The Winner Is Big Brother
Before I tried summoning on pure gut instinct alone, I figured I ought to get my thoughts in order.
"Hmm. Give me a second to sort this out."
"What is it? Spit it out. What happened with the necromancer?"
"Well…"
I laid out the whole sequence of events for the ancestor — every last scrap of nonsense that human-garbage had spouted, the way it had jabbed at my sense of justice, and finally how this purple stone had been left behind in the skeleton's place.
"So you're saying that holding it gives you the same feeling you got when you summoned Golgol?"
"Yes."
I couldn't put it into words properly, but something about it just felt… possible.
"So what are you going to do?"
"I'm not sure."
In the past I would have summoned without a second thought. This time, though, something snagged.
This thing… came from that guy, didn't it?
What if I summoned with it and that human-disgrace of a psychopath popped out with a flourish?
Summon it? Or not?
"Doesn't seem like a soulstone to me. I think you'll be fine."
"Yes, well, about that…"
I fretted a moment longer, then decided to trust my instincts.
Fine. Whatever. I'd summon it.
Just as I had with Golgol the first time, I moved my mana according to whatever rose naturally in my mind. Light spilled from the purple gem and answered my mana in kind.
And then—
Clack. Clatter.
A single skeleton bloomed into being in midair.
Half-dreading what I might find, I stared hard at its skull, half-convinced it would match the bastard who'd once been a candidate for my master.
It didn't.
Different.
Different was good — but the real question was what this thing actually was.
"Hello?"
Tiktak?
So this one was a Tiktak. Golgol had been more of a clack-clack type.
"What's your name?"
Tiktak.
"You don't know? So you want me to name you? Mind if I ask a few questions first?"
Tiktak!
Golgol Unit Two (working title) thumped its chest as if to say, ask me anything. The gesture was a little too vigorous for its frame, though — its bones cracked and crumbled under the impact. More fragile than Golgol, apparently.
Not the important part right now.
"Suppose I bought bread because I was sad. What would you ask me?"
Option one: What kind of bread?
Option two: What happened?
What? Wasn't this the classic MBTI T-versus-F sorting question?
Yes. Exactly.
It wasn't a medical or scientific classification, so I had no intention of treating the answer as gospel. It was the bare minimum of due diligence, nothing more.
Because that master candidate from earlier — no. Calling that creature a master candidate was an insult to me. Let's just call him the bastard.
Anyway.
That bastard was a full-blown psychopath.
Would a creature like that have a human heart? Not a chance. Empathy? Obviously none. So which option would he pick?
Obviously number one.
I wasn't saying T-types were psychopaths. I was a T myself. A T was simply someone who thought rationally — a cool-headed, sharp-minded intellectual, not some antisocial inhuman monster.
Picking option one wouldn't automatically make this thing a psychopath… but if it picked option two, I could set my suspicions down for good.
Confirmed F.
Was there such a thing as an F-type psychopath? I found the idea hard to picture.
In other words: option one left things uncertain, but option two was a clean bill of health. A reliable enough sorting method for my purposes.
I waited for its answer.
Tiktak!
"Option two?"
Tiktak-tik!
It nodded furiously — and yet somehow managed to look droopy while it did it, clacking its jaw over and over in a dejected rhythm.
What was it trying to say?
"Hmm. It's asking if something difficult happened. Whether you want bread when you're sad. And… it seems to be telling you to cheer up."
"You can interpret that?"
"I get the general feeling."
Maybe the dead had some kind of mutual wavelength. Either way, good enough.
Judging by the reaction — confirmed F. Extreme F, even.
That made it trustworthy.
"From now on… you're Tiktak."
Tiktak?
"Tiktak."
"Could you put a little more effort into the naming?"
"Did Tiktak say that?"
Strange. It looked perfectly pleased to me.
"No, that was just my own thought."
"Then overruled."
It was my firm belief that a summon's name should be short, snappy, and easy to remember. By that standard, Golgol and Tiktak were excellent names.
Anyway.
"Tiktak, is there anything you can do? Anything that comes to mind?"
Tiktak?
Tiktak tilted its head. A moment later—
Tiktak!
"Oh, you thought of something? Great — what can you do?"
"It says to watch."
I stood quietly and observed. Tiktak planted its feet and whirled its arms around as if working up to something.
Could it fly?
That thought barely had time to form before—
Tiktak!
—a change erupted alongside Tiktak's booming battle cry (or whatever that was). I let out a low sound of appreciation.
"Huh."
I wasn't the only one startled. The ancestor marveled too.
"Well now. I had my suspicions, but whether I should say 'as expected' or simply 'astonishing'…"
In this case, astonishing was the right word.
Because Tiktak's talent was this:
Necromancy.
That's right. Tiktak had summoned a skeleton.
The skeleton Tiktak had summoned was, how to put it…
"It's tiny."
"Yes. Small."
Maybe a meter tall, give or take. It reminded me of something — that one game character. A skeleton protagonist type. Not so much human bones as the child of an entirely separate species called "Skeleton."
Tiktak!
"Hmm. It says it can summon more."
"Oh, really?"
Tiktak nodded with supreme confidence and spun its arms again. Practice must have helped — this one came out faster than the first.
A second skeleton appeared.
"Oh."
How many could it manage?
"It says we'll have to try and find out."
"Hmm. Is that so?"
Then we'd better check right away.
I took Tiktak and its two little hangers-on out to the training grounds. Golgol came over at once.
"It's asking what those are."
"Hmm… your little sibling?"
Golgol?
Golgol tilted its head, apparently unfamiliar with the concept of a "sibling," then fixed Tiktak with a long, hard stare.
That was when it happened.
Tik!
What was that? A sneer?
"Hmm. Seems it's treating the other less as a sibling and more as a rival."
"Yeah, looks that way."
Well, their relationship could be sorted out later.
"Golgol, over here. Tiktak, go over there and keep summoning. Figure out how many you can call."
Tiktak!
Tiktak planted itself in the center of the grounds and shot Golgol a look that was pure mockery, then whirled its arms the same way as before.
And then…
One, two, three…
Mini skeletons multiplied across the training grounds one by one. The summoning finished before long.
"Twelve."
"So it is."
Was that a lot? Or not enough? I had no idea. I'd never met another necromancer to compare against.
While I was still turning it over, Golgol stepped forward.
"Yeah, Golgol? What is it?"
Golgol!
"It's asking for a chance."
"A chance? At what?"
Golgol!
"Hold on a moment. This one's a bit harder to parse… Roughly speaking — ah. Yes. I see."
Maybe it was because I'd grown stronger, but the ancestor seemed able to interpret the two of them reasonably well now. And so I learned what Golgol wanted.
"It says it's stronger. That the lot of them are barely a mouthful."
"Ah."
So what now?
"You ought to check their combat strength. Put them against each other."
"Shall we?"
Golgol!
Tik!
Golgol nodded with absolute confidence. Tiktak flashed that same irritating grin as before.
Hmm. Did that one need a retest on the MBTI? No — this time I should skip the MBTI entirely and run a full personality evaluation over time.
Anyway.
"Go ahead and fight."
I was curious, honestly. How strong was greatsword-wielding Golgol? And how would Tiktak fare, commanding twelve Minitons — short for mini skeletons?
"Can you handle this? From the look of it, your mana is being used even when those little ones are summoned."
"Yes, I think I'm fine."
I'd kept Golgol summoned around the clock and practiced Bone Armor in every spare moment. Given that mana capacity grew the more necromancy you used, my reserves now were in a completely different league from the beginning. Running both of them at once wasn't particularly hard.
But a plain fight would be boring.
"Winner is big brother."
Blue ghost-fire flared in Golgol's eye sockets.
And exactly five minutes later—
Golgol!
—Golgol stood with one foot planted on Tiktak's skull, the only piece of it left, striking a pose worthy of a conquering warlord.
"Well. Golgol was overwhelming."
"Yeah. Looks that way."
Undead couldn't attack their own caster… right? I sincerely hoped so.
Because the Golgol I'd just watched had been a little frightening even to me.
And so, after acquiring the necromancer skeleton Tiktak, my forces looked like this.
First, Golgol.
"At Golgol's current level, it could pass for a middling Non-Bloodline Knight without much trouble. For comparison… roughly on par with that fellow Milo."
"Not bad at all."
Milo was still a common soldier on paper, but his skill put him on level with the knights around these parts.
What? A backwater knight was weak, you say?
Well… you could look at it that way.
But don't get the wrong idea. Even the bottom-rung knights were genuine killers who ate three meals a day and spent the rest of their time refining the art of murder. A handgun might be weaker than an anti-tank weapon, but get hit by either one and you still die the same.
So what about Tiktak?
Tiktak! Tiktak!
Perhaps it was the sting of defeat. Tiktak was currently hard at work in the middle of the grounds, summoning Minitons and drilling them. The ancestor's assessment of Tiktak's combat power went as follows:
"Each Miniton seems to be worth about half a soldier."
"Oho. And in Milo units?"
"Do we really need to do that?"
"We should keep the units consistent."
"…I don't follow the logic, but it's meaningless. A hundred rabbits don't make one wolf."
Fair point.
So, to summarize: Golgol equaled one Milo. Tiktak equaled six soldiers. Was that the breakdown?
"For reference, one Milo is Milo without using aura."
So knight-class either way, then?
Hmm. At this rate, I could retire right now.
Look at it. By simple arithmetic, I alone could field the combat power of seven people. That meant seven times the daily wage!
And Golgol?
Knight-class. Work one day, loaf for a week!
Wasn't that exactly the life I'd been dreaming of?
"Have you forgotten your promise to me?"
"Promise… ah."
Right. I had made one of those. Something about working hard in my own way for the revival of the Falaon estate.
But I'm a Falaon, so me doing well is keeping the promise too, isn't it?
The thought crossed my mind, but I didn't bother airing it.
"Of course I remember."
"Good. As you should. But… the estate seems unusually restless today."
"Yeah, it does."
The training grounds were somewhat cut off from the outside, yet people were rushing about so frantically that the commotion carried all the way in.
What is it? I don't remember hearing about anything special.
I was still tilting my head when John, my personal attendant, came pelting up at a dead run.
"Young master — huff, huff — the Baron is asking for you."
"Father? About what?"
"I don't really… I was only told to bring you at once. But whatever it is, it seems serious."
"Let's go, then."
And so I arrived at Father's study. He asked me without any preamble whatsoever.
"Khtun. Have you given any thought to marriage?"
"Huh? No thanks?"