Ritzy woke up with a start after a bad nightmare. He quickly looked around while wiping the cold sweat from his brow. However, his hand stopped moving, and his face grew even paler than before as he saw a few things that told him it hadn’t been a nightmare.
The three used summoning circles, or rather, the two used summoning circles, and the small crater were proof that Ritzy had already tried and failed to summon a skeleton thrice.
In order to stop his brain from shutting down, Ritzy looked away from the evidence of his failure. That was in the past, and he wouldn’t let his past define him. That, he had already stated.
What was more important were the remaining summoning circles he had prepared. He had put all his savings into getting enough materials for it all. Combined with the preparations he had done and all that he had studied, Ritzy was confident he wasn’t going to fail. At least not as long as he ignored the fact that he had already failed three times. Since he didn’t understand how, why, or where he had failed, those attempts didn’t count.
Ritzy got up, moved to the fourth circle, gave it a final check, closed his eyes, and clasped his hands as if making a prayer.
“Storage of Darkness, bestow upon your faithful servant an aide!”
The chant rang out once again in the spacious cave. Ritzy’s mana followed the chant into the summoning circle and lit it up, turning the ground hazy.
By now, Ritzy didn’t even care about the skull that started peeking through the summoning circle. He had already confirmed three times that he could summon skeletons. The problem came with what happened afterward.
The skeleton, slightly bigger than Ritzy, stood on the summoning circle that had now lost its light. The bluish light in its eye sockets flickered. And, when Ritzy had barely begun trying to control the skeleton, the lights in its eyes flew out and whizzed around the cave like a pair of fireflies before disappearing into the sky through the hole in the ceiling.
“What the shit…?”
Ritzy sighed and kicked the pile of bones that the lights had left behind. He couldn’t even be bothered to get as agitated as he got before.
“At least I got something this time.”
Unlike the previous three attempts, where Ritzy hadn’t even gotten a single bone, he now had an entire skeleton. Of course, without the lights, the undead skeleton was now just a pile of bones. And since they came from the Storage of Darkness, he wouldn’t be able to use them to create a new summoning circle. But he could sell them to someone who didn’t know that.
Ritzy moved the piles of bones to the side with an ominous grin before moving on to his fifth attempt. Since he had summoned a skeleton that technically stayed with him, Ritzy was sure things were finally beginning to look up for him.
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“I won’t get my hopes up, but it should work this time, right?”
Ritzy was a little disappointed when the skull from the fourth summoning didn’t answer. But he didn’t let it distract him. He clasped his hands and closed his eyes a fifth time.
“Storage of Darkness, bestow upon your faithful servant an aide!”
Ritzy opened his eyes to look at the scene that was nothing more than a repeat of the previous four times. His empty, lifeless eyes could rival those of a corpse, granted the corpse still had its eyes.
The fifth skeleton, just like the first, was practically spotless and annoyingly white.
“Is someone on the other side washing them, or what?”
After letting the skeleton arrive, Ritzy, with expectations so low they were impossible to stumble on, manipulated his mana to try and control the skeleton in front of him.
Unfortunately, the fifth skeleton’s appearance wasn’t the only thing similar to the first one’s. Shortly after being summoned, it also started melting and turning into a sloppy white liquid that seeped into the ground.
Ritzy stared at the ground where the skeleton had disappeared.
“At least give me something new!”
Ritzy roared to the sky and stomped his foot in anger. The skeleton disappearing in the same way as the first one made him feel even worse than if it had just attacked him.
“Argh, fuck it. Third time’s the charm! You hear that, Oh Great Storage of Darkness?! I’m giving you another shot at this. If you don’t give me something good now, I’m coming over there to beat you up!”
Ritzy had no idea how he would actualize his threat, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was whether it worked or not.
Ritzy stood in front of the sixth summoning circle with a frown. He still had a few summoning circles left. But he had to look serious to make the threat more convincing.
“Storage of Darkness, bestow upon your faithful servant an aide!”
Ritzy shouted the chant loud enough to make it echo throughout the cavern several times.
“Give me something good, you shitty fake!”
Since he was so caught up in the moment, he also accidentally added a few of his own words to the mana as he sent it into the summoning circle.
Maybe it was due to the added vigor and energy behind his chant, but the mana seemed to shine a little brighter than what the previous five had done. Though, it could also be because of the sun leaning in over the edge of the ceiling to take a peek at what Ritzy was doing.
Ritzy, despite his threat, was still prepared for the summoning circle to summon another useless skeleton. However, his eyes quickly lit up in joy and excitement when the first thing popping up through the blurry summoning circle wasn’t a polished skull.
It was hair!
Hair was something only high-ranking undead could have.
“Yes! Now, this is what I’m talking about! You did a good job, Storage!”
It should have been impossible for a high-ranking undead to appear in the summoning circle Ritzy had made. But it should also be impossible for a skeleton to melt, fly off into the sky with or without its body, or explode. Ritzy couldn’t care less about what was possible or impossible.
The only thing that mattered was that he had done something that not even the Dark One could do. He had taken the first step to reaching and surpassing the Dark One.