Right, my summoning ability.

So far I have only encountered one creature with this ability. I had been killing off massive brightly coloured snakes somewhere in a forest in Brazil, as they had two abilities I wanted: Poison manipulation and moderate-poison immunity. I already knew that even if one species had multiple abilities, I would get just a single ability from drinking blood from one creature. So, even though all snakes had both abilities, I would sometimes get poison manipulation and sometimes I would get an increase in my poison immunity.

I had been happily killing snakes left and right deep in the forest and drinking their blood, when I came across a huge brown King Cobra that had three heads! It was most definitely more than 50 feet in length and was wide enough to swallow an elephant easily! It looked like some kind of mini-boss monster that appeared in games. It was like I had walked through the whole ‘snake zone’ and ended up at the ‘boss snake’ at the deepest part of the zone. Sometimes this whole world feels a lot similar to a game…

I checked out the snake for abilities and found out that apart from poison manipulation and moderate poison immunity it also had a third ability: Summoning! I got extremely excited and killed it off quickly. It wasn’t hard, I simply kept hiding presence active, used elemental control to come up with numerous earth spikes, fireballs, water balls and wind blades and struck it. Earth spikes did the most damage, so I continued using earth spikes and even added ice spikes to the mix. It didn’t even get a chance of using its summoning ability before I killed it. Too boring.

I knew I could only get one ability from the snake, so I activated my luck ability and wished to get the summoning ability before drinking as much blood as possible from the huge king cobra. I’m still not sure if it was my luck ability or it was simple chance but I ended up getting the message from mind-me that I desired!

Blood successfully absorbed. Ability gained: Summoning. You will now be able to summon one creature. Drinking more blood from creatures with this ability will enable you to summon more creatures at a time. Be warned, summoned creatures could be hostile towards you!

I was overjoyed at getting the ability, but the ominous warning was the reason I ended up postponing trying out the ability. I didn’t want to summon something that could turn on me in an area already infested with monsters! Thus, I decided to wait until I reached a safe area before summoning something. I chose to go to Mount Everest next on my travels and facing the dragon made me forget all about the ability until now!

I was at my room where I had been staying the past two days, and it was obviously not a place for me to summon something. I teleported to the roof of the building and looked around. The roof was devoid of anything, and any aerial creatures were few and far between in the surrounding area. I scanned the aerial creatures for their abilities but thankfully none of them had anything powerful that could prove to be troublesome.

The sun was shining, the sky was clear and I had an empty roof, perfect time and place to summon something!

Even though this ability excited me, I was still a bit hesitant in using it. I had no idea how it worked! Did the ability summon something randomly, or did it summon a creature I was thinking about? How powerful a creature could I end up summoning? Do I really want a powerful creature that could turn hostile and end up killing me, or would a weak creature that won’t be of much help be better as it was safer? What kind of creature would I summon? What species? Would I be able to ‘unsummon’ it as I wish or would the creature summoned stay with me permanently?

So many questions! Why can’t I get some sort of a help menu?!

*Sigh* Let’s just do this...

I don’t know if thinking about a kind of creature will affect summoning in any way or not, but I think I’ll try and keep my mind blank just in case. A random summoning would be so much more exciting!

I cleared my mind the best I could and activated my summoning ability! As soon as I activated it I immediately teleported a fair distance away and used hiding presence, I didn’t want to take any chances with summoning something hostile that could harm me!

I looked carefully at the roof but couldn’t find anything… Did the summoning fail…?

I flew a bit closer to the roof and used all my vision abilities, but still couldn’t spot a thing. Strange.

I deactivated summoning and activated it once again, but still there was nothing! I looked all around as carefully as I could but there was nothing as far as I could see. Did the summoning only work in a specific location…? Or did it work only on a specific time of the day…? Hmmm…

This is getting frustrating! I am so tired of absolutely no information at all! In my frustration, I ended up repeatedly activating and deactivating summoning countless times to see if something would happen before…

“Can you fucking stop that already! It’s making my head hurt!”

Huh…? Who said that!

I looked all around me but couldn’t spot anything at all. Could it be someone using hiding presence like me? But wait… the voice was inside my head, like mind-me, only this voice sounded a bit childish. Telepathy…?

“Over here in the shadows you dumb fuck.”

Well, this is getting a bit rude. And annoying.

“Who are you?” I asked, throwing my voice as I was still on guard.

“You have to name me idiot. You are the one who summoned me after all! Damn, why did I have to get stuck with a stupid-ass pansy like you!” Replied the voice.

Well, it appears as if the summoning was successful in summoning an asshole. Though I still don’t know where this asshole is.

“Where are you?” I was still being cordial as I wasn’t sure how strong this ‘thing’ was and if it could harm me or not.

“I told you already didn’t I? Don’t tell me you have short term memory problems on top of being a world-class idiot? Fuck me! I’m in the shadows on the roof dumbass!”

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Okay, seriously, what’s with this shitty attitude?! Is this what the warning about summoned creatures being hostile meant? Fucking hell!

I took a deep breath and swallowed my anger. I still had no idea on how strong this thing was so I had to remain calm for now. I flew to the roof still with hiding presence active and searched through the shadows as the voice said. At first I was unable to see anything but I soon spotted an irregularity…

It looked… like a blob…? A small, spherical, gray… something… was hovering two inches off the rooftop staying in the shadows. It barely had a diameter of 4 inches, and that’s it. It was a 4 inch gray ball.

Is this the thing I summoned? This ball is the one who has been pissing me off?! Still, it could be an illusion of some sort… Stay polite for now Ben…

“Is that you? The small, round… thingie…?” I asked.

“A round of applause for the dimwit for finally figuring out where I am!”

Damn this thing is annoying! I conjured up a small half-inch fireball and flung it towards ‘Gray’, and was extremely pleased to hear his painful screams.

I let out a satisfied sigh and spoke, “There’s plenty more where that came from. Speak to me politely or it won’t end well for you.” I was still using hiding presence and I was still throwing my voice, but I don’t think a 4 inch ball can do anything to me anyways. I even scanned it using ability identifier but it had no abilities at all!

A few seconds passed by but there were no words from ‘Gray’. I took its silence in a positive light and decided to get moving with the conversation.

“So, now that we have speaking manners out of the way, could I know what the hell exactly you are supposed to be? All I can see is a small ball!”

“I am a shadow elemental.” This time, the voice sounded a lot meeker than before. Good.

“Elaborate please.” I think I know what it means by being a shadow elemental, but let’s just confirm my theories.

“Summoners can summon beings from the elemental world or the spiritual world usually. I am from the elemental world. I am a newborn shadow elemental. I can travel through the shadows during the day or move anywhere during the night, but any form of light harms me, so please no more fire attacks! Fire releases light too you know! It’s fucking painful!”

“Language!” I said.

“Sorry…” Gray replied. I was enjoying it much more now that the conversation was flowing on my terms.

So, this thing is an elemental. Neat! Though it is seriously weak looking, and it is basically useless in any place with light, but it is a newborn so hopefully it can grow stronger… Though it has a serious mouth for being a newborn!

I asked it a series of questions and I learned quite a few important things.

Summoned creatures get ‘downloaded’ with the language and a bit of knowledge about the world that they are summoned in, which explains how Gray knew English. Though I still have no idea how he learned that way of speaking...

More importantly, the ‘elemental world’ where it comes from has all sorts of elementals present, fire elementals, water elementals, air, earth, lightning, ice, light, dark etc. Gray here is a sort of sub-species of the dark elementals called a shadow elemental.

Shadow elementals are basically most useful in recon missions or for surprise attacks. I can do plenty of surprise attacks with my hiding presence but recon is something quite useful for me. If I had Gray here when I was travelling I could have sent it ahead and avoided those confrontations with the T-rex or the dragon. Hell, if I had him earlier I could have done a lot of information gathering on those underground abominations too!

However, the most exciting piece of information I got was regarding our ‘bond’. Apparently we had some kind of bond that comes from summoning, which allows us to communicate telepathically and it also allows one other pretty exciting thing!

“This bond also allows us to share abilities with each other. I have no ability right now so I can’t share anything with you, but you can share whatever you want with me. Right now I can only use one shared ability at a time, but as I grow that number will increase. This is only available because I belong to the Dark elementals. Each elemental species has their own special ‘bond-ability’, like fire elementals grant you more attack power, earth elementals give you an increase in defense, light elementals increase your regeneration etc. Dark elementals have the bond-ability that allows us to share abilities with our summoners.”

It was pretty strange for something ‘dark’ giving the ability to share things, but that’s beside the point. The fact of the matter is that this little gray ball here went from being a nuisance to being extremely useful in a matter of seconds! I could already see so many uses of this little shadow if I could share my abilities with it!

“Me and you are going to have a lot of fun, Gray!” I told him with a big grin!

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Author's note: So, what do you think? No OP legendary creature summoned that can tear worlds apart. I kept it simple, it's his first summoning! Anyways, more information on summoning will keep on coming as the story progresses.

As always, any feedback is always welcome. That being said, I will reply to any comments on this post or the comments in the previous chapter in the morning, as I am so sleepy it's not even funny!

Thanks a lot for reading! :)

P.S. 25 chapters done. Could I once again shamelessly ask for reviews? :P I really would like to get some advance reviews to see where I am lacking, so far there's only one and I have been trying to improve on the faults that the review pointed out. I would like more people to let me know what they think and where I lack so I can improve on it. Thanks!