Chapter 832: Summoning With Variation!

She threw herself off the parapet and shot off into the night.

WHOOSH!

A sudden concussive draft of displaced air swept through the courtyard, rustling the hems of the girls’ dresses, blowing a spray of dried leaves across the flagstones where she had bledthen, the night returned to silence.

Silas stood on the marble platform, his hands still held halfway out in the empty air, watching her go into the dark pine canopy in the distance.

A slow dragging scuff of boots broke the quiet.

Morwenna sauntered up to his side, her hands buried deep in her coat pockets, looking out toward the trees with a thoroughly unimpressed critical scowl.

"What a bitch..." Morwenna snorted loudly, shaking her head until her black ponytail slapped her collar. "Does she think we hate her for being a demon or something? I’m pretty sure she hasn’t killed as many people as I have, and you don’t see me throwing myself off balconies in a tantrum..."

She hooked her arm through Silas’s with rough strength, giving him a tug toward the Keep.

"Come on, Captain," Morwenna said, her stormy gray eyes brightening as she turned toward the six girls standing on the terrace steps. "Who wants midnight supper...? I fried up an entire vat of salted river cod and buttered dumplings before the gateway went off, and it’s sitting on the stove right now."

Lupina’s ears perked straight up into the air, her tail wagging so hard it created a gentle breeze against Solenne’s skirts.

"Cod?! With the crispy skin?!"

"The crispiest, dog-girl," Morwenna grinned.

Silas let out a slow sigh, looking down at his blood-stained tunic, then glancing toward the kitchen wing with deep, profound suspicion.

"I hope you didn’t poison it..." Silas muttered dryly.

Morwenna didn’t bother arguing.

With smooth lightning-fast pirate leverage, she pivoted on her heel and drove the flat of her leather boot straight into Silas’s stomach.

THUMP!

"OOF!" Silas grunted, folding forward half an inch as the breath left his lungs.

Across the gateway terrace, everyone burst out laughing.

Lupina, Kaelia, and Aurelia laughed openly, Rowenna giggled, Solenne covered her mouth with a soft fox-tail swish, and even Morrighan’s stony lips twitched upward into a rare, amused smirk as the young Lord rubbed his ribs.

"My cooking is an art form, Captain," Morwenna declared with unshakeable arrogance, hooking her arm firmly through his elbow and hauling him bodily forward.

"Wait, Morwenna, hold on," Silas said, trying to plant his boots on the flagstones. "We still need to summon more people—"

"You can do that later~ Supper now~" Morwenna sang out, dragging him off with relentless laughing momentum.

The girls followed behind them, chatting happily about crispy cod and buttered dumplings.

On the way through the torch-lit corridors of the Keep, Silas reached into his mental interface with a quiet sigh.

He opened Rèn’s status tab.

A glowing blue system window snapped into existence before his retinas, hovering in the corner of his peripheral vision as he walked.

[Name:] Rèn

[Loyalty:] 3 (Wary / Curious)

[Title]: Heavenly Demon of Slaughter

[Realm]: Qi Gathering (First Layer)

[Qi]: 0 / 40

[Active & Passive Skills]:

[Step, Guard, Cut]: A single basic sword form refined past mortal limits... Every step claims distance, every guard creates an opening, and every cut targets something vital. (Passive)

[Primordial Blood Root]: Senses and controls blood within a few meters, including blood inside living bodies. Rapidly heals her own wounds. (Passive)

[Crimson Thread]: Seizes the blood inside a target’s limb and yanks it against their will. (Cost: 15 Qi/cast)

[Blood-Core Detonation]: Reverses her own heartbeat to turn her blood into a boiling battering ram and damages her own body in the process. (Cost: 30 Qi/cast)

[Domain: Red Heaven of Slaughter]: Turns the sky crimson and makes every drop of blood in range obey her. (SEALED: requires a higher realm)

[More]

Silas stared at it.

’Ah... she’s from a realm of cultivation?’ Silas thought, his mind piecing together the fragmented puzzle of her violent arrival. ’Not only that... she’s the Heavenly Demon...?’

He read through the description of her basic sword form, noting the brutal efficiency of a technique that had been practiced past the boundaries of mortal logic.

He looked at the sealed domain, looked at the meager pool of forty qi points sitting in her newly reset foundation, and finally, his gaze drifted to her loyalty rating.

It sat at a miserable three and as he watched, the number ticked up by one.

...Then it ticked up again, climbing steadily past ten, fifteen, and twenty.

The tab flickered to 26 and Silas smiled.

’She doesn’t hate me... at least that’s what I think.’

...

The next afternoon, the autumn sun hung high over the granite courtyards of Blessed Land, bathing the Dawnspire Gateway in warm honey-colored light.

Silas stood at the foot of the quartz pedestal with his arms crossed over his chest, his dark blue eyes sparkling with absolute, unrestrained boyish amusement.

Spread across the silver inlay of the ritual surface was an entire fan of shimmering gold-embossed tickets he had retrieved from his Inventory.

Instead of stepping forward to press his own thumb against the activation runes, he had decided to experiment with territory logistics, turning the entire afternoon into an open chaotic festival of chance by allowing the girls to place the Hero Summoning Tickets themselves.

The results had been nothing short of spectacular.

"My turn! My turn!" Lupina barked, practically bounding onto the platform with her bushy silver tail whipping back and forth like a metronome.

She slammed a ticket down onto the circular plate with enough force to crack slate, hopping back as the pillar of sky-blue light roared toward the clouds.

When the etheric mist dissolved, a stout, broad-shouldered woman with fiery orange braids, a soot-streaked leather smithing apron, and a war hammer nearly the size of a beer barrel stepped out, blinking at the sunlight.

"Look at her shoulders!" Lupina cheered, throwing an arm around the bewildered artisan. "She can probably forge an anvil with her bare fists! We’re keeping her!"

Aurelia stepped up next, placing a slip with delicate, prayerful grace, her golden hair fluttering as the gateway flared into a radiant pale-violet hue.

Out stepped two quiet, rabbit-eared archers from a verdant forest realm, their long ears drooping in shy reverence as Aurelia immediately offered them warm chamomile tea from a traveling kettle.

Kaelia went next, placing her ticket with both hands as carefully as if she were setting down a fragile soufflé.

The light that answered her was a warm, buttery gold, and out stepped a pair of plump, rosy-cheeked cooks in floury aprons, one of them already holding a wooden spoon.

Kaelia burst into tears of pure joy and hugged them both at once.

’Finally... finally, people who know how to boil an egg...’

Morrighan stepped up with a face of carved stone and dropped her ticket onto the plate like she was executing it.

The gateway flashed, the mist cleared, and a tiny, round-eared beast-kin girl with a fluffy striped tail tumbled out, looked up at the towering demon, squeaked, and immediately latched onto her leg.

Morrighan stared down at her as her spade tail began to wag.

Rowenna giggled softly behind her notebook as she nudged Solenne forward.

Solenne timidly set down three tickets at once, her nine silver tails bristling with nervous anticipation, only to shriek in pure delight when the resulting golden flash revealed an entire squad of short energetic mountain tinkerers carrying brass toolkits and leather goggles, who immediately began chattering about the frequency of the quartz balustrades.

By the time the sun began its lazy descent toward the western mountain ridge, Blessed Land had welcomed nearly twenty-five new arrivals into its roster.

The courtyard was bustling with laughter, clattering boots, and the high-pitched banter of newly formed squads organizing their bunk assignments.

Silas stood on the edge of the terrace, throwing his head back as a deep booming laugh rumbled straight up from his chest with his hands planted firmly on his hips.

"Gwahahahaha!" Silas roared with pure joy. "I have dwarves! Real mountain forge-masters and look at that squad of beast-kin over there, with lots of fluffy tails! Kaelia, tell the pantry to triple the roast pork rations tonight! We’re celebrating until midnight!"

Hours later, the deep velvet hush of midnight settled over the valley.

Morwenna sauntered along the cobblestone paths winding through the outer gardens with her heavy leather boots scuffing softly against the fallen pine needles.

She was still chuckling to herself, a crooked, fond little smirk tugging at the corner of her lips as the memory of Silas’s roaring laughter played back in her mind.

’I also showed him the Fourth style again... hopefully he doesn’t get it too quickly.’

He was a menace on a battlefield, a terrifying force of nature who could crack bedrock with his bare knuckles but whenever he was surrounded by strange girls, fluffy ears, and mechanical oddities, he looked like a hopelessly excited kid in a toy shop.

’Gods, he’s cute when he gets like that...’ Morwenna thought, shaking her head until her messy black ponytail brushed the collar of her dark coat.

She slowed her pace, her left hand casually slipping down to rest against the flat linen of her lower abdomen.

Her fingers curled gently over the fabric, feeling the cool night air seep through the weave.

It had only been one wild unforgettable night in the hotel, but ever since then, she had felt a strange quiet warmth humming deep within her belly... a tiny anchor of life that she found herself checking on whenever the world grew quiet.

’I really hope I did get pregnant...’ Morwenna mused, her stormy gray eyes softening with an uncharacteristic tender warmth under the moonlight. ’A little sea-brat with his gold-ringed eyes and my sharp mouth... Aye, that would drive the whole fleet mad. Once he finally clears his ledgers and finds time for all of us, I’m dragging him back to my bunk for twenty more nights... I’m not letting that green-haired tree goddess hog all the planting.’

She adjusted her grip on the heavy wide-rimmed wooden bowl balanced in her right hand.

Steam curled lazily into the crisp night air, carrying the rich aroma of braised beef, sweet mountain onions, and thick wheat noodles tossed in chili oil.

Morwenna veered off the main stone path, pushing her way through the dense thickets of Spirit trees that bordered the Keep’s southern ridge.

The silver-leafed branches parted, revealing a quiet secluded clearing she had hollowed out with water-scythes a while ago for her own private retreats.

In the center of the clearing lay a small, crystalline pond, fed by a small spring with its clear water glittering like liquid mercury beneath the cold moonlight.

The surface was smooth as glass, reflecting the stars that wheeled slowly through the deep indigo vault above.

Sitting on a flat slab of moss-covered slate at the water’s edge, cross-legged and perfectly rigid, was Rèn.

The world around her frame did not behave normally.

The air within ten paces of the slate slab rippled with strange, translucent waves of heat, distorting the reflection of the trees like an oily film on water.

Rèn was breathing in slow measured rhythms with her chest barely rising as she reached out through her altered spirit root.

Because there was no loose free-flowing qi drifting through the atmosphere of this world, she had to forcefully drag the latent essence of her surroundings through her skin, the chill of the water, the damp minerals of the slate and the vitality of the Spirit trees, grinding the raw energy against her meridians to refine it into drops of usable qi before compressing it down into her depleted dantian.

...The spiritual friction made the fallen leaves around her boots jitter and dance against the dirt, trembling in erratic miniature circles.

Her long black eyelashes fluttered.

Rèn opened her eyes with the dark crimson irises catching the moonlight, locking squarely onto the dark-haired pirate standing at the tree line.

She did not flinch, and she did not reach for her notched iron sword resting beside the moss.

Over the past twenty-four hours of wandering the outer perimeter of this strange territory, observing the patrols and the routine training drills from the shadows of the high crags, a cold humbling realization had settled deep into her bones.

...The people here were terrifyingly strong.

Back home on Jiuxiao Xing, she had stood atop the mountain of bones as a supreme demonic entity, capable of parting clouds and shattering primeval star-chains.

Now, stripped of everything she had ever devoured, reset to the very bottom of the first layer of the Qi Gathering Realm, she was astonishingly fragile.

An ordinary patrol guard walking the palisades carried the power to snap her collarbone with a careless backhand and to a woman who had survived solely by being the deadliest predator in the room, it was a dizzying revelation.

’I am weak...’ Rèn thought, her knuckles tightening slightly against her knees as her crimson eyes tracked Morwenna’s casual approach. ’A common foot soldier could crush my ribs before my blade cleared its sheath... I need to get stronger... I have to push past this first layer, or I will die the second someone decides to clean their boots on my face...’

She kept her posture stiff, her voice coming out dry from a full day of silence.

"Why are you here?"