Chapter 117

After returning to Japan from America, I sat quietly in my room, waiting for the time of my summons.

Barring any issues on Lady Clara’s end, I was scheduled to be summoned in about five minutes.

Did I leave anything behind?

Once I returned to Saxens, I would have a mountain of things to do as usual.

Preparations for opening Amida Trading, the business with the newspaper, and the setup for Lady Clara’s baron investiture ceremony and her debut party were all necessary.

But after all that, I was planning to go on a trip with Lady Clara to inspect her new territory.

I wondered if we would get to relax a little.

Ever since I became able to use God Finger on myself, I hadn’t felt an ounce of fatigue, and every day felt incredibly fulfilling.

Just as I psyched myself up to do my best over there, I was thrown into the small room in the gap between worlds.

“Hello, Mr. Hinoharu.”

The sudden greeting from Mr. Handsome made my body freeze up instantly.

“Lord Seraphim.”

“It’s been a while…”

Both Yoshioka and I stumbled over our words.

“I didn’t mean to startle you. I came because there is something I wish to convey.”

Emitting his usual divine aura, Mr. Handsome offered a gentle smile.

Could it be that he was going to scold us because the publication of the newspaper was running late?

“No, not at all. I am quite impressed by how well the two of you have been doing.”

He read my mind!

But I was glad he didn’t seem angry…

“Actually, while you were away on Earth, Ria and the others safely arrived in Dresden. Currently, they are staying with Clara Ansbach.”

So they arrived safely.

I wondered if everyone was doing well.

“Ria, as well as her younger brother Zotto and younger sister Noel, are all in good health.”

Thank goodness.

I should offer a prayer of gratitude to Lord Seraphim and the God of Space-Time.

“As for future matters, there are a few favors I would like to ask of you.”

“Please, whatever you require.”

There was no going against Mr. Handsome.

“First, I would like you to introduce Ria to Hero Gary. With that, the gears of fate should properly mesh together.”

Come to think of it, Ria was originally fated to join the hero’s party as a summoner for the mythical beast Phoenix.

“Introducing her to Gary is fine, but what happened to Ria’s new summoned beast?”

The Phoenix was originally supposed to come to her, but because I got summoned instead, the whole story had gone off script.

“We have considered various options, but a suitable summoned beast has proven quite difficult to find…”

At that point, Lord Seraphim fixed his gaze entirely on Yoshioka. Could it be…?

“How about it, Akito Yoshioka? Would you be willing to act as Ria’s summoned beast?”

“Me, sir?”

“Yes. I did consider asking Mr. Hinoharu, but in terms of pure combat ability, you far surpass him. If it comes to fighting monsters, you are much better suited for the task.”

It was true that Yoshioka, who could freely manipulate both attack and recovery magic, would be a massive help to Ria.

“I have a question. As of right now, I am being called out at the exact same time as Senpai. How will my summons work going forward?”

That was an incredibly important point.

“If you become Ria’s summoned beast, your summons will be completely decoupled from Mr. Hinoharu’s. It is a rather troublesome task, but the God of Space-Time will make the necessary arrangements. Furthermore, since this is a request coming directly from our side, we have decided to grant a special privilege regarding your summons. Namely, you will be allowed to choose the location of your return destination.”

In short, whether he was summoned from Earth or Saxens, he could choose to return to any location he wished.

As long as he had Ria’s cooperation, Yoshioka would also be able to travel back and forth between Japan and Saxens on his own.

“So even if I am already in Saxens and Ria is also in Saxens, the summoning will still work?”

“Yes. No matter where you are, you will be summoned directly to Ria’s side.”

That was amazing.

In Lady Clara’s case, she couldn’t summon me to her side unless I was sent back to Earth first.

Though on the flip side, I got to pull a skill card each time.

“What do you say, Yoshioka? Will you accept this arrangement?”

Being able to travel between Earth and this world individually was quite a favorable condition for Yoshioka.

“Since it’s a direct request from you, Lord Seraphim, I can hardly refuse. But is there really a point to me being summoned by Ria? It feels like we could just travel together normally from the start.”

Now that he mentioned it, that made sense.

“Ria’s summoning ability is special. Immediately after being called forth by that girl, the destructive power of your attack magic will skyrocket tenfold. That is the divine blessing granted to Ria by the gods.”

“Tenfold, you say…”

Yoshioka looked slightly pleased.

“Understood. I’ll work as Ria’s summoned beast. I assume it’s perfectly fine if I continue my work at Amida Trading during normal times?”

“Precisely. It is more than enough for you to lend her your strength only when Ria calls upon you.”

If that was the case, it shouldn’t interfere with our business. Yoshioka and I locked eyes and nodded.

“Furthermore, there is one more request. This one is an emergency.”

I got a really bad feeling about this.

“Three days from now, at midnight, the entrance to a new dungeon will open at a certain point within the underground aqueducts.”

A new dungeon… Was it the same type as the one we saw in the forest near Dortranfur?

Back then, we had to cooperate with Lady Clara’s cousin, Captain Mel, and her unit to seal it off.

That had been incredibly brutal.

“An entrance to a dungeon appearing right under the royal capital… Isn’t that extremely bad?”

“It was something already predestined to happen. The emergence of the dungeon could not be avoided by any means. It is precisely to deal with this situation that Hero Gary, Ria, and the others were chosen. If it is them, they will be able to stabilize the dungeon. The rulers of the land will likely seek a path to secure a stable supply of magic stones from within it.”

If that happened, it would probably lead to advancements in magic cannons and magical tools.

The members of the Enlightenment Faction would undoubtedly be ecstatic.

However, I couldn’t help but feel that the progress of magical tools was built on top of human corpses.

Was Lord Seraphim planning to have the opinions of the Elder Faction published in the newspaper to act as a restraining function against that?

Allowing various factions to clash opinions might be exactly what he intended.

“Please cooperate with Hero Gary and assist in the containment of the dungeon. I will also request cooperation from Clara Ansbach. As for the shrine maidens of the temple, I shall issue a divine oracle to them myself.”

Things were turning into a massive ordeal.

I thought I would finally enjoy peaceful days after returning from the battlefield, but this completely threw a wrench into those plans.

After Mr. Handsome left the small room in the gap between worlds, I turned to ask Yoshioka.

“Are you really fine with being Ria’s summoned beast?”

“Eh? Yes, of course. For the power of my attack magic to multiply tenfold, it means my total mana capacity and mana control must scale up. If that’s the case, this is the perfect chance to test out spells that I’ve only ever held as theoretical concepts on paper!”

…Well, if Yoshioka was satisfied with it, I had nothing more to say.

At any rate, I might as well draw my skill card.

With a dungeon containment operation drawing near, I desperately wanted a skill that would be useful in combat.

I pressed my hands together toward the card dispenser.

“Please! Give me a combat-related skill. Combat-type. Combat-type. Nam-nam…”

A skill that had absolutely nothing to do with combat came out!

Instead of a combat-type, it felt like a liberal arts-type skill.

“That’s roughly the length of a single light novel volume, or slightly less,” Yoshioka offered an example that felt very typical of him.

Personally, saying it was about two hundred and fifty pages of manuscript paper made it easier to visualize.

What on earth was I supposed to use this for?

Maybe I could memorize a literary masterpiece or something?

As a test, I tried memorizing a magazine column that was lying around the small room.

I managed to completely memorize it just by glancing at the page from a distance.

It took roughly one second per page.

The capacity held exactly one hundred thousand characters; anything beyond that would cut the text off mid-sentence.

Being able to recite text perfectly just by looking at it was a surreal sensation.

I could see myself flipping through a book I wanted to read to memorize it, then thoroughly enjoying it later in my own head.

Since it could also memorize diagrams, I felt like I could probably become an industrial spy if I wanted to.

Not that I’d actually do that, though.

For the time being, it didn’t look like it would be of any help in a fight.