Free Web NovelChapter 33: Cursed Witch
"Isn’t that a bit too fast for a tier 8 summoner?"
Savors narrowed his eyes from atop his stead, watching the movement below.
Ethan was weaving around the North Coal Lizard with a speed of motion that didn’t fit the category. Most summoners at that tier were not built for this. Strength and agility were not their strengths by design.
The combat role of a summoner sat behind the summon, directing, managing, keeping distance. Those who could fight at this level personally were exceptions, and those exceptions usually had a specific reason for it. Dual class, specialized physical training, rare bloodline traits that pushed the body beyond its natural ceiling.
Ethan didn’t appear to have any of that.
No visible class technique. No specialized skill activations. Nothing
Just pure brute force dressed up as something controlled.
Savors’ expression shifted.
He remembered what Davos had said. The comment passed without elaboration, the way Davos delivered most things that mattered.
’Smells like the blood serpent god clan.’
The blood serpent god clan.
Even the Maqaue clan, with its numerous Demi-gods, kept its distance from them. The gap wasn’t in numbers or organization. It was in ceiling. A clan with no one at the god level had no answer for a single individual who had reached it.
One person at that tier could dismantle everything they had built across generations in a sequence of attacks and walk away from the wreckage without looking back.
The smell on Ethan was not something Savors could verify himself.
But Davos had said it, and Davos did not make careless observations.
That alone was enough to make the fact worth sitting with.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,
—Rawwrrr
The North Coal Lizard’s body changed.
Something internal triggered, the innate ability releasing without warning, heat spreading through its body from the inside outward. Its scales began to bulge and redden, the surface of them shifting from dark grey to a deep smoldering orange, radiating outward like coal that had been burning for hours and finally reached the point where the heat had nowhere left to go.
Vlad dissolved.
The cloud of bats scattered upward and outward, clearing the surface of the beast before the heat peaked, the Black-Eyed Bat Evasion pulling him out of contact in the same instant the ability activated.
Ethan was already moving.
He turned, raised the Elderan Crossbow, and began firing.
—Shuuu
—Shuuu
—Shuuu
Bolt after bolt drove into the center mass of the lizard, the splinter enchantment fragmenting each one across the surface on impact, spreading the pressure wide, forcing the creature’s system to manage damage across its entire body rather than absorbing it at any single point.
Despite the power surge.
Despite the heat still rolling off its scales.
[You have slain a North Coal Lizard.]
[You have received a Treasure.]
[Bolt of Fire: With the full force of a Tier 7 beast, this bolt explodes with hot lava, leaving continuous damage for 30 seconds. Can be used every 2 minutes.]
The heat began to cool.
The temperature rolling off the lizard’s body dropped by degrees, the smoldering orange of its scales fading back toward grey as the smoke curled upward from its body and dissipated into the dark air above.
Ethan exhaled.
Several slow breaths.
If he was being honest with himself, and he generally was, he might not have closed this without Savors. A Tier 7 beast was a Tier 7 beast. The opening Savors had created by dragging it across the field and compromising its vision had changed the equation significantly. What he had done from that point forward was capitalize on damage that was already there.
He had no choice but to note that.
"I’ll help."
Savors arrived behind him and dropped from his stead and crossed to the lizard’s body with his spear already in hand. He moved through the harvesting process quickly,. The core came out first. Then he began working toward the heart.
He handed it across.
Pocketed the core. freёwebnovel.com
"It’s not like you need the core or anything."
He said it with a shamelessly wide expression and then produced a bag from somewhere on his person and threw it at Ethan.
Ethan caught it.
He looked down at it. The ritual ingredients. Everything gathered across the past days assembled in one place, the quill, the claws, the stone, and now the heart sitting warm against the inside of the bag.
His eyes moved back up.
"Here?"
He had assumed there would be a return first. A room, some preparation, Hela present to help manage the process if something went wrong.
Doing this out in the middle of the horde was not what he had pictured.
"The heart is on fire."
Savors said it with the tone of someone explaining something obvious to someone who should have arrived at it themselves.
"Do you think it’ll still be viable when we get back?"
He wasn’t wrong.
The North Coal Lizard’s internal system regulated its own temperature while it lived, cycling the heat of its innate ability back down after use. That regulation ended with the creature. The heart was still burning from the inside. Without the system that cooled it, the organ would begin to degrade, and the degradation wouldn’t wait for convenience.
Ethan exhaled.
"Sigh."
He reached into the bag and pulled out a chalk stick.
He found a section of flat ground between two sleeping beasts and crouched, drawing the circle from memory. The pattern was one every summoner learned before their first ritual, the essential structure of communication between the summoner’s essence and the spirit world, the channel through which the spirit king’s attention could be requested and through which a summon could be called forward.
The specificity of the ingredients existed for a reason.
The spirit world held more than viable summons. It held entities of every kind, beasts with minds built around destruction, intelligences shaped by centuries of whatever had formed them in that place. An unfocused call pulled from the widest possible range. A careless summoner didn’t just risk failure. They risked attracting something they had no capacity to manage.
The ingredients narrowed the signal.
Ethan placed each one at its position in the circle, the quill, the claws, the stone, the heart, and then knelt at the center with his hands pressed together.
"Spirit King Zarth."
His voice was steady.
"Grant me passage into your kingdom, that I may seek my destiny. Protect my essence as I call for a summon."
A bright light broke from the sky.
Brief. Contained. Sharp enough that several nearby beasts stirred and then settled without fully waking.
Then silence.
[You have summoned a Cursed Human.]
[Morgan La Fey: Enchantress of Avalon. Dark curse and bender of wills. Morgana is the half-sister of the legendary King of Camelot. She wields mysterious cursed magic and a strange grace for dragons.]
[Evolution Requirements: Bend the will of 15 Lesser Dragons and place them under her liege.]
