to do it the hard way.
“You need to run and do some physical training. Since I’ve promised to teach you the Dragon Fist, I’ll also fork out some medicinal herbs to let your body grow faster. Once you go back, you should ask your teacher as well, or the training will be less effective.”
“I understand.” Nathan let out a sigh of relief.
“Good.” The Dragon King nodded and summoned his familiar.
Nathan could feel an extraordinary Ena coming from the figure.
The draconian was a male. He had the body of a human, but he had a dragon tail, scales, and horns. His arms and feet were red as if they failed to form complete dragon limbs, and his eyes were sharp like a lizard.
“Is it him?” The draconian asked while staring at Nathan.
“Indeed. I need you to give him your blood and scale.”
The draconian nodded. He casually ripped apart the scale on his arm, which also caused bleeding.
The Dragon King tossed him a small tube so that he could pour the blood into it until the bleeding stopped.
The draconian didn’t go back as if it were his request to actually see the legendary dragon. Meanwhile, the Dragon King expected Nathan to summon a lizard or a wyvern at his current level, considering it wasn’t the norm to summon a strong familiar with a small amount of Ena.
If he was lucky, he would probably get a lesser dragon.
The Dragon King grabbed the scale and the tube and handed them to Nathan. “Here you go. The requested item. Take it. Do you need my help to prepare the summoning circle as well?”
“No. I’m a summoner, so I should also learn how to draw the summoning circle correctly.”