Summoner Sovereign

"It"s a matter of timing," Dad explained flippantly. "If they saw us that far out and a while ago, they will have plenty of time to ready a defense and start evacuating the facility. But if we strike now, they"ll be caught unawares and completely off guard. So let"s not waste too much time arguing and hit them hard and fast before they know what"s happening."

He unleashed the torrent of flames that seared through the ma.s.sive doors, his superheated fire melting the reinforced metal instantly.

Holy h.e.l.l…Angel of Fire indeed.

"Let"s go."

I hurried after him, and we stepped into the vast facility beyond the molten doors, which continued to smolder glow red-hot from the intense heat. Taking care not to step or touch the warped, softening but scalding edges, I peered inside the facility.

"…where"s everyone?"

There was no sign of panic, nothing. No panicking humans running around at the sudden attack. Not even a single sign of human life.

"Where did everyone go?" I asked dumbly.

"s.h.!.+" Dad snapped at me. I fell silent, wondering why he was so on edge despite his usually cavalier att.i.tude.

And then I sensed them.

There were things hiding in the shadows, staying just out of sight and lurking on the edge of our peripheral vision. I summoned Corvus and sent them to scout ahead, but something lashed out and smashed one of them into the ground. I instantly recalled the rest, feeling a cold jolt at the demise of the poor crow.

"What the h.e.l.l is that?!"

Then I realized that there was no sign of human life, but…there was definitely something alive in here.

Something alive and overwhelmingly hostile.

"Stay back!"

Dad pushed me back as something whipped out from the shadows, piercing through the s.p.a.ce where I had been occupying just a millisecond ago. Drawing his flaming sword, Dad cut whatever it was, and it shrieked and recoiled before withdrawing back into the darkness. I saw something drop down, a black appendage, but it disappeared fully before it could hit the ground.

"Angelica!"

The angel of fire materialized, illuminating the entire place with blinding crimson fire. I could see inhuman shapes scuttling at the edge of the shadows, where the light of the blazing flames couldn"t quite reach, but the brief glimpse was enough to cause me to back away in horror.

Gritting my teeth, I immediately drew Gan Jiang and Mo Ye. Summoning a pride of Leo Minor and Leo, I held them back around me, not wanting to commit them just yet. The horrific memory of Corvus getting dashed to the ground, and the chill that jolted through me at the moment of contact…

If anything, Dad had everything well in hand. Angelica was incinerating the creatures in the shadows, her hands spread out as she sang some sort of siren"s song and unleas.h.i.+ng torrents of flames in all directions. Inhuman howls and screeches drowned out the roar of the flames, and beyond my vision, things scuttled away in a frenzy. Countless eyes blinked frantically as they stared from black, gelatinous bodies that crept away in a slime-like manner.

"s.h.a.ggrowths," Dad hissed in a deadly tone. "Be careful. If they capture you, they"ll a.s.similate your biological structure into their own and digest you."

"Shapes.h.i.+fters?"

"Worse than that." Dad grimaced. "They become you, with your memories, personality, abilities, everything…and you become part of them. A horrific collective mind of agony where uncountable souls are forcefully melded together."

His words horrified me.

"Then the…Dark Church people here…they all have…"

"Most likely." Dad glanced around, and then turned to Angelica, who was still burning a few of the s.h.a.ggrowths into cinders. "Angelica?"

"I don"t detect any human life in the vicinity."

"Well, Richie, you get to nuke the mountain, after all. We can"t let these creatures get out, or they"ll completely take over a city."

I was reminded of an old horror movie from the 1980s about a shapes.h.i.+fting alien that was found in Antarctica before it wiped out an entire human expedition. Drawing a deep breath, I nodded, and began casting my spell.

One of the s.h.a.ggrowths had crept up behind me, but one of my Leo Minors pounced on it and ripped it apart with his claws. Leo roared as he unleashed a brilliant burst of Regulus that scorched through another horde of s.h.a.ggrowths, slaying a few and forcing the others to scamper away. Unfortunately, they fled right into an inferno conjured by Angelica, and were wiped out.

Dad had rushed toward a computer terminal and switched it on. I gaped at him, puzzled.

"Dad? What are you doing? I thought you want me to nuke the place?"

"Yes, but give me some time. You need time to summon your soul beast, anyway, don"t you? In the meantime, I"m going to download whatever data I can from here." he glanced at me sharply. "We need to know what happened…I"m guessing the s.h.a.ggrowths were summoned through an Emergence event, and they exceeded the Dark Church"s control and slaughtered them. But I want to know why they were summoning such abominations. Their motives…and their next target. I also need to know where else they were conducting such experiments. Is this the only facility with s.h.a.ggrowths in them, or…?"

The idea that there might be many more places filled with these things filled me with horror. Gulping, I nodded and tried to hurry the casting of Draco as quickly as possible. Another alien screech blasted out behind me as Angelica reduced it to ash, but there were more of those things shuffling in the shadows, and I was pretty sure there were even more of these things populating the rest of the facility beyond.

"I say we take off and nuke the entire site from heaven. It was the only way to be sure."

"I agree." Dad shrugged as he plugged in some backing device and began copying all the data and files from the computer terminal into it. "Normally we should be searching for survivors, but I can"t take the risk of allowing these things to roam free. A colony of them wiped out an entire expedition of mages in the Antarctica a few decades ago, and the Federation decided to sterilize the site with a Strategic-scale spell before the a.s.similated mages could escape to human society and spread beyond number."

We had our backs to the door, and I had even posted Ursa Major and a pack of Ursa Minor to ensure none of the s.h.a.ggrowths escaped through the exit we had just so kindly opened for them. Glancing around, I tried to think of a way to seal the doors before it was too late.

"Okay, done! Go, go, go!"

Dad vaulted over the computer desk and landed on the ground, his fiery sword flas.h.i.+ng out and searing through a s.h.a.ggrowth stupid enough to ambush him. The creature wailed as it toppled over, its entire form combusting.

"Taurus!" I shouted, summoning the giant bull to clear a path for my dad. As the huge Constellation spirit materialized and trampled on a couple of s.h.a.ggrowths, I issued another command. "Aldebaran!"

An enormous gout of flame erupted from his jaws and washed over the milling s.h.a.ggrowths. A good number of them managed to crawl away to safety, but the flamethrower technique incinerated a significant portion of them.

"Thanks!" Dad cut through another s.h.a.ggrowth with his fiery sword before reaching my position. "Angelica, you"re on rearguard duty! Make sure none of them get out!"

"Roger that," Angelica replied softly as she raised her hands, almost as if in supplication. The entire room disappeared in a raging inferno that continued to expand ferociously toward the exit.
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I quickly dismissed the majority of my Constellation spirits, leaving only the pack of Ursa Minor and solitary Ursa Major at the door. Dad and I threw ourselves out of the door and hit the ground, rolling to our feet and racing across the artificial concrete road that had been paved in the hollowed out tunnel of the mountain.

"Draco!" I shouted, summoning the t.i.tanic dragon. Hopping onto the Constellation spirit, I waited for Dad to do the same, and then had Draco fly out of there.

"You can dismiss the rest of your soul beasts," Dad told me, and then he turned around to call out to Angelica. "Create a Firewall!"

"Already done it."

The fiery angel soared upon wings of fire, easily catching up with Draco. Behind, I caught sight of an immense inferno erupting over the gates, turning into a blazing barrier that reduced any creature that attempted to pa.s.s through it into ash. None of the s.h.a.ggrowths were going to escape through those superheated flames.

I was glad I had managed to recall my Ursa Constellation spirits in time, right when Dad told me to. Otherwise they would have ended up immolated along with the s.h.a.ggrowths.

Now that we were flying upon Draco"s back and not on foot, we were out of the tunnel within a minute. Draco ascended high up into the sky, several magic circles appearing around his jaws as he slowly but surely cast Thuban.

Flapping his great wings, he whirled around in the air to face the wretched mountain we had just escaped from. Hovering in a fixed place several hundred meters from sea level, he directed his glowing jaws toward the site. In the meantime, Angelica guarded us for a while longer, but when she saw there was no other threats, she waved and vanished from view after Dad nodded at her. It was going to take some more time for him to fully charge the attack, so I waited for him to complete the casting of the spell before pointing dramatically at the mountain.

"Draco, Thuban attack!" I shouted, behaving like some pocket monster master who had never won a single pocket monster league. Draco obeyed and unleashed the devastating energies from his jaws. The tremendous torrent of black mana surged from him and slammed into the mountain, erasing it and every foul creature inhabiting it from existence. The entire place vanished into a spherical explosion of black and crimson, expanding and billowing upward into a mushroom cloud. Another two mountains that happened to be nearby were also annihilated, disintegrating from the sheer destructive force of Draco"s Thuban spell.

"Ho…"

Dad whistled, thoroughly impressed. He patted me on the head and snickered.

"Man, I don"t know what you"ve been doing in order to master a Strategic-scale spell at your age."

"A hundred losses, lots of training, and lots of learning and research," I replied matter-of-factly. Dad grimaced.

"That"s not what I meant…never mind." Then he noticed that I was breathing laboriously and looking extremely pale. "Oi, Richie, are you all right?"

"Yeah…just that this spell takes a lot out of me. And even before summoning Draco and having him unleash his Thuban spell, I was summoning quite a lot of Constellation spirits. So I"ve expended quite a lot of mana."

"Okay, set down and dismiss your Constellation spirit then." Dad observed me and nodded. "Yeah, it"s costing you quite a lot of mana just to maintain this dragon"s existence in the material world. The faster you set down and release him, the better. We"ll just make the rest of the journey on foot."

"Thanks."

I obeyed and dismissed Draco as soon as we reached the ground. At least I didn"t pa.s.s out like the last time I did after nuking the two h.e.l.lfire Drakes. I was gratified to see that I had grown stronger. At the very minimum, it was clear that I had increased my mana reserves and stamina.

We strolled back toward the village on foot in silence, with me staggering as I forced my exhausted body to move. Mana depletion affected the physical body tremendously as well – if you expended a significant amount of mana, you were going to feel physically drained as well. So this was only natural.

However, Dad, who had been reading the data he had downloaded from the Dark Church"s computer terminal into his hacking device this entire time – having beamed a huge holographic image into the air – suddenly paused.

"Sorry, Richie. I know this will be hard on you, but I need you to summon one of your flying soul beasts again."

"What"s the matter?" I asked, feeling unsettled despite my weariness. Dad turned from the holographic images and toward me, looking all serious and furious.

"We"ve to hurry back to Sakha City. The d.a.m.ned Dark Church has already unleashed a monster army in its direction a few days ago, and if the data reads right…they"ll reach there in a matter of hours."