Ch. 260
The problem was, I had never summoned Undine.
More than that, I hadn’t felt her appear at all. No—I hadn’t even called for her, so how did she get here?
I’d briefly considered fighting, but the one I meant to summon was Endairon.
[Come at me! My master’s enemy!]
“……!”
Even Rovenin seemed not to have sensed Undine’s appearance. Bewildered, he belatedly turned the tip of his sword toward her.
Then he immediately coated the blade in sword energy, and I gasped in horror.
“Wait! I’m not trying to fight! It’s a misunderstanding—a misunderstanding!”
“How did you summon it without a single trace?”
“That’s what I’d like to know! Undine! I didn’t call you, so how did you get here? Go back!”
If there was one Spirit I would never bring out against Rovenin, it was Undine—the weakest and most precious.
She already had a history of nearly being annihilated once, and compared to Rovenin, Undine was no different from a newborn puppy.
It had happened before, but now… if she was even grazed by that sword, she would be annihilated.
[I’ll protect you! I can do it!]
Something was wrong with her.
I stepped in front of Undine, shielding her with my whole body, and made it as clear as possible to Rovenin that I had no intention of fighting.
“Don’t cut her! Don’t!”
“……What are you trying to do?”
“Something’s wrong! This isn’t my will!”
“Lies.”
“I didn’t summon her! And she’s not listening to me! You can see that, can’t you!”
Rovenin’s eyes changed.
He looked ready to slice both me and Undine to pieces the moment I made the slightest move.
I felt wronged. If I’d truly meant to fight, I would’ve summoned Endairon, not Undine.
Flustered, I examined Undine more closely, and her condition was clearly strange.
She was faint, like she could vanish at any moment. The water shaping her body kept collapsing, dripping to the floor.
It was an unstable summoning.
Even back when I was inexperienced—long ago, when I’d first contracted with Undine—I’d never seen her look this precarious.
[Master! It’s that, that thing. The one I told you about before!]
“What? What are you talking about? Why is Undine like that!”
[I told you that when a Spirit is certain it’s loved, it’ll do anything for its master, didn’t I? That you might get to see something amazing. That’s what this is!]
Undine, melting like ice cream and barely holding her form, was supposed to be… amazing?
I couldn’t understand what was happening at all, but Rai kept chattering like he was proudly showing off something he knew.
[A Spirit from the Spirit realm comes to the Middle realm on its own! Entirely of its own will. It senses its master’s crisis and crosses over by itself. It doesn’t use the master’s Mana, so its arrival can’t be felt by the enemy, and it can move without the master’s command, so it’s safe even if the master faints!]
“……What is that!”
[It’s a technique that requires immense love!]
“A low-level Spirit can do something like that? I’ve never heard of it!”
It was definitely amazing—but it was something even I, who’d studied Spirit Magic my whole life, had never heard of.
[Ah, the level doesn’t matter. Anyone can do it as long as they have a contractor. But this is the first time I’ve seen a fool actually use it.]
“Why? This feels ominous……”
[Why do you think it doesn’t need the master’s Mana? It burns its own life force to cross over in the first place… Simply put, it consumes life force instead of Mana. For a human, it’d be like a technique that eats away at your lifespan.]
“……You’re joking, right?”
[And it burns it so fast that being out for ten seconds probably shortens its life by about a year.]
For once, Rai wasn’t joking.
Though I desperately wished he was.
My gaze on Undine started shaking harder than ever.
[You make a contract at first, right? But this is outside the contract. It’s forcibly intervening in the Middle realm with its own power… so it’s closer to a Descent than a summoned state. As a result, it burns its own life force. It’s also a deviation from the established flow, so there’s a penalty of sorts.]
For a moment, our Undine looked like the biggest idiot in the world.
A scream rose in my throat without sound. My hands and feet trembled, and I wondered if this was what it felt like to raise a child.
Why does she keep doing things I never asked her to do?
“What on earth… have you been muttering to yourself this whole time?”
[Don’t bully my master!]
As Rovenin looked at me like I was strange, Undine flared and puffed up her body.
“……Go back! Undine! I understand how you feel! But I’m fine, so go back!”
[Since she came by her own will, she doesn’t have to listen to your commands, Master! But if you refuse her, it’s a violation of the soul contract, so her lifespan will drastically decrea—]
“Aaaargh!”
[Ah! The Spirit kings have near-infinite lifespans anyway, so they pop over whenever they’re bored.]
Stop the Spirit Encyclopedia time!
“Undine!”
“What trick is this?”
That’s not it!
Even Rovenin reacted to my scream.
He stared at me like I was insane, eyes narrowing in disgust.
[If she uses Magic in that state, her life force will vanish in decades-long chunks… If this goes on, that Undine brat might die before you do, Master. Oof, Undine’s love runs deep, so deep! This is what you call true love!]
“Stop it! Undine!”
The only one enjoying this was Rai.
He was the kind of Spirit who would be genuinely thrilled if a rival disappeared—even if Undine burned through her life force and vanished because of it.
[Ah! The great thing about that state is that it doesn’t require the master’s Mana, so it’s very useful in an emergency. For example, even if the master’s Mana is depleted and they can’t do anything. Undine’s sacrifice—]
“You shut up!”
No matter how much I was the symbol of sacrifice that moved a continent, I never sacrificed my Spirits for my own survival.
Not even Rai.
A Spirit was, in the end, like me. I couldn’t bear to watch one get hurt.
“Calm down and go back to the Spirit realm! Undine! Listen to me!”
[Don’t worry about me! You’re more important than I am, Master!]
“Aaaaaargh!”
How was I supposed to make a completely agitated Undine listen?
She was as stubborn as I was.
Her watery body bubbled and roiled as she treated Rovenin with open hostility, and I couldn’t even imagine how ridiculous she must look to him.
Even ten years ago, Undine was no match for Rovenin.
Now he could cut her down with his eyes closed… and a chilling thought hit me.
“Rai… What if—just what if—Undine gets hurt in that state?”
[Well! Annihilation, of course.]
“……There’s nothing good about this. At all!”
[If she’s summoned normally and gets hurt, she’s automatically reverse-summoned to the Spirit realm and can recover there. But in a state of Descent, since she came on her own, she has to go back on her own… If the injury is severe, she won’t have the strength to return and she’ll just be annihilated right here. Simple, right?]
I threw my whole body in front of Rovenin—no, even to me the situation looked insane, but I was protecting Rovenin from Undine’s attack—while shouting.
“That kind of thing should be illegal! You said the Spirit realm has rules! Aren’t the Spirit kings doing their jobs!”
[Normally they don’t do it even if it’s not banned! Because it’s suicidal!]
Unbelievable.
To think the day would come when I’d be protecting Rovenin. Of course, technically, I was protecting Undine—so she wouldn’t get hurt by trying to touch Rovenin.
“What kind of ominous technique is this! It’s not amazing, it’s dangerous!”
[It’s amazingly dangerous!]
“Crazy!”
If Undine—whose mental age wasn’t even that high—could do this, then the Spirit kings needed to step in and forbid it immediately.
What do they even do?
“Back off! Please, stop! Undine!”
[No! I’ll smack the back of his head even if it means I’m annihilated! I can at least do that much!]
“No! Just listen to me!”
[For my master! I’ll do anything!]
Was my usual desire to smack the back of Rovenin’s head really that intense?
So intense that Undine wanted to grant it even at the cost of her own life?
It was touching—but I’d never wanted to achieve it by sacrificing Undine. And Undine showed no sign of listening.
The ignorant way she glared daggers at Rovenin, ready to throw herself at him, was clearly influenced by me.
Ah. That’s why the elders always said it.
You have to be careful what you do in front of a child…
If it’s come to this, is that the only way?
“You. Come here.”
I had no choice.
I reached for Rovenin—the one I’d been keeping behind my back.
He’d watched my desperate efforts and seemed to realize I had no intention of attacking, so he let me grab his collar. But the moment I tried to link arms with him, he slipped away.
He was so fast it was invisible.
“Cooperate!”
“No.”
“It’ll just be a moment!”
Rovenin growled like a beast.
“Get off me this inst—”
“If you cooperate, I’ll tell you about the Dragon’s weakness.”
I muttered it under my breath, as quietly as I possibly could.
It was so soft even I could barely hear it, but Rovenin’s hearing was beyond ordinary. He froze.
I seized the opening and quickly linked my arm with his.
“See? Undine! We’re… fine!”
Rovenin, openly displeased, didn’t even look at me. He only offered one arm.
I clung to it as conspicuously as possible and tried to explain things in a way Undine could understand.
[……Hmm?]
“How about it? It’s fine, right? You don’t need to attack.”
Undine—fists still clenched—tilted her small head and looked back and forth between me and Rovenin.
[But… a volcanic rage is boiling up inside you, Master.]
“That’s because I want to be friends with him! But he keeps pushing me away, so I’m angry.”
[What about the sickness you feel from wanting to kill him?]
“……It’s like with Rai! I sometimes want to kill Rai, but I don’t actually kill him, do I?”
[Ah……?]
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