Housebreaking
I stared for a long while at the palm-sized black cotton puff I had just summoned.
It looked up at me, too. There was nothing on it you could call eyes, so I couldn't be certain it was actually looking—but it felt like it was, so I decided it was looking up at me.
"……I've never seen one of these."
Yeah. I'll admit it. If someone called me a fake gamer, I wouldn't have a word to say for myself. The game had been left running all day, so the playtime looked impressive, but what I'd actually been doing was running macros. I'd never played seriously, never dug into the systems, never even read the story. Not knowing which summons existed in the game was, in a way, only natural. On top of that, every summon I'd ever used was one of the big ones, large enough to be of direct use in a fight. Something this small and frail simply did not exist in the database of my memory.
We stood there like that for a while, and the little thing cocked its head and pricked its ears at me.
Well. Fine. It was cute, I'll give it that…….
"What am I even supposed to do with you……."
What I'd meant to summon was something that could help Unit 1 hunt for clues. This thing didn't look capable of turning a single page, let alone reading a book. Did summoning just spit out completely useless creatures sometimes? In the game you opened the skill window, clicked a few buttons, and a summon appeared. It had never once occurred to me that something like this could happen.
……Well. I might as well try giving it something to do. Not that I expected much…….
I thought it over, then crouched and held out my palm.
"Come here."
"Ooiiee—!"
It let out a delighted little sound and hopped straight up onto my hand. Good. At least it seemed to understand speech, more or less. I poked the palm-sized black cotton ball a couple of times, and every time I did, it rolled around and whined.
"Hm."
……It really was cute. A party could stand one mascot. I'd just keep this one around. Squishing it now and then like a stress toy might even settle my nerves.
"All right. From now on, you're Unit 2."
"Eeeii—?! Weeeii—!"
The moment I called it Unit 2, it visibly brightened and started bouncing. Was a name really that wonderful? Well, if it was happy, that was enough. I set it on the floor so it could celebrate more freely, then folded my arms again.
A problem, however, was still a problem. Unit 2 being cute was beside the point. What I needed right now was labor—reading, scouting, fighting, anything. Going forward, I was going to need at least one more summon that could actually be of use.
"All right. One more time."
I held my hand out again. The sensation was already far more familiar than the first time. I drew up the mana flowing through my body and slowly pushed it outward. A pale haze rose, and a moment later—
"Ooiiee!"
"……Again?"
Another palm-sized black cotton ball dropped onto the floor with a hop. The ears were a tiny bit different in length, but anyone could tell it was the same species.
"Hm."
……It could be a coincidence. I set that one aside and took my stance again. Black mist. And then…….
"Ooi."
"……Again."
"Ooi!"
Once more.
"Ooi!"
This time, for real!
"Ooiiee!"
…….
"……No."
Before I knew it, I was surrounded by black cotton balls huddled together at my feet. One, two, three, four……. Twelve of them. They all looked the same. If you insisted on differences, the ears varied a little in length, one was slightly fluffier, and one was unusually round.
At first I'd called it chance. The second time, I'd called it bad luck. But when I'd done it dozens of times and gotten nothing but the exact same creature, even an idiot had to admit something was wrong.
"Why do I only ever get these things when I summon?"
I couldn't begin to guess the reason. I'd clearly been picturing a skeleton like Unit 1 when I pulled, so why hadn't a single one come out? Did the image in my head not matter at all? What was even different from when I'd summoned Unit 1?
"Ah."
The place. Right—the location was different. Don't tell me summoning was affected by the surrounding environment. If it wasn't that, none of this made any sense. Maybe, in this world, the system of summoning was tangled up with far more factors than I'd ever known.
"Ugh. What a headache."
It wasn't like clicking a skill upgrade in the skill window anymore, and now I had problems like this on top of everything else……. The summoner class was worse than I'd thought, now that I actually had to handle it myself.
Still, one thing had improved with the game system gone: the cap on how many summons I could maintain seemed to have vanished as well. Even after I'd realized something was off, I'd kept summoning the same creature for a while, because I'd wanted to confirm exactly that. If the in-game rule had still held—eight summons at once, maximum—I never could have called twelve of these. The discovery was definitely a good one. Going forward, I could probably mass-produce skeletons like Unit 1, and if I ever found a spot that spat out decent summons, I could inflate the headcount without mercy. Then human-wave tactics might actually get me somewhere.
……For now, though, all I'd multiplied were these little squirmers, and I had no idea what to do with them.
So. Back to the problem I'd been chewing on.
"So what am I supposed to do with these things……?"
I had twelve of them now and still no idea where to put them to use. What were they even good at? They couldn't really be cute and nothing else…….
……Even so, watching twelve lumps of black charcoal hop around and play was entertaining in its own way. A bit like the old screensaver days, staring blankly at a monitor. With none of my former distractions left, the sight made a surprisingly decent show. Well, with no number cap, a few more mascots wouldn't hurt……. Maybe I ought to summon a few more and make the place properly crowded.
I was thinking that, watching what they were up to, when I got the odd feeling that the spots they'd passed over had grown strangely clean.
"Huh?"
I went straight over and ran a finger across the floor. Sure enough, no dust came away. Up close, the boards gleamed as if someone had gone over them with a rag.
"What."
Found it. This was what they were for!
I called them together at once.
"Hey, you lot! Get over here!"
"Ooing?"
"Euing?"
"Ooooo?"
Murmuring among themselves, the black cotton balls came trotting over. You couldn't call it disciplined, or anything like in unison, but that was a training problem for later. For now, I gave them a name.
"All right. From now on, you're the Unit 2s!"
If I named them one by one—Unit 2, Unit 3, Unit 4, and so on—I'd have a problem the next time I summoned something new. The way I saw it, I was going to call up over a hundred of them and keep this mansion looking brand new. Do that, and what number would the next real summon even get pushed back to? I called them Unit 1 and Unit 2 because naming things was a pain. I had no desire to memorize serial numbers later.
"Unit 2s, I have a mission for you! Polish this mansion until it shines! Understood?"
"Uwaaa—!"
"Eeeii—!"
They let out small, spirited cheers, then set off at once, bustling all over the mansion just as ordered. The very first one I'd summoned looked, somehow, a little hurt. Lumped in under the name Unit 2, had it decided its specialness was being watered down? For crying out loud. A thing that small, getting jealous over something like that.
So I had no choice. I singled it out.
"You. The one I summoned first. Come here."
"Ooiing?"
It glanced back, prim and a little aloof, as if to ask why I was calling. Even so, since I'd called, it came trotting over. But how was I supposed to soothe it? Ah. Maybe this would do.
"You're Unit 2-1. From now on, when I call out Unit 2!, you come right over and command the rest of them exactly as I say. Got it?"
I'd only put it in plainer terms—you're the squad leader now—and all at once the little thing grew bold.
"Ing!"
Good grief. Was that really so wonderful? There was nothing good about it at all……. But the effect of Unit 2-1 taking the armband was tremendous. The Unit 2s grew noticeably livelier, and Unit 2-1 worked harder than any of them, clearing away even the scraps of debris small enough to move on its own. Seeing that, the others refused to be outdone and started hauling wreckage in competition, and in no time the lobby was clean enough that you could have lain right down on the floor.
Hmm. So this was why elementary school teachers picked a class president. The class president had been the teacher's macro all along.
Creeeak…….
I was thinking that when, all of a sudden, the door opened. Had Unit 1 already found something?
"What is it, Unit 1. Did you already finish every book in there?"
The moment the door opened she came at me as if bursting through it, shook her head, started to gesture as if she had something to tell me—and then froze stock-still. Wondering if something was wrong, I followed the line of those eye sockets. Her gaze wasn't on me. It was behind me, fixed on the sight of dozens of black cotton balls sucking up dust and cleaning the mansion.
Clack.
Yeah. She'd only stepped away to read for a little while, and the number of summons had jumped. No wonder she was thrown.
"So? What is it? Did you find something?"
Snapping back at my words, Unit 1 urgently gestured again, as if to say I needed to come and see, right now. Hmm. She must have found something pretty incredible, judging by how frantically she was calling me.