Beatrice managed to return to the dorm room. Students with black uniforms were forced to share their space with others. The girl was feeling quite tired after the encounter with the group of girls and after using that summon for the first time her head was still hurting. She felt that she was suffering from drowsiness that came from overstraining herself and drawing out too much mana.
Her roommate looked sloppy as always. It was a short girl from the alchemist circle, due to this the room’s smell was always strange when she came back. The two did get along but the constant threat of explosions and poisonous mists spreading through this room was a thing that she had to live with.
“Hey, Beatrice.”
The girl called out while pouring some green liquid from one beaker into another.
“Hey Marry, I’ll be in my room.”
Even though they shared the same dorm room with each other they both had separate bedrooms. They were still nobles so the ones in charge decided to not make them share bunk beds or be stuck in one small room with each other.
‘Do summon spirits talk that much?’
Beatrice flopped on her bed, she didn’t even feel like taking a bath or calling her family. The summoned spirit that she made a contract with was on her mind. Normally the spirits that magicians summoned weren’t that intelligent.
They mostly followed their master's orders in a robotic way. This one on the other hand was capable of holding a conversation. This meant that that heroic spirit was really rare as only the top shelf ones were intelligent enough to converse with their contractor. There was also another problem, this spirit never told her its name. Normally during the contract, the spirits true name would come to her naturally but instead, there was some kind of conflicting information that didn’t make sense.
‘Maybe I’m not worthy enough to know its true name yet?... I don’t think I can control it well…’
She thought back to the encounter with the snake spirit. When she attempted the summoning it worked but it took some time for her spirit to react. It was as if it only acted when its summoner was in danger but didn’t follow specific instructions. It also left on its own accord when her head started to hurt, without the summoning being canceled by the summoner.
‘I’ll have to visit the library, maybe I can find an answer there…’
Beatrice gave out a yawn while curling up in bed. Due to the stressful nature of this day and lack of sleep the previous day she was really tired. Soon her eyes were closed as she floated off to dreamland. The person she was thinking about on the other hand was wide awake, looking at his ‘contractor’ from his void dimension.
‘Her body can’t take the strain of summoning me into that world, I need to do something about that…’
Zhang Dong was sitting on that column in the middle of the void. Shooting stars were flying down above him but not like he could move towards them. After further examining where he was in, there were a few conclusions that he was able to make.
For one this place was a small pocket dimension, similar to what the Dimensional Regalia was in the beginning. The whole space stretched out for about five kilometers in all directions. When he tried flying forward he ended up at this pillar again, if he tried going towards the shooting stars he would hit an invisible wall that he was unable to break.
It looked like there was nothing to work with here but that wasn't necessarily true. If he concentrated his spiritual energy, there was a way to change the scenery. He tested this out by creating a small patch of grassland, the field was small but this was just a proof of concept. It was as if this place was part of him, part of his soul, just empty and uninhabited for now.
‘I guess I could create a house for myself, for the time being, just sitting on this pillar isn’t very comfortable.’
Before he did any renovating though there were other questions that needed to be answered. Today’s strange event of him being summoned to this world that his contractor Beatrice inhabited. Another question was concerning his ability to move through that other world. It was at least possible if his summoner called him but it was temporary.
The amount of force this young girl could exert on him was minimal, he attributed that to being much stronger than his summoner. If he compared the amount of energy that this girl was able to output, it would be around the lower levels of Qi condensation. With him being now really close to the late stage of the nascent soul there was no way of her forcing him to do anything.
‘She is lucky that I’m not some kind of malicious spirit, I feel that a strong summon would be able to devour their contractor if they really wanted.’
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He thought while looking to the side, there a small ball of blue light was floating about.
“Hey Bob, Is there a way of increasing the girl’s spiritual energy? Though I guess they call it mana here.”
He was still getting used to the new AI companion that he received. It came to life after the absorption of the previously corrupted cube. The trust between him and this construct wasn’t quite there yet but there was a use for it. This system wasn’t something that he could wholly trust but without it, he would have still been stuck in that strange energy tunnel.
“I have finished scanning the host named Beatrice, sending data to the user.”
Zhang Dong felt a jolt in his brain again, soon he had a detailed biometric profile of the person that he was inhabiting. The girl even had her own section in the system window from this point on. The blue AI had some other features that it could bring out, a holographic image appeared in front of him after he ordered it to produce it.
“I see… this world has a similar energy source as my spirit energy. Mana huh…”
Mana sounded like something that belonged to a high fantasy world that had elves and gnomes in it. From what he could tell it worked a bit different than Qi from his world.
A cultivator absorbed spiritual energy from the surroundings and nourished various parts of his body to get stronger. There were all kinds of cultivation techniques just as many as the stars in the sky. In the end, a cultivator ended up with an enhanced version of their body and soul. Even without specialized body refining techniques, their body would be transformed, more when a cultivator ascended into a higher realm.
In this world, on the other hand, mana wasn’t absorbed in such a way. At least these summoners or magicians didn’t strengthen their body, they went for the soul instead. Thus they only increased their casting capabilities and mana reserves while the body didn’t change much from what a regular human would be.
‘They can advance their mana faster than a cultivator would but at the same time they remain weaker…’
Zhang Dong wasn’t sure but he figured that there were spells or ways that could enhance one's body. It looked like they were more of a temporary boost than something that prevailed even if the caster was out of mana. A cultivator on the other hand would be left with a certain degree of strength even if they used up all of their Qi. Even more, if they were practicing any body refining techniques like him.
‘I don’t really need to make her body stronger but I need her to have more mana…’
He rubbed his chin while staring at the hologram of Beatrice. He could see all her vitals and statics, due to the contract the system was able to gather all of this data. With it, he was able to analyze how people in this world differed from the old one.
There was a need for more information. The cultivation that he had amassed was for spiritual energy and not mana. The ones concerning a person’s soul arts were a bit more similar to the techniques people used in this world, he still needed more information.
‘Well, she needs to wake up first…’
He looked at the empty void with the patch of green grass that he made. For the time being, he needed to renovate here....
Beatrice woke up with her face on the ground. She had somehow rolled down from her bed and landed straight on the floor. The girl’s original bed back home was much bigger and she was quite the high roller. This wasn’t anything new for the girl, she just climbed back up to her feet and moved towards the bathroom.
Her roommate was not here anymore so she would have it just to herself. The water faucet was activated with an infusion of her mana. She was now staring at the reflection in the mirror while brushing her teeth. The events from yesterday were going through her mind, the only thing indicating that it really happened was the magical tattoo on her right hand.
Thanks to passing the ritual trial she had the day off. The teachers had marked her down and the next round of tests would continue later. For now, she decided to relax in the bath after that it would be time to go home to meet up with her parents.
They were probably expecting her to come back soon, it wasn’t allowed to use magical devices to contact people outside the school. She would need to go to the appropriate place and ask for permission first. But for now, it was time to relax, though while doing this she heard a disembodied voice call out to her…
“Beatrice was it? Could you hurry it up, I would like to gather some information…”
She raised her head while looking around, confusion was clearly on her face. The voice was familiar and soon she remembered who it belonged to.
“Honorable Spirit? Is that you?”
The spirit never told her his name so she still didn’t know how to refer to him.
“Yes, it’s me.”
“How can you be here without being summoned?”
“I’m not really here, I’m just contacting you through our link. Our souls are partially connected but don’t worry, you aren’t in any danger.”
This spirit had quite the soothing manly voice, it reminded her a bit of her late grandfather. For some reason it made her trust in his words, she still needed to clear one thing up.
“Great Spirit, could you give me your name… and tell me why you have chosen me?”
The latter part was more important than the first one. She wasn’t sure why a powerful spirit like this agreed to a contract, there could be some ulterior motives.
“My name you ask? I guess I forgot to mention it...”
There was a moment of silence before the manly voice was heard again.
“Yes, I will tell you my name. The people have already forgotten me but I am the one and only Holy Lightning Emperor, Leigong!”
For some reason, there was a thunderclap sound the moment he disclosed his name. She had never heard of a being of that name before, it also sounded quite fierce. She wouldn't know that this Lightning Emperor only went with this name to sound cooler. He didn’t want to go with the usual thunder god names and chose something closer to his current cultivator disposition instead.
“Respectable Leigong, about my other question?”
“You can drop the honorifics… for the reason I chose you… well… let’s just say that you aren’t ready to know the truth yet…Now, could we go to a place with some books?”
“Books? We have a large library with magic books at his academy… but I’m supposed to go home now...would the book at my home estate be enough?”
“Think that should be fine for now...let us depart, with haste!”
Beatrice just nodded, she wasn’t sure what this spirit named Leigong wanted but he was her summoned spirit. This meant that she needed to cherish it. The books did say that the better relationship that a summoner had with their spirit the stronger it became. So the time came to return home.