The Summoner of ■■ (11)
This was exactly what it felt like to skip school out in the open.
After resting so thoroughly that boredom finally set in, I ignored the order to stay put in the dorms and headed outside. Midway I locked eyes with the dorm manager and thought I was screwed—figured he'd start yelling and march me straight back in. Instead we just exchanged ordinary greetings. The only other thing I got was a mild warning not to stay out too late.
I was wandering around in plain clothes, and even the guys who looked like security only gave me a glance. No one stopped me. Academy security this full of holes? No wonder the place gets breached left and right. One of these days I might actually have to chew out that old man about it. Whatever else he is, he has this weird principle that if someone brings a problem all the way to him personally, he'll handle it no matter what. Claims that if they went to that much trouble, the least he can do is take care of it. Personally I'd rather he dealt with things before they reached his desk, but I'm the same guy who puts off my own work until tomorrow-me has to clean it up, so I don't exactly have room to talk. If it ever gets unbearable I'll just send Ban Taewung or one of the hangers-on stuck to him to dump the complaint straight on the old man.
"...Hmm."
Now that I was actually out, there was nothing to do. I thought about grabbing a meal and started looking for a good place, but the hour was awkward and nothing was open. Time just hung there, useless. I considered diving into a dungeon, then remembered I hadn't set foot in the research lab in ages. I'd been so focused on dungeon runs that I'd only attended the most basic classes and hadn't touched research at all. Since I'd already parachuted into the research track, leaving zero results would mean I hadn't even earned my keep. Might as well kill some time at the lab while I was thinking about it.
My feet carried me there on autopilot. I already had the key from before, so no need for any annoying detours.
"?"
When I reached the entrance, lights were on inside a lab that should have been completely empty and lifeless. A vague chill ran through me—half of me wanted to turn around and leave, the other half insisted that walking away without checking would be wrong.
"...Let's go."
A man keeps his word once he's said it. I activated the master key on my device, opened the front door, and strode right in.
Thud, crash! Clatter-clatter!
The second I entered, frantic sounds of someone scrambling to clean up erupted from deeper inside. Definitely someone here. While I'd been gone they'd practically set up house—traces of coffee and instant noodles cooked in beakers were everywhere. If you're going to eat, at least clean up after yourself. Little messes like that wreck concentration. I'm the type who lives on calorie bars because cooking takes too much time and effort, so I keep trash to the absolute minimum. Suck it down or tear it open, chew, dump the wrappers in one bag, done.
Once the racket died down I opened the inner door and stepped through.
"Ewaaah...!"
Beyond the table something was crouching, spitting out a flurry of panicked little noises. Voice said female. What kind of eccentric comes all the way to the Academy and sets up house in a research lab? Whoever it was, I could already tell they'd be a pain.
The leftover food smell and floating dust were getting on my nerves, so I opened a window, yanked the blackout curtains shut, and poured mana into my fingers.
"Kyaaah! Light?! My eyes, my eyes!!"
The shriek hit almost at the same instant. Annoying and a little unhinged. Exactly the kind of person I wanted nothing to do with. Felt a bit bad using a brand-new summon for something this mundane, but that was the whole point of making it—convenience. It could deal.
Snap!
"Haze."
Whoooosh!!
The translucent fluff of cotton that had settled around me like a dust-clearing cloud immediately accepted my will, drew on my mana, and took control of the surrounding air. Every scrap of trash flew into a single pile and vanished into the bin; anything that looked like research notes was stacked neatly in front of me. Stale air and dust got blasted outside in one go, though the lingering stink stayed, so I opened the window wider. Watching the place clean itself in seconds, I decided I'd done a damn fine job creating this summon. High intelligence, sharp as a tack—I liked it a lot.
"Wh-what are you?! Is this a raid?! Is this that seizure-and-search thing I've only heard about?!"
A burst of pink exploded into view right in front of my satisfied face. Her hair seemed to have a mind of its own, puffing up and shrinking with every emotion—pure small-animal energy. If I had to pick a comparison, a red panda? Both hands raised, trying her hardest to look threatening and growling. The only real difference was that eye-searing shade of bright pink.
I grabbed the pink raccoon’s head and squeezed. Mana included. A little hard.
Squeeeeeze!
"Ow?! That hurts! My head’s cracking open...! Something that shouldn’t be leaking is leaking!!! Kieeeek...!!"
Flail-flail.
Watching her thrash around clutching her skull, I thought, wow, the Academy really does collect characters. I kept testing the pressure—tightening and loosening—while she wriggled and never stopped talking. Loud as hell. On second look she wasn’t a red panda; she was a chick. The endless peeping finally got on my nerves, so I let go.
"Hueee... No violence, okay? It hurts so much, you know..."
Thanks to my skill she was full-on bawling with snot running down her face. I wasn’t fooled. All that theatrical suffering hadn’t generated a single Pain Token from Sadism. Meaning she was a lot tougher than the act suggested.
The real question is whether it’s an act or not.
I stared down at her ridiculous performance in cold silence, waiting to see how long she could keep the farce going. Slowly her reaction shifted.
"...Sniff."
When I gave her nothing, she started reading my face. The opening power play must have landed; she clearly realized I wasn’t ordinary. The way she rubbed her eyes while secretly rolling them was impressively subtle and fast—anyone who wasn’t already coating their vision in mana the way I was would have missed it completely.
"Um, excuse me..."
Silence finally broke her. I formed a chair out of shadow and sat.
Bang!
"Hic!... Hic, hic..."
I made the sound deliberately loud to broadcast that I was in a foul mood. She jumped so hard she started hiccupping, looked away, and put on the most wronged expression imaginable.
Mental fortitude’s solid too.
Not completely empty-headed, and she had some survival instincts. I crossed my legs and started flipping through the research notes Haze had stacked for me. Looking at someone else’s materials without permission is normally rude as hell. I was doing it anyway. You can tell a lot about a person from their work; the papers alone would give me the outline. Real data lives on devices anyway—nobody keeps the important stuff on paper lying around.
Dungeon reconstruction using a hydro engine?
I skimmed, raised an eyebrow, and looked at her again. Rough notes, but everything was slanted toward redesigning or creating dungeons.
A Maker, then?
Makers. People who go beyond studying and cataloguing dungeons and try to build their own. Put simply, a group whose goal is constructing the ultimate dungeon. The basic approach is to leave the existing theme and structure mostly intact while kneading the contents into whatever shape they want, or adding something entirely new. The skilled ones can analyze a dungeon from the outside and pull geography, monster layouts, boss presence, clear conditions—everything—without ever stepping inside. That uniqueness means top Makers get constant love calls from nations, hunter guilds, and corporations alike. After the Dungeon Creation Alliance—or DCA for short—formed, more of them started freelancing: taking commissions, getting dispatched, then moving on so they could keep more time for personal research.
When I launched Project Exile I’d gotten help from a Maker the DCA sent over. However the middle steps went, Exile’s core mechanism was creating temporary mini-dungeons to lock enemies inside. Barrier specialists did most of the heavy lifting in the end, but the basic framework and production data came from Maker input. Come to think of it, they’d said they invited a Maker last time to look into things. This woman must have been the one assigned. The job never got finished on her end and we cleaned it up ourselves, so now she was just squatting in the lab?
"Name."
"Hic, y-yes...?"
"Your name. What is it."
Her eyes went wide. She clutched the pink hair that fell all the way to her waist, half-hiding her face, and finally spoke.
"Croft... Bella Croft, okay?"
Bella Croft. I ran the name against everything I remembered. Nothing. Still worth checking.
After that whole mess and she found zero anomalies in the dungeon? Something’s off. Either she’s not skilled enough, or she’s dirty. One of the two.
Could just be that I’d forgotten the name, so I opened my device and messaged a Maker I knew—someone high enough in the Alliance that confirmation would be solid. While I waited I tapped the armrest. The woman calling herself Bella Croft kept glancing at me and slowly started to stand. Floor must have been freezing; spring hadn’t fully arrived yet. She knew how to take care of herself. Once I confirmed whether she was friend or foe, she’d be perfect research material.
"Um... so who exactly... are you? Is it okay if I ask?"
Still hadn’t pinned me down, so she was feeling me out. The whole situation had been too sudden for her to process; now that her head was clearing she wanted answers. I didn’t bother giving any. The reply came back on my device and I just sighed.
The record was so clean she might as well have just joined the DCA yesterday. Actually the membership itself was old, and she’d used Alliance services for years, but her practical dungeon experience was paper-thin. Theory, though—years of pure theory had made her razor-sharp. They’d thrown her into this job to fill that gap, and the lack of intel had tripped her up instead. The Evil God cultist business was classified, but inside the DCA everyone who needed to know already knew. Public secret. Whenever a wave like this hit they just muttered “cultists again, outside our jurisdiction” and quietly stepped back. Meaning this woman operated so alone she didn’t even have those informal channels.
The note from the Alliance contact said she was a good kid, just a little lacking. I accepted that, sent a polite thank-you for the help, and decided I’d put her to work. Money wasn’t an issue, and her specs—even as a Maker—weren’t in the expensive tier.
"H-hey... can you not hear me? Is that it?"
When I stayed silent her real personality started leaking out. She edged closer with increasingly rude little comments. I reached for her head again to shut her up, but she was half-ready this time. “Hiiiek!”—a pathetic little yelp—and she twisted free.
I watched her for a second, then spoke.
"Curious who I am?"
"Y-yes? Of course! After treatment this rough, not being curious would make me not even human!"
Those sparkling pink eyes full of righteous determination to reclaim her rights somehow made me want to mess with her.
"Your employer."
"Huh?"
"As of this moment, the man who just became your boss."
Bella Croft tilted her head, then the puzzle pieces slammed into place. Her face went past blue straight into pure white. She frantically opened her own device, tapped something, then slumped back down in defeat.
"Why? No, more than that—this thug is above me? No, even putting that aside, but still, even sooo...!"
She started clawing at her hair and wailing like half her soul had left her body. The look on her face was pure Newton watching an apple he’d dropped to prove gravity suddenly reverse course and float back up into the tree. The sensation of watching your entire worldview get openly twisted.
From her perspective nothing could be more unfair. A simple side job she’d taken for experience had exploded into a major incident. Before she could even handle it on her own, the Academy had already closed the case—because a third party solved it. She’d suffered for nothing, failed to finish the job, lost credit, never got paid properly, and now the Association was side-eyeing her. Fire under the feet, right? She needed the next commission yesterday just to rebuild her reputation, and instead she was stuck at the very Academy that had caused the mess. A job with zero upside forced on her. Of course she was miserable.
And the result was this: thrashing around so hard her fluffy pink hair swept the entire floor like a mop, looking exactly like a kid throwing a tantrum because she didn’t get a toy. Something about her felt familiar—then I realized she gave off the same vibe as Riri. At least Riri actually looked like a kid. This one was a miniature adult: small, but everything that should stick out stuck out and everything that should go in went in. Hard to feel sorry for her. Watching her just reminded me of the pathetic adult I’d been before I cleaned this place up.
"Kieeeek...! A dream, this is a dream. There’s no way this is real, okay...?!"
She started rolling on the floor, speech patterns going weird from pure denial. News flash: the world doesn’t run on your wishes. Same for me. If things went my way I’d already be ignoring whatever the protagonist was drumming, dancing, frying, or boiling and just doing whatever I felt like. The fact that I still have to do things I don’t want is exactly why they count as work.
I stood, walked over to the woman who had flopped out like a jellyfish washed up on the beach, and patted Bella Croft’s shoulder.
"...Ah."
Hope flickered across her face for a second. It didn’t last.
"Time to work. Let’s put in exactly as much effort as we’re paid for. Got it?"
The light in her eyes died the instant the words landed.
"...Could you maybe just spare me?"
Anyone listening would think I’d ordered her to die at knifepoint. All I said was let’s work together. You took the money—now earn it. Do the jobs I give you properly and nothing bad happens. I patted her shoulder again to drive the point home.
"...Ha, ahaha..."
A dry, damp little laugh echoed emptily through the lab.