What Benjamin wanted to do right now, more than anything, was to Banish Miku. He couldn’t, though. He had no leash on her host, Ethan, because Benjamin had shunned all the mind-control magics of any power. Even if he had them, he’d be hesitant to cast them.
Instead, he called her over, though he was careful to banish the hydra before she got close lest she find some way to misinterpret his orders. “Drop the illusion, Miku, and show them exactly what you did to your master.”
He watched the shock in Matt and Emma’s eyes as the demoness stepped away from her master, showing off his pale, scared skin as basking in the horror. She let her enjoy the moment as Emma threatened to kill her while he swapped a few of Ethan’s spells out for better versions that Benjamin had already created while he was in purgatory.
Once that was done, he deleted the logs to hide any clues, and then he said, “Alright, enough of this. I want you to summon a dragon and see just how much damage you can cause to them before they head this way, Miku.”
As she looked at him in confusion, he noticed that she’d shifted almost entirely from the wicked tigress that seemed closer to her true form to the cartoon fox girl he’d first seen her as. He had no idea why she thought that would have an effect on him after he knew what kind of monster she really was, but he ignored it as she asked, “How can I? Ethan doesn’t have access to that kind of firepower. Such things are reserved for—”
“Check again,” Benjamin shot back.
Moray Dragon (20 mana/minute): Summon the king of the ashen sky to rend and devour your enemies.
Her eyes widened when she found the description. “But… this is impossible. H-he’s not high enough level, and his system would never give him access…” she stammered. “Even Lord Jarris doesn’t have—”
“But I do,” Benjamin lied. “And now, so does Ethan. So summon the thing and use it solely against the Rhulvinarians before I send your host in for a little hand-to-hand combat, and you cease to be.”
That threat got the Rahkshaza’s attention, and even as she glowered at him, a swirling shape began to fade in above them. It wasn’t the first time Benjamin had seen one of these, but it took all of his certainty that she couldn’t harm him any more than Raja had been able to speak for a month. Even so, by the time it finished manifesting out of the ether, it was as big as a school boss and almost twice as long.
It lingered over them for a moment, and Benjamin kept his metaphorical finger over the unsummon button on Ethan’s system, just in case. It didn’t try to strike them, though. Instead, it darted out over the flaming buildings, heading for whatever forces were currently forming up to oppose them.
“You know… this might be too much… mana for him…” Miku said, feeling the strain even as Benjamin began walking down the street to try to get a clear view of what was happening. “He’s not ready for such a strain.”
“Ethan is already dead to me,” Benjamin answered with a shrug as he walked away. “If he lives, I have some questions, but if not, no big deal.”
“Are you really going to trust her… trust them with a fucking dragon?” Emma asked, jogging to catch up with Benjamin. “We should kill them now. Not in five minutes or after we question them. Right now!”
“We should,” Benjamin agreed. “But for the moment, it's impossible for her to betray us, and it's been impossible for Ethan to disobey her for a long time now, so I’d say we earned ourselves at least one firework show before we put them both out of their misery.”
“How did you manage that?” Matt asked as they hiked to the top of the nearest rise and behold the carnage below.
“Easy. The asshole that summoned her didn’t change his seal, and you know exactly how it is we cracked that code,” Benjamin said with a smile.
Matt opened his mouth to say something, but Benjamin cut him off. “She, on the other hand, has no idea how we came by such a piece of information, so it’s better not to talk about it.”
Matt grunted at that but said nothing else until they arrived at the top of the hill. It was there they saw the slaughter that was taking place without them. The iridescent eel slithered and shimmered across the night sky, leaving chaos in its wake.
Any men with free will would have been running in panic, but instead, the soldiers stood their ground, trying to fight the impossible, and died by the score as billowing lime-colored flames consumed them and left little more than the metal of their weapons and armor behind. This wasn’t a battle. It was a slaughter, and Benjamin wished that he had a way to save these people, but killing them without endangering the lives of anyone who was already free was the next best choice.
There were at least three summoners down there, based on the ice giant, the jellyfish-like soul stealer, and the small army of goblins gathered around one man. With the possible exception of the ice giant, though, those summoned demons were less than useless, and the first two evaporated only a minute into the melee when a stray gout of flame annihilated the whole area they were standing.
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The ice giant lasted longer. Between its giant size and the aura of cold that surrounded it, it was strong enough to last through a few of the dragon’s attacks. That gave the mage just enough time to open a rift to escape but not long enough to use it. Before the man could enter the thing to what looked to be a military camp on the other side, The moray dragon had finished constricting the giant until its limbs began breaking off, and it bathed the Summoner Lord and everyone on the other side of the portal in a wave of toxic green fire.
It was a massacre, but from this far away, it was instructive enough, and the three of them stood there watching in silence and after a couple more minutes. After watching this, he understood why the mages of Rhulvin relied on these terrible servants. As dangerous as system wielding humans could be, the monsters from beyond the world were far worse.
Benjamin silently watched Ethan’s mana tick down toward nothing, and when he was down to 5, Benjamin canceled the spell. He could have just as easily used Mana Burn to keep it going a while longer, but the beast that he summoned had already done its damage, and Benjamin thought it might be more useful to investigate the remains rather than let it keep rampaging until there was nothing left by ashes.
The mounted elements were only just starting to arrive when all of that was finished, and Benjamin walked back over to Ethan to make sure that no one accidentally struck the man down until he was finished with it. “Did you enjoy that little show?” he asked the husk of a man who used to be his friend.
“It was too much,” Miku started to answer. “I—”
“Be quiet. I wasn’t talking to you,” Benjamin snapped as he looked Ethan in the eyes.
“Is there anyone still in there, or did this demon—” Benjamin tried again.
“I-I’m here…” Ethan slurred finally as his eyes regained some focus.
“Then answer me this,” Benjamin repeated. “did you enjoy that?”
“Lighting people on fire is always fun,” he breathed, “But not as fun as this!”
Ethan might have thought that he was being subtle, but Benjamin saw the activity in his friend’s system even before he’d finished talking about the fire, and as a result, his arcane armor was up a full second before the Asmodean fly’s summoned by his swarm of devil’s spell went off.
To say they were harmless would have been a lie, but neither of the awful buzzing things managed to get through the level 3 spell. Instead, they shattered against it, leaving with a dull ache that he imagined wasn’t completely unlike the way one would feel when a bulletproof vest stopped a real bullet.
Benjamin responded by punching as hard as he could in the jaw and dropping him to the dusty street on his knees.
“You could have stopped that, couldn’t you,” Benjamin asked the demoness. She said nothing, though, and merely smiled at him.
Malicious compliance, he thought, just like any genie.
That part made sense; he’d told her to shut up, and his instructions had been for her not to hurt him. With her hands off the wheel, Ethan was welcome to do anything he wanted, which was apparently murder.
Benjamin sighed, unsure of the right way to untangle this knot. Killing them both was definitely the right option. Anyone with a decent mana pool could summon dragons or whatever else he wanted now. He didn’t need these two. Not unless he wanted information.
Or to shove a knife through the man’s heart when he least expected it, Benjamin added belatedly.
In the end, he decided it was a decision he’d make after he consulted his friends. He spent the next couple of minutes reading Miku the riot act about what she couldn’t do and what she must do to make sure that she was as close to three laws safe as he could make her, even though he wasn’t quite sure what that phrase meant.
He even included extra admonishments about trying to escape and even allowing someone else to rescue her, just in case, but honestly, he had no idea if that was going to work. After that, he had Ethan bound, gagged, and escorted back under heavy guard with orders to kill him rather than let him escape.
Once all that was done, he finally went looking for Matt and Emma, who were surveying the remains of the battlefield. He found them there with Raja looking over the remains of an extra crispy skeletonized summoner.
“No way,” Raja exclaimed, “You’re telling me Benji did this? The dude can summon dragons now? Sick!”
“I can’t, actually,” Benjamin said, causing the three of them to turn in his direction. Amidst all the other soldiers milling around and picking through the remains. “Soul damage makes my mana too low to do it, but now that I know how it works, I think I can give someone else the spell or at least swap out a similar one for it. It's hard to say. Some experimenting will be required. I—”
“I don’t think this one’s still readable,” Emma said, tossing him a charred soul phylactery that was almost as warped and damaged as the man that it had been attached to.
“You don’t say,” Benjamin said sarcastically, verifying that was, in fact, the case before he tossed it aside.
“Seriously?” Raja asked. “If you could grant ‘summon dragon’ to whoever you wanted, then why didn’t you say so before. That would have been helpful information to have.”
“Well… a lot happened today,” Benjamin said with a smile. “You know the saying, ‘There are years when weeks happen, but weeks when years happen?’ It’s like that. I’ll tell you later.”
His friends looked at him like he was a little crazy, but he said nothing else about it. So, eventually, after a little more gentle ribbing, the conversation drifted on to the trap and other related topics.