The Ritual at the Summoning Circle
“Turn off the lights?” Larilura said, then jumped as if the words had slapped her across the face. She clearly hadn’t expected them to tumble out of her own mouth.
Selena answered like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Of course. This world is a dimension without light. The bug bastards that live where the gods’ radiance never reaches will swarm to any spark they see. We’ve learned that the hard way.”
“I-is that so? Understood.” Larilura couldn’t come up with a single logical counterargument. Keeping watch in total darkness would be inconvenient, sure, but they couldn’t exactly light a signal fire and invite every insect in the area. If those little shits came fluttering in like moths to a streetlamp, they’d be completely fucked.
“The spot we stayed in was near the ocean, so we didn’t run into much trouble.”
“Y-yeah… That’s a relief.”
You say that, but your face screams anything but relief. I gave Larilura’s back a comforting pat. Let’s just hope she can endure one night of this.
“It might get cold, so those with cloaks should share them. Make sure Sir Norde gets one too.”
“Here, use mine.”
“Thank you.”
A burly middle-aged man offered his cloak, so I took it. I discreetly sniffed it when no one was looking. It didn’t stink of sweat at least. Wearing someone else’s clothes felt gross, but refusing it here would have been a stupid move.
Hiss.
Larilura turned off the lantern and fidgeted, stealing glances at me. If we shared this blanket, our bodies were going to be pressed right up against each other. I shook out the cloak and held it out to her.
“You take it. I run hot anyway.”
“…Haa. Stop talking nonsense and just lie down already.”
Whoosh!
Larilura snatched the cloak and pushed my head down. The message was clear: hurry up and lie down. The moment I stretched out on the ground, she draped the cloak over us and pressed herself against my back.
Soft.
Goddamn.
No matter how much she looked like a kid with an oversized body, the direct press of those large breasts against me made it impossible to stay calm. The fact that I couldn’t see her face somehow made it worse.
“Hey, I told you I’m fine.”
“Fine? What’s fine? I finally worked up the courage to do this as your adorable junior, and you’re thinking of rejecting me? I’d appreciate it if you didn’t embarrass me like that.”
“…Are you scared?”
“…N-o I’m n-o-t? I’m only doing this because you’re my senior, okay~?”
Squeeze.
Larilura buried her face in my back and tried to pinch my side, but failed.
“Too bad. Unlike you, I don’t have any love handles.”
“Huh? I don’t have any either, you know? What’s with that tone? The whole ‘of course you’d assume I got fat but I work hard to maintain this figure~’ vibe? That’s incredibly rude, you know?”
“Alright, quiet down. You’ll wake the others.”
“…Hmph. Sleep well or don’t, I don’t care.”
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Larilura kept bumping her forehead against my shoulder blade until she finally settled down and fell asleep. She must have been exhausted to pass out so quickly. Between exploring the ruins and today’s brutal march, we had basically walked all day.
I’m pretty tired myself.
Once the tension drained away, my eyelids grew heavy. I forced myself to stay alert enough to react instantly if the bug bastards swarmed us, then finally let sleep take me.
How many hours had passed? I woke up suddenly and frowned. I had braced myself to open my eyes to a swarm of bug faces, but what my dark-adjusted vision caught instead was a head of pink hair.
“……Zzz.”
It was Larilura. Our positions must have shifted while we slept, because she had climbed on top of me and curled up like a cat. The so-called “baking bread” posture.
“Ugh.”
For a second I thought I had woken up in the middle of the night, but the thought vanished. This fucking dimension was dark and damp as hell, exactly like a bug-infested hellhole, so I had no idea how long I’d actually slept. I rolled my eyes to check our surroundings.
Rustle. Rustle.
Luckily, no one had been devoured while I was out. A few explorers were up and moving around. I even saw the butler waking Selena. That noise must have been what pulled me from sleep.
“Mmm…”
Maybe because I turned my head? Larilura, who had been draped over me under the cloak, rubbed her eyes and slowly woke up.
“……Huh?”
It was only a matter of time. The moment her sleepy gaze focused and realized she was pressed chest-to-chest with me on top of my stomach, her whole body froze.
I waved a hand vaguely in front of her face, thinking I should get her off me before morning wood became an issue.
“…………Ah.”
After a full minute of her brain booting up, Larilura turned her face away and muttered.
“It wasn’t on purpose, okay? Your stomach was warm so I just climbed on in my sleep, got it? Don’t misunderstand! Larilura is not the kind of bad girl who carelessly climbs on top of men!”
“I get it, so get off. You’re not heavy, but my head feels like it’s ringing.”
“Ah… ugh, sorry.”
“It’s not your fault. Like you said, your body’s nice and warm.”
The floor was probably too hard for proper rest. I held back a yawn, stood up, and stretched. No one looked like they’d been attacked in their sleep, though everyone’s faces showed clear exhaustion. At least no one seemed drowsy.
“Six hours of sleep. That’s sufficient. Let’s eat and get moving.”
With her hair still messy, Selena handed out rations. Once again it was the bare minimum needed to keep functioning.
The hunger will fade once we start walking.
I clicked my tongue and tried to convince myself, but focusing while starving turned out to be fucking difficult. Now I understood why office workers in the 21st century packed on weight. Even while walking through the forest, avoiding battles, and searching for the summoning circle’s mana, the thought of food refused to leave my head.
“──Huh?”
We had been heading south for about one or two hours when it happened.
Ping!
It felt like a single hair on the back of my neck had been yanked. My senses, enhanced by mana and rune magic, had picked up mana that didn’t belong in this stale space. I calmly suppressed the surge of relief and excitement.
“Miss Selena. I’ve found it.”
“The summoning circle? Where?”
Her response was almost instantaneous. She must have been waiting for me to say exactly that.
“Northwest from here. Roughly two to three hundred meters.”
Three hundred meters at most. That was the limit of my detection range. Sensing something three hundred meters away might sound impressive, but when you compared it to the five senses of wild animals, it wasn’t that big a deal. Especially since nothing here interfered with my senses.
“That’s close. Still, we should send a scouting party. Everyone? You heard him. Sir Norde has located the mana of the summoning circle.”
“Haa, what a relief. We found it in just one night.”
“Now we can go back.”
The explorers’ expressions brightened at Selena’s words. If the location had been safe, they probably would have cheered.
“Don’t let your guard down. This is only the beginning. Stram, Vios. I’m entrusting the scouting to you two. Can you handle it?”
“Yes.”
“Of course.”
With the charisma of a proper party leader, Selena rallied the mood and picked two men who looked like rogues.
“Larilura.”
I gave her a meaningful look. She answered with a sigh that clearly said she had no choice. It meant she’d wait.
“I’ll be back soon, so stay safe.”
“I don’t know who’s telling who to be careful. You’d better stay safe, Senior. If you don’t come back, I’ll just stay here and die, okay?”
“What are you talking about? Even if I kick the bucket, you need to go back and get scolded by Franc and Dana.”
“Ahaha♡? That’s exactly why I’d rather die here?”
This kid’s talent for dodging responsibility is top-tier. She’s got the perfect qualifications of a 21st-century Earth human.
“We’re just scouting. Wait here quietly.”
“Okaaaay~.”
I headed toward Selena while listening to her half-hearted reply. When I got close, she tilted her head.
“Sir Norde. Is something the matter?”
Her eyes were filled with surprise and doubt, as if asking whether I intended to join the scouting party. Which made sense. No one would look at me and think “stealth expert.” I was wearing armor and carrying a spear, for fuck’s sake. Even I agreed with that assessment.
So I asked her directly.
“Do you have any spares if I go?”
“Spares? We do have a mask enchanted with Telephoto magic, but…”
Selena brought over something that looked like a telescope mask and trailed off, clearly wondering why I wanted it. I was a little disappointed by its appearance too. The mask she handed me was a goddamn butterfly mask.
If a muscular guy like me wears this, won’t I look like a total queer?
An image flashed through my mind of some flamboyant gay man with a long mustache, swaying his hips and going “Oh~ mucho~.”
Fuck it. Who has time to be picky about cold rice or hot rice?
If I stayed behind and only listened to the scouts’ report before moving, what would I do if we got ambushed? To protect my life, cosplaying as a Pride parade participant was acceptable. …Okay, fine. It wasn’t completely fine, but I could endure it.
Swish. Swish.
Whirl!
The reverse Kenaz rune activated its concealment effect. I had worried the mask wouldn’t count since it only covered the lower half of my face, but apparently a butterfly mask still qualified as a mask.
“That’s rune magic too!”
Selena asked with her mouth hanging open. She seemed shocked that simply drawing a few tiny characters like Kenaz could produce everything from detection to concealment. Magic spam at its finest.
“Yes. It helps with stealth. If I won’t be a burden, I’d like to join the scouting party.”
“A burden? Please do! Our side would be grateful. Rogues have no choice but to retreat if a fight breaks out.”
Selena spoke as if she would have shouted it at the top of her lungs if the situation had been different. If combat started, the rogues would die or reveal our position and get us all ambushed. Having someone with high combat power like me in the party would only be beneficial.
With permission granted, I put on the mask and finished preparations.
“I’ll be counting on you.”
“We’ll be counting on you as well.”
I exchanged brief greetings with the two rogues and we moved toward where I sensed the summoning circle’s mana.
Swish. Swish. Swish.
The rogues were professionals; they barely made any sound. Or maybe it was because this forest had almost no underbrush? Either way, it was perfect for infiltration. I used hand signals to indicate direction. The rogues followed.
Three hundred meters might not sound far, but moving carefully made it feel as long and agonizing as a month-old case of severe constipation. Still, everything has an end.
Stop.
We discovered something that looked like a bug hive and froze. The description fit perfectly. Those disgustingly protruding rock formations and holes big enough to bury a person were clearly the home of giant walking bugs.
Fuck.
The summoning circle was right in the middle of the bug hive. That was why I cursed. No, not because of that. Having the dungeon exit in the boss room is basically a universal rule, so that part wasn’t strange at all.
What made me internally scream “fuck, fuck” was the other thing happening in front of the summoning circle.
“KKK! KRKKKK!!”
The giant bug bastard that had dragged me and Larilura here! Of all places, that very same bastard was performing what looked like an offering ritual at the summoning circle. It was ridiculous that humanoid bugs were conducting a ceremony, but the term “offering ritual” didn’t seem wrong at all. On what looked like an altar made of grass lay the corpses of adventurers we had seen in the ruins. Every single one of them had had their heads eaten.
Ugh, shit.
Suddenly Franc’s words from when she was scanning the area came back to me. She had said something about a bastard that was chewing on something while making footsteps. So these fucking bugs weren’t even taking proper bites. They took one bite each and offered the leftovers as tribute.
“K, KK── K!”
The endlessly racist-sounding cries continued. The giant bug performed the ritual alone, its wings buzzing loudly. Then it tore off part of an adventurer’s corpse and tossed it into the summoning circle. It looked like a scene from a snuff film, but the circle glowed and transferred the body away.
This was important information. Did we just have to step on it? If so, that was lucky. Well, if it had been complicated, the bugs probably couldn’t have used it either.
Are there any others?
For now, only that giant bug was near the summoning circle. It seemed the representative performed the ritual alone while buzzing its wings. Of course, I couldn’t give less of a shit about bug religious culture. But I couldn’t ignore what the bastard was offering the ritual to.
I examined the altar where the adventurers’ corpses had been placed and my eyes widened.
A statue?
It was a statue shaped like a curled-up larva. For a moment I wondered if that was the real boss and the bug priest was just a mid-boss, but no matter how I looked at it, it didn’t seem like a sealed monster. It looked like a statue formed naturally through erosion. I couldn’t sense any mana from it, and its shape was crudely made. Though calling it erosion in a dimension with no wind felt strange.
Some kind of primitive religion for these bastards.
What if invaders from an ancient civilization had once appeared through that summoning circle in the past, and the bugs who remembered it had passed the story down through their culture? Then it made sense that a religion worshiping the summoning circle and the rock statue beside it would develop. Since Homo sapiens had deified lightning, it wasn’t strange for Homo fuzz-bug to deify a magic circle that summoned creatures from another dimension.
Swish.
Swish swish.
We exchanged retreat signals and pulled back. This was clearly a situation that required discussion. When we returned and reported, Selena let out a short groan.
“So it’s a nest where otherworldly monsters live. Sir Norde, do you think you can exterminate them?”
“I’d love to just burn the whole place down, but that could destroy the magic circle, and we don’t have a good way to start a fire anyway.”
I answered while considering our options. There were probably other summoning circles besides this one. The bug bastards that had appeared on floors one through four of the tower must have been summoned from various places in this dimension.
But where the fuck are the others?
We had probably come here through a summoning circle somewhere on the fourth floor. Selena’s party by accident, and me and Larilura dragged here by that bastard’s hands.
The only magic circle linked to the one we used is that one.
The chance that other summoning circles were installed far away, at a distance comparable to Britain and the Aztecs, was high. It would be more efficient to space out the circles if they wanted to summon large numbers of bug monsters. Which meant if we didn’t break through that bug nest, we might literally starve to death.
“A frontal assault is impossible. Without being able to use magic properly, we can’t win a war of attrition. An operation with low odds of success and no merit is a bad idea.”
“Do you have a better plan?”
“Honestly, we don’t have much choice. Unless your party happens to have an item that would be perfect for this situation.”
“We don’t have anything that convenient. Even our magic items only work for a little while before stopping.”
“Haa. Then what do we do…”
Selena and I discussed as the party representatives and asked for everyone else’s opinions, but no one had a sharp solution. The brief meeting ended as meaninglessly as a group project. I learned with my own body the truth that “the first conclusion you reach is usually the best answer to any problem.” I really didn’t want to know that fact.
“No choice then. Let’s go with the cheat method.”
“Cheat method?”
“We didn’t come here to exterminate monsters. We only need to reach the top of the summoning circle to win. We can deal with whatever chases us afterward.”
I spoke with the expression of an AV actress forced to deliver the most embarrassing line in the world.
“Everyone? Do you like short-distance races?”