She Professed Herself The Pupil Of The Wiseman (LN) - Volume 10 - Chapter 7

Chapter 7

FIVE LARGE SKELETONS—the Guards of the Midnight Sun Vessels—stood in the center of the room. Unlike the previous guards, they each had a weapon: a broadsword, a halberd, an axe, a mace, and a sword-and-shield combo. Their fighting styles differed based on their weapons.

The party had already discussed this during their strategy meeting. Tryde’s allies would fight the enemies they were best suited for, as planned. Mira and Tryde remained behind. Since they were both A-rank, they would fight the strongest guards.

“Mira, you take that one. If you need anything, just yell,” Tryde said, as he confronted the strongest guard, the one with the sword and shield.

“Of course. Leave it to me!” With a smirk, Mira fearlessly confronted the halberd-wielding guard. At the same time, she scanned the room and set the stage for the rejuvenation of summoning.

After confirming that everyone was up against their assigned foes, Tryde ran forward and ordered, “Now, begin the battle!” 

His comrades all ran together at once, closing in on their respective guards. The five guards moved as well. They readied their weapons and awaited the oncoming charge. However, the one with the halberd began to walk. Nobody was running toward that one, so it had decided to stride toward the slowly approaching Mira.

Tryde’s party collided with their four enemies. They used a hit-and-run strategy. Due to their large size, the guards would still pack a punch, even if they were significantly lower in rank than the adventurers. The party didn’t want to take any hits, so they took the safe route. Just as planned, they struck the skeletons with practiced blows before breaking away to put distance between them.

It was then that Mira took action.

“Pegasus… Deus Voltage!” Mira shouted for Pegasus and all the others to hear. 

As if to make its presence known, her steed neighed heroically and covered its wings in dazzling electricity. Thunder boomed, and lightning flashed…and the halberd-wielding guard was blown away. Thunder continued to echo throughout the room. A light rattling could also be heard—the sound of the guard’s core falling to the ground. All other sounds then ceased. The jaw-dropping sight had made Tryde’s party forget they were in battle; they simply gazed at the place where the guard had once stood, awestruck.

Mira had waited for them to get clear of their assigned monsters, thinking that using the thunder might surprise them and leave them vulnerable to counterattack. Even if they were shocked and awed, it seemed that had been an unnecessary precaution. The sheer power of that blow drew the full attention of the four remaining guards toward Pegasus.

This is all too perfect. Once she’d confirmed that all eyes were focused on her, Mira smirked and began summoning.

“My assigned guard is down. As promised, I will now aid you!”

Helping the others once she’d finished off her target had been part of their strategy, after all, so Mira brazenly engaged all the remaining foes. She used the summoning points she’d set ahead of time to flood the room with over fifty dark knights. In order to summon an entire army, Mira needed her [Immortal Arts: Hermit’s Cursed Eye] to utilize the mana in nature. But for a simple platoon of the summons, her own mana alone would suffice.

“These knights…?! Is this summoning?!”

It was sheer power of numbers. One knight would have been enough against these guards, but since she wanted to put on a bit of a show, Mira had summoned a wave of dark knights to close in on them. They smashed the guards to dust in no time, heedless of their feeble resistance. The guards were not especially scary to the average adventurer, as long as they strategized, but the dark knights stampeded over them in a laughably one-sided battle.

When they witnessed this overwhelming power, Tryde’s party gawked in amazement as the black wave swallowed the guards. It took about ten seconds total. The dark knights were then dismissed, and the room fell silent, the five cores still on the floor.

“And there you have it. Behold the power of summoning!” Mira declared.

“That was incredible, Mira! I had no idea summoning was so strong!” Tryde said, genuinely impressed, as he picked up a core.

“Isn’t it, though?” Mira replied, puffing out her chest with pride.

“Sure surprised me,” one of Tryde’s party members said.

“Thanks for making it easy for us,” another joked.

It seemed they now understood the untold potential of summoning and were deeply impressed; no doubt their perception of her field had changed.

Good. That’s one step closer to fixing our reputation.

Satisfied by their response, Mira threw the cores into the vessel. Once they were all inside, there was a loud rumble from up above. That was the sound of the puzzle being solved.

“There. The palace is cleared,” she declared.

“Sure is,” Tryde replied. “Let’s get going.”

Mira and the others walked upstairs triumphantly. 

Unfortunately, Mira failed to realize that the new perception of summoning she’d instilled was based on the greatest summoner in the world. As a result, any summoner they ran into would fall well below her standards. But she would not come to realize this for quite some time.

***

“Man, that was a real surprise. Mira’s summoning was just amazing.”

After the entire alliance had obtained their third symbol at the top floor’s crystal ball, they headed back downstairs. Tryde still seemed shocked as he continued to heap endless praise upon the power of summoning. Mira’s efforts had worked even better than expected.

The man who’d been subjected to his gushing the most, Viz, frowned in annoyance. “Yeah, yeah, we get it. We knew we were in for a ride the moment we saw that Pegasus there.” Despite being B-rank, Viz was extremely close in strength to A-rank. It seemed he’d realized Pegasus’s hidden power the moment he saw it—he had an eye for strength. Perhaps this was why Tryde was chattering at him specifically.

“That’s right,” Tryde said, continuing to talk his ear off. “That lightning was unbelievable. But I think what we saw right after was the real essence of summoning.” Though he kept changing his words, he kept repeating the same message.

“Yeah, you already said that. Blah, blah, simultaneous summoning.” 

Viz had enthusiastically agreed the first time, but by the third time, he didn’t react much. And because of his weak reaction, Tryde only became more animated, hoping to elicit more of a response.

I think that’s enough now…

Mira began to worry that this might actually hurt summoning’s reputation. But Tryde talked on, even saying that it had changed his outlook on life altogether.

“I get it!” Viz was out of patience. “There’s power in numbers, yeah. But summoners aren’t the only ones who can do that. I mean, just last week, I met this insane necromancer,” he countered, launching into a passionate tale about what he’d seen.

It had all happened on the second level. After collecting five symbols on foot, Viz had made his way to the Great Temple. The shortest route teemed with monsters. Though they were all F-rank monsters, their sheer numbers alone were threatening. Even a B-rank would not want to run in carelessly. So Viz had hidden and watched the situation, searching for a detour. Then an army of golems rushed in out of nowhere and mopped up the horde of monsters in the blink of an eye.

“I think they were just there to clean up,” he said. “After that, a guy on a dead Bicorn—I mean, a Bicorn skeleton—appeared and just rode through the carnage. Just seeing it made me shudder. That was one hell of a necromancer…” Viz trembled at the memory. The other party members were speechless.

Necromancy was just another field of magic, but its unique traits naturally came with a rather dark impression. Perhaps that was why Viz had been terrified rather than awed by the stranger. 

But there was one person who showed more interest than fear in his story’s necromancer.

While everyone whispered about the encounter, Mira ran over to Viz and asked, “You said a Bicorn? Would that Bicorn happen to have had a broken right horn?”

Viz looked surprised for a moment before confirming that she was right. “How’d you know? Do you know him?”

Mira was certain: that necromancer must be Soul Howl.

“I heard a rumor that he was around,” she said. “But to think that it’s true…”

A Bicorn with a broken right horn. Once upon a time, Mira and Soul Howl had teamed up to defeat a corrupted Bicorn. They’d broken the Bicorn’s right horn in the process, which Soul Howl loved, so he’d secured it as a catalyst for his necromancy.

Incidentally, “corrupted” referred to a process during which high-ranking beasts and other beings became monsters. The majority were extremely powerful foes; multiple people were needed to take them down. Running into one was rare. It was even rarer for a necromancer to be able to make them into a catalyst. That was part of what made Mira so certain.

She’d already known that Soul Howl might be here. Now Mira had eyewitness testimony of a powerful necromancer with a Bicorn that matched the one she remembered. It was extremely likely that the person Viz had seen was Soul Howl.

“Figures. You crazy-strong people always seem to know each other somehow,” Viz muttered, amazed. Tryde commented that he certainly couldn’t best Mira’s summoning, prompting an eye roll and a sigh from Viz. “Guess that leaves me stuck with this guy.”

***

They left the northern palace without issue. It was just after seven in the evening. The alliance had disbanded, but because most of them were headed to the fifth level, they naturally traveled together to the staircase. It would take some time, but they would go to the Great Temple and camp there for the night.

“I’d best go, then. Safe travels.” Mira was in a hurry to catch up to Soul Howl, so she got on Pegasus, said a quick goodbye, and lifted off for the Great Temple.

“Yeah. You be careful out there, Mira.”

Along the way, Mira looked down below and murmured, “Hmm? What is that voice?”

Pegasus slowed down in response, wary of their surroundings.

It was even quieter than a whisper, more like a faint presence than anything. She could make out neither the words nor the source, but Mira was certain that there was a voice.

“I know I heard something. Who is that?” While she had no idea who it was or what they were saying, she knew that she couldn’t ignore it. Heck, Mira didn’t even know why she knew that; it was just an odd, instinctual feeling. She pointed in the direction she thought it might be coming from and asked, “Pegasus, could you circle around there?”

Pegasus flew around the designated location in a slow circle. Mira gazed at the neat lines of mansions and palace ruins. After two laps, she pointed Pegasus to the next location. They repeated this process five times.

When they reached a corner of the fourth level, Mira heard that voice again.

“Hrmm?! Over there?!” Mira couldn’t make out the words, but she had heard the voice more clearly this time. She reflexively turned her eyes toward a large mansion. “What is that? Something seems off…”

The simple, featureless mansion was constructed of sturdy stone. However, the more she looked at it, the more something seemed off. What was the source of this odd feeling?

Mira landed in front of the mansion, slowly approached, and circled around it. From there, she put a hand on the door to check out the inside. Mira finally hit upon the source of her confusion and looked up at the building. “Of course! Why couldn’t I tell at first?” 

It was unnatural because it was among these ruins. If one compared them, it became obvious. The other mansions and palaces had decayed doors and windows, but this one looked as good as new. It was blanketed in a layer of dust, but the windows were unblemished, and the intricate parts of the door were all intact. It was clear that someone was taking care of this place.

“Has someone been living here all this time?”

Monsters appeared here, so one couldn’t let their guard down, even in a mansion. Could some insane person possibly live here? Mira chuckled to herself with the realization that some of her tower scholars might be eccentric enough to do so, as she peeked into a back window.

“Deserted. No signs of life at all, in fact.”

There were no signs of people—or anything else for that matter—near the windows. If someone lived here, then there would be some traces of them. Or perhaps the resident was just a clean freak? After glancing through all the windows, Mira confirmed that there was no sense of the place being lived in.

But then, she heard that mysterious voice once more.

“Where? Where are you?”

The voice had definitely come from inside the mansion. However, they didn’t reply to her calls; silence enveloped the place.

“Better safe than sorry.” Mira had been careful to this point since she thought someone might be living there. There was only one way to find out, though, so she put a hand on the door. “It isn’t locked?” 

She used just a little force, and the door opened without resistance. 

“Coming in…” Mira called out weakly as she stepped inside.

She was first greeted by a large, empty foyer. The mansion sported a wide staircase, high ceilings, and long hallways. The fourth level was bright, even at night, so the light filtering in through the windows allowed her to see to either end of the hallway.

While it was dingy, the mansion was still in a livable state. There was no furniture that she could find, though, and it lacked that lived-in feeling. However, it didn’t look quite as dirty as a home that had been abandoned for centuries should have. Had someone been cleaning it regularly? There was no fathomable reason to do so, but there were all sorts of folk out there. 

Just as the thought occurred to Mira, she heard the mysterious voice again.

“This way!” 

Mira must have been getting closer, as she now understood the direction with ease. She ran up the stairs and toward the back of the mansion. Pegasus warily followed. Guided by the voice, she arrived at the top floor of the mansion and made her way to the room with the best view in the building.

“Could it be…?”

Something was just barely glowing below the window. The light was so feeble that it looked like merely touching the thing might destroy it. It was the first time Mira had seen anything like it. Though she knew what it was by instinct, she felt a touch confused. Based on what she’d heard, however, this wasn’t impossible.

“Say, Spirit King, are you watching? This feels like an artificial spirit to me. What do you think?” Mira asked mentally.

A response came quickly. “Yes, I agree.”

Artificial spirits resided in things that people created and used for long periods of time. The Spirit King claimed that this mansion’s former resident must have cared quite a lot about it. Its lack of decay was thanks to this spirit’s power.

“However, it is badly weakened,” the Spirit King added. “It will soon reach its limit. The voice you heard may have been this spirit’s dying cries.”

“Goodness. Is that it?”

Artificial spirits did not have free will; they responded to people’s feelings. No doubt this room, with its lovely view, had been the lord of the mansion’s favorite. The spirit of the mansion had stayed there, quiet, slowly losing its light, as if hoping to spend its last moments there.

Unable to merely stand by and watch, Mira covered the spirit with her hands, as if protecting a weak flame from the wind. Then, she asked the Spirit King, “Is there no way to save this spirit?”

“I had a feeling you might ask.” His voice, unsurprised yet warm, echoed in Mira’s mind. At the same time, the marks of his blessing appeared all over her. “I’m ready when you are, Mira. It’ll be just like last time. Form a contract with the spirit, and I will give it strength through that contract and my blessing. That should save it.”

“I see. Then I shall!” Mira replied promptly. 

She gently placed a hand on the mansion’s spirit and used Contract Forging. The mark of the Spirit King’s blessing instantly glowed brighter, and his power traveled through Mira’s body and into the spirit. The contract’s light swelled brighter and began to flow outward before condensing within Mira’s right hand. The light of the contract eventually faded, and Mira felt the mansion’s spirit within.

“I think…that worked.”

Unlike the primordial spirits that governed the natural world, artificial spirits resided in the contractor after a contract was made. Mira felt the addition of one more such connection and breathed a sigh of relief; she had saved the spirit of the mansion.

“I thank you for your kindness. Take care of them.”

“I should be the one to thank you. Without the power of your blessing, I would not have been able to save them.”

Before she knew it, the symbols of the Spirit King’s blessing had faded. Mira gazed at her arms and sighed; if only she could make them glow at will. That would be so cool. 

Still, she smiled at the new connection she’d made.

Then, seeming to sense what was going on, Pegasus nuzzled Mira’s chest, as if to remind her that it was her best friend.