Taking my bloodied hand, I place it on the obsidian egg and initiate the summoner contract. The blood seeps in and turns the egg magenta as the contract activates, suddenly golden light spills through cracks made in the egg until finally an equally cute and scary sight was introduced into my sights.
Sitting in the lotus position in the bottom half of the eggshell or what remained of it was a little skeleton that looked as if it was cast in gold and seemed to be held together or animated by some dark force along with small red threads connected throughout its body as if they were blood vessels or something of the sort.
He was like a tiny person made of bones with a proportionally small skull that had blue fire in the eye sockets. I could sense the curiosity the little summon had at the new world it was exposed to, but there were no outward signs of any expression or emotion aside from some faint flickering in the little guy's eyes.
I turned around to Alex to see what she thought of the little summon, but she was on the other side of the throne platform where the ritual had taken place. Her face was pale, but she seemed determined not to show any fear to something she logically knew wouldn't hurt her since it followed my commands. It seems that getting over almost having your soul sacrificed in a summoning ritual by a crazed undead ruler wasn't as easy as it sounded, *haha*.
"What are you laughing at?" Alex asked in a defensive tone.
Knowing that my livelihood resided in my answer, I would do everything in my power not to say in any way, shape, or form that I was laughing at her reaction to the little skeleton after almost being sacrificed by one. Even though I was laughing in a sarcastic manner because of course, that would scar someone, she definitely wouldn't take it that way and I'd be in deep shit.
"I was thinking about how something so small and cute came from such a dark ritual." Whew, it was close enough to the truth that she didn't suspect anything, and it avoided the whole part of mentioning her fear of skeletons.
"I don't know about cute, but why do you think he turned out this way when the lich made it seem like he was bringing back some great sorcerer?" -Alexis
"Who knows, but I think the lich's soul being used instead of yours might have something to do with his current form rather than an undead human sorcerer. I guess one monster was transformed into another. Speaking of, why don't we start looting what we can from here before getting the hell out of dodge?" I said to distract her from the dark topic, not to mention that there were plenty of things to take that would sell for a pretty penny or we could keep for ourselves.
As Alex and the remaining summons goes around gathering some stray loot and surprisingly well-preserved furniture that was placed down here, I turned my attention back to my new summon to think about what I was going to do with him.
"Hey little fella, need to think of a name for you, why don't you show me what you can do so I can think of a fitting one." I talk in a soft but normal voice to the little baby skeleton.
All he can do to communicate is nod his head and clack his jaws together in what I assume was agreement. He stretched out his hand and a tiny ball of darkness formed in front of him and shot out at the speed of a lobbed baseball. When the ball hit the stone wall on the other side of the room, what remained was a divot perfectly cut out in the shape of the ball he had released.
I was impressed by the potential of the little guy if he could already do something like that after just being born. It seemed that his powers leaned towards darkness or some subset of, which narrowed down the names I wanted to choose.
Seeing as he was made from a lich and would likely end up as one in the future, I figured I should go with the name of a lich or one suitably fearsome for the undead. Thinking hard, I recalled an old character that was a magic lich named Ainz, deciding that would be a suitably fierce and appropriate name for the baby undead, I told him, "Your name will now be Ainz, got it".
He clacked his jaws in what I thought was approval and then made his way towards me and started climbing up my leg until he rested on my shoulder, carefreely swinging his legs like a child, which I guess he technically was. I still wasn't sure if he was the reincarnation of whatever the lich was trying to summon or if he was a new monster created in a ritual, but either way, he was my summon now and would be treated as such with no other bias, it's not his fault how he was made.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
Seeing that the last of the antique items held within the room were secured in a pile within the room, I went to help store it all, which included the ostentatious robes of the lich and his gilded throne of gold and jewels. It sure seems like even ancient civilizations had expensive tastes, but now it was mine. I could just see it now, the throne in our new guildhall with me on it in front of my underlings... I mean comrades.
....
Returning back to the city was rather uneventful aside from a few desert worms and even a pack of quill cacti attacking us as Alex and I rode back on Brutus and Musashi who had performed admirably during the lich attack due to his advancement into a death scythe mantis.
Even more interesting was Ainz retaining his place on my shoulder and even Violet coming over to my side to check out the small summon. Alex was a little put-out, but got over it when Ainz abandoned me by hopping onto the larger bydra and riding her back over to Alex. It seems the two got along quite well despite Alex's slight aversion to the skeleton summon.
it seemed a bit of contact was gradually getting her more accustomed to Ainz if not all skeletons, but it probably helped that the little summon was quite well behaved and looked non-threatening given his size. I would make a fuss over him leaving me if it wasn't for Alex already having issues with him, it looked like it would be good for her, so I let them be for now.
We cashed in the cores and bodies we salvaged from the trip, even though it was really only the cores we could collect from the undead. We made a fair sum from the trip and only kept a few for feeding Musashi and Ainz, but that wasn't the end of our money gaining ventures.
After hitting those buildings, we made our way to the similarly ostentatious building that was an exact replica of the auction house we had back in the North American continental city. Marble pillars and gold inlay shined brightly on the auction house as we walked up the steps and entered the building.
A nicely and professionally dressed woman stepped up to greet us and asked, "Welcome to the auction house, what can I help you two with"?
"We'd like to see an appraiser, we have a few items we came across recently that they might find interesting." -Alexis
Sensing that we were serious, she left down the hall and returned two minutes later following a mature older woman who seemed to be the appraiser we had requested.
"Hello, my name is Maya and I am the appraiser for the auction house. If you two will follow me, I'll bring you to a secure room where we can talk privately."
Seeing nothing wrong with her offer, we just nodded our heads in ascent and followed behind her to a pristinely and colorfully designed room with expensive-looking furniture and a few tasteful decorations dotting around. Clearly it was a room meant to impress and show the wealth and influence of the auction house. This was different from our auction house that only had minimalist and plain furniture and overly gaudy paintings or knickknacks dotting around the place.
"What is it that you wish to show me?" Maya asks us.
"We came across some Incan ruins in the desert of the monster plane and managed to secure a few artifacts after defeating the undead inside." I decided to disclose as it would corroborate our story and didn't give away what strength of monster we were capable of taking down. I wanted to give away as little as possible in case of our information leaking, and even ended up hiding Ainz while we were here despite his protests.
After telling her that, we started to bring out the items we took until the floor was covered in all sorts of objects. After noticing one particular one that Alex had decided to take, I couldn't help but ask, "You even took the sarcophagus"? The large stone coffin was inlaid with turquoise and gold with various other gems creating the image of some mythical bird that I didn't recognize.
"Of course I did, I wasn't going to leave anything in there we could sell even if it's linked to that psycho." -Alexis
Mara didn't even blink from our discussion, as expected of a professional appraiser from the auction house. The only things we didn't give up were some cool furniture that had survived due to being made of stone, the throne, and some jewelry for Alexis and Mira. The rest of it we put up for auction at the suggestion of Mara as they would all fetch more at auction than wholesale despite the common nature of the items.
The sarcophagus was something special as it was linked to a secret South American organization of mages in ancient times, their insignia was a depiction of the great bird serpent god known as Quetzalcoatl. This item would be the star of the coming auction and was expected to be quite valuable, as tombs and relics were even more dangerous than they were before the summoning era.
Collectors would go nuts and people of great influence would want to own it for the notoriety that would come with it. Even more so when we informed Mara of who the sarcophagus belonged to, we didn't disclose how we came about this information, but she seemed convinced given the luxuriousness of the coffin and other items held within the tomb.
Mara was enthusiastic and assured us that the items would all end up being sold and if no one bid, then the auction would quote us a fair price we could agree on later, although she seemed sure that would not end up happening. We left with a few receipt tickets noting all the items we had put up for sale and went back to the Espinoza's house to rest.