Looking at Unusu walk towards me, he reminded me of how powerful he truly was. His aura was fully unleashed once again. The power he possessed was still so far from me. I couldn’t see how I would ever reach such a level. His power flared for the second time, once again pushing me down. This time around, I had no will to fight back. Letting myself be brought to my knees. 

His approach never slowed, stopping only a few steps from me. For the first time, he held his hand out for me.

“You have a long journey ahead of you child, don’t give up so soon. With the talent you have shown to me so far, you will make it.”

The positive encouragement felt very strange, coming from Unusu. The captain was far more lenient with praise, more than willing to point out the good in anyone. Unusu not so much, his teaching style up to this point had been layered in criticism.

He pulled me to my feet. I hadn’t even reached out to grab his hand; this was also the first time he was touching me.

“Come, let us go to Iirin, he has progressed very well. I am happy about his progress”.

This was more emotion from the man than I had ever seen before. He almost seemed to float in his steps, hopping throughout the compound. Now that I had left the battlefield, Iirins new limits quickly became apparent. The large area where we trained every day was littered with great holes, some still hot from the leftover magic.

The man himself was standing on the far side of the arena. He seemed very pleased with himself, the power radiating off him was equally impressive; he had managed to reach tier 5, granting him a significant amount of power.  

He sent out another bolt of flames into the arena. The explosion, even as far away as I was, nearly knocked me off my feet. It was quite the display of strength. I was feeling more and more confident about our chances in the upcoming bout. With Iirin capable of things like that, we’d have no issue dealing a lot more damage to the enemies. 

He stopped when he noticed our approach.

“I am impressed Micael, not only did you manage to survive, you are finally a useful teammate.”

As much as I wanted to argue that fact, it was true. While I was good at harassing and distracting, I didn’t have enough power to back it up and make a meaningful difference in a fight at the Heti level. If I were in the Heri rankings, I would be dominating, even my old self, but on our playing field, I hadn’t been worth much.

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Now was a different story, even my weakest summon had a use beyond its ranking, with their increased capabilities.

“Thank you. You have also progressed very well.”

It was all I could reply. He had come out from the ordeal no worse for wear, I was not sure how similar our experiences were, but he had none of the fatigue I was feeling. So it might have been a bit less harrowing for him using a smaller dosage.

Unusu pushed me to practice my new skills, so I went over to an area of the arena that was free and began to meditate to get my energy back a little. My trip to my Inner world didn’t change anything either. They were still getting used to all the changes, so they had not got a full overview of what had truly happened yet. I was looking forward to that.

I emerged soon after. I had gone through all the summons I had available to me. I was quite impressed with the changes. Even my weakest of summons had specialized themselves in some way or another. I was giving all of them a chance to shine in their way.

So I began practicing, summoning creature after creature, working out the full limit of each of my newly evolved summons. I also worked on my shielding abilities, but they hadn’t changed overmuch. It was only their potency that was any different.

Soon the arena wasn’t too dissimilar to Iirin’s side. The arena had several lovely new hills and tunnels. I had got my summons to build a small mountain of earth. They were creating their own little living space inside. 

It allowed me to practice both sides of each of my summons, both how constructive they could be as well as how destructive.

It was quite fun experimenting with all the possibilities that came with my summons.

I then had little duals between my constructs. Watching massive tier 4 creatures fight against each other was a real sight to see.

A Giant King crab fighting an Armoured bear was a very entertaining fight, I must say. The crab managed to eke out the victory at that time, but it proved far from my strongest summon. It did have some very entertaining abilities, though, being able to summon an army of tiny crabs to aid it.

So it was also quite the way to pass the time from now on. I would never be genuinely bored again, that much I was very confident. Even watching a weaker tier creature take on a higher tier was also quite inspiring. They rarely won, but some of the methods that they came up with to battle their foes were quite ingenious.

It gave me lots of ideas for tactics I would be able to make use of in the future.

Unusu called me over soon after, Iirin and I lined up in front of the man. His gaze now held quite a bit more pride than it had before. His slight smirk marred his face. I had never seen him use so much emotion as he had during the past few hours.

“Now, kids, you will have to do me proud. I have given you a path to victory; it is up to you to follow it.”

Iirin and I both bowed, we had a long road ahead of us. But for once, I saw a chance of becoming the number 1 team in the Heti Culling.