Summoner (2)

Ding. Ding. Ding-a-ling.

Translucent windows began to bloom across the empty air like scattered ornaments. A long receipt of text unfurled, and I swept my hand through it, dismissing the entire scroll at once.

What remained was the single, familiar status window that belonged to me alone.

The final results I had already seen were stored in Record. All I needed was to pull out the changes from that and sort them cleanly.

“Let’s see.”

Better to start with the summons. Comparatively speaking, there was less to look at there.

Lately I had been keeping him summoned so constantly that dismissing him felt stranger than leaving him out. That probably explained why Shadow Dash—the skill that let him melt into darkness—had climbed to a level that felt almost absurd.

Given the way Hive’s skill set leaned hard into Dexterity, it was no surprise that particular stat had already broken thirty. I had always preferred balanced growth, so nothing looked lopsided. I dumped the remaining points—two into Strength, three into Intelligence, two into Luck—bringing them to 17, 22, and 15, then locked the changes in.

Next up: Growl.

If Kallion had claimed the most glory inside the dungeon Sun Spitting Sandstone, then Growl had eaten the most dirt and trial-and-error along the way. One-on-one marks against the named monster Gray Death, plus endless rounds against sand-concealed rattlesnakes and centipedes—all of it had paid off. Skills that had looked stubbornly stagnant, Battle Ecstasy and Berserker’s Combat Style, had jumped hard. The steady climb of his bread-and-butter Deep Wound needed no comment.

Whether it was the wolf race itself or the sheer bulk of his Strength, half-hearted attacks without mana behind them could no longer punch through Growl’s hide with any ease. Thanks to Berserker’s Combat Style, he thrived in pure brawls—taking hits, weathering them, and driving even deeper. Watching him hold the line so reliably made me feel I could keep trusting him with the front forever.

I poured five points into Strength and one into Dexterity, locking them at 43 and 25.

Next: Kallion’s turn.

The first thing that jumped out was Dragon Magic sitting at level 8. Last time I checked it had been hovering around 4. Reaching 8 this fast meant Kallion had been polishing magic with genuine seriousness. The other skills had risen too, but nothing like that. Looking at the numbers, I felt again just how broken a dragon truly was. If Kallion had evolved into anything else, this kind of explosive growth would never have happened.

I put four points into Dexterity and the rest into Intelligence, locking them at 20 and 33.

Last of the summons: Echidna.

On raw level she looked highest, but the others had all evolved once, resetting their displayed level from 10 back to 1. You had to assume a hidden +10 was sitting under the surface. Hive and Growl already pushing past 10 proved it. After a first evolution at 10, the next natural plateau usually sat in the thirties. If my guess was right, both of them would stall again around 20.

Echidna had grown in her own way, but the real prize for her had been the Doctrine. Over these two weeks she had fully settled it, forging her own pure divine power and learning to recharge it. No more fumbling with the faint divinity mixed into ordinary mana—she could now wield pure holy force, which would only accelerate her further.

The problem was Sin. It had ticked up once before her class change and then refused to move again. I had been chewing on that from the start. When every other skill climbed while one stayed frozen, ordinary hunting clearly wasn’t the way to train it. Sin granted bonuses for committing crimes or breaking rules—devilish enough on the surface, but I figured it was all in how you used it. Breaking rules also meant shattering the frames someone else had built. Dig deep enough and it might become a real trump card.

I put four points into Strength and one into Dexterity, locking them at 15 and 9.

That finished the summons.

“Now me, I guess.”

With this many skills, the changes stacked up too.

What hit me first was the Summoner level and the Dexterity number. I still didn’t fully understand how experience was calculated, but I had climbed higher than any two of my summons combined. Even Kallion, who had been prepping magic the whole time, should have been second; instead the summons had all risen in a strangely uniform block. My best guess was that most of the mana fueling those spells had been mine.

In theory, if I created a new summon right now I could hit level 25 while still raising it to 10. That would feel like raising two at once. Since things had already gone this way, building the next pair as a matched team from the start didn’t sound bad. Even if perfect simultaneous growth was impossible, I could link them mid-way and specialize them to cover each other’s weaknesses—something the current roster didn’t do as cleanly.

Melee was already covered by Growl and Echidna. Adding a dedicated ranged option for the times Kallion couldn’t shine, or something built purely around debuffs, both looked solid.

Dexterity had crossed the 50 threshold and handed me the title Forerunner. Simply holding it permanently boosted movement speed by 5 percent; equipping it raised all speeds by 10 percent. Nice to own, better to wear—but the title I already had equipped, Master of Transformation, was still superior, so I left it alone.

Most skills had ticked up by one. The ones I actually used—Sadism, Torture, Combat Focus—had jumped by two. Looking at the pattern, almost everything outside the weapon skills was feeding Dexterity. Unlike summons, I could gain new skills just by repeating actions, so I needed something Intelligence-oriented sooner rather than later.

My core skill, Book of Summoning, was still a question mark. Normally it leveled when I summoned a familiar and offered a sacrifice; last time with Echidna it hadn’t budged. Whether the number of contracted summons mattered was something I would test now. If this next summon raised it, then the formula “max summon level = Book of Summoning level” would be confirmed. If not, I would assume the skill’s hard cap was 5 and I simply hadn’t met the conditions yet.

Everything’s fine except the lack of information. That still bothers me.

It wasn’t that data on summoners was scarce. Data on cases like mine was scarce. People who rejected their destined vocation, picked one of the root classes—mage, swordsman, thief—and then further chose the minor path of summoner were vanishingly rare. You had to be a genuine eccentric. Most summoners, like Ban Taewung with his Indomitable Warrior of Reversal, simply accepted a pre-packaged “Summoner of Such-and-Such” destiny. Statistics even showed that the first vocation that appeared was usually the best statistical fit, and the vast majority took it. Hunting for a summoner path inside the already tiny subset of people who rejected destiny made me an exception stacked on an exception. Sparse information was only natural.

“Nothing left to check.”

I dumped every remaining point into Intelligence, locking it at 54.

The message arrived right on cue. Checking the new title, I found it mirrored Forerunner almost exactly. Simply holding it permanently reduced mana consumption by 5 percent; equipping it raised mana recovery speed by 10 percent.

Unlike Dexterity, mana was something I kept wrapped around my entire body, so breaking the 50 wall hit me like a physical sensation. Mana moved more smoothly than before, and I felt I could handle it with finer precision. If earlier I had been examining nearby mana through a magnifying glass, now it felt like I was using a telescope—able to see and manipulate things farther away with equal clarity. Pure metaphor, of course; my actual range hadn’t suddenly exploded. Dexterity had probably given me a similar quiet upgrade in dynamic vision and overall speed.

“Haaah.”

Just reviewing the changes had eaten a surprising amount of time. I opened my device and saw roughly an hour had passed. Spending a full hour on this felt ridiculous, but factoring in the time I had wasted just feeling out the new mana flow, it had actually been pretty efficient.

With another dungeon run planned soon, I needed to decide on the next summon quickly.

“Book of Summoning.”

A luxurious black tome materialized in the air and settled into my hand as if it belonged there. Reading my intent, it flipped its own pages and displayed the available list.

The list had grown since last time.

“Yeah. Ranged first if I can manage it.”

Personally I thought Kallion alone was enough—but that only held if I could deploy him everywhere. Using a past-life game analogy, Kallion was a pure AP hyper-carry. The moment an enemy shrugged off magic, his value dropped hard. What I wanted now was an AD ranged dealer.

Honestly the decision was already half-made. The biggest reason was the item I had pulled from Sun Spitting Sandstone this time: the Wasteland Archer’s Thimble.

No extra stats, but the effects were more than attractive enough. I had earned it the hard way—my first real pyramid clear, not the one-shot wipe of earlier runs, but a full, grinding slog through every misery until the boss finally fell.

The boss, Fallen Sun <Agatum>, had looked like a pharaoh forcibly demoted. Probably some kind of hierarchical undead. A black mage would have commanded undead directly; this one hadn’t. My guess was that he forcibly summoned every monster already nested inside the pyramid. As a former king he must have had some specialty for calling subordinates.

The correct clear was therefore slow conquest floor by floor. That way you never got sandwich-swarmed by the entire roster at once. In my case the cramped interior made Kallion unusable, so I had leaned on Echidna as main damage while ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠trapping the nuisances and leaving them. When the boss finally pulled every monster I had already fought into one room, I broke out in a cold sweat for real. In the end I accepted the pyramid’s collapse, summoned Kallion, and flooded the place with mana laced with the Holy trait. The structure came down, the boss died with it, and I grabbed the rewards while Kallion’s wings kept us aloft long enough to escape. First clear, and a thoroughly annoying one.

Among the archers that thing had summoned was a mummy wearing this thimble. Even as undead the obsession with shooting arrows had lingered, so living beings—specifically anything still alive—could no longer use it. Lucky for me, not every summon I could raise was alive.

“Bone Soldier.”

The image that rose from the Book of Summoning was a textbook skeleton straight out of a science textbook. Beside it sat the extra option for Mummy, but this time I wanted the orthodox skeleton, not a desiccated husk.

Unlike games, you couldn’t just spam arrows forever in reality. How long would a new familiar take to get comfortable with a bow? If I had to keep crafting shadow bows and arrows for it every time, the time sink would be ridiculous. Even after it got good, hunting down real bows and arrows later would be another chore. And if my shadow weapons worked on a target, Kallion’s magic almost certainly would too—so the whole idea was dead on arrival.

That was why this item’s effect stood out so hard. In a world that had already thrown logic and rules to the dogs, it created actual physical objects with real mass—no prep, no sacrifice required. Once the new summon could fully use a bow, it would become a solid combat asset. That was my thinking.

Penalty that living beings die if they wear it? Just pick something already dead.

I could pretend I was still deliberating, but the truth was that the moment I saw the item, every option except “skeleton archer” had evaporated from my head. The only real question left was what to pair with it—something to guard its back or cover its weaknesses.

“I choose Bone Soldier.”

As with the others, I didn’t bother naming it myself. I simply pushed the floating hologram in. Sparkles burst, and the system’s confirmation chime rang.

“Confirm.”

Thump.

For a second I was certain my heart had stopped. A full-body chill like someone licking every inch of my skin slammed into me, followed by the sensation of my neck being ripped out by force. Not just the heart—every organ, every drop of blood, every muscle dried out and rotted while still alive. The pain was so far beyond imagination that I even wondered whether “pain” was still the right word.

“Kh—!”

The frozen moment was mercifully short, but what I tasted inside it was something I never wanted to feel again. Blood welled at the corner of my mouth. I didn’t force it down; I let it spill. Pitch-black dead blood sprayed as if it meant to soak the floor, yet instead of landing it rose into the air and vaporized into pure mana.

The answer was always the same.

“I offer it.”

At the words, mana stones that had been resting inside my shadow rose into the air. I ordered Hive to pull out every useless item as well. Among them sat several copies of the Mummy Crafting Manual I had already obtained more times than I could count. Whether undead recognized their own kind or not, the materials dissolved at once and soaked into the Book of Summoning. I closed my eyes and waited.

No level-up chime ever came. So raising Book of Summoning required some other method after all.

Focus on the summon first.

The image I held was of strong bones. No brittle, weathered scraps. Skeletons might be the textbook fodder of every dungeon, but I had no intention of raising mine inside that mold. If I was going to do this, it would be strong.

I poured that fierce will into the book along with shadow-laced mana. Once everything was ready I gathered mana at my fingertip and flicked.

Snap!

“Keres.”

Sssssss…

At the call, my shadow slowly widened. Echidna had done the same; anything comfortable with darkness seemed to emerge from my shadow as a base. Hive had first appeared in light, but the more skilled he became with Shadow Dash, the more he started slipping out of the dark without fanfare.

Thud!

The expanding darkness suddenly stopped, and a hand of pure bone punched upward—exactly like a black mage raising undead from a grave. The only difference was that mine was crawling out of a swamp of shadow.

Hooooh…

The complete skeleton hauled itself free, then abruptly lifted its skull. Inside the empty sockets a vivid blue flame kindled. That must have been the sign of awakening consciousness; the skeleton turned toward me and bowed its head with a sudden jerk.

“Clack. Click-clack, clack!”

It worked its jaw joints desperately, trying to express something, but all that came out was the dry rattle of bone. Normally that would have been unnerving, yet the rough exchange of intent between summoner and summon already told me what it wanted to say.

It was thanking me. For what, I couldn’t be certain—yet somehow I felt I already knew. If the nightmare I had just tasted was death itself, then gratitude toward the one who had pulled it out of that agony was only natural.

Maybe I was over-reading it. I decided to believe it anyway.

“Here. Take this.”

I pulled the Wasteland Archer’s Thimble from my shadow and held it out to the blankly staring skeleton. Keres examined it for a long moment, then slipped it onto its bony hand without hesitation.

Whoooooosh…!!!

Even though no wind blew, a freezing chill washed over me from the front—some kind of ghostly wail, no doubt. The curse inside the glove was checking whether its wearer was living or dead. The blue mass of grudge circled Keres once, then sank back into the glove as if nothing had happened.

“Clack-clack-clack!”

“…Good.”

Keres rattled its jaw and thrust a thumbs-up at me. All clear. Even without the skill No Life sitting right there on its sheet, that appearance made “not undead” the stranger option.

Standing tall, its frame looked better than mine at a glance. Because I had imaged strong bones, there wasn’t a single common scratch or nick on them. People would probably call bones like that “dragon-bone quality.” Was that pure random luck, or had the image I poured in been strong enough to force it?

No idea. Maybe both. Maybe neither.

I had confirmed the cheerful personality under the scary exterior, so that was enough. Then again, with nothing but bones, “exterior” was a bit of a stretch.

“Think you can shoot a bow?”

“Clack!”

At my question Keres immediately clenched its fist in empty air and settled into a stance. A slightly grimy bow and arrow materialized in its grip.

Creeeak—

Not polished, but full of confidence, it drew and released.

Thud. Clatter.

The arrow dropped straight to the floor right in front ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of it. Because it had real physical mass, the falling sound was almost pitiful.

“Clack… clack-clack?”

Even the shooter itself tilted its skull in pure “why didn’t that work?” confusion. My hand rose to my forehead of its own accord.

…Ah. You too, huh?