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.
"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."