For a few moments, Emery saw a hint of irritation and disappointment on Zach's face when he announced his decision. However, they quickly disappeared as the dragon protege gave a slight nod of respect before turning around and leaving.

With their duel finally over and the outcome revealed, the crowd began fervently cheering. While it indeed ended as most of them initially expected, the battle itself far exceeded their imaginations.

Meanwhile, Emery noticed his friends running toward him a distance away.

"Aaaargh, that's too bad! Why! Why!? Just one gladiator punch and that lizard would have popped!" Thrax shouted as he hastily closed the distance between the two. Oddly enough, even though Emery was the one who lost, the gladiator seemed to be even more annoyed than him.

However, as soon as Thrax finished speaking, Emery's legs finally gave out. Fortunately, he reacted just in time and managed to use his sword to help him stand.

Julian quickly ran over to hold him, and almost immediately after, Emery felt a soft breeze from a touch on his back. Although there was no instant effect, he could feel his vigor slowly recovering as energy flowed from the touch.

"Thank you, Klea thank you, everyone," Emery mustered up his energy and weakly said.

"Don't worry about it too much, Emery. You will definitely beat him next time," Klea comforted in a rather low voice. While it was true that she said those words partly to comfort him, she truly believed that Emery will succeed.

Emery felt more determined when he heard this. He wanted to respond to the girl's trust, but he currently did not even have the strength to prop himself up anymore.

Moreover, he had been holding out his stamina and spirit pool until its last drop, and now that he had finally stopped, the side effects were finally catching up to him.

With his rank 9 stage and two cores, Emery really thought that he would be able to hold the twilight form for two or three hours. Nonetheless, it was only halfway through the fight that he realized those tier 4 and 5 spells took too much of his spirit pool.

He knew that his biggest mistake was using a spell he had not completely mastered yet, causing the spell to cost more than it should and yield less result despite the cost.

"Next time," he quietly muttered to himself.

Although Emery lost, none of the spectators thought less of him. On the contrary, although it was not by a lot, this duel made most of the spectators think more of him as his performance took them by surprise yet again.

After all, at one point in the match, they even subconsciously rooted for Emery and believed that he could truly win and take the position of rank 4 from the dragon protege.

Either way, there was no use in lamenting since the fight was already over. Emery could only hope to learn from the experience and move forward from there.

While he was looking back at his battle against Zach, the sound of multiple individuals' footsteps came approaching the group.

It was Annara, Atlas, Roran, and Sigurd.

"All right, now that everything is over, we can finally focus on the mid-test preparation!"

Roran actually came up with a plan and had been thinking about it for the past three days. While Emery was conserving whatever energy he had left and being healed by the lovely Klea, Roran began explaining so he could understand the overall plan.

After Emery had understood their team's plan came the [Soul Contract] that Roran had brought for them. At this point, although he had not fully recovered, he already had enough energy to move on his own.

"All right then, we will see each other in 3 days."

Klea and the others wished to stay with him longer, but unfortunately, they only had a restricted amount of time given to visit the privileged planet.

"See you all in 3 days."

Now that everyone had gone their own ways, Emery decided to return to the Zero Abyss rock and spend the next three days training and honing his skills there. Hence, after moving his limbs for a bit to make sure everything was fine, he quickly flew and entered the dark rock toward the same place he went to last time.

The battle against the dragon protege sapped a lot of his energy, but because he was forced to cast the new spells numerous times, Emery gained a new understanding of the dark element.

It would be good to start consolidating all that he learned today and further understand the energy of space.

Another thing he was hoping to achieve was to be able to properly cast the two spells that cost all of his fortune, [Mineralized Warrior] and [Aegis of the Void].

[Mineralized Warrior] was an rank summoning spell, and [Aegis of Void] was a divine protection spell.

If he had mastered the protection spell before he went against the dragon prodigy, the result of that battle might have turned out different.

Without further ado, Emery once again took out the [Spirit Foundation Pills] and started consuming them one by one while cultivating.

[Spirit force increased.]

[Spirit force increased.]

One day passed and Emery entered the second day. It was early that day that Emery realized his spirit force had increased by over 50 points.

[Spirit Force: 1,301]

Even so, there was still no indication of another pillar being formed. He felt that his cores were half-filled, but that was it. After observing his body's state for a moment, Emery became quite sure that he needed the all 100 to create both pillars right away to keep his balance.

With this realization, Emery continued to consume the pills while cultivating to further advance his spirit force.

On the third day, he had taken a total of 30 pills and ended up with a little over 1,320 points of spirit force.

[Spirit Force: 1,328]

The progress he made within these three days was quite satisfactory. Although he did not manage to completely master the two spells, he had successfully learned part of them.

Hopefully, he would be able to give it a few tries to truly master them.

Hours before it was time for the gathering for the mid-test, Emery thought of something and decided to leave the Zero Abyss rock and head toward his spirit cave.

He headed toward his garden, opened his [Spatial space], and took out all the 5 Chizpur brothers.

"Ku ku ku"

All five chubby creatures, added with Twik, were currently standing in front of him.

"Now, what should I do to you guys?"