Breaking into an Empty House
The skeleton and I tore through the forest without a thought in our heads until the sunset finally bled out of the sky, and only when we stumbled on an abandoned mansion did we manage, at last, to shake the wolves.
"Hah... I really thought I was going to die..."
Right. I was already dead.
An undead who'd been hit by a truck and then possessed a body inside a game. In other words, whether you counted my past life or this one, this body of mine was already dead.
Well. The fact that a thought like that could even surface probably meant I'd gotten a little of my composure back.
I brushed the dirt from my clothes and shoes and looked over at the skeleton I'd summoned. She was in no state to be seen either, soaked through from skull to toe. For the record, it hadn't rained on the way, and we hadn't fallen into any water. All of that was wolf drool. Come to think of it, people always said dogs loved bones. Maybe that was why they'd taken such a liking to her.
I glanced around for anything that might pass for a rag, spotted a sizable scrap of cloth lying nearby, picked it up, and called her over.
"Unit 1, come here."
Unit 1—the name I had personally bestowed on this skeleton. I had no gift for naming things, and the more summons I ended up with, the more names I'd have to invent. When was I supposed to sit down and christen every last one of them? I was the sort of person who named characters Grinder1, Grinder2, Grinder3, even though a character's name is the most important part of making one. Expecting me to come up with something lore-friendly and easy to shout was asking too much.
Anyway, she didn't seem to mind the name all that badly, and came over without any visible complaint. For a second I wondered whether something without vocal cords could complain in the first place, but what was I supposed to do about it?
"Wipe yourself off with this. You reek."
Unit 1 took the cloth and started scrubbing before the rank stink of drool could soak all the way into the bone. Water would have been better, but I couldn't see anything like that around here. A mansion this size ought to have a well nearby, right? People can't live without water. There was probably one somewhere close.
"Anyway, this place doesn't look half bad."
We'd stumbled in by accident, but the mansion was genuinely impressive. Most of it was old, broken, and cracked, and yet the house itself was spacious, and the furniture looked as if it had once been seriously expensive. There was a real pleasure in just taking it in. Had this been some noble's villa?
Looking closer, I found a portrait hung between the two wings of the split central staircase—a woman who was presumably the lady of the house, holding something in her arms. Written across it was the name Elysia.
Elysia? Hmm. I felt as if I'd heard it somewhere... I couldn't place it. Maybe I was imagining things. If I couldn't remember, it probably hadn't been important. Of course, there was no guarantee I would have noticed even if it really had mattered to the story.
For the time being, I started exploring the mansion. Finding something would be nice, and even if I didn't, I'd be staying here a while, so I might as well get used to the place. A pre-move-in inspection, you could call it.
Most of the rooms, though, were blocked by collapsed ceilings and debris. I couldn't get in. All except one that was still more or less intact. That door, at least, wasn't buried under rubble, and it wasn't locked.
Creeeak...
I opened it and stepped inside. A bedroom. The first thing to catch my eye was an enormous canopied bed hung with curtains—practically a symbol of the nobility. I touched it lightly. Dust was the least of its problems. The bed itself was so rotten that the slightest pressure drew a sharp crack of splitting wood. No lying down here, then. A shame. I'd wanted to sleep in a bed like this at least once.
Next I opened the wardrobe. Scraps of cloth that could no longer honestly be called clothes barely clung to the hangers. Everything else was the same: a shattered mirror and cosmetics, dried-up ink and a pen, torn books and papers. There wasn't a single usable object in the entire room.
I picked up what was left of an old letter, and it crumbled the moment my fingers closed on it. Rubbing the dust between them and letting it scatter, I thought it over. Something about this felt as if it were leading me—clues tied to a predetermined answer, and everything else quietly telling me not to bother. Maybe this little exploration already had a correct answer waiting.
Thinking that, I looked around, and my eyes landed on a bookcase set against one wall. Compared to the size of the shelves, the books were sparse. Once, there must have been far more of them. Come to think of it, could I even read the writing here? I'd read the name on the portrait, so I ought to be able to, right? I walked slowly toward the shelves.
"Hmm..."
Figures. I couldn't read a word of it. Not Korean, not English—a writing system I'd never seen before. Well, even when this was a game, I hadn't been able to read those meaningless letter-fonts that were nothing but decoration. The reason I'd been able to read Elysia was probably that someone had "processed" it with some kind of magic so that I could. Oh. I'd only just thought of that, but it made a strange amount of sense. In a world without compulsory education, the illiteracy rate would be sky-high. A spell that simply hammered the meaning of any text people absolutely had to understand straight into their heads wasn't hard to imagine.
But had the game ever had a setting like that? I wasn't sure about that part either. Anyway, what mattered more right now was what to do next. These books were still here, which made them feel like clues... What on earth did they say?
I was scowling at a book I couldn't read when Unit 1 drifted a little closer and glanced at it. Watching her, it didn't look like a passing curiosity about what I found so interesting. She seemed genuinely focused on the contents. On the off chance, I spoke up.
"What? Unit 1, can you actually read?"
She nodded. Twice.
What. A skeleton that could read? Was she not an ordinary skeleton after all? Then again, who was I? I couldn't see a status window, so I didn't know whether it still applied, but I'd been a max-level character who could leave a macro running even in a high-level hunting ground. There was no way a summon of mine would be some useless scrub who folded in front of a pack of wolves.
I immediately handed her the book I'd been staring at.
"Perfect! Then read everything on this shelf. I've got a feeling there's some really important clue in here."
"...?"
Her gaze toward me turned a little odd after that, but she couldn't exactly go around badmouthing me, so it didn't matter.
And so Unit 1 started reading in my place. Ahh, this is nice. Now this is a macro. Watching her throw herself into the books, I felt nothing but satisfaction as a summoner. I'd never been able to sit still and focus on letters for hours on end. And a skeleton who could read, no less. Was she smarter than I'd thought? Judging by how fast the pages turned, her concentration might even be better than mine...
"..."
Well, a subordinate's ability is basically the commander's ability. In the meantime, I just had to do my own job. So what was my job in this particular moment? Lie around and roll on the floor? Doodle in the dust? Those were options, but the most important thing right now was summoning Unit 2. I could grow the workforce on the spot, and it was also a chance to learn a little more about my summoner skills and strengthen them. In every respect, the timing was perfect.
"All right."
I shook out both hands as if I were warming up, closed my eyes, and focused. Summoning Unit 1 had been so sudden and so panicking that I couldn't remember a single sensation from it—but one thing I knew for certain. The summoning words. What had I said back then? Summon, come forth, rise, awaken, appear, manifest before me, reveal yourself. I'd tried just about everything. But the words that had actually brought Unit 1 into the world were those ones: the most primitive, desperate cry of all.
"Hoo..."
I drew a slow breath and closed my eyes, calling up, as closely as I could, the feeling from the first time I'd summoned Unit 1—
"Ahem. Hm."
Ah. Now that I was actually about to do it, it was kind of embarrassing. Still, I had to, right? Nobody was around, so...
I drew in another deep breath and shouted at the top of my lungs.
"P-please, somebody, anybody, save me—!!"
A moment later there was a crash, and Unit 1 burst out of the room in a panic. An open book was still clutched in her hand, and another sat across her skull like a hat. She scanned the surroundings as if hunting for an enemy, then just stared at me, blank. I stared back. The silence stretched, until the book perched on her skull slipped and hit the floor with a soft thump.
"Th-that... it wasn't because anything was dangerous. Go finish what you were doing."
At that she tilted her head for a second, picked up the fallen book, and went back into the room as if nothing had happened.
"...Well. The summoning worked, at least."
I had called a summon, after all. Yelling for help for no reason had just startled her. If this were a game with a visible favorability UI, a window might have popped up just now informing me that Unit 1's trust in me had dropped by about ten.
I cleared my throat and sat back down as if nothing had happened, settling into position again.
"Guess the condition for a summon isn't the 'incantation' after all..."
Then what was it? How had summoning worked in the game? Let me think...
"..."
How else? I'd just pressed a button. One click of the skill button, and the mana spent itself and the effect went off on its own.
"Ah. Right. Mana."
Why hadn't I thought of that sooner? Using a skill obviously meant using mana. This was the world inside the game, and I'd become a character in it, which meant I had mana too. Good. First, feel the mana.
I closed my eyes and focused on the sense of my own insides, and finding that thing called mana didn't take long at all. Ha. Nobody had even taught me, and I'd found it immediately. Maybe I actually had a gift? But now what? Being able to feel mana didn't help at all if I couldn't use it.
What did I do back then...
I started recalling every sensation from the moment I'd called Unit 1. The desperation, the anxiety, the confusion. I set aside the bodily changes those emotions had stirred up and searched, inside all of that, for the feeling that had been strange and unfamiliar. And at last I grasped that sensation from when I'd summoned her.
"Right. This was it."
Proud of myself for finding my own skill with no one else's help, I allowed myself a faint smile and tried to reproduce the feeling. Doing, through some unfamiliar sensation, what should have been a single button click was considerably difficult. But in the end I pulled it off with ease, as if I'd been born for this. Or should I say, as if I'd died for this?
While I was thinking that, I saw a strange black mist creeping in from all around and gathering near me. Curious. Last time I'd had my eyes shut because of the wolves and hadn't seen a thing. Had summoning Unit 1 been like this too? The mist kept collecting, slowly, a little at a time. Then it seeped into the floor and gradually took shape.
"Uh..."
Good. It finally felt like something was happening. ...But was it supposed to be this small? I'd expected at least something around Unit 1's size. When I saw the form of the newly summoned Unit 2, I was briefly speechless.
Waiii—!
"And what is this supposed to be...?"
A black fluffball no bigger than my palm, with a pair of rabbit ears stuck on it. Did Eternal Arcadia even have a summon like this?