Ritzy looked on with enough anticipation to choke him as the tuft of white hair rose through the summoning circle. It moved slower than the skeletons had done. But considering the fact that it was a high-ranking undead, it wasn’t weird that a novice summoning circle couldn’t handle it.

However, when it moved so slowly that it looked like it didn’t even move, Ritzy got a little worried.

“Damn! I praised you too early, Storage! Come up! Here! Good boy!”

Since he couldn’t interfere directly with the summoning, all he could do was make sure there was enough mana while trying to motivate the summon with his voice and hope that it reached, despite no ears or auditory organs visible. Magic could do wondrous things, after all.

Ritzy continued pumping mana into the mana circle in a bid to reinforce it enough to the point where it could handle summoning a high-ranking undead.

But when there was no doubt that the hair had stopped moving and the summoning circle had completed its job without failing or breaking down, Ritzy was forced to accept reality, even if he didn’t want to.

He had summoned a full head of white hair, except there was no head about it. Only a pile of hair lay inside the extinguished summoning circle.

Ritzy knew that not all undead came in the shape of humans. But it was the first time he had ever heard of someone summoning hair when they were trying to summon a skeleton. At least the other skeletons, regardless of how faulty they were, were still skeletons.

“You are taking it too far, Storage of Darkness!”

Ritzy grabbed the hair in a fit of rage and drew back his arm to throw the wig into the stone wall of the cavern.

However, his hand, despite relaxing, didn’t let go of the hair. Or rather, the hair didn’t let go of him.

As the wig began crawling its way up his arm like an oversized and hairy caterpillar, Ritzy realized his mistake.

Although it wasn’t the kind of undead he had wanted to summon, it was still something he had summoned. So, he should have either sent it back or just accepted his fate and tried to control it. But instead, he went ahead and grabbed it.

If he had done that with a skeleton or something similar, the skeleton would have attacked him with the ferocity of an abusive husband.

Fortunately, the hair didn’t seem to be very aggressive or good at violence, so there was still a chance for Ritzy to salvage the situation.

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He tried to pluck it off of himself, but the hair stuck to him and climbed from arm to arm like glue. His idea of placing the hair back in the summoning circle and trying to control it failed.

Left without a choice, Ritzy’s only way of bringing the hair into the summoning circle was to step inside with the hair crawling on him. He did his best to keep the furball from scampering up his body to his face since it felt like something bad would happen if he let that happen.

But when he stepped inside the circle, Ritzy was hit with the double trouble of having to concentrate on controlling his mana and the furball that had somehow sensed that something was going on and redoubled its efforts.

The stickily soft wig shimmied around Ritzy’s body like a squirrel and avoided his arms on its way to his back.

Ritzy wanted to reach back and prevent the tuft of hair from slinking up his neck and onto his head, but he had to concentrate on the mana before the summoning circle lost all effect and whatever the hair was completely escaped his control.

Ritzy closed his eyes and mouth and did his best to close his nostrils as well. As slinky and soft the hair was, combined with how it moved toward his head, Ritzy was afraid that it wanted to enter him through any of the openings in his head. Unfortunately, there wasn’t anything he could do about his ears.

Ritzy shivered as the thing’s strands of hair came into contact with the skin on the back of his neck. But he didn’t get distracted. He could feel the connection between himself, the summoning circle, and the piece of hair.

He used the summoning circle as an intermediary between his mana and the thing, and when his hair came into contact with the hair of the thing, Ritzy felt an odd sensation of being able to control the thing.

Since the skeletons had collapsed, exploded, melted, or disappeared before he could reach that stage, it was the first time Ritzy felt a sensation like that. However, he couldn’t indulge in it as the tuft of hair was fiercely struggling against his control as it inched its way closer to his ears and face.

The white strands of hair spread out and covered his head of dirty brown hair like drops of white ink poured on wrinkled brown paper.

Ritzy felt the hair’s fierce resistance, but he wasn’t afraid anymore.

Although the foreign piece of hair still struggled, it had stopped moving, and Ritzy could tell that he had won the battle of wills.

“Phew. Piece a cake.”

Ritzy wiped the sweat off his brow with a sigh of relief after confirming that the tuft of white hair had stopped struggling. Now, he only had to complete the summoning ritual and establish a subordination contract between himself and the thing.

Although he had initially wanted to get rid of it when it was first summoned, Ritzy had changed his mind. It was, after all, the first thing he summoned that didn’t escape or disappear in any way. Besides, he wasn’t sure what would happen if he sent it back while he was still inside the summoning circle.

“Ah, wait, stop that tickles!”

Ritzy let down his guard as he began establishing the subordination contract, and the thing took that opportunity to begin moving again.

An electric feeling of alarm shot through Ritzy’s scalp all the way to the soles of his feet, and he instinctively smacked the top of his head as hard as he could while injecting his mana in the thing to complete the contract.