"No."

The [Oracle] was staring at me with a deadpan face. Sure, I got why he said no, but I wasn't about to change it for him. Not that I could.

[Summoning will begin in 59 minutes 48 seconds]

Proceed to a summoning site before the countdown ends. Failure to do so will result in forced summoning.

What I understood from the message was that either I went there, or they made me.

"What do you mean no? I am being summoned."

"You can refuse!" Yasmin cheerfully chimed in.

"I am not given the option, I'm afra-"

"Lies," the [Oracle] cut me. "Your petty excuse will not work with me. You will come with me to our Third Sanctum and you will be ordered Saint."

There was one comforting truth behind his whole speech. He couldn't tell if I was saying the truth or not. And, certainly, he didn't seem to have any way to check if I was being summoned.

My lie about not being able to refuse was safe.

“[Oracle]!” Yasmin intervened. “Please reconsider! If he is telling the truth and he is being summoned, we must get him to a summoning site!”

“Must?” I asked surprised.

My System message did say I would be force summoned there, but that was about it. I would even say it was more convenient to just be dragged there at the last second than wasting time going earlier.

“Yes! We must!” Yasmin insisted. “Being force summoned… You risk corruption seeping on you!”

Oh, that's it? Sure, it was a huge problem normally. Just not for me.

I kept quiet, hoping they thought I'd be too shocked about the revelation to say anything.

Shortly after we resumed walking. The [Oracle] in front with Yasmin on his tail. Literally. She was his shadow and did everything for him; even opening doors. It was sickening at a level that I couldn’t even began to explain.

The [Oracle] didn't bend, not even when faced with the fact that I might become corrupted and useless. If I became corrupted—to their eyes—I would never be able to become a Saint.

He was invested in me becoming a Saint right then and there. Too invested. I didn't know what, but I was sure there was something greater at play. Something, or someone, moving the threads behind the scenes.

[Summoning will begin in 27 minutes 23 seconds]

We had long made it outside, and we were making our way towards the town gates. Yasmin was still with us, bickering about how rushed and wrong it all felt.

He passed by curious looks and stares. By pointed fingers towards the man leading the way. Admiration. Adoration. They saw salvation in him.

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Meanwhile, I was just busy reading over my assigning. Cleaning an off-site research base. It didn't sound fancy, or exciting, at all. The saving grace was, perhaps, that it required high resistance to corruption and identifying things.

I was not sure if destiny was a thing, or if there was some grand scheme orchestrating my life. Saints were a thing, so who knew. I just couldn't help but wonder, what if I had taken any other class? Or even if I didn't have the idea about the second class?

Am I really free? Is the system setting everything up for me? Is this even real?

One couldn't help but wonder. One day I was on Earth, and the next in some magical land. I might have gone mad and everything was a product of my imagination. My gut told me this was as real as it got.

“You know,” I finally broke my vow of silence, “the whole idea about Saints always seemed weird. The Church, Sanctums, Orders, all of it.”

I paused, my words were not right.

“No, weird is not the word. I’ve never been in one, but this felt like I was being abducted into a sect. Some kind of cult that manipulates and controls people with high potential. But you know what?”

[Summoning will begin in 0 minutes 41 seconds]

“Today's not your lucky day!”

I had just enough time to see him turning; red from the unconstrained rage.

[You are now being force summoned]

This whole time, I had been imagining I would disappear from one place and reappear on the other.

Well, that didn't happen.

My area perception started picking on small grains. Perturbations on the energy around me. Almost like someone was sprinkling salt and pepper all over me.

This small grains began attaching to my energy. To me. And all around me it became blurrier and blurrier.

Whatever it was, it travelled with me. I could feel it. I knew the salt was there, and I could sense it had power. Perhaps like energy, but different.

It didn't reject me, but neither did it accept me. I was in a stasis state were I could move my energy but not me.

And suddenly, there was nothing else there. Yasmin was gone. The [Oracle]‘s enraged face nowhere to be seen. Not even the ground, trees, people, and insects that had been there.

My mind started replaying all those old movies where space jumps were filled with lights and stars. I was daydreaming of wormholes, light travel, and spaceships. And it was devastating.

There was, for the whole duration, absolutely nothing. Just me, the foreign energy, and nothing else. It felt empty. I sent pulses, each time further and further away, but they all returned empty. Daunting emptiness where not even the system seemed to exist.

Is forced summoning a teleportation without the system help? That must be why I needed to go a summoning site.

The pieces started falling together. The next step was clear.

And here I'm in a void space, were not even the System reaches. This is what must cause corruption when force summoned, being abruptly disconnected from the system.

There was some beauty to it; one that eyes couldn’t ever capture. Ethereal power that only my pulses caught on. The very same particles that travelled with me, scattered and lost in the immensity of this nothingness.

I stretched my arm. I open my hand.

I have to catch one.

They were calling to me. I could feel they needed me. And I needed them. My hand closed. With a puff, the particle exploded in a dust of black. It was gone.

I reached out for one more, but before I could even get close to it, the scene faded in again. Blurry and imprecise, objects began appearing out of nowhere. A stretcher. Chairs. Some cushioned walls. Equipment.

Not again!

I knew what I was seeing, even if the first time I hadn’t been able to completely grasp it.

A summoning facility! They are going to experiment with me again and I cannot take it again. Not one more time, not a-

My brain took longer than I’m proud to admit to realize what was really going on. No, I was not being experimented on. I just had reached the summoning place, my destination.

Luckily, perhaps for me but certainly for those around the room, I had managed to contain my energy within me. The fact that my [passive] Enemy sense hadn’t trigger was certainly a big contributor.

“Welcome to the Summoning Facility XF(9),” a robotic voice announced through some speakers in the room. “Please follow your System indications to your work position.”

Nobody seemed to care about me. Like, not at all. They didn’t offer to help me get up, which I could understand, but they didn’t even bother looking at me. I supposed I was just one more of the many hundreds that got summoned there.

There was a virtual line on the ground, bright neon yellow and impossible to miss, that guided me somewhere. I followed it three floors up and then through some concrete looking walls until it finally stopped in front of a metal door.

I knocked; it obviously wanted me to go inside.

“Come in,” a familiar feminine voice invited me.

I walked in with no expectations, but to say that my curiosity was picked was an understatement. She was seated on an office chair, her back to me and only her long straight hair visible.

“I am Darian,” I introduced myself. “I’ve been summoned just recently.”

“Yes, I know.”

She kicked the floor, and the chair turned.

I couldn’t believe what I was sensing. Had I had eyes, I would have rubbed them several times.

What?

I stood there, looking at her, asking myself if the force summoned had really corrupted me. Or my reality.

“Yasmin?”