The Spirits' Grievances
As soon as she was summoned, Undine flew straight toward the water’s edge. I followed behind at a leisurely pace, strolling along with my hands in my pockets.
“You go too, Rai.”
[What? Me too?]
“That’s right!”
[Can’t you just call the others? Like Adore or Grufein!]
“Hey now. You need to get used to that body. Off you go.”
Rai, who had spent a long time living as a snake, desperately needed practice fighting in his wolf form.
[Someone of my caliber shouldn’t have to dirty my own paws like this!]
“When I say go, you go.”
Apparently thinking this fight didn’t require his participation, Rai was dragging his feet. I gave his backside a firm kick.
It was full of affection. At least, that’s how I saw it.
“Go on, Rai-Rai!”
Rai reluctantly joined the fray.
And right then—as if he had sensed my mocking grin—the hostility of the lizardmen suddenly swung toward me.
Out of all the people here, the fact that they were hissing specifically at me was proof that their instincts were far more developed than a human’s.
They were clearly wary of me more than anyone else.
Not bad. They knew how to identify a dangerous individual.
“Hello there, friends.”
Even though, on the outside, I looked like the weakest and most harmless person present.
And I even greeted them so kindly!
The lizardmen tensed up when they spotted me drawing closer, but they were completely helpless against the sudden surge of water that crashed into them from behind, dragging them back into the river.
I jerked my chin at the flailing creatures who had no idea what was happening.
Undine pulled them deeper into the water and began spinning them round and round. A small but powerful whirlpool formed in the river.
Every single one of them was sucked in, except for the lizardman currently fighting Rai.
“……Oh my god!”
“Sister, maybe you should change your bathing spot? The lizardmen seem to have their eyes on it.”
“Is that… something you’re doing?”
“Strictly speaking, it’s Undine who’s doing it.”
Their opponent was a lizardman, strong in underwater combat, but Undine was water itself.
There was no better place for a Spirit Master like me to fight.
That was exactly why I felt relaxed instead of pressured.
“I can’t believe it! Was Undine always this powerful?”
“Spirits are only as strong as their master allows them to be.”
“Amazing… I had no idea being a Spirit Master was this incredible.”
Rather than puffing up with pride at my sister’s admiration, I stood by the water and stroked my chin.
Something didn’t sit right with me.
Undine had dozens of lizardmen trapped underwater by herself, but at this rate, we wouldn’t be able to finish them off.
Lizardmen could breathe underwater, so drowning them was impossible.
It was only natural that fighting water-dwelling creatures with water itself wouldn’t yield a decisive victory.
This was a first for me.
Come to think of it, my specialty—Unbreathing—probably wouldn’t work on them either.
The tribespeople, who had entered battle stance, began gathering around me one by one.
They pointed at the whirlpool in the middle of the river and the dozens of lizardmen struggling to escape it, chattering at me excitedly.
I had no idea what they were saying.
[Huff… huff! Master!]
“Hmm?”
Rai, who was in the middle of a fierce brawl with the only lizardman left on land, called out to me urgently.
Rai had the lizardman’s tail clamped in his jaws, while the lizardman had wrapped its own tail around Rai’s body and was raising its claws threateningly.
I’d heard lizardmen claws were highly venomous. But there was no way something like that could harm Rai, so I remained perfectly calm.
[I can’t do this! I’m a spirit! A spirit! Not a wolf!]
“Keep practicing.”
[Can’t I just turn them into statues?!]
“No. Diamonds are expensive.”
[Gah!]
Rai had overwhelming defense, but his offensive capabilities were lacking.
He had been a little better as a snake, but ever since taking on a wolf’s form, he seemed completely lost on how to use it.
For example, his go-to attack was coating enemies in diamond to immobilize them—an incredibly inefficient method.
It was far too costly to call it proper combat, and it didn’t suit a wolf’s fighting style at all.
[Then at least let me transform into a snake! I’ll finish them in one go!]
[That’s not allowed either. A wolf that turns into a snake? People will think I really am a witch.]
I had no intention of being burned at the stake.
[Ugh! This is so uncomfortable! Do you have any idea how hard it is to fight in this body?!]
[Nope.]
[It’s ten times more distracting! I have to pay attention to four legs, two ears, a tail, and teeth all at once!]
[That’s exactly why I’m telling you to practice.]
Rai thought he was incredibly useful, but from my perspective, all he had going for him was his absurd defense. Nothing else was worth bragging about.
The ones who saved Rai from my cold shoulder were passing tribespeople.
They smashed the lizardman’s head with a rock and jabbed its eyes with a branch, allowing Rai to finally bite down on its neck and escape.
Then, as if deeply wronged, he whined with the monster’s green blood dripping from his mouth.
[This is unfair! Who makes their spirit fight in close combat?!]
[A master who happens to have a spirit with a physical body.]
[Master, you’re doing this on purpose! You’re deliberately only giving me tasks I’m bad at!]
Oh, you finally noticed?
[Master! Master!]
While I was making a sour face, Undine came fluttering over to me.
I quickly smoothed out the wrinkles between my brows.
“Oh my, my sweet Undine! You’re amazing. Incredible. Holding twenty of them at once—our Undine is the best!”
[Discrimination! This is discrimination! Master has a double personality! You’re a pervert who only likes cute things!]
“Ugh, so noisy.”
It was true that my expression when looking at Rai and when looking at Undine differed by about 180 degrees.
[The monsters are too good at swimming. They keep trying to escape!]
“Is that so? Then shall we burst them?”
To end this stalemate that felt like a battle between water and fish, what would be best?
Should I drain all the blood from the lizardmen’s bodies? Or increase the water pressure until they exploded? Or maybe…
“Ah, Grufein.”
That guy was still around.
The spirit I called with a clap of my hands was the ice spirit, Grufein.
I could have called Adore, but there was a risk of electrocuting the people nearby. Grufein was the perfect choice right now.
Since we had only formed our contract a year ago, I needed to summon him often to build rapport.
“……Grufein?”
But this guy’s resistance was extreme.
It wasn’t unusual for him to ignore my calls like this.
“Pain!”
I ground my teeth and shouted. Only then did he reluctantly appear on my shoulder in a swirl of cold air.
I called him three times!
[You’re so annoying.]
“Hey! I haven’t called you in months!”
[Still annoying.]
“Then hurry up and freeze those things!”
The ice spirit Grufein slowly drifted over the river.
He had zero motivation. He was the complete opposite of Adore.
[These guys?]
When I nodded, Grufein lazily dropped… massive chunks of ice over the whirlpool.
About forty of them, each as thick as a thirty-year-old tree trunk.
“Pfft.”
He had made them so huge that my mana was instantly cut in half. Every time an ice chunk slammed into the riverbank, the ground shook with a terrifying boom.
The river quickly turned green with blood, and lizardman fragments encased in thin ice began floating along the shore.
That… that damn bastard.
He’s going all out just because it’s not his own mana!
“Pain! I told you to freeze them, not hack them into pieces like some brute! This is practically crushing them…”
[You’re the one being annoying.]
Grufein spoke in a truly irritated tone before vanishing with a flick.
He had returned to the spirit realm on his own.
“That arrogant little—! I swear I’m going to—!”
What a rude spirit!
Agh, if he weren’t my spirit, I’d…
My blood pressure is spiking. Who the hell did he take after?!
While I clutched the back of my neck, Rai chuckled and said,
[See? I told you to give up on that one. There were plenty of gentle spirits, so why did you insist on contracting with that stubborn jerk?]
“Damn it!”
Grufein was the ice spirit who had once refused to form a contract with me.
And I, unusually persistent, kept summoning him again and again until he finally appeared.
As long as the ice spirit stone was in my hand, I believed it would eventually work.
And in the end, I succeeded.
I had summoned him over thirty times before he finally responded.
It took two whole years.
I thought I had achieved something amazing. I swear I never imagined I would come to regret it this much.
[Master sometimes digs his own…]
You’re not going back to the spirit realm either. When I glared at him, Rai quickly changed his words.
[Digging your own grave in advance is a good thing! Preparation is key!]
One of them never missed a chance to tease their master, and the other couldn’t do a single task properly.
This was exactly why I couldn’t help but adore Undine.
[Aaaah! No! Master! That’s the Dragon Heart side!]
Another advantage of Rai becoming a wolf was that there was now a lot more of him to grab and yank around.
Lying sprawled out in a breezy pavilion, I lazily munched on freshly picked fruit from the field.
“Hey Rai, about Einy. How can she hear your voice?”
I used the prone Rai’s waist as a pillow and rolled around.
“I thought that was supposed to be impossible?”
[It is possible. If their spirit affinity is abnormally high for a human.]
“Hmm… But even Magi couldn’t hear you, right? And he’s a dragon.”
That was before Rai absorbed the nameless gold dragon’s Dragon Heart that Magi’s mother had given him. Until the strange resonance between them settled, Rai’s voice had been audible only to me for a very long time.
[Dragons don’t have high affinity. They’re a species with strong dominance. The two are completely different.]
“So you’re saying Einy has higher affinity than a dragon?”
[It’s not that dramatic. She has about the same affinity as an elf.]
“That’s plenty dramatic, then.”