Free Web NovelChapter 44: Summons and Infiltration
Ronan gestured toward the far wall.
"You, try hitting that target at the back."
Sebastian moved immediately. A small ball of fire gathered at his fingertip, no bigger than a marble, and he flicked it toward the bucket.
FWOOSH!
The flame struck dead center, and the bucket was erased in a blink, leaving nothing but a faint wisp of smoke curling toward the ceiling.
"Is that satisfactory, master?"
Sebastian asked, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. There was pride in his voice, something Ronan hadn’t expected from a summon.
A little arrogance, even.
But as long as it was loyal, Ronan didn’t mind. Personality wasn’t a flaw if the obedience was absolute.
’Two hundred percent stats is definitely the real deal.’
He thought, eyeing the empty space where the bucket used to be.
’Then again, it was just a bucket.’
He tilted his head and reached into his inventory, a familiar weight settling into his palm.
[B-Rank Longsword]
"Fight me."
He said, rolling his shoulder.
"But don’t break anything, and stick to close-range. No fireballs."
"I will abide, master."
Sarael didn’t need instructions. One of her shadows was already slithering across the floor, coiling around the doorknob and pulling it shut with a soft click.
Anyone wanting to train this late would have to fight against her grip to get in, and Ronan didn’t like their odds.
The noise wasn’t a problem either. The two of them had walked in together. Anyone who heard blades clashing would assume it was just a couple sparring, nothing worth investigating.
No reason to think about summons or shadow tests.
"Now!"
Sebastian moved, and to Ronan’s surprise, he didn’t come at him empty-handed. A blade materialized in the summon’s grip, and Ronan’s system chimed in response.
[A-Rank Hunter’s Longsword - Broken Tip]
The exact same weapon Ronan had used back in Tartarus-B.
’So we share inventories...?’
CLANG!
The blow connected, but Ronan absorbed it easily. His constitution and strength were far beyond anything Sebastian could threaten, but the strength behind the swing was genuine. Harder than the skitter.
Harder than anything below the flesh golem. fгeewёbnoѵel.cσm
They traded strikes, the ring of steel filling the empty range, and Ronan found himself grinning.
"What class were you when you were alive?" he asked between clashes.
CLANG!
"I was a spellsword, master."
Sebastian sidestepped one of Ronan’s slashes with a clean, practiced motion. He was smart. He knew if Ronan landed even one solid hit, he’d be finished.
"All my stats are well-balanced. Constitution was my lowest."
That tracked. A spellsword was versatile by design, magic and steel in equal measure. Ronan had already seen the fire.
But he’d test the rest of his spells during the gate raid, where there’d be proper targets and no risk of burning down the spiderweb’s cheap construction.
And if he was going to make a name for himself in the underground, he couldn’t keep hiding his full toolkit forever. He was already wanted for teleportation.
Adding summoning to that list wouldn’t change much. Worst case, he’d need to wear a mask and let people assume the shadow-summoning hunter was someone else entirely.
CLANG!
CLANG!
FWOOSH!
Ronan pressed forward, and Sebastian’s blade went spinning from his grip. Ronan’s own sword came to rest against the summon’s throat, the tip hovering just above the shadow-darkened skin.
Sebastian froze.
"Return," Ronan said, lowering his weapon. "I’m satisfied."
The summon bowed at the waist, still smirking faintly, and melted back into the darkness at Ronan’s feet.
Sarael’s applause filled the silence, soft and genuine.
"Bravo!"
Ronan turned to her, gave a big thumbs up, and let the grin he’d been holding back finally break through.
✧ ✦ ✧
The portal hummed, a low thrum of unstable energy that filled the warehouse like the bassline of a song.
It was 6:12 P.M., a full hour before the gig was supposed to start, but two of their party members were already there.
"Do you really think this’ll work, Tri—I mean Dean?"
Yeula caught herself mid-syllable, stumbling over the fake name. She wasn’t used to the disguise yet.
None of them were.
The Association had found it nearly impossible to track the fixer still lingering on GodBound’s contacts.
The app’s interface was so ancient, so deliberately unoptimized, that even their best techies couldn’t interpret its underlying structure.
And even if they could, the app was old enough that it likely wasn’t interconnected with any modern social media or tracking systems.
So the Association had decided on a more hands-on approach. A hundred hunters, scattered across the underground, accepting random jobs under fresh identities.
Some bought old accounts from retired hunters. Others created new ones from scratch. All of them designed to blend in, to look like desperate freelancers looking for work.
Tristan and Yeula were two of those hunters, and this portal job was their first assignment. It hadn’t been hard to get. The Association had prepared fake licenses for them weeks ago, detailed enough to fool any fixer into offering them high-paying work.
The kind of jobs they assumed GodBound would be taking. The kind of jobs that would put them in the same room as their target.
"It’s not my call."
Tristan said, his voice clipped. He wore a plain brown jacket now, his distinctive silver-blue hair hidden under a cap.
"It’s the Association’s. And be careful with your tongue, Haley."
"Yeah, yeah."
Yeula waved him off, but her gold eyes were still scanning the warehouse just in case.
"You already scanned this place, remember? No cameras or mics present. We’re clean."
"Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be careful. Our contact will be arriving in the next hour. And according to the fixer, this one’s a married couple."
Yeula frowned.
"Our target isn’t a married couple."
"I know. This one’s a bust."
Tristan exhaled, the faintest crackle of static electricity dancing across his knuckles before he suppressed it.
"But if we abandon the job now, it’ll look suspicious. So let’s just get this over with and accept other jobs. Sooner or later, one of them will lead us to him."
