Chapter 24
“ANYWAY, ALL IN ALL, compatibility matters most. The desire to be friends, the joy of being together… Such things are more important than anything when it comes to summoning. Contracts are about creating bonds, after all. Summoners are often called laborer mages, but I don’t think that’s accurate. We don’t force spirits into labor; we work together with them. Like me and Undine here, for example.”
Summoning contracts were based on various circumstances, conditions, restrictions, and expectations, but compatibility was vital. It was all about teamwork, as Mira said in summary.
At that point, it was time for questions. She gave the adventurers precise answers; though she forgot simple things like people’s names, she had a surprisingly good memory when it came to summoning. Receiving more information than they could’ve hoped for, the adventurers were equally surprised and happy.
***
“Thank you! I’ll look into this as soon as I can!”
“Thanks for teaching us. Summoning really is incredible.”
Once Mira finished passing on the knowledge she wanted to, the female adventurers who’d listened most intently thanked her and ran off. They headed straight for the Mages’ Guild, naturally.
The Adventurers’ Guild Union had numerous support services to help adventurers form parties. Adventurers could search for compatible members based on rank, class, age, gender, and many other factors.
The women planned to use that service to find freelance summoners. Their first choice would be a summoner able to summon a water spirit, but they’d settle for someone with the potential to gain that ability. No doubt the Mages’ Guild would be busy tracking down summoners for a while.
“Um, could I ask a favor?” someone asked.
Mira turned toward the voice addressing her and saw six women who seemed to be from the same group. Based on their outfits, they comprised three front liners, a mid-liner, and two back liners. The back liners looked especially young.
“Oh, a favor? What is it?” She couldn’t help smiling at the lovely team. Whatever the situation, she was happy when girls sought her aid.
“Our friend Layla here is a summoner,” the stranger said, introducing a girl wearing a green robe. “But she can’t use any evocations.”
Upon that introduction, Layla greeted Mira cheerfully. “I’m Layla!” She gazed directly at Mira with hopeful, perhaps envious, eyes.
“R-right. I’m Mira.” The impure thoughts Mira experienced upon the girls’ approach made her flinch away from Layla’s innocent, expectant eyes, though the thoughts obviously weren’t realistic. Clearing her throat and collecting herself, she urged the girls not to beat around the bush. “Now, what’s the favor you’re asking?” Why were they introducing her to a summoner who couldn’t use evocations?
“Well, we’d really like you to teach Layla to use evocations.”
“To use them? Not learn them?” Mira cocked her head in confusion.
When she’d heard that Layla couldn’t use evocations, Mira assumed that meant that the girl couldn’t learn the most basic evocation, weapon-spirit summoning.
To make summoning contracts with weapon spirits like holy and dark knights, a summoner had to defeat those spirits using their own power. By defeating them, they earned the spirits’ respect.
However, as weapon spirits were spirits, they were quite strong. Even the weakest were D-rank, and C-rank status made someone a veteran adventurer. A summoner just starting out couldn’t defeat such a foe easily, especially not a summoner as young as Layla. She looked hardly thirteen years old.
Still, it was no exaggeration that a summoner’s journey began with weapon spirits. Those spirits were used as a standard, both in terms of forming bonds and contracts, and in proving one’s power as a summoner.
As artificial spirits, weapon spirits couldn’t progress on their own. They literally resided in weapons created by human hands and given meaning by human use. Therefore, a summoner had to train such evocations from the get-go, which made the spirits good indicators of skill.
An inability to use them would greatly restrict a summoner’s future contract options. Some might be lucky enough to encounter and befriend a spirit, but that was exceedingly rare—and usually more challenging than learning weapon-spirit evocations.
Thus, newbie summoners sought ways to overcome weapon spirits, even if it entailed considerable expense. Mira had helped many figure out how to do just that. After working with a number of them, she’d gathered enough information to devise one reliable solution. She’d intended to teach it to Layla, but it seemed that wasn’t necessary this time.
The girl who’d first addressed Mira was Layla’s big sister, Sara. According to her, Layla had already learned a weapon-spirit evocation. “Um…about two months ago.”
Sara told Mira what had happened eight weeks prior. Back then, the young summoner had yet to make a contract with a weapon spirit, which naturally troubled her to no end. Then the group bumped into a summoner of incredible skill. That summoner, a middle-aged man, declared that he was working to popularize summoning throughout the world.
“Wonderful!” Mira was deeply moved to learn that someone else out there was fighting for the future of summoning. Who was the man?
When she asked, the girls replied that they only knew his name—Bruce. They explained that they’d started off cautious. After all, when Bruce saw Layla struggling with her magic, he suddenly approached her and offered to help, unprompted.
“Well…one can hardly blame you for caution,” Mira muttered, shooting a glance at Layla. She was still just a little girl. How come a grown man wanted to help her? Alarm bells would obviously ring.
“Bruce was actually really kind, though.” Sara smiled broadly. He must’ve been quite the man.
“Yeah!” Layla chimed in. “He taught me lots of stuff.” She explained that, as they spoke with Bruce, they’d gradually dropped their guard. The main reason was his summoning skill; he showed them a ton of evocations.
As a result, Layla began to admire the man. She gladly accepted his offer to help her learn a weapon-spirit evocation, and they began their journey together. As for how they planned for Layla to defeat a weapon spirit, incredibly, they chose the same tactic that Mira had come up with so long ago—Bruce had indeed taught the girl the blasting-stone method.
Mira had devised that method for contracting weapon spirits in her Danblf days. It was a very reliable strategy for newbie summoners, although using it definitely required blasting stones. That was due to weapon-spirit characteristics Danblf had learned about during his research.
To contract a weapon spirit, one had to defeat it alone. Furthermore, while doing so, long-range attacks such as those from bows didn’t count. But how could weapon spirits tell the difference?
Focusing his investigation on that point, Danblf managed to discover the determinant. It was mana. A weapon spirit remembered and distinguished the mana of whoever it fought. That mana detection had a roughly two-meter radius, which was why bow attacks didn’t count.
Blasting stones were perfect for such battles. They could be called long-range attacks; you had to throw them, after all. However, one thing distinguished them from arrows and bombs. To activate a blasting stone and render it usable, you had to infuse it with your own mana, which would detonate it.
That caused a weapon spirit to detect the mana within the blasting stone and recognize the mana that defeated it, resulting in a contract. It might’ve seemed like a cheap trick, but most summoners shrugged that off, since the task was Herculean without it.
There was also another special work-around method—a protracted battle. A long fight could cause a weapon spirit to remember someone. It would recognize the victor even if they finished it off with an arrow or bomb.
That method wasn’t realistic, though. Spending hours fighting a tireless husk wielding a sharp weapon was difficult even for a trained warrior. It was practically impossible for an up-and-coming summoner unless they brought a veritable fortune in restoratives. Blasting stones could help summoners overcome that hurdle.
The latter method was extremely efficient, but not flawless. Producing blasting stones was a problem. One needed the crafting skill Refining, so only Danblf and a few people to whom he’d imparted his knowledge could make them.
In other words, blasting-stone supply was a serious issue. Worse, the number of blasting stones with enough power to safely defeat a weapon spirit was even lower. Yet the summoner who’d offered to help Layla had given her one. Generous indeed.
“Oh ho, a blasting stone! I don’t know the man, but that was very kind of him!” Skill aside, manufacturing blasting stones was expensive, so Mira praised the stranger as a model summoner for future generations.
“I’m grateful to him to this day. Thanks to him, Layla smiles much more lately.” Sara gently patted Layla on the head. No doubt she’d worried, and no doubt this had made her very happy.
Layla acted a little embarrassed, but there was determination in her eyes. She wanted to use summoning to help Sara from now on.
“Yes, yes. That’s wonderful to hear.” Mira couldn’t read minds, but she could tell at a glance that Sara and Layla were very close. Seeing such loving siblings warmed her heart.
“I could never thank him enough! Not everyone would give away a treasure like that to a stranger they’d just met. We couldn’t bear to waste that opportunity, so we thought of a way to make sure we used it!”
At that point, the topic abruptly moved away from their gratitude toward the skilled summoner. Perhaps because of how sincerely Mira listened, Sara’s tone became more and more excited. She was recounting all this like a heroic tale.
Bruce had sat in on their meeting to discuss how to use the surefire strategy, but he offered no input beyond outlining previous success stories.
It wasn’t school, after all. Coming up with things themselves was important.
According to Sara, the summoner had only provided them with one blasting stone and information on past successes. Had they devised a plan of attack from that alone?
Bruce had tried to promote their growth as a team, Mira realized. That only made her more curious about him. She was sure that, if they ever met, they’d have a great time drinking together.
While Mira reflected on the kind of man Bruce seemed to have been, Sara continued her story. “He said he wouldn’t help with the battle, but he’d gladly aid us as much as we wanted in our preparations.”
After using the past successes as points of reference to brainstorm with the group, they finally settled on a strategy: a trap. By capturing the weapon spirit in a hole, they could limit its movements. Then, Layla would throw the stone in.
They couldn’t afford to let anything go wrong, so the summoner advised them that they needed to practice. They rehearsed several times.
The contract condition requiring a solo kill didn’t extend to the prep before the fight, so it was no problem if Layla’s friends helped her prepare. When the team learned that, they immediately began setting the stage for the fight.
They needed a hole of the proper size and a route that guaranteed the spirit would be lured into it. Those apparently took an entire month to prepare.
They made the route by piling sandbags, creating a narrow corridor, and dug the hole at the end of that. Bruce also helped them prepare that path. Thanks to him, it turned out even more perfectly than they expected.
“We tested it on a monster first to make sure it’d work.”
They couldn’t afford to let anything go wrong, so they needed to practice. So the summoner had advised them, and they rehearsed several times. Their results were spectacular. As long as they could herd a target into the corridor, it always fell into the hole.
Their preparations complete, the day finally came. After all the time they’d put into the plan, it went off without a hitch, and they drove the spirit into the hole. The only thing they hadn’t practiced with was the blasting stone, given its value. However, Layla calmly activated it as directed and scored a direct hit. Thus, she managed to defeat the weapon spirit alone.
Sara noted that the blasting stone was much stronger than they’d expected. The others laughed. It seemed the elder summoner had given them a particularly high-quality one.
To guarantee a kill, one had to aim for some measure of overkill. Since she’d done similar things in-game, Mira was even more impressed with this “Bruce” man. He indeed knew what he was doing.
After seeing that they’d defeated the weapon spirit, Bruce quickly departed. Many other summoners were struggling at the start of their careers, and he wanted to help as many of them as he could, as quickly as he could.
“What a wonderful attitude. I wish I could meet the man.” Mira was amazed. Bruce was truly a guiding star for summoners.
But she’d forgotten what the girls had said earlier. Despite how proudly she’d told the previous story, Sara was sad now. “So as you’ve heard, she already has a weapon-spirit contract. But now we don’t know how to actually…”
Despite possessing that contract, Layla just couldn’t properly summon the spirit.
Bruce had given her some training after she’d learned the spell, but when it came to actually performing it on her own, things were different. She couldn’t grasp the feeling of it, and she’d been failing ever since. Worst of all, the general lack of summoners meant that there was nobody they could beg to teach her.
“Hrmm. I see…” Now understanding what Sara had meant about learning to use the evocation, Mira looked back at Layla.
When their eyes met, Layla bowed deeply. “Please!”
From appearances alone, the girl looked older than Mira; her honest pleas despite that proved her sincerity. More importantly, it was Mira’s policy to help anyone who needed assistance with summoning.
Thus, she confidently replied, “Leave it to me.”
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