Chapter 104: Summoner
As time passed, Sara and Blade watched Zero and Night dart across the battlefield, killing monsters and plundering their corpses.
They sat perched on a sturdy tree branch, affording them a clear, view of the battlefield.
Sara turned, swinging her legs casually. Her dark witch attire looked distinctly out of place against the freezing, bloody environment. "Do you sense it?" she asked softly.
Blade, sitting cross-legged on an adjacent branch, replied without turning her head. "Yes. It must be the Overlord Zero Zero told us about."
"Not as strong as I thought," Sara mused.
"Hard to say. It is a Demigod, but a newly ascended one," Blade noted.
"Can we kill it?"
"What about the territorial boost from its Node?" Blade asked logically.
"I’ll set up some arrays. That should level the playing field," Sara replied with a confident smile.
Little did Night know, while he was busy grinding, Sara and Blade were already plotting to slay the region’s Overlord.
....
Down below, Night didn’t bother checking his notifications, though he was aware that the skills he was receiving from devouring the corpses.
[Dream]’s voice suddenly echoed in his mind. "You should really summon your friends. You are a Summoner, so start acting like one."
Night paused, looking around at the swarm.
(-_-)
He suddenly felt incredibly stupid for not thinking of this sooner. While the battlefield was undeniably dangerous, the level of these grunts was manageable for his team.
As Night called upon his companions, five swirling, blackish-purple portals materialized around him. From the rifts stepped Lucy, Lilith, Eve, Sage, and Death.
They could already sense the soul connection linking them to a new presence.
While the summons were inherently tied to Night, the unique nature of the [Nightmare Domain] interconnected them with each other as well.
Zero noticed their arrival and hurried over to group up, dragging a trail of aggroed Dark Phantoms, Snow Foxes, Water Bulls, and Armored Fire Lizards right behind her.
Instead of greeting Night enthusiastically like always, they fixed their gazes directly on Zero, who was rapidly darting toward them.
Death gave Night a deeply betrayed look. "Master... you got another summon?"
As she spoke, she angrily swung her scepter. Twelve skeleton Ice Light Eagles materialized with a shriek and ruthlessly dove into the charging horde of crazed monsters.
Night wisely kept his mouth shut.
"This is highly unfair, Master," Eve chimed in, her mechanical eyes glowing with accusation. "You really should have consulted us before making such an important decision."
From the pristine pocket of her maid outfit, she pulled out her newly acquired Nanobot artifact. The tiny machines instantly dispersed and rapidly rearranged themselves, forming a sleek, high-tech handgun. She casually raised it, aiming directly at the encroaching swarm.
Bam!
A bullet coated in crackling [Electric Energy] shot forward, perfectly striking a Dark Phantom,the once that looked like a black panther, that was stealthily trying to flank them.
Wow, that was really cool, Night thought, thoroughly impressed despite the heavy guilt trip.
Lilith sighed dramatically. "Master, what will happen if we simply can’t get along with each other? What about our team harmony?"
She, too, pulled her dark Nanobot artifact from her maid pocket, effortlessly transforming it into a matching handgun. Taking calm aim, she fired at a charging Water Bull.
Bam!
A bullet thoroughly coated in corrosive [Dark Energy] pierced directly through the Bull’s eye, instantly killing the massive beast in a single shot.
Lucy didn’t say a single word, but looking at her drooping wolf ears, one could easily tell she was not in the best mood either.
But entirely unlike the others, Sage didn’t look unhappy in the slightest. Instead, she looked incredibly ecstatic, like a little kid receiving her favorite toy on Christmas.
Eke eke eke ekek!
(That incredibly beautiful woman taught me a new skill!)
@( ✧Д✧ )@ ✨
As she cheered, she plucked a single strand of fur from her tiny body and blew on it softly.
Puff!
Instantly, another Sage appeared right beside her. However, this clone looked visibly wobbly and struggled to maintain its form.
Eke eke ekek ek?
(How is that?!)
(@( ≧ ▽ ≦ )@ ﾉ)
she asked Night, vibrating with excitement.
Night looked at the display and smiled warmly. At least exactly one of them wasn’t bothered by his new friend.
Looking closely at the wobbly clone with his [Mystic Eyes], he could vividly see that it possessed the exact same raw strength as the original Sage, which was completely absurd but he also quickly realized it possessed incredibly low vitality.
It looked as if a single strike would be more than enough to dissipate it.
"That looks incredibly cool!" Night praised genuinely.
Sage nodded proudly, and both the original and the clone aggressively charged ahead, covering their tiny bodies in Stone Armor and carrying stone staffs.
By the time Zero successfully reached their position, all of them had fully prepared themselves to fight.
...
The tactical change was immediate. With five more powerful beings actively joining the chaotic hunt, the kills racked up exponentially faster.
[You have slain a Lvl 33 Water Bull | +330 EXP]
[You have slain a Lvl 36 Armored Fire Lizard | +360 EXP]
[You have slain a Lvl 34 Snow Fox | +340 EXP]
[You have slain a Lvl 38 Dark Phantom | +380 EXP]
[You have slain....]
[You have slain...]
Level 30: (EXP: 6,907 / 131,000)
The two Sages dynamically darted around the larger monsters, slamming their stone staffs coated in corrosive [Nightmare Mist].
A Dark Phantom rapidly dissolved into dark smoke, instantly reappearing directly above the original Sage.
She flawlessly ducked and swept her staff upward to block the descending claws. The Dark Phantom desperately dissolved into smoke again to dodge a heavy flank attack from the wobbly clone Sage.
The real Sage’s body suddenly glowed with blinding white light as she closed the distance to the Dark Phantom.
The beast, not expecting its tiny prey to chase after it so fast, hastily spat out a condensed dark orb from its maw. Sage effortlessly swatted it aside.
Thinking it was momentarily safe, the panther landed, only for all its black fur to stand on end as it sensed its death rapidly approaching.
It desperately tried to its movement skill to escape, but right before it could vanish, a stone staff smashed into its back, shattering its spine and killing it instantly.
The wobbly clone Sage stood triumphantly directly behind the now-dead monster.
Both Sages nodded firmly at each other and continued their rampage.
A little further away, Lucy found herself working directly alongside Zero.
Out of absolutely all the monsters, Zero severely struggled with the Armored Fire Lizards the most.
The Armored Fire Lizard inherently possessed the Fire Aspect, which acted as a direct counter to her Ice Aspect.
Of course, Zero securely possessed the Light Aspect as well, but the heavy "Armor" in the monster’s name was absolutely not just for show.
When Zero had previously tried to split one in two like she did the other monsters, her mandibles had barely chipped its scales.
So, Zero intelligently switched to using ranged ice skills, like [Ice Bullets] and [Ice Spears], to carefully attack it from afar.
It would have easily been a manageable fight if not for the Water Bull that was simultaneously harassing her with lethal [Water Blades].
As for exactly why Zero wasn’t rapidly darting around the battlefield like before, it was simple: now that there were more people on their side, if she blindly ran around, she might accidentally drag more aggroed monsters toward the group than they could safely handle.
Just when a razor-sharp [Water Blade] got too close to her, a shadowy hand violently extended from the ground and blocked the lethal strike.
Zero looked over at the wolf standing casually beside her.
This specific summon gave her a weird feeling, exactly as if it possessed something fundamentally similar to her.
"Hi. I am Lucy," the wolf introduced herself telepathically.
Despite looking incredibly sad and betrayed just a short while ago in front of Night, she was not actually mad at him.
What she was genuinely furious at was herself, for foolishly falling for [Dream]’s cheap distraction trick and taking her watchful eyes off Night.
"I am Zero," the Matriarch replied respectfully.
"Let’s try to work together?" Lucy asked.
This foreign concept of willingly fighting together with a stranger was still new to her.
Just a month ago, she was a completely lone wolf - no, a lone Fenrir - who cared for no one but herself.
Still, she was learning. And since Zero was also a beast like her, she deeply felt they might work well together.
Zero clacked her mandibles and, after a brief moment of processing, nodded. "Yes. My Light Aspect will synergize well with your deep Shadow Aspect."
Lucy grinned, her sharp teeth flashing. The brighter the light, the deeper the shadows.
Before they could continue their talk, the Water Bull and the Armored Fire Lizard released another round of ranged AoE attacks.
Zero flawlessly used [Light Flash] to dodge, while Lucy instantly melted into Zero’s shadow and followed her high-speed movement.
Zero released a blinding wave of light and dashed directly at the Water Bull first.
The massive beast didn’t seem fazed; it released a deafening Mooo! and stubbornly met her charge head-on.
Lucy was just about to jump out from the shadows to execute a lethal flank, but she rapidly pulled herself back when she saw a massive fireball rapidly hurtling toward them.
It violently exploded right near Zero, generating an intense wave of sheer heat and blinding illumination that completely wiped away all the ambient shadows in the immediate vicinity.
What?!
Zero and the charging Water Bull both got caught in the crossfire and hurriedly shielded themselves.
Zero frantically covered her entire body in thick [Ice Armor], while the Water Bull conjured a dense [Water Shield] to absorb the explosive heat.
All of them snapped their gazes toward the actual culprit: the Armored Fire Lizard.
Completely unlike the brutish Water Bull, the cunning Armored Fire Lizard had seen Lucy melt into the shadows and timed its explosive AoE attack, predicting the exact location where the Fenrir would likely exit her stealth.
The monsters natively born in the Eternal Light Region were not dumb.
In fact, they were exponentially more clever than the mundane monsters outside. They possessed the terrifying cognitive ability to actively make independent decisions despite being dungeon-born monsters.
This was the exact reason why, even though they had initially spotted Night’s small group, they didn’t blindly rush at them with overwhelming numbers.
Because of the way they were created, standard dungeon monsters possessed the suicidal tendency to attack any foreign beings the second they spotted them.
But here, inside the Eternal Light Region, the monsters didn’t just blindly charge; they utilized their intelligence to the fullest.
So, instead of mindlessly rushing at Night’s group or aggressively hunting down the sneaky scavenger monsters actively looting the corpses, the main factions kept fighting amongst themselves.
Only some of the monsters had attacked Night’s group, purely because they had stepped too close to their combat zone, and not because some instinct forcefully commanded them to do so.
Looking directly at the smirking Armored Fire Lizard, Lucy rapidly realized this fact and finally got serious.