Chapter 250. Takeaways.
I returned to where I had left off inside the Los Alamitos Joint Forces Training Center. I’d been controlling my minions, using them as the opposing force for the platoon of soldiers to fight against. It took a moment to get my bearings when I heard Major Finley speaking to me.
“Rico, is everything okay? All your minions just disappeared. Do you need a break or something?” Finley asked. We were sitting in the command bunker watching the exercise unfold when I had been summoned.
“Yeah, that might be best, I was summoned and just came back,” I told the major. I hadn’t considered that anything I had summoned here on Earth would disappear when I was pulled back into a summoning series.
“All right everyone, the exercise is over, regroup at the gym and we’ll do a debrief. I think Rico’s will have some interesting stories for us,” Finley said over the group comms channel. Gathering my bearings, I left the bunker with Major Finley and jumped into the SUV they used to cart me around on post with.
“I’ll try to hold my questions until the platoon is gathered, but I must admit, I didn’t see a thing when you were just summoned. All your minions disappeared, and I asked you if everything was okay. Only a few seconds passed here, how long were you gone? No, hold that, I want the whole platoon to hear,” Finley said, more animated than usual.
Being summoned and coming back home was old hat to me now, but it must seem bizarre to these soldiers who only heard about the odd things going on and hadn’t experienced them directly. I hoped that the work I was doing with them would help prepare the soldiers for integration. Maybe my efforts would save lives and keep things from spinning out of control.
“Find a seat everyone, Rico’s going to give us a debrief. While you were hunting down his minions, Rico was summoned again. Rico, I’ll record this to save you a second debrief with the feds later. We can just send them the video,” Finley said. They didn’t have a dedicated tech guy here to work with us, but one of the soldier’s was into that kind of stuff and got everything set up while the platoon sat on the gym bleachers and waited.
“Where do you want me to start?” I asked once the video recording was ready.
“Start at the beginning, when you were first summoned. I know you go to the personal space, but what happens there?” Finley asked.
I described being pulled into a summoning, how it seems you float in nothingness for a bit until you suddenly appear standing in the personal space. For the most part, the soldiers sat there eating it up, until I mentioned the servants I now had in the personal space. Of course, one of the soldiers had to ask if the maids were hot, which caused Finley to signal one of the sergeants to slap the offending soldier in the helmet.
“How many different summonings did you go on, and how long were they?” one of the soldiers asked.
“Let’s see, this time I had a total of six this time. Some were pretty short, but one was at least a weeklong ordeal, maybe a bit more. It was hard to tell, I was inside a dwarven mine,” I replied.
“Dwarven mine? How about a quick recap in order. What types of things did you fight, and what could you have done to improve your performance,” Finley asked. I was a bit self-conscious talking about my performance, finding that I didn’t want the soldiers I’d trained with to think I was a screw up.
“Sure, let’s see. My first summoning was for some guy that was almost human, but not quite. The place was like being in a western mixed with magic, and I was summoned by him to, believe it or not, help him cheat at cards,” I said, pausing for the others to absorb what I’d said.
“How’d the summoning end, and what kind of booze did they have,” one of the soldier’s asked, half joking about the booze.
“No booze for me, well, maybe one drink. I was a simple minion to that guy, and things were over quickly when I was caught cheating and had my head melted by a Searing Doom spell. I don’t recommend it,” I replied.
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“So, no combat, and no other takeaways that might help us here on Earth after the integration?” Finley asked.
“Not that I can think of now, I’ll write down a full report later, but it’s good to recap for you now while it’s a bit fresher in my mind. Ready for the second summoning?” I asked.
“Hold up, we know you were killed by spells, but what about other weapons. You mentioned it was like a western, did they guy who summoned you have a gun?” one of the sergeants, a short but stout man named Mendez, asked. I couldn’t help but think that if the sergeant was kitted out in dwarven gear, he’d pass for one of their miners. Despite his small stature and my enhanced stats, the man utterly destroyed me in combatives training.
“No guns or anything like that,” I replied. Finley motioned for me to go onto the next summoning. I explained the mansion and the contest where me and the other summoned beings had to survive and fight our way out. The soldiers gave me one of their Hooah’s when I told them I’d won the challenge.
Next up was the dwarven mine summoning. It was a longer term contracted summoning, and I explained the details of what that meant. A few questions about the bugs were asked, and the other dwarves we’d fought.
There were more than a few looks of horror when I explained waiting for the bugs to come and eat me after the minion explosions. You wouldn’t think that you’d be thankful for a mine collapsing on you, but when the alternative was being slowly eaten alive by bugs, it was a much more pleasant end.
My next summoning was to the dungeon. They’d heard me talk about my previous experience defending a dungeon and even clearing two here on Earth, so this summoning was a bit more familiar for them. I answered questions on the mage, knight, and their fighting styles, and Major Finley took notes to incorporate both a simulated dungeon clear, and a defense into our training program.
I had my new dungeon shard ability as well, and Finley asked if we should use it before I was summoned again, to give the team a look at a real dungeon room. While I was reluctant to use it for just a training session, I still had tons of consumable figurines to use here on Earth if we ran into something dangerous.
The odds of me being attacked or having to defend myself had dropped drastically when we finally started working with the government and the other summoned being organizations. After the dungeon, I explained the next summoning by the merchant being attacked by the dire bear. I felt vindicated when a few of the soldier’s began to curse the system at my performance rating of poor just because I had been late to the summoning because of the dungeon shard integration.
“My last summoning had something interesting happen. I got a look at a weapon resembling a gun turret,” I said, explaining the weapons the goblins had mounted on top of the train cars. Major Finley had me go over those several times and mentioned that they’d need a full report with as much detail as possible.
I’d explained a similar weapon with the mech suits the gnomes used, and I figured they already had plans underway to make some kind of magic missile rifles or something along those lines. The goblin turrets were a bit more than just magic missile wands mounted on a mech, they were powered by the strange mana crystals and weren’t just firing a spell from a wand.
“Thanks for the information, Rico. After this last summoning session, is there anything you want us to focus on to help you in the future?” Finley asked.
“I think we just keep doing what we’re doing. Just from the short time we’ve been working together, I learned enough to help keep that dungeon alive. Small unit tactics are great, and maybe we can see about getting some medieval and ancient weapon specialist to come at teach us,” I suggested.
“Work on that is already underway. From what I understand, command is in the process of vetting several individuals to work with the new teams were forming. On that note, we’re going to have to share you with another team next month. Until then, we’re going to get as much out of you as we can,” Finley said.
“Any idea who I’ll be working with?” I asked.
“No, it’s not something command decided to share with me. Since we were so rudely interrupted earlier by your summoning session, why don’t we restart the last exercise. The platoon against your summoned creatures in an urban environment,” Finley said.
“I’m up for it, but I’m not sure the troops are,” I said, spinning up the soldiers a bit. “My minions have quite a few upgrades since the earlier skirmish. Did I mention the mana slayer drone has a grenade launcher now?” I taunted.
“This sounds like a good opportunity for a wager,” Sergeant Mendez suggested.
“What did you have in mind, Sergeant?” I asked. Finley just smiled, his silence letting us know he was cool with a friendly bet.
“Winner of the skirmish buys lunch for the next week,” Mendez offered.
“Is that fair? If I lose, I’ve got to buy for the whole platoon, and if you lose, you just have to buy my lunch,” I complained.
“Dude, you’re loaded, you can afford a whole lot more with all that magic gold and stuff you sell off. I’ve got an E6 salary and three dependents to take care of,” Mendez countered.
“I guess you’re right. Now, what kind of rules do we have for this little contest?” I replied.
For a moment, I’d forgotten I was now a millionaire. Being broke for so long, it was hard for me to get my head around it. That didn’t mean I was going to let them win. My minions had improved, and I wanted to show them off a bit. If Finley agreed, I even had a few tricks in mind to simulate the bizarre environments they might find themselves fighting in once the integration occurred.