Thalion appeared on an endless stretch of tall orange grass that swayed in the wind. The sll was pleasant and reminded him a bit of Earth, and the peace was sothing he could have enjoyed long term.
If there hadn’t been the lion-headed warrior standing opposite him, he would have just lain down and let the sun shine on his face.
“Greetings, Thalion. I am Ratgul, the architect of the treasure hunt you just won. Welco to my place.”
Ratgul’s voice was strong, and he stretched out his hands far and wide, clearly proud of what he had created.
“Hello,” Thalion managed to say.
The pressure from what he had been through only a few minutes ago made it hard to engage in small talk.
“I have to say, I didn’t expect an F grade to win. So before we start with the training, why don’t you tell what you want to learn?” Ratgul asked.
For Thalion, this was going far nicer than he had first expected.
“Well, first I’m going to evolve. As for what I want to learn… there aren’t many things I don’t want, but improving my fighting as the Crippled Eclipsari is definitely high on the list. Since it looks like you also enjoy close combat with your claws, I figure you know a thing or two?” Thalion said, getting a bit more used to talking. After so much stress, it was a lot harder than he had thought.
“Ra, ra, ra—yeah, I kinda like using my claws,” Ratgul laughed out loud before getting more serious. “One rather important point. Do not evolve right now.”
“Wait—why?” Thalion managed to ask. He really wanted to get going.
“Well, for multiple reasons. Here, you cannot gain any experience, but we can improve your body tempering by quite a lot. This will result in a better evolution. The higher you rise in rarity, the bigger the difference between soone who just managed to slip in and soone who is about to break through to the next level. Besides testing out your new forms, there is no advantage in evolving here.
“And think about it. I know you are exhausted after the whole ordeal, and staying F grade for so long while everyone else was gaining level after level must be hard. But do you rember the reward for being first place? From now on, when evolving, you will never get weaker—which is a huge deal. Every hour you invest here right now will spare you thousands of years later,” Ratgul explained.
Thalion understood and agreed.
There wasn’t much to think about, and he wasn’t great at thinking clearly after the ritual had almost nuked his body.
“That makes sense. On another note… how much ti do we have? And would you mind if I take a little nap before we start?” Thalion had really thought he was fine when accepting the invitation, but just standing there and talking already felt like sothing was pressing against every word.
“Ra, ra, ra, ra—sure, go ahead and take a nap. We have ti. But I must say, between the five I’m training right now, I already like you the most.”
With those words, Ratgul simply disappeared.
Thalion, too exhausted to bother in any way, just fell onto his back and looked up at the sun.
It wasn’t completely silent—Saranya was complaining that she didn’t want to be placed in the spatial amulet ever again and the Primordial Bloodseed fantasized about the taste of different blood types.
For Thalion, that didn’t matter much right now.
He closed his eyes.
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