The Summoner

Eliot

His eyes were glued to the hippos. While waiting for his arm to heal, he resolved to studying. Analyzing their behavioral patterns, what they consumed, how they interacted, and, most importantly, any exploitable weaknesses.

  After a day and a dungeon gained health potion, he judged his arm had healed ‘enough’ and pored over his recently acquired knowledge of hippos. The wooden spoon he was using to deliver the soup from the bowl to his mouth snapped at the point where scooper met handle.

  “Nothing,” he whispered with equal parts indignation, respect, and awe. “They have no weaknesses, not even a natural predator.” In fact, Eliot witnessed the pitiful attempt a lion made at hunting one of them. The damn brainless lob of meat didn’t have a care in the world as the lion’s claws and teeths uselessly went at its blub. The lion gave up in the end, sulking back to whatever pride it was part of in shame. “Why the Abyss aren’t they at the top spot in the compendium?” he complained.

  Of course he knew why; the ranking was based on the mob’s ability to kill with precedence over natural food chain. Although a lion had nothing on a hippo if they were to fight, a lion proves more threatening to a humanoid’s life than a hippo. Not to mention, hippos are easily killed with some piercing weapons and most magic. And the elephant, the current holder of the top spot, was a beast stronger than the undefeated hippo for warriors that weren’t Eliot.

  In fact, the only reason he had trouble with them at all is because they were a perfect natural counter to his fighting style. That is why it was so important for a team of dungeon divers and mercenaries to diversify between the plethora of different widespread classifications.

  After finishing his meal with his back up spoon-he tended to break most of his utensils for some reason-he faced them again. He was curb stomped, and almost regular stomped, of course. He was absolutely no match for them head on. Faced with his helplessness, and after deliberating for a few hours, he skipped the hippos to circle back to after he defeated everything else.

  The lions and crocodiles were laughably easy to kill. For lions, it was a simple process of high or roundhouse kicking them when they got close and swiftly following up with a killing blow while they were phased. Their only defense to speak of was a thick coat of fur and hide that thwarted most sharp attacks but was practically useless against those of the blunt force variety.

  Crocodiles were the same. Their strength was stealthy ambush, not full fledged confrontation. All that’s needed is to dodge the first attack and they’ve already lost.

  The elephants proved a greater challenge. They had the invincible defense against conventional attacks that hippos did, so Eliot merely employed a bit of the unconventional. Unlike the hippo’s fierce bite, the elephants could only make use of charges, stomps, and wacks with their proboscis which were easily avoided thanks to their heavy movements of a beast that was too large for its own good. After a few tests, Eliot took a liking to grabbing their trunks then jumping on top of them and pulling. Either he would tear its nose off in a particularly grievous manner, or one of its friends would injure it in consequence of trying to get him off. It was a nice core exercise that involved killing and blood, three of his favorite things.

  Two days later, equipped with no actual improvements to his strength but experience and knowledge, he confronted the hippos once more.

  He waited until a moderately sized hippo, around five meters in length, was lured outside of their murk away from its family by a patch of grass. Using form four, Eliot dove from above, left leg first. It pressed into the beast’s mid back and jiggled its fat like a gelatin dessert, but was ultimately useless. He caught himself on the way down, and flipped to his feet, meanwhile the hippo wheeled on him, particularly irate. Eliot immediately sunk and used form three. His right leg strained to hold him in a low crouch, while his arms spun like a wind mage’s to keep him balanced. His left leg drifted just above the ground as it swept in a crescent and slammed into the hippo’s leg. His leg plunged into its fat, actually managing to push the hippo's leg a few centimeters before it rebounded from the force, making Eliot fall over. Annoyed that he interrupted its grazing, the hippo lifted its front legs, twenty centimeters the best it could manage with its mass, and slammed. Eliot felt his breath quicken as he rolled, subjecting the poor ground to his fate of being ground to a fine paste, though a fine dust in its case. As he sprang to full height, he raised his right leg to use form ten. His horizontal foot hit the hippo’s chin fat with a loud, smack! It wasn’t as powerful as it should have been because he had to account for a few variables, but it actually did something. The hippo stepped back as if staggering and stayed motionless as if rattled. Eliot broke out in a grin with an undertone of celebration when he realized the hippo did stagger and proceeded to be rattled.

  Without meaning to, his excitement spurred him to blur faster than he ever had, smoothly linking form six. His left leg boosted him like a spring rebounding, and his right leg came down to support him, effectively switching places. Instead of a high kick, his body twisted in time with his arcing left leg, delivering a devastating roundhouse kick. Then, he switched his legs mid spin and hit it with the back of his right foot. As he completed the three sixty, he planted both feet and twisted his torso as his left fist came in like a meteorite. With each hit, the hippo’s head jolted more right until the final blow elicited a crack and had its head bent at an unnatural angle, its fat jostling like a vat of bubbling water during the entire barrage. The hunk of meat spread tremors and lifted dust as it was finally felled.

  Eliot watched in disbelief as the body winked out of existence, replaced with a generous pile of five items. He wavered momentarily; he almost couldn’t believe he killed it without the proof of its corpse. But, then he exploded into cheer.

  “Woooooh!” he wailed while shoving his fist in the air. His clamped eyes cracked open and his head tilted just in time to see a rampaging hippo barreling towards him. ...Crap, was his only thought as he involuntarily scrunched to protect his vitals.

  Something outside of his view glinted in the sunlight as it flew into the hippo. It crashed to the ground instantly, sliding about a meter from its built up speed and snapping out of existence before it could come to a stop. His wide eyes traced the glass dart in slow motion as it obeyed gravity, falling from its place in the now erased hippo's body. Eliot’s head snapped to his left.

  There he was, the genius that managed to kill the titanic hippo with a small dart, throwing something opaque with a shiny teal luster at the foot of the stampede of enraged hippos Eliot drew the attention of.

  “Cover your mouth and run!” the younger denarian shouted as he twisted to bolt. Eliot only followed after witnessing whatever the adolescent threw burst into a cloud of blue gas. As he picked up speed, he bent down and stored the hippo’s drops in his soul with a sweep of his hand.

  Eliot’s rescuer stopped only a couple hundred meters away from the hippos. He was huffing, hunched over with his hands on his knees. Eliot smirked knowingly, Master Camble made him run long distances near top speed as a part of his training. That was the sole reason he knew that The Room of Enlightenment was a closed tunnel of space. Exactly like the illusion the other monk heads put him under; when you cross the boundary of the space on one side, you wind up on the other side.

  “Thank you for the save,” Eliot said to him after the kid mostly caught his breath.

  “No problem,” he sighed, “You’re the only other human I’ve seen.” Now that attention was drawn to it, Eliot realized he hasn’t seen anyone else either. There were hundreds in line when he entered, it was about time he ran into someone.

  “Yeah, it’s the same for me. Maybe everyone isn’t sent to the same space? It might be that the dungeon has identical spaces it uses to separate people and dissuade team work,” Eliot proposed.

  Fully able to control his breath, the teenager shot him a sly look and said, “What do you say we stick one to the dungeon, then?”

  Eliot appraised the youth with a once over. He had wild, spiky green hair that did not go with his chestnut brown eyes and eyebrows. He was wearing a motley assortment of leather and mail items, mismatched chain mail gloves, yellowing leather boots, stockings, and a chain mail jacket over a thin hide shirt. The jacket had a sagged hood and sleeves that met the gloves, while the shirt had none of these features. In his left hand he dug a meter long staff with a topaz studded tip into the sand like a walking stick. On his back secured with a strap of leather was a long glass tube contraption with rocks, leather, and wood tied to it. Eliot couldn’t shake the feeling that the shape of whatever the thing was was familiar.

  His lips split into a small grin and he said, “Absolutely.”

  “I’m Faith,” the youth introduced himself and extended a hand.

  “Eliot,” he said, returning the gesture. Weirdly, Faith continued the shaking longer than comfortable. Eliot let his hand float, but didn’t say anything out loud.

  “You picked up the loot from the hippo you killed, right? What’d ya get?” Faith asked. Eliot was too focused on reading him to remember what had just happened, and his heart skipped a beat out exuberation at the reminder.

  “Let me check,” he muttered as he took them out of his soul. He dumped them on the ground and crouched down to inspect them. The pile consisted of a curved dagger, pair of matching shoes, bag of coins, and some bent pieces of metal.

  “You hit the jackpot!” celebrated Faith, crouching across from him. Eliot looked at him and raised a brow. “You don’t have an identify skill?” he asked him.

  “Skill? Do you have a unique constitution?” Eliot tried to clarify.

  “Well, what do you do to identify things?” he deflected. Eliot considered his words for a few seconds.

  “Most people have to take it to a mage for appraisal, or just figure it out through trial and error,” he decided to act oblivious.

  “Ah, well, I’m a summoner,” Faith said matter of factly.

  “Are you from the Feral Continent?” Eliot couldn’t help but question.

  “No, I, uh, hail from the Amerigo Republic,” he answered.

  “This is the first I’ve heard of it…” Eliot said suspiciously.

  “That’s why I’m here, actually.” Faith cleared his throat and continued, “The Amerigo Federation is on a different continent. The Library of Alexander has tomes that speak of old societies, but we grew to encompass our entire land mass without finding any of their ruins. Some of our elders proposed that it was possible there are other land masses out there and so hordes of adventurers set out to prove it. As far as I know, I’m the only who’s made it here without dying.”

  Eliot burst out a sigh of barely held excitement. “Well, it’s nice to finally have some proof. Generations of our scholars agree that there has to be something in that giant ocean,” he said with relief. ‘Is there something else out there?’ is one of life’s greatest questions. Eliot was starting to suspect that somebody or something hid them on purpose. Even with heaps of evidence begging on behalf of a supercontinent, all the expeditions set for the open ocean ended in traveling the entire globe and docking on the other side of the continent they originally set sail from. It was like they were in some isolated subspace, but Occam’s Razor and all that ensured it remained nothing more than conspiracy.

  “So, you don’t have skills, or at least, you don’t call them skills?” Faith broke the brief silence.

  “Basically, we separate abilities into martial and magical. Anything that can normally be done with the physical and spiritual bodies and soul without consuming mana we say is a martial technique. Anything that uses mana is defined as a type of magic, or sorcery,” Eliot simplified as best he could. “And, martial abilities that don’t qualify as magic but can’t be done by everybody is usually a unique constitution or bloodline,” he added.

  Faith took a few seconds to digest and form his next sentence.

  “Where I come from, martial techniques or abilities are called skills and we don’t label based on constitution or bloodline, instead we just say they have a unique or special ability,” he said slowly, brow knit and frowning in thought.

  “What do you call magic?” Eliot prodded.

  “We also just call it magic,” Faith answered quickly with a shrug.

  “Is identify a unique skill, then?”

  “It’s technically a special skill, but everyone from my home was able to do it. It probably comes from my bloodline, or something,” he said evenly.

  Eliot eyed him, fighting a tension building up in his diaphragm. If any of his friends were here, they would recognize the gleam in his eye and the imperceptible quiver at the edges of his lips that itched toward a smile. He wanted to know more, he wanted to ask him about their technology, architecture, social norms, settlements, government, and everything in between. He couldn’t help but imagine the knowledge they have that beings on the Human and Feral continent don’t. The knowledge he could glean from their libraries that he couldn’t find anywhere else. He was close to choking the answers out of him, but alas he restrained himself.

  “Demonstrate,” he said with difficulty and a small gesture towards the items. Faith stood up from his crouch, legs achings.

  “Let’s see,” he groaned as he hunched over the pile instead. He pointed to each and listed off what they did, “Those boots give plus five armor and the ability to blink fifteen feet every thirty seconds. That dagger has a whopping fifty damage and fifteen percent chance to pierce armor. That’s ten gold, and you got eight lock picks!”

  “Ok, what exactly do you mean, ‘plus five armor’ and ‘a whopping fifty damage’?” Eliot queried.

  “Oh, um, identify puts a number on sort of abstract or circumstantial qualities. Fifty damage and five armor with that ability is really good for our, um, power levels,” he explained clumsily.

  “Our power levels?” Eliot repeated, “You can use identify on me?”

  “Yeah, I can use it on any item, monster, or person as long as their power level isn’t double mine.”

  “Even items have power levels?” Eliot continued.

  “Yeah, but sometimes they also have other prerequisites to use, like a certain skill level in a-uh-martial skill to use the item effectively.”

  “Hm… that makes sense,” Eliot said with a small fit of nods.

  Faith put on an awkward smile and nodded along with him.

  “You take them,” Eliot said suddenly as he stood up straight.

  “I’m not lying, that’s seriously some good stuff,” Faith tried.

  Eliot looked specifically at the boots in contempt when he said, “Dungeon drops make a mockery of engraved items.”

  He was of the belief that they were cheap reproductions of the real thing. In real life, he would be an artisan that dedicated their life to making the perfect pairs of scissors and refused to give up the craft when they started being mass produced because he made them better. Which, in scissors’ and engraving’s cases, is true if the artisan is skilled enough.

  Faith didn’t fully understand what he was getting at, but hesitantly stored the items anyway, equipping the pair of boots.

  “If we’re gonna be fighting together we should be transparent about our abilities,” he said a little awkwardly into the silence.

  “Of course!” Eliot exclaimed a little too eager. He cleared his throat and said much more tempered, “That’s reasonable.”

  Faith chuckled and Eliot couldn’t tell if it was an awkward pity laugh or a genuine one.

  “I’m a mage, however I’m currently trying to conquer this dungeon as a test for my Martial Arts magister, and can’t use my magic right now.”

  “Oh, that’s why you were slapping the hell out of that hippo instead of using fireball!” Faith exclaimed.

  “Yes. Unfortunately, that’s the extent of my capabilities at the moment,” he said, embarrassed at what he was bringing to the table, but not failing to catch Faith already knew he was a mage. Exactly how much did that identify skill tell him? he wondered.

  Faith chuckled and said, “Anyone who can kill a hippo with their bare hands is pretty dang strong in my book.”

  Eliot, fully immersed in his form or socialising, gave him a smile as thanks for the compliment.

  “Alright, I guess it’s my turn, then,” Faith filled, “I’m a summoner.”

  “Summoner?...” Eliot repeated like he had never heard the word before.

  “You guys don’t have summoners either?”

  “No, but we know what they are,” he said brusquely. “Why does that sound… weird?.”

  “What, summoner? That doesn’t sound weird.”

  “Summoner… summoner… Summoner... I am a Summoner.... I am the only Summoner,” Eliot muttered to himself. Then, he said, “The Summoner.” The words carried an ominous weight to them. “You have a title?” he stated more than asked.

  “Oh, um, yeah I do. I guess that means I’m the only summoner, huh?” he admitted. Eliot put serious effort in to fight off a giant grin.

  “Yes, the one and only summoner,” he said with glee. “After all, most mages can’t even make a stable portal when banded together, summoning a monster through space just isn’t possible. How do you do it?”

  Feeling Eliot’s worked up gaze, he said, “I just sorta… do it. I mean, I have to focus a little.” and added a small demonstration. He lifted his staff, seemingly the cause of the topazes suddenly glowing. Then, a small lemon colored frog with beady black eyes appeared on the head of his staff, held aloft right before Eliot’s eyes.

  “I see, so your power is like that of a warlock,” he said, hugely disappointed.

  Noticing the curb of his enthusiasm, Faith said, “Yeah, sorry. I don’t really know how it works, if that’s what you’re getting at.” Unsummoning the frog in the meantime.

  Eliot sighed his glum away and continued the conversation, “What else can you do?”

   Faith cleared his throat and looked down.

  “Nothing, really.”

  Eliot gave him a sceptical look and said, “Then, how did you kill that hippo?”

  As if he was waiting for him to ask that question the entire conversation, Faith lit up and raised his hands to explain.

  “Well, you see, the frog that I summoned earlier has extremely deadly poison, potent enough to kill an entire herd of elephants with a single dose!"

  Eliot’s eyes widened enough to portray awe.

  “With some experimentation, I managed to make a forge capable of smelting glass and made nearly fifty glass darts, all of which are poisoned tipped and have already been preserved in smoke.”

  Faced with this information, Eliot’s eyes genuinely popped and his jaw dropped.

  “You know how to make glass!?” he rather rudely interjected.

  “Yeah, you just have to melt sand, generally the whiter the better. The real hard part is shaping it,” said Faith.

  Eliot physically slapped his forehead. No wonder! he thought. Now it made perfect sense how someone could have a monopoly on glass. You wouldn’t even need to keep the manufacturing process a secret, you only need control of the few natural deposits of sand on the Human and Feral continents. It also made perfect sense that the cost was so outrageous. The monopolizer wasn’t unimaginably greedy, it was simply the fact that the supply of sand was abysmal.

  But here was Faith. He made glass from the sand that made up the expansive sand dunes in the Sahara Dungeon. Since he was capable of making it in the first place, he could assume that glass wasn’t monopolized or nearly as expensive in the Amerigo Federation. Eliot wondered if the black smith who created glass even knew such a deep coffer of sand existed within their grasp.

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  “Sorry,” Eliot apologized and explained, “Glass is really expensive in the Crucible Empire. Please, continue.”

  “Right, where was I?” Faith pretended to be a little lost as a segway. “So, after making the darts, I stabbed a few monsters with them, and eventually one of them dropped a force rune. With it, I made this baby!”

  He reached behind him, and showed off the contraption on his back. It had a simple, skinny glass barrel with an opening on each end. One end was left open while the other had a fist sized rock with faded blue runes that meshed with the rest of the stone strapped to it. With the rock as the central point, he added a handle, stock, and scope made of acacia wood.

  Suddenly, Eliot realized what the weapon reminded him of. It was a rudimentary version of a musket. Given the wooden attachments that mimicked those of a gun, it was highly probable that the Amerigo Federation also had firearms of some form. The new information prodded him to wonder, How advanced is the Amerigo Federation? And how high in relative knowledge is Faith?

  “Can it shoot as far as a musket?” Eliot tested the waters.

  “Way farther, actually,” bragged Faith with a smug smile. “It really depends on the specific mob, but it can shoot about five hundred meters and still pierce deep enough to kill a hippo.”

  Eliot couldn’t help chukling in disbelief.

  “What the Abyss do you need me for?” he asked, only half joking.

  Faith laughed along with him, perfectly used to self-deprecating jokes, and said, “The weakness is obvious: it can’t kill anything too thick skinned or with natural armor. I’m only just getting powerful enough to summon monsters with capable offensive abilities, and seeing as you can kill a hippo with your bare hands, we should have no problem killing the few mobs we need to full clear the dungeon.”

  Once the shock and excitement wore off, Eliot thought about their strengths and weaknesses. In the end he realized it would be a mutually beneficial partnership. Faith would one shot every monster without gigantism, most of which Eliot’s already killed, and they would combine their meager non-magical offensive to take down the mini boss and boss mobs, most of which have the aforementioned gigantism.

  Eliot flashed him a dazzling smile and expressed his anticipation, “It’s really unfortunate that we had to meet under these time restrictive circumstances, but I think we’ll have a prosperous week and a half partnership.”

  Faith returned a goofy smile of delight and warned, “Make room!”

  Eliot stepped back and Faith raised his staff. It lit up with a significantly stronger orange light and two beasts appeared between them. They roughly resembled a smaller and black scaled alligator, standing a meter tall on four legs and three half meters long, four meters includings its acute profile tapered tail. It’s actual body was only thirty centimeters in vertical dimensions, the rest of its height came from the long, bent-at-the-knee legs that supported it, each foot sporting an oversized talon on its innermost toe that stood out from the other four, more sensibly sized, white talons. Finally, its head was that of an alligator with a dry white tuft of hair under its chin.

  The kapros took in their surroundings, panicked because of a sudden shift in environment, but instantly lunged when they saw Faith. The pair toppled him with ease, and drowned his face in saliva.

  “Easy there, your talons really hurt!” he laughed while pampering them with pats, scratches, and belly rubs. He had to physically shove them off before pointing to Eliot and saying, “Friend.”

  Their feet flopped as they scampered over to him. They ran in circles around him, sniffing and scratching, practically ruining Eliot’s boots. Only after guaranteeing that he wasn’t a threat did they jump and lick at him, but Eliot wasn’t as unbalanced as Faith. Instead, he crouched down and manicured them that way. The duo finally mounted the two vivacious lizards after a healthy amount of loving that even peta would approve of. Because of their length and snake-like attributes, the back of the kapros dipped and formed a natural saddle shape between their legs.

  Their running would be more aptly labeled as short distance hopping, making great time as they bound toward the sand dunes. On the trips in between their monster hunting, Eliot learned all about Faith’s identify skill, hoping they would eventually warm up to intellectual communion of knowledge. According to Faith, they were both level seventeen, but Eliot was a multi classer with seven levels in monk and ten levels in mage. Naturally, he felt that seventeen was too low. After all, that would mean he was only level seven without using magic, and the top three mobs at the watering hole were all level seventeen, all of which he managed to kill, albeit some easier than others.

  Faith made sure to stress that he didn’t really know how it worked before telling him how he thought it worked. He mentioned something called Dnd and went on to explain how it was different from that system in that because he was a level ten mage and a combined level seventeen, his strength when only using his monk abilities was closer to a level fourteen or fifteen. Faith also told him about something called stats and stat growth. He said that stats was how the identify skill measured their physical and mental attributes like strength, dexterity, intelligence, wisdom, and so on. Then, he said as people grow stronger and level up, their stats grow along with them, however some people’s stats grew more on average than most others and Eliot was one of those with superior stat growth. All in all, when utilizing his entire arsenal, he was probably equivalent to a level nineteen or twenty.

  Although most of the concepts were foreign, Eliot understood them and found that they actually made perfect sense. There were plenty of things his level ups in the mage class did to strengthen his physical stats. Recalling some off the top of his head, specialization was basically an overall increase to his stats while adding some sort of engraving skill, and his mana quality increasing serves the same purpose since mana’s instrumental to bodily functions. The stat growth was even simpler: it was just natural talent.

  After going over everything technical, they moved on to their personal histories. Eliot told him his tale from start to present, only leaving out his inclination towards death and his relationship with Ellulia. Finally, they got to the good stuff. Faith wove an interesting but very closed to interpretation story about his life. He modeled the Amerigo Federation after a normal medieval fantasy setting with small steam punk influences. They weren’t very advanced compared to the Crucible Empire, which Eliot thought was particularly lame. However, they did have better architectural and engineering knowledge. Faith told him all about elevators-the original non-electric version, buildings with massive domes and upwards of fifteen floors, suspended carriages that don’t rattle, large ships that replaced wind mages with tacking, and their supposedly recent research in fire arms.

  It was an eye opening revelation to the reason no major technological advancement in the Crucible Empire has occurred in the last century. Thanks to their wonderful Academy of Everveil, it has a constant supply of mages to resolve every kind of problem you could possibly run into. Was the castle near collapse? Add some engravings to increase structural integrity and slap on another floor while you’re at it. Was it impossible to sail without relying on fickle winds? Keep a few mages proficient in creating their own draft and sail wherever you want whenever you want. Did your tower have too many floors? Add an incredibly expensive and hard to maintain teleportation or space shift engraving.

  It was fascinating to hear how simple engineering knowledge could fix widespread problems forever without constant mage overview, and he couldn’t help thinking about Cel. He showed interest in engineering and architecture on multiple occasions. He once ridiculed a caravan’s poorly made carriages, saying how their wheels weren’t perfect circles, their axles were tilted a few degrees, and how susceptible the frame was to strong winds. Unfortunately he never explored the field because it was tied to blacksmithing, a field he had zero to no interest in, and there were no accessible wells of knowledge he could learn from in the Town of Flora.

  Eliot imagined how happy Cel would be freaking out over how amazing the designs of the Amerigo Federation’s carriages were, and threw everything else out the window. Whenever they had freetime, Eliot would make sure he internalized as much engineering knowledge as possible, having Faith teach him through explanation and drawn images in the sand. Cel was the assistant mayor, afterall, he could bring real improvement to the Town of Flora.

  Of course, they had all of these exchanges in between hunting monsters. On their first day, they had a fortuitous encounter with a mimic. The mob compendium describes three different versions of mimic and every single one has a rarer encounter chance than any miniboss.

  The mimic caught their eye immediately. A giraffe was standing idle in the middle of an open field, all alone.

  “Stop!” Faith commanded the kapro. “That’s a mimic,” he said after using identify.

  Without his confirmation, Eliot came to the conclusion that was the most likely scenario. The giraffe wasn’t acting natural and it looked exteremly odd. It was lifeless, giving off the same creepy still frame that taxidermy did.

  “You said you ran into a few mimics, right?” Eliot asked him as they slowly approached the thing.

  “The other two versions, yeah. But those were normal mimics that took the shape of inorganic items and environmental features. That looks… disconcerting,” replied Faith.

  Closer inspection revealed that the giraffe had its eyes shut and mouth hung open. Its tongue flopped to the side and the head lolled. They stopped five meters away from it to consult the compendium. The only helpful information was that the mimic itself burrowed deep within whatever it was taking the shape of, attacking it anywhere else was useless.

  Eliot and Faith dismounted and shared a glance. Faith nodded and Eliot stepped within the mimic’s range. The giraffe ragdolled and twitched, the sound of meat squashing and bone snapping marking its transformation. A vertical mouth filled with rows of serrated teeth split from its forehead to its chest and a slimy red tongue could be seen dripping with saliva. Some of its flank grotesquely traveled as lumps of meat to the front of its body and formed a third pair of legs, then they all bent outward like a spider’s.

  It exploded into a disturbing sprint, intent on devouring Eliot whole.

  “Oh my God, that’s disgusting! Attack!” Faith exclaimed while suppressing a gag.

  Eliot was filled with adrenaline as he hitched a ride on one of the charging kapro. He was keenly aware of their lung range and made sure to roll off before they jumped. Unfortunately, their attack was thwarted with a swing of the mimic’s mouth-neck appendage. The kapro were flung through the air and disappeared the moment they touched the ground.

  Eliot decided he would wow Faith a small bit with his seven levels in monk, so he stood with his hands behind his back and waited. The mimic reared and stretched its maw as wide as it could go before slamming down to engulf him. He reached out and forced it to a halt, his palms facing outward as he gripped its hideous lips. The mimic pulled and strained in an ultimately futile struggle to get free, the only thing it achieved was to dig its teeth deeper into his hands. Now that Eliot had shown the monster that it was completely at his mercy, he gripped till his knuckles turned white and pulled. Its mouth tore open one hundred eighty degrees with a sickening squelch of organic material. Then, he placed his left foot on its collar, adjusted his grip, and yanked its head off.

  There was no blood, only the wails of a mimic hiding deep inside its skin suit. It fixed its balance and immediately bolted the other direction, to no avail. Eliot took off after it and clamped down on its left hind leg. This time, it struggled so violently that it severed its leg completely of its own merit, and continued to drag itself with an odd number of legs. Eliot dropped the leg and jumped on its back. There, directly in the upper middle back was a small lump. He rested his foot on it and put pressure. He was rewarded with the crunch of a shell and cease of movement.

  It’s corpse and dismembered limbs were replaced with items the second he stepped off.

  “That thing was no creation of the gods,” he said with mock disgust as Faith ran up to him.

  “I’d be surprised if that wasn’t pulled right out of a nightmare,” he replied with a shudder. “Did you get any good loot?”

  “You’re the one with identify,” Eliot shrugged.

  Faith walked up to the three items and crouched with a grunt, “Alright, what do we have here?” He took a few seconds to examine each of them before giving his verdict, “I already have hundreds of those skeleton keys, and that is a bag of pittons. But those look perfect for you.” He pointed to a pair of dark red padded gloves. “Non-magical and decent stats,” he added.

  Eliot lifted his palms and looked at the grievous grooves in them from the mimic’s teeth. Gloves are probably a good idea, he decided.

  They addressed his wounds, Faith revealing his ability to summon an infant water elemental, and continued. They reached the sand dunes by dusk, and hurried to reach deep enough to set up their trap before night proper. It was designed for the giant snake miniboss that could see in infrared; they set up a blazing bonfire with the help of a turtle that could heat its shell. The snake was a full counter to Faith’s poison and versatile animals thanks to its gigantism and natural amino acids that made it immune to most poisons and venoms. Eliot, on the other hand, had no problem dealing with it, especially considering it was the first mob he had killed when he first entered the dungeon.

  The other miniboss in the sand dune biome was the mole rat. Similar to how they set up the trap, Faith was able to pinpoint where its home nest was based on the level of vegetation. He explained that mole rats were blind but its other senses were greatly heightened as compensation. So, all they needed to do was find the place where the least amount of booming sand dunes were because it would hurt their hearing if they were subjected to it frequently. To do that, they had to find where the sand was most stable and not susceptible to the whims of the wind. Then, he finished off the explanation saying, that it would be where a large amount of vegetation grew because their roots helped stabilize and hold the sand in place.

  Eliot was thoroughly impressed by his spot on reasoning and eventually found that he was genuinely enjoying himself around Faith instead of having to act. If he had to say exactly why, it would be that Faith was having fun himself and was incredibly knowledgeable. When it came to other adventurers, they were always on edge and solemn, every battle was a life and death struggle in their eyes. But Faith saw it with the same excited anticipation of a game, something Eliot couldn’t relate to with anyone else.

  Unfortunately, he knew their time battling together was limited and quickly diminishing. After killing the mole rat with little to no struggle, they made their way back into the savanna to slay the final miniboss. They specifically faced the other two first because Faith wanted to level up and gain the ability to summon a Knight of Beelzebub.

  Eliot was happy to go along with his plan after recognizing Faith as a fellow intellectual who was adept at strategic planning. He was even more thankful when he belatedly looked up the third miniboss in the monster compendium. It was a giant golem made of pure rock. Eliot was very confident in his martial abilities, but there was absolutely no way he would be capable of shattering a boulder without the use of magic. He also doubted there was anything in Faith’s arsenal that could perform such a feat.

  All in all, it took five days to kill the first two minibosses and find the golem. It was disguised as a monolithic boulder in a quarry. Thankfully, as was the case with most ambush type mobs in this dungeon, it remained lifeless until they attacked or stepped within range.

  Eliot and Faith prepared a soccer field’s distance away from the ten meter(about four hundred feet) boulder of the same height and width.

  “Here goes nothing,” Faith whispered as he summoned a Knight of Beelzebub for the first time.

  Eliot watched only a small distance away with interest. He had never seen any abyssal entities before and was letting his imagination run wild.

  Faith’s staff head spouted a small orange flame that floated down to the stone before bursting into a roughly human diametered pillar of flame. The flame dissipated into embers and revealed a female humanoid in its place. She had purple skin, charcoal eyes, fangs where regular canines should be, ears pointed to the point that they were slits, and dark red liquid flames for hair. She wore half plate lemon yellow armor with decorative engravings and embellishments that accentuated the point of her shoulders, outlined her curvy figure, and pulled back to reveal her massive black claws and regular sized hooves of the same color.

  She took a small moment to take in the two humans before walking up to Eliot and falling to one knee with her head down, her hair falling over her shoulders and singeing Eliot’s shirt as it swung.

  “I am Lleanna, Third Knight of Beelzebub. For what purpose have you summoned me, Master?” she asked with a surprisingly soft and amicable voice.

  “He summoned you,” Eliot corrected her while pointing at Faith. “I am only a spectator.”

  She lifted her baffled face and looked over at Faith. Her hair flashed purple at its tips and she hastily corrected her pledge.

  “My deepest apologies, Master. I hope you can understand my error,” she apologized in embarrassment.

  “It’s no problem, Eliot does have a sort of… aura,” Faith said as he patted her head. Surprisingly, her hair didn’t burn him, even when it turned slightly pink from being acknowledged by her summoner. “Are you, uh, gonna prostate forever?”

  She rose to her full height of two and a half meters(eight feet), towering over Faith’s measly one sixty centimeters of height(five feet three inches), and explained, “It is customary to kneel before a superior until told to stand.”

  “Well, my knowledge of abyssal etiquette is somewhat lacking, so just do what you see fit,” he said.

  “I live to serve,” she replied with conviction.

  “Alright!” Faith cheered with a clap, “First order of business is to attack that golem with your fire.”

  Llenna turned around and sized up her opponent before saying, “I should tell you that since this is not my home plane, my power is currently based on the strength of whatever power you are using to summon me. My flames will fail to melt magically reinforced stone.”

  “That’s fine, just attack it until it gets close,” Faith reassured.

  Llenna stepped the proper distance away and summoned fire in the caldera of her claws. White hot flames gathered into a giant fireball that looked normal sized in her enlarged right hand, then she pulled her arm back and threw it full force, utilizing perfect pitcher form. The ball soared as fast as if it was launched from a cannon and exploded against the golem’s massive body.

  Along with the blast, a crack of stone breaking away could be heard clear as birds in the earlier morning. Jagged arms separated from the main body and lifted enough to hold itself on legs of similarly shoddy carving. The behemoth was slower than a snail. It was rewarded for its troubles with two more balls of fire as it found its balance and it was pelted with an uncountable amount as it sluggishly stomped towards its attacker, the stone already beginning to glow white hot with each explosion.

  “Cease fire!” Faith ordered as it stumbled within range.

  Eliot and Faith produced two ice cold jars of water and chucked them as fast as they could, summoning more and throwing them as fast as they were able. Scorching steam rose from the stone and a loud sizzle slapped their ears as the jars shattered and water touched stone. Suddenly, large cracks formed all around its body and it shattered into a hill of luminescent, hot stones.

  “Yes!” Faith and Eliot celebrated as they high fived.

  “That’s the power of thermal shock, baby!” Faith whooped. Llenna’a claws clinked together lightly in a clap and an impressed smile was on her face.

  They had spent some of their down time in the sand dunes making glass jars and filled them with ice cold water from Faith’s water elemental summon; they stayed perfectly cold in the storage of their souls. It would be a crime not to utilize such an effective method.

  The pile of rocks disappeared and greeted them with their well earned loot. They practically ran over and merrily identified the items.

  “Ooh, a new arcane focus, nice,” Faith mumbled as he grabbed a stereotypical magician’s wand. “You should trade out your gloves for those gauntlets,” he said to Eliot, gesturing to silver gauntlets with opals embedded in the knuckles.

  “They’re a little flashy,” Eliot frowned disapprovingly as he equipped them anyway.

  “Oh, we hit the jackpot!” Faith exclaimed as he tossed a small red rimmed orb that was cloudy black in its center.

  Llenna caught it with a slight movement and asked, “What might this be?”

  “That, my lady, is called the FireStorm orb. It increases the damage of fire based attacks by ninety freaking percent!” he almost squealed with cheer, “And it’s all yours.”

  Her hair turned bright pink as she held the orb in her left and coalesced a fire ball in her right. It was nearly three times larger than her previous ammunition and bright blue in color.

  “I am forever grateful for this amazing gift you have bestowed upon me,” she thanked him with a deep bow in an over the top fashion.

  “You’re probably gonna be my main summon for a while, and you conveniently use fire, so it’s only natural that you should have it,” Faith waved nonchalantly.

  All that’s left now is the boss, thought Eliot with unfocused eyes, examining the gauntlets. He was filled with the conflicting emotion of watching a good thing come to an end, an entire week faster than he had first hoped. “We should move on,” he stirred.

  Two days later they were lying in watch a few hundred meters away from the boss, a gigantic mantis shrimp. Its light brown dotted, white carapace glinted in the sunlight, protecting its pale red body from the harsh rays. A long line of cockroach like legs stuck outward, and led to its cramped front face, not in any way dissimilar to an arachnid. Two slimy, alien, and unnervingly flat white eyes stuck up and out from its raised face with mandibles flaring from under—all over its hulking knuckles, a pair of appendages that resembled wrecking balls.

  “What’s the plan?” Eliot whispered even though it was unlikely it would hear them at their distance.

  “We wait,” Faith answered decisively. “Not long by the looks of it.”

  “And…” Eliot continued, “What are we waiting for?”

  “We are waiting for it to shed. Its knuckles can shoot forward faster than a bullet, but it can’t use them while molting without injuring itself. It should be a free win, really,” he explained.

  “How do you know so much about these mobs? Are you some legendary, reincarnated monster hunter?” joked Eliot playfully.

  “It’s all a big coincidence,” Faith shrugged. “Lots of these monsters are indigineous to the Amerigo continent.”

  “Then, you are a monster hunter?” Eliot laughed.

  “You could say I’m a connoisseur of all fields. I’m gonna know everything about everything, one day.”

  Eliot glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. He had said those exact same words before. Except, when he said everything, he meant it loosely. He was going to know everything about the fields that interested him, he wouldn’t bother too much with most things, certainly not past their practical potential. When Faith said the words, there was a burning ambition that could be heard moving up from his heart, and the resolve in his voice made Eliot inclined to believe that he would know everything about everything. One day.

  As it turns out, their timing was impeccable. The mantis shrimp started its molt midday; still, they waited till sundown before launching their attack. An unwieldy blue fire ball, nearly eighty centimeters in diameter(31 inches), greeted the lowered eyes of the unprepared shrimp. It let out a deafening hiss as it recoiled in the face of a blast of flames. One after the other, a wall of heat and blast of force hit it, burning its eyes and rendering it near blind, all the while charging at its attacker nonetheless.

  Finally, it was time for Eliot to act. While Llenna darted silently as possibe towards it, he got the responsibility of drawing its attention. He used form eight to soar into the air, landing on the space of shell that covered its neck. He braced his legs and reached forward, grabbing the appendage that lifted its eyes from its skull. He heaved with more effort than he had ever put into anything, perhaps except for Ellulia fantasies, fulfilling his role in their plan.

  The beast blasted air from its mouth in fury and its mandibles worked up a frenzy as it desperately fought against Eliot’s pull. It was mostly unsuccessfully, and its entire mass was skewed left by the time it felt the other pain. Llenna, equipped with a personal bag to hold the FireStorm orb from her brief trip back home, dug her claws into its skin and wrenched off its right knuckle. She fell to the ground in a tumble, but quickly rolled out of the ensuing spill of blood. Then, she proceeded to wield the knuckle as a giant club, using it to smack its remaining knuckle with enough force to bend it at an awkward angle. Eliot, rolling to stable ground while the shrimp writhed in pain, followed up with a kick that tore its remaining knuckle off with a spin.

  The end of the battle, if it could be called that, was utterly comical. Eliot and Llenna pummeled it to death with its own arms. It was a grand old time that must’ve looked as fun as it felt because even Faith wanted a turn, but decided against it when he was almost crushed in a failed attempt to lift one.

  With one final wack, the mantis shrimp died and disappeared, unfortunately so did its amputated limbs. Eliot was disappointed for only a split second before his mind was occupied by the thought of reward. They scrambled over each other to examine the modest gemstones it had dropped.

  The first one was a bluish purple hexagonal crystal and the second was a small white pearl that could fit on a particularly ostentatious noble’s ring.

  “What are they?” Eliot demanded breathlessly.

  “The crystal is a port crystale. And this” -he lifted the pearl with three fingers to get a closer look- “Is an Epiphany Orb.”

  “What does it do?”

  “I… don’t know…” he said slowly, squinting at it in an attempt to make it confess its properties. “It’s too high level.” He tossed it to Eliot.

  “You don’t want it? Llenna did do most of the work, it’s only fair you get the loot,” he said.

  “Nah,” denied Faith. “I’m not prone to having epiphanies. Really, if you study something correctly, then you shouldn’t have any epiphanies. It should all make sense and line up in a timeline of complexity.”

  Eliot understood where he was coming from. He had the same feeling when learning magic. There was no grand secret, everything just made sense and you either knew it or didn’t.

  “Alright, I’ll take it, then,” he conceded while stowing it in his soul.

  Their attention naturally shifted to the port crystal, and a heavy silence descended.

  “…I guess this is where we go our separate ways,” said Faith.

  “Well, for all we know it’s night time and we have to walk back to town together,” tried Eliot.

  Suddenly, Faith asked, “Do you happen to have any extra port crystals?”

  “No, actually I think that’s the first one I’ve seen,” admitted Eliot.

  “Yeah, same,” replied Faith. Only one of them could leave. Eliot wanted to propose they hunt until they get a second, but Faith picked the crystal up and handed it to him. “You go. I think I’ma stay here and grind until I can one shot the boss.”

  Eliot sighed through his nose in defeat. “Alright.” He smiled and held up the port crystal. “See you on the other side.” Faith saluted as the crystal lit up, it disappeared with Eliot the next second.