The Summoner of Salvation (77)
If a dungeon is a well-crafted world sealed inside a box, then the front line is the demonic realm itself.
That is the shared impression of everyone living in this world.
Dungeon incidents had already been happening long before the Awakened system was fully established. More precisely, even back then there were those who mistook the mystery of awakening for their personal privilege and power, treating dungeons themselves as nothing more than a means to make money—childish outrages that only made everything worse. In fact, one could argue it was far more severe in those days. Now there are specialized agencies that handle Awakened, and the laws have been revised so that even ordinary Awakened will move to catch those who commit crimes.
Where there are villains, bounties appear, and where there are bounties, bounty hunters inevitably gather to claim them.
Among the villains of that era, the worst were the ones who used Maker-related powers to force dungeons into rampage, driving an already chaotic world even further into madness. That much has not changed much even now.
Dungeon rampage. The collapse phenomenon commonly called a Break.
It was that damned phenomenon that made me decide to create Project Exile in the first place.
These days there are countermeasures, solutions, and even the Maker collective known as [Changyeon], so the damage is not quite so catastrophic. Back then, though, none of that existed, and everything had to be handled in the most slapdash, improvised way imaginable.
That is why the things left unresolved from those days multiplied until entire regions became places where human life was considered impossible. Those places are now called the Unexplored Zones, the Sealed Zones—and at the same time, the Front Line.
The place we currently occupy sits at the outermost edge even among the front lines, an awkward strip of land caught between the ordinary front and the true Front Line. Of course that does not mean it is safe. If anything it is more dangerous, crawling with monsters and the criminals who ride their coattails to prey on people.
If one were to compare a dungeon and the front line and ask which is harder, I would probably give the nod to the front line—the side that forces you to worry about far more things. Unlike a dungeon with its clear theme and distinct personality, the front line is stark reality. The entanglements with other people that you never feel inside a closed dungeon, the successive battles against completely different monsters drawn by the noise, and the quiet, ever-present fear that fellow humans might turn on you—none of it can be easily ignored.
No matter how skilled someone is, the moment they are thrown into a sudden situation they will still flinch. That is why people form parties or expedition teams.
If there is something you lack, of course it is important to work at filling the gap yourself. But there are things that no amount of effort can ever complete. That is when a party becomes necessary. Matching yourself with people who can cover your weak points is faster and more reliable than trying to patch everything alone.
The downside is that every time a party breaks up you have to bring in new members, re-synchronize, and spend time getting used to one another all over again. That is why parties rarely dissolve unless something serious happens. In that sense, people who hone themselves at places like the Academy have a clear advantage. The chance to mingle in advance with others of similar level who can fill your gaps, to form parties, and to choose the people you will walk with in the future is not something that comes around often.
I’m the exception, of course.
I chose the path of a summoner precisely because I hated and resented those parts of myself that inevitably had to lean on others. Whatever I lack, I fill with my own power. In the places that matter most, the only one I can truly trust is myself.
Everything I had worked for until now proved it was not wasted, right here in this moment.
“Shaaaaak—!!”
A mantis larger than most adult men swung its scythe-like forelegs. In an instant the limbs exceeded the speed of sound and vanished from sight. I condensed mana into my pupils.
Sssweeeeeng!!!
In the leisurely stretched field of vision I finally caught their shape. Forelegs wreathed in mana thick with the property of fire—specifically the aspect of activation—carved through the air with vicious red afterimages.
Chuut!
At the same time, viscous fluid came flying from the caterpillar-type beast beside it. I twisted my body with calm precision. The moment I reached a position that let me slip past the blade-sharp forelegs by a hair’s breadth, I launched a shadow thorn straight at the caterpillar’s head.
Kwajak!
The sharply rising spike of shadow punched clean through the caterpillar’s skull. It thrashed a few times, then went limp.
Huuuung!!
Something cold brushed past my side. I immediately wrapped a shield of shadow around my hand, blocked the identical foreleg thrust coming from the opposite direction, and at the same time poured mana into the gauntlet on my other fist.
I lowered the proportion of shadow and raised the proportion of fire.
Hwarreureuk!!
Pitch-black flames bloomed as if they had been waiting. I did not even bother to control them; I simply drove the punch home.
Peoeok—!
“Ki, eeek…”
The impact shattered the creature’s carapace and snapped its thin waist. Insect-white blood sprayed out and instantly evaporated in the black flames, leaving behind a sour yet somehow savory scent.
“Kishaaaaak!!!”
In the split-second opening created by my attack, another mantis that had been camouflaged against a tree and waiting for its moment revealed itself and swung its legs. Killer Mantises of this season form pairs for mating. In other words, if you meet one, there is a high chance another is nearby.
Judging by the fact that this one was larger than the one I had just killed, it was probably the female. The force packed into the ambush carried the clear intent to kill in a single blow.
I remained unfazed even as the attack closed in on my face. Because sharp fangs were already positioned behind the creature.
Tak! Kwaduk!!
“Kirik…?!”
One chew crushed its body. The massive form was dragged down into the earth as if sinking into the ground. Naturally the attack aimed at me failed as well. The creature thrashed wildly after being forcibly pulled under, but only for a moment.
Hwaeaek! Ppudeuk!
The half-buried body spun once at high speed and was severed clean through. All that remained was the limp, half-body of a cooling mantis corpse.
“Well done, Ea.”
Chambang!
The creature under my command answered by flicking its tail once, then submerged back beneath the earth.
With the skirmish settled, I tapped the ground a few times. The Hive fragment I had left behind stretched out like a shadow and swallowed the corpses lying on the floor.
“Impressive. You’ve already clearly surpassed the level of a mere cadet.”
“You’re the one who clearly isn’t human.”
“Keuheuheu, you little brat. There are things you say to your elders and things you don’t.”
Ppujik!
At my retort, Harantz pinched his fingers together and crushed the Killer Mantis head caught between them, then snorted a laugh. He immediately wiped the smile away and shook the monster corpse from his grip. Of course the Hive fragment happily devoured that one as well.
“From the looks of it, none of them have lived even a year. Not even warm-up material.”
He said that, yet the people behind us were struggling… well, if he said so, then so it was. The moment you start grabbing those things bare-handed and bursting them, you have already left the realm of humanity.
Killer Mantises are C-rank monsters. They are born with the skills Body Acceleration and Stealth, so anyone who meets one for the first time without knowing better inevitably falls prey to those razor forelegs. Combined with blade-level sharpness and ambushes that rely on stealth as their main hunting method, even people who know about them often end up with serious injuries. On the front line they are infamous as newbie-killers.
Their defense, however, is garbage compared to their offense. If you can spot them first, you can kill them in an instant. That is why they originally sat at B-rank, but as the overall level of Awakened rose over time their grade was adjusted downward to C. Not that the creatures themselves became weaker; the general standard of education simply rose, and methods for dealing with them became widely known.
For anyone heading toward the true Front Line, though, few monsters are more annoying. The road is long, yet they pick fights; they have no nest concept, so once they decide to hunt something they cling stubbornly even if the target is far stronger. You cannot simply ignore them. Leave them alone and they become a real threat, so every encounter drains strength for no good reason.
Since their base form is a mantis, their reproduction works through egg-laying—once they spread, that is enough. No matter how thoroughly you exterminate them, around this time of year they suddenly erupt from somewhere and become a massive headache. In game terms, they are the equivalent of a guaranteed battle monster.
Why do I know so much about them?
Because when I visited the front line for Exile-related work, a mass outbreak of these things caused the death toll to spike overnight.
That period was truly hellish. Killer Mantis materials are not particularly popular for equipment or alchemy to begin with. Even so, when they appear in huge numbers you still have to kill them. In the end people reach the point of just extracting the magic stones and leaving the corpses where they fall.
That is where the real problem starts.
Even if they are insects, places where corpses rot and fester naturally fill with the gloomy aura unique to death energy. So you cannot simply bury them; you have to burn them until not even ash remains. Fail to clean them up properly and the death qi and miasma seep into the land itself, turning the area into an undead breeding ground.
But that is easier said than done. Do you know how much fuel it actually takes to burn a living creature’s corpse? Even with overwhelming firepower, time is inevitably required. When that happens not once or twice but in massive numbers, people start thinking “just this one won’t matter” and leave them.
They are carnivorous, the meat tastes terrible, and there is no real demand for them, so no one bothers. The result is a place where death energy gathers with ease.
Back then natural undead actually began to appear, and the Church of the Radiant Sun went into a frenzy, regularly dispatching “ascetic” expeditions to the front line. Once an atmosphere suitable for undead has formed, restoring things to normal is extremely difficult. I heard that even then they had to comb the entire forest by force, and the damage was anything but light.
Thanks to that, though, I was able to gather more than enough experimental data for Exile, so it worked out in the end.
I stuck with Lee Se-rin just to avoid annoying stares, and that only made me more exhausted.
Days I never want to relive.
I wrapped mana around my fist and swung without even looking behind me. Something burst with a wet sound and went flying into the distance. Another Killer Mantis that had thought I was distracted and charged.
There’s no end to them. Seriously.
Cockroach-like bastards—no matter how many you kill, more just keep coming. The funny part is that even the A-rank cockroach monster Death Black doesn’t breed this aggressively.
…Something’s off.
We are heading into summer, but it is still too early for the population to be this high. Yet the number of monsters we have met on the way to our destination already exceeds three digits. The fact that their numbers are increasing rather than decreasing is a clear sign that someone is intervening. Of course, after pulling a cute stunt like this they would not leave themselves completely unprepared.
My mistake. If I had known this man possessed that level of defense, I would have simply flown over and dropped him from directly above. He would have flattened the surroundings like a bomb all by himself, wouldn’t he?
Too late for that thought now, but it still felt regrettable no matter how I looked at it. Of course this method was stacking data of its own, so it did not really matter.
Uuung!
At that moment a dense wave of mana rolled out from deeper in the forest.
“Kieeeek!!!”
“Sssiiik…!!”
“Kurreuk, keureung!?”
Monsters came flooding in as if drawn by the wave. Monsters are sensitive to mana by nature. Instinctively they know that consuming it will make them stronger. Scattering mana so carelessly is a sure way to attract a horde.
Our advance must have been smoother than expected, and now they were getting desperate. They had given up on hiding and were openly summoning monsters.
“…Brat. You felt that too, didn’t you?”
Obviously. Without answering I lifted Shiz. As if it were the most natural thing in the world she pointed the way toward the source of the disturbance. With this I could send her ahead without worry.
“This is Ichiro’s mana.”
At those words I stopped myself just as I was about to tell her to run ahead and smash the culprit.
It had brushed past so quickly that I had glossed over it, but when I carefully replayed the sensation there were indeed similarities to the mana I had felt in that room.
But this was Shirogane Ichiro’s mana? There were too many strange points. I needed to pin this down clearly.
I flicked a glance toward Lee Se-rin standing behind us. From the faint smile she wore while watching me, she clearly had no intention of helping. She had maintained that spectator stance ever since we arrived at the front line, so I had not expected anything. I only checked her to gauge whether she had already interfered in this matter or not.
Still, corrections had to be made. No matter how much of an idiot I might be, I am not so stupid that I forget mana I have already felt once.
“Calling this Shirogane Ichiro’s mana leaves far too many impurities.”
“Meaning?”
Instead of answering immediately I activated Reaper. In an instant the surrounding colors blazed in five dazzling hues and a waterfall of light that threatened to blind me erupted.
I adjusted the mana so that I looked past all of that and observed only the souls, then fixed my gaze on the “something” far ahead.
Masses that should never have mixed were forcibly tangled together. Most of them had already fused, yet in the center something was still baring its teeth and snarling, refusing the fusion.
That was probably Shirogane Ichiro’s soul. He had been unconscious for three months, was it? Long enough that an ordinary person would have lost their sense of self. Yet that soul still clearly retained its ego. Whether from iron will or from love for his family I could not say, but he had been fighting continuously ever since that day.
Impressive, I’ll give him that.
But it was also extremely inefficient. If I were in that situation I would not fight head-on; I would start by searching for a way to absorb every last one of them instead.
“…It’s a chimera, I think.”
I could not be completely certain. What I did know was that the pseudo-chimera was using Shirogane Ichiro’s soul as fuel instead of magic stones.
That was exactly why I had felt the dissonance. It was using Shirogane Ichiro’s mana itself, yet because the main body was what it was, the mana passed through a filter and became tainted with impurities once.
When I relayed that information as-is, Harantz’s expression visibly soured.
“Then it’s the work of the Black Magic Tower. To think they would even reach out to those things… the name of Yashiro has fallen far.”
I nodded in agreement. There are not many people in this world who create such grotesque things. At best it would be the work of those who broke taboos, were cast out, and ended up joining the Black Magic Tower.
I examined it a little longer, but nothing major seemed wrong. If the chimera was destroyed, Shirogane Ichiro’s soul would come free.
Normally, that is.
I pushed Reaper even harder.
Jjirit.
At the same time a long-absent pain flared as if my brain were cooking. My eyes felt like they were on fire. No—I could actually see mana sparkling in the form of flames.
I forced myself to ignore the pain and the blood trickling from the corners of my eyes and looked at the thing again. Not just looking—I layered on the Book of Investigation as well and continued the observation.
What had been hazy like a heat shimmer gradually grew clear.
Fuck, this is filthy hard.
First I needed to understand the most irritating point: why Shirogane Ichiro’s soul was bound to that chimera’s body.
I focused solely on that, and at last I reached the answer. Then I was stunned.
Is that… even possible?
It was not simply bound. Shirogane Ichiro’s soul was clearly one. Yet it was twisted in a bizarre way and seated throughout every part of the chimera’s body.
How was something like that possible? It was not as if the connection to his original body had been severed, and beyond that—could a soul be torn while remaining intact and then bound to another body?
Even as I said it, it sounded so strange that I checked several more times. The result never changed.
In that moment a game I had enjoyed in my previous life floated up. The one where you created orange and blue connection points and solved puzzles by passing through them.
The fascinating part of that game was that if you placed the connection points on the same plane, an infinite loop occurred as if facing a mirror. Looking into one side of the portal showed your own back. Stretch out a hand and only that part poked out on the other side.
Shirogane Ichiro’s soul felt exactly like that right now. Connected, yet divided. The formula used in the middle was far too complex for me to grasp at my current level.
No—could I even read it at all?
It was not even sealed inside a top-grade vessel; the fact that something like this was possible with a mere chimera left me speechless.
Was the material special? No, that alone was not enough. This was not a matter of good materials or bad; it was something that should never have been possible, forcibly woven together.
The proof was Shirogane Ichiro still struggling inside. A chimera is something that can barely move even after perfect fusion. Yet this thing was moving just fine despite its interior being a complete mess. The existence itself had to be regarded as a walking contradiction.
It isn’t even an application of sealing mechanisms.
If the soul had been held by a seal, using Shirogane Ichiro’s mana in that manner would have been impossible to begin with. On top of that, fuel would have been required to maintain the seal. From what I could see, this chimera had nothing of the sort.
Grotesque.
A phenomenon that should never occur was being maintained for some reason. A clear anomaly.
The chimeras alchemists commonly create are mostly the result of body modification. They take an existing creature, forcibly attach parts from other creatures, then graft in something to replace the soul so the body recognizes everything as its own. Only after that harmonization process can something finally be called a chimera.
But this… how should I put it? It was not connecting parts; it was simply forcing living things together into a lump. Like mixing rubber clays of different colors and molding them into a plausible shape.
Contradiction upon contradiction.
So that’s why she followed so obediently.
She had expected this. I shot a cold glare at Lee Se-rin, who was still smiling sweetly behind us, and clicked my tongue.
Originally I had planned to hand the job over and move on my own. But after seeing something like this I could not simply walk away. It was a contradiction that exceeded the bounds of my understanding. If anything went wrong, Shirogane Ichiro’s soul could vanish along with the thing.
What a headache.
What was certain was that I had to move personally and extract the power source—Shirogane Ichiro’s soul. My instincts whispered that with Reaper and my summons it was entirely possible.
From ancient times, what is needed most in sudden situations like this is adaptability and improvisation. And those happen to be my specialties, given how much I prefer the spontaneous. In other words, for me this situation was, without exaggeration, perfect.
The sheer artificiality of it all made my mood sink in an instant. I looked at Lee Se-rin again, but she remained in her spectator’s seat, watching. Preparation was already finished, so I was supposed to just open my mouth and eat, was that it? How very kind of her.
“Five minutes.”
At my sudden words Harantz raised an eyebrow. Whatever reaction he showed was outside my concern right now.
My brain, spinning at full tension in real time, stuttered as if overloaded. I forced it down with mana. My vision flickered and my center of gravity wavered. Irrelevant. I fixed myself with shadows, poured Spirit to the maximum, and focused everything on recovery.
Even that was not enough, so I re-summoned Echidna—who had been standing beside Comet—and turned her toward my recovery as well. While I was at it I summoned Kallion and Growl and issued orders.
Growl was to join the Hive and tear apart every approaching enemy so that no unnecessary interference reached me. Kallion took complete control of all mana regulation that would have hindered my calculations.
With that, the throbbing in my head eased a little.
The moment I realized Shirogane Ichiro’s anomaly was being influenced by something spatial, Haze had already moved and was analyzing exactly what it was.
Everything was completed in a mere two seconds. Adding the stretched subjective time made it longer, but what did that matter? To anyone watching it would have been the blink of an eye.
“…No. Three minutes will be enough.”
A smile rose unbidden to my lips.
An incomprehensible strategy had appeared for the first time in a long while. Maybe because I had borrowed the idea from a game, the gamer’s clearing instinct I thought had died long ago stirred once more.
“I’ll crush it thoroughly.”
The shadows that began to writhe under the influence of my emotions looked like the hands of the dead bursting up through the well-packed earth of a grave.
Well… not bad at all.