All My Summons Becom Chapter 69: The Efficiency of Power

Chapter 69: The Efficiency of Power

Hajin didn’t say anything as he stood up, his hands shoved deep into his pockets while he walked toward the desk. He could feel the weight of their stares on his back, but he kept his expression flat, trying to ignore the sudden tension in the room.

He reached the desk and placed his palm against the transparent orb, feeling the surface of the crystal vibrate slightly against his skin.

"Just rember," Allen said, his voice quiet but focused. "The device only reads what you give it. If you try to hold back, the results will be skewed."

"I’m not going to hold back," he muttered, though he knew that wasn’t entirely true.

Behind him, he could hear Elise and Sable whispering to each other, their voices barely audible over the low hum of the device.

"If Juna managed to hit one thousand four hundred," Elise whispered, her voice trembling with excitent. "Then Hajin has to be at least in the triple digits, right? Maybe even top five hundred?"

Sable shook her head, her eyes locked on Hajin’s hand. "I don’t know. His mana never felt like hers. It isn’t heavy like a hamr, it’s more like... a razor. I wouldn’t be surprised if he breaks the machine entirely."

Juna sat on the couch with her tail curled around her legs, her eyes narrowed as she watched the back of Hajin’s head.

’They don’t understand,’ she thought, her ears twitching slightly as she listened to their theories.

She rembered the day she had first evolved, the sheer rush of power that had flooded her body when the second wing manifested. For the first ti in her life, she had felt truly invincible.

Her stats had tripled, her mana had grown dense enough to speed blitz a four shard monster, and she was certain that she had finally surpassed him.

When he asked her for a spar match, she was fully expecting to pin him to the ground in seconds.

’I was definitely ahead of master in terms of raw power,’ she thought, her grip tightening on the couch cushion. ’I was faster, I had more mana, and every strike I made carried enough force to level a building. But despite all of that, I never beat him, not once.’

She rembered how he had looked in the center of the clearing, his feet barely moving while she threw everything she had at him.

He hadn’t used any flashy skills or massive bursts of energy. He had just stepped aside, his movents were small and efficient, making her feel like she was fighting a ghost.

Every ti she tried to overwhelm him with a blast of mana, he would simply tap her wrist or shoulder, and her energy would dissipate into nothing.

’Why?’ she wondered back then, her frustration nearly boiling over.

The answer was simple, though it had taken her a while to truly accept it. It didn’t matter how much power she had if she couldn’t actually land a hit.

Hajin didn’t fight with a hamr, he fought with a needle. He knew exactly where to strike to collapse her flow, and he never used a single drop of mana more than was absolutely necessary.

’Master’s strength isn’t in the amount of power he has,’ she thought, her eyes softening as she watched the blue line inside the orb start to spin. ’It’s in the way he refuses to waste it and ever since the gate, his proficiency has grown a lot.’

Cut back at the desk, Hajin was demonstrating that exact principle once again.

He wasn’t just letting his mana dump into the crystal like the girls had. Instead, he was threading it, weaving the energy into thin, razor-sharp lines that bypassed the outer sensors of the device and headed straight for the core.

He could feel the machine trying to pull more from him, the blue light spinning faster and faster as it searched for the edges of his capacity.

’Hah, trying to dig into my mana huh, not happening,’ he thought, his eyes narrowing as he tightened his control. ’If I let you read everything, I’ll never hear the end of it.’

He compressed his mana until it was nearly invisible, forcing the device to work twice as hard just to register his presence.

The hum of the machine changed, shifting from a steady drone to a high-pitched whine that made Elise cover her ears. The needles around the plate began to spin in circles, unable to find a steady rhythm while Hajin’s mana flickered in and out of their detection range.

Allen leaned forward, his hands gripping the edge of the desk while his fingers dug into the wood.

"What is he doing?" he whispered, his eyes locked on the glass strip where the numbers were still scrambling.

Hajin smirked, his eyes staying closed while he felt the machine’s desperate attempt to gauge his depth.

’One day I’m going to flip this entire system upside down,’ he thought, his pulse steadying as he visualized the hidden layers of his own power. ’But for now, I just need a badge that doesn’t put a target on my back.’

He relaxed his grip on the golden threads, letting just enough mana flow into the orb to satisfy the sensors.

He didn’t just dump the energy, he carefully calibrated the output, guiding the numbers on the glass strip until they reached the exact range he wanted.

The high-pitched whine vanished instantly, replaced by a low, steady hum as the device finally locked in a reading.

1,210.

He pulled his hand away and took a slow step back, shaking out his fingers while the glowing numbers floated in the air between them.

The room went completely silent.

Elise blinked, looking from the number back to Hajin with a look of pure confusion. "One thousand... two hundred?" she repeated, her shoulders dropping in visible disappointnt.

"But... he cracked a ten-shard core. I thought for sure he would be in the top one thousand at the very least."

Sable let out a quiet sigh, her hand falling away from her sword hilt. "Maybe the core was just a fluke of synchronization," she muttered, her eyes losing so of their previous intensity."It’s a good score, obviously, but it’s not exactly the monster level I was expecting."

Juna didn’t say a word, she just gave her tail a single, knowing flick and looked at Hajin with a tiny smirk. She knew exactly what he had done, and why he had done it.

Allen stared at the number for a long ti, his brow pulling together in a deep frown. He looked at the badge crystal, then back at Hajin, who was currently rubbing the back of his neck with an indifferent expression.

"One thousand two hundred and ten," Allen said, his voice flat and unreadable.

He didn’t sound impressed or excited, he sounded like a man who had just been told a joke that wasn’t particularly funny. He picked up the final badge and placed it on the desk, his eyes never leaving Hajin’s face.

’This guy...’ Allen thought, tapping his fingers slowly against the desk. ’There is no way a man who can drain a ten-shard core and synchronize three different mana types at once only has the output of a high-tier rookie.’

He looked at the device, then back at Hajin who was already turning away to walk back to the couch.

’He completely fooled the device,’ he realized, a faint chill running down his spine. ’Is his control over mana that great? Just thinking about how his na will spread is giving

chills.’

He let out a short, quiet breath and finished the attunent, his suspicion growing into sothing that felt a lot like genuine wariness. He had been looking for a monster to lead his guild into the high-tier Gates, and it seed he had found one.

The only problem was that the monster was a lot smarter than he had anticipated.