Summons

'If I recall correctly, Azef was...' Aria's head began to hurt. It felt like a part of her memory was misled.

Had she forgotten something important?

In her vague memories, Azef was... who was he?

Didn't she meet him early in her life? Why couldn't she remember anything? Her memories..

'..What?' Aria was lost in her thoughts. Her head rang so badly, fogs were covering up her memory recollection.

She never doubted why Azef did what he had done. Because the reasons were clearly stated by himself, she didn't care to look into the deeper truth. To see if the one who betrayed her was truly that man.

Even so, she felt like he wouldn't betray her. He, of all people, wouldn't betray her.

'..Would the Azef I used to know betray me?'

'...I saw it with my own two eyes. He burned me himself. What am I thinking about?' Aria thought of herself as foolish.

It was precisely her hopeful side that took over her mind for that short moment.

Somewhere inside her heart, she still hoped that the betrayal was not canon and was just a ploy of deceit used by another party.

However, her memories... Something was strange.

She wanted to say that they couldn't fool her, but somehow she felt like she had been fooled from the first round. Before anything even happened.

It was suspicious how she could only reach these conclusions now. After everything passed.

'That is of no matter to the current situation. No matter how you push it, Azef and the others must've died.' Aria sighed.

She took Yoo Jin's offer to stay together in the tracking period, so she was now lying down on a mattress inside the child's supposed base.

Yoo Jin turned out to be someone who lived in a nearby small house.

At first glance, the items scattered around showed that he didn't live here alone.

The house was kept neat and tidy. There was no unnecessary furniture, as if the dwellers didn't even live here.

Only the bare minimum necessities was there. Like it's a fake house.

Aria gazed at the plain white ceiling.

She felt empty.

'..This would be my first proper sleep ever since I got inside the coffin. I should savor it and stop thinking for a bit.'

Closing her eyes, she drifted to sleep.

The next day, she found herself being shone at by the intense sunlight.

Rubbing her eyes, she sat on the bed. Her thoughts were in disarray.

It took her minutes before she was able to recall the reason she was there.

Wanting to search for the kid who brought her here, Aria stood up from the bed and went out of her room.

In the kitchen, she saw Yoo Jin in the middle of cooking a light meal.

"Aria-nim, good morning." Yoo Jin was already awake from a while ago.

"..Morning," Aria's mind was hazy from the drowsiness that plagued her.

Aria immediately checked her Systems to see if anything changed. Her [Main] values were still broken, and she couldn't see anything.

Her status recovered, as the three hour vulnerability period had ended.

Her health and mana was back at full.

In just a single day, she had climbed up by 15 levels. Although the concept of levelling up wasn't a thing back then, she understood that as long as she leveled up, she could increase her power.

There were so many questions she had to ask.

"Kid, I'm going to walk around for a bit." Aria covered her mouth to yawn.

"Make sure to come back fast, I won't be happy if you waste my cooking." Yoo Jin casually said.

"Mmm."

Aria quickly left Yoo Jin's small abode to enshroud herself within the nature.

Yoo Jin's base was located near the mountains. There was a forest that no one entered.

She went inside and tried to scout for people.

After making sure that she was alone, Aria channeled her mana and began chanting a summoning spell.

However, her desires were met with naught as the magic circle that should have appeared did not show up.

"As expected..." Aria noticed that she did not possess anything in relation to summoning.

But in theory, she should still be able to operate a summoning skill, right?

She was confused.

Was it her mana? Was it insufficient?

No, she succeeded in summoning Dianthe. She did it before! Although Dianthe was a lower - ranked Spirit, it was still a great feat.

Through her experiences, she also obtained the ability to gauge her mana output.

The mana it took to summon a creature was now possessed by her.

Now, the question was: How did she summon Dianthe?

Dianthe was similar to the one she knew in the past, but the law of nature itself contradicted the hopes she wanted to place her bets on.

Contracted summons weren't able to live on without their contractors. A pact between the two parties would mean that the summon will henceforth live on their Summoner's mana, creating a symbiotic relationship.

Without her existence, the summons she trusted and loved- they would perish.

The magic circle she created was certainly that of a Summoner's spell. The System recognized Dianthe as her summon, but wouldn't recognize her as a Summoner.

'The only thing I could muster up is.. If the spirit came to me and launched the spell instead of me doing it.'

It was quite unbelievable.

Troubled, Aria racked her brains to search for a solution to this problem. She still planned to pursue the path of a summoner.

If possible, she wanted to regroup with her past summons. Regretfully, that couldn't be realized.

'The System is defective, as I thought.'

'..Runes would be a plausible solution.' Runes could be absorbed and turned into skills for her. If she could find a summoning skill, perhaps she could walk down the path of a summoner from then on.

'The question is, how many runes will it take until I find the correct rune?' Aria sighed.

Dungeons yielded her EXP to grow, so she wasn't complaining, but it would mean that she had to risk her life multiple times.

At least until she got stronger.

'Next, the sword.' Aria drew the newly obtained blade from her inventory.