Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/

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Chapter 11: The Summoning Ritual

A middle-aged woman stood at the door, holding a candlestick.

She had a kind face with fine lines at the corners of her eyes, wore a long linen nightdress, and had tawny hair pinned at the back of her head. She carried no weapon, and her presence was no different from an ordinary person.

“We’re fine, thank you for your concern.” Salaar didn’t open the door fully. He stayed in the half-open doorway, giving her a genuine smile. “May I ask who you are?”

Thanks to that brooding face of his, the smile made the woman a little uneasy.

“I help in the tavern kitchen,” she said softly. “I am glad you are fine… By the way, there’s always some light wine and dried figs in the kitchen cupboard. Help yourselves.”

With that, she gave a small nod and hurried away.

Salaar didn’t close the door immediately. Only when a door clicked shut at the far end of the corridor did he close theirs and turn the lock with a snap.

He then lowered the ritual dagger he had been hiding behind his back. In the shadow-draped room, Myss rolled over and smacked his lips in his sleep.

The next day.

At the table, Myss was still drowsy.

There were few patrons at the tavern in the morning, and most of the diners were lodgers from the second floor. The “Resolve to Elope” still had a lingering effect, so few people paid them any attention.

Breakfast was decent. Hammer provided them with crispy fried bacon, black bread that was somewhat soft, and pears that were firm but not tough.

There was only water to drink, served in a round-bellied jug. The surface caught the soft light of morning.

Myss squinted against the glare and gave a huge yawn. “I didn’t dream about anything last night.”

“Humans don’t dream every day,” Salaar said as he buried his head into the thick bacon. “But humans get up every day. You need to get used to that.”

Myss gave a disgruntled “oh.” He secretly infused a little magic into his table knife, which made slicing the bacon easier than cutting butter, although a small portion of the bacon mysteriously evaporated.

“I am practicing magic control,” the Demon Lord announced at once when he noticed Salaar glancing at him hesitantly.

The bacon was a little salty, but the fat was wonderfully flavorful. He glanced at the bright sunshine outside. Fresh air poured in through the window and loosened him up.

Myss suddenly felt that this kind of life wasn’t so bad, although it would be even better if Salaar wasn’t watching him.

Once he shook off his drowsiness, the events of the previous night flooded back to him.

In short, the mysterious pen pal “Patience” had studied demons and summoning rituals, then the bird-beaked demon and the strange illness appeared, and “Patience” cut off contact around the same time.

Unfortunately, there was no definite link between them.

There was one thing Myss couldn’t figure out.

If they were truly connected and “Patience” had botched a summoning ritual ten years ago, why did the bird-beaked demon and the strange illness only appear in the last two months?

Ultimately, what they most ought to investigate was this—

“We need to look for death records from ten years ago,” Salaar said. “‘Patience’ seems to have used the summoning ritual in an attempt to resurrect someone.”

“You don’t want to investigate the disease first?” Myss bit down on his fork in surprise.

They had three leads right under their noses: the summoning ritual, the bird-beaked demon, and the disease. Only the disease was actually killing people, yet the great hero was willing to let it go for now.

Salaar was silent for a few seconds. “If it really is a plague, a small border town like this is easy to seal off, and the losses are still controllable.”

“But if my delay lets you return to your true body, the death toll will multiply a thousandfold.”

“Wow.” Myss sighed. “You hate me that much and you are still willing to talk to me.”

Salaar smiled as he sprinkled some cracked pepper on his bacon. “If you were human, I would make you regret being born into this world.”

“Humans have choices. We can survive without harming the innocent. Some people insist on trampling others, and if they are trampled in return, they brought it on themselves.”

His tone was almost calm. “For those people, I am more than happy to be the one who tramples. As for you…”

Salaar didn’t finish. He stared at Myss, speared a piece of bacon, and chewed in silence.

Myss watched that piece of bacon go. Was this his way of saying he would love to kill me and turn me into bacon?

So he issued a solemn warning. “Listen. I don’t know exactly what I am, but my flesh would definitely poison you.”

Salaar nearly choked on his bacon. He silently gulped down half a jug of water and let out a long sigh.

……

“You want to see coffin orders from ten years ago to find information on someone who died? That’s hard. I didn’t keep any copies.”

The old carpenter frowned and puffed on his pipe. Hammer had sent them to him, and he was the only coffin-maker in the Lower City.

“Is there really no way?” Salaar asked earnestly. “All I remember is that ten years ago my pen pal lost someone important… we truly have been out of touch for too long.”

“You don’t even know where the deceased lived. Best give it up.”

The old carpenter shook his head. “For the Upper City, it’s customary, but the Lower City doesn’t keep track of the dead. Everyone just dumps the bodies into the communal grave. No one bothers with much else.”

“Would the church have records? Requiem rites or something like that?” Salaar asked.

The old carpenter shook his head even harder. “Rosha has plenty of religions. Each has its own believers. There is no way to keep a unified registry.”

“How does that saying go? In this day and age only one number can be trusted, and that is the count of five-year-olds. Not even the royal genealogies are recorded as reliably as the Summoning Rituals.”

Myss: “?”

Salaar: “???”

Did you just say “Summoning Ritual”, just outright?

“What’s with those faces?” The old carpenter looked puzzled. “What, you don’t call it a ‘Summoning Ritual’ where you are from? Then what do you call the ‘Pure Soul Magic Initiation Ritual?”

Myss immediately looked at Salaar. Salaar let out a few awkward grunts. “Maybe it’s a cultural difference. Would you mind describing it?”

“It’s a free initiation for magic. The one every child goes to at five years old. Even the smallest country has it. Only slaves aren’t qualified to attend.”

As he spoke, his gaze turned a shade more sympathetic. “Don’t tell me you two are slaves who escaped from somewhere…”

Half right, Myss thought. He continued to glare at Salaar in reproach. You, kid, have Lord Karns’s memories at least. How do you not know something this important.

Salaar looked like he wanted to smack himself. He kept a straight face and bluffed, “It’s all in the past. Could you tell us about this ‘Pure Soul Magic Initiation Ritual?”

“Of course, of course.” The old carpenter looked them over with pity and tapped his pipe hard.

A faint magical ripple spread out.

A half-transparent red-headed woodpecker emerged from the back of the old man’s hand and gradually solidified. When he saw the bird with the unusually long tail feather, Myss’s pupils widened a little. Wasn’t this the odd thing he had seen before?

Compared with Old Aiken’s hamster and the bandit mage’s weasel, this red-headed woodpecker felt especially real. Salaar stared straight at it, so he clearly saw it too.

“This is the Magibase, the foundation for using magic.”

The old carpenter spoke while the bird hopped merrily about on the back of his hand. “This isn’t innate. You have to summon it with a special ritual, which requires…”

“… personal participation in the rite, chanting an incantation, and offering a sacrifice. The offering is prepared by the individual and must be the essence of a nonhuman species.”

Salaar murmured in a low voice, “A Magibase is a symbol of its owner’s spirit and magic. Its strength correlates directly with the person’s talent and the quality of the offering…”

“You do know quite a bit.” The old carpenter made a gesture, and the woodpecker vanished. Yet in Myss’s eyes it merely returned to being half-transparent.

Only when the old man’s magical fluctuations settled did it give its wings a shake and burrow back into the back of his hand.

“What are you staring at, brat!” Before it went back, it even glared at Myss on purpose.

Wonderful. He had now witnessed a screaming hamster, a foul-mouthed weasel, and an irritable woodpecker. What a kind world this was.

Myss turned to Salaar speechlessly. “Can Magibases talk like people?”

The old carpenter and Salaar shook their heads in unison.

“In theory they are only a kind of totem and have no ability to communicate,” Salaar explained dryly.

“More or less.” The old carpenter chuckled. “The Summoning Ritual takes place every year on the first Saturday of September. You can still attend even if you are over five. It’s coming up in a few days, and the venue is right here in the Lower City. If you need it, you might as well go and take a look.”

Interesting, Myss thought.

He had no Magibase at all, and Salaar clearly didn’t either, yet both of them could use magic normally. As for seeing Magibases and communicating with them…he was undoubtedly a special case.

But he wasn’t some small human to begin with, so he should be a special case. Myss felt perfectly justified.

“The Summoning Ritual ‘Patience’ had done ten years ago may have meant the Magibase summoning ceremony.”

Back at the tavern, Salaar poured himself a cup of herbal tea. “We jumped to conclusions and assumed it had to be a demon summoning ritual.”

Myss regarded him with great gravity.

“Hey, I didn’t mean to hide anything. That young lord only called demon summoning a ‘Summoning Ritual’. He called the Magibase one ‘creating a Magibase’.”

Under Myss’s complicated look, Salaar added, “Yes, Lord Carnes did have knowledge related to Magibases. I just couldn’t tell what was real and what was fantasy on his part, since the whole thing sounds too far-fetched.”

“It wasn’t like this three hundred years ago?” Myss asked.

“At that time Magibases didn’t exist at all. Only very few people had the talent for magic. If you could do it, you could do it. If you couldn’t, you couldn’t.” Salaar pinched the bridge of his nose. “The world has changed a lot.”

Myss let him off for the moment. “All right. I have only one question left. You said the offering must be the essence of a nonhuman species. What exactly is ‘essence’?”

“That’s an alchemical term,” Salaar said. “It actually means body parts from a nonhuman creature. Blood and flesh, bones, scales…things like that. Most people bring livestock offal. Some use dead rats and insect corpses.”

“Oh,” Myss replied in a casual tone. “Then what would happen if you used a human corpse?”

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The author has something to say:

Mr. Hero: some roundabout, meaningful reflections on life.

Demon Lord: blah blah blah what are you even saying, I’ve turned off my ears off.jpg

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