Luca DR
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Accidentally summoned 21
🕑 Added 2024-02-07 23:34:13 +0000 UTC21 – Friendship
“How strong do you think I am?” Ishrin asked as he finished up the last touches for the ritual. Gore and blood was everywhere, even on his usually immaculate clothes. “Right now, I mean.”
“With the pixie, impossible to say,” Lisette said with a shrug. “With just the sword, probably peak Tier 4 offensively, low Tier 4 in a straight fight. Without it? Probably still low-4.”
“Interesting,” Ishrin said. The ritual was taking shape quickly now. Its name was Appropriation Ritual variation IV, also known as Death Stealer. “What makes you say so? I would have thought I was lower without the sword.”
“You know too many spells. You are unpredictable. The sword forces you into a fighting style, without it—even limited to Tier 3 spells as you are right now—the sheer amount of them in your arsenal would make you impossible to predict. And dangerous.”
Ishrin nodded. It made sense, and soon it would all change for the better. The Death Stealer ritual would bring him to the cusp of tiering up, a process he would then have to delay until he could get the Derillomouf dew from the guild to complete the two Hands of Aer’Naari rituals and fully optimize the first tier. There were other things he could do too, but time was running short and they weren’t worth the risk of waiting too long. Already the atmosphere back at the guild was growing tenser than he’d like.
Ishrin walked to the middle of the pile of corpses, letting their energies flow into him. The blood of the many monsters seeped out of their bodies, and even what had flowed to the ground in little cerulean pools quickly gathered together and started moving on its own.
Taking a deep breath of stale dungeon air, he let the main part of the ritual begin. Lisette watched attentively from outside the magic circle, interested in magic as ever, as the blood surged upwards and creeped up Ishrin’s body. For a moment, he was shrouded in a living armor of liquid red, the bodies melting around him, their energies flowing into him like oozing fluids entering his skin, his pores, tainting his being.
Then, the last part of the ritual flared to life, purifying the filth and taint, leaving only pure, unadulterated raw power behind. Ishrin wrestled it under his control with practiced ease, and flexed.
“Ah,” he took a deep breath. While he was still in the same Tier, the difference was night and day. “Nice.”
Lisette was staring holes into him.
“Don’t worry. You may not be able to do this very same ritual to grow quickly, but we can figure out an alternative.”
“How much do you ask in return?”
Ishrin smiled. “How about nothing? We are friends, after all. Or we could be.”
“Friends…” Lisette echoed, for a moment lost in her own world. “I do not have friends. You would be the first.”
“What are you talking about? Isn’t Melina your friend?”
The girl seemed to think it through very carefully. “I suppose I could call her that, yes. That would make you my second friend.” She nodded, satisfied. Then, she frowned. “I do not know how friendship is supposed to work. Can you teach me?”
Ishrin laughed warmly, for a moment considering slapping the girl on the shoulder like he would do a buddy. Then changed his mind when he realized he was still covered in blood.
I did this whole conversation covered in blood. I can’t believe it!
A quick utility spell and he was clean, but the moment had passed. Perhaps for the better. He couldn’t remember the last time he had been buddy-buddy with someone.
As they made their way out of the dungeon, Lisette muttered something.
“Can we…”
Ishrin perked up. “Uh?”
“Can we… keep adventuring together? As… friends.”
She enunciated every word as if it tasted alien in her mouth.
“Of course! I enjoyed our little hunt!”
They made some small talk on the way back to the city, an event that surprised Ishrin more than meeting a god ever did. Lisette seemed to be trying hard to open up to him, and it made him feel very warm and happy to see her relaxed. Even Liù had caught on to this, and let the girl touch her hair. Once. But it was a step in the right direction. Besides, Lisette’s big smile when she did was priceless.
Ishrin also gave her a list of ingredients she would need to procure for her own version of the Death Stealer ritual, then they parted ways.
“I must take a detour,” she said.
“At night?”
“I am not scared of the dark, Ishrin, but thank you for worrying about me.”
***
Lisette didn’t miss the fact that Liù waved her goodbye for the first time ever as they parted ways. She also made plans to go back to the Dungeon with Ishrin again tomorrow after lunch, which left her with a wide smile on her face. It was totally involuntary, of course, she didn’t even know she was capable of smiling naturally, but she was aware of the strange and alien feeling of warmth in her chest after Ishrin asked her if she wanted to be friends. She liked it. She liked it a lot.
She also liked that she could finally grow in power again. It finally looked like she might overcome her bottleneck, and it was all thanks to this mysterious good Samaritan. Ishrin had somehow appeared in her life barely a week ago and already was doing more for her than anyone ever did before.
***
Ishrin, back at the inn, looked at the diagrams on the floorboards again. The lines where the wooden boards met were imprecise, but he could easily envision the correct form in his mind. A retrieval ritual. A modified summoning, basically. The ritual he had used to try and resurrect his dead wife, but which had almost ended up destroying a universe.
Why? Why had it tried to consume a universe?
Ishrin searched for clues in his conversation with Albert. The god had talked, revealed things while he killed Ishrin over and over. The details were hard to remember, but not forgotten.
Albert literally told me that Liù was never dead. He told me that I already knew it, well before I tried to resuscitate her. How could I know?
Ishrin re-examined his memories of his wife. What little he could remember of her. Her peerless beauty. The way she always found grace and harmony in everything she touched. How she felt connected to the world, and at times above it. Like a gentle gardener tending to her orchard in bloom.
Then, after she was gone, Ishrin couldn’t help but see things that reminded him of her. The beauty that she cultivated so meticulously reflected in the little things that persisted, what he thought at the time was a mockery of her soothing presence.
The world had endured, and its beauty had not dimmed. It had kept shining, reminding him of her. And it had hurt so much.
Albert had implied that he knew his wife was not dead. Had he chosen to fool himself?
He remembered how, after she was gone, he had secluded himself away from all mundane matters. Searching for one thing and one things only: more power. But as the centuries turned to millennia, her face faded from his memories.
All that was left was the thirst for power. Until he reached the peak of mortal power: Tier 15. That’s when he realized that he could not grow any further, and the idea for the resurrection ritual came to him. If he was as powerful as he could get, then he could pull a soul from the Beyond back to the mortal world.
Except.
I wasn’t at the peak of power.
It was clear now. The multiverse made it abundantly obvious. There were Tiers beyond the 15th. A thing Ishrin could not have known, back in Eternia. Had he known…
Why was I so dead-set on gaining power? What is there that I no longer remember?
