“Another Summoner?”

Chapter 27: Summoner Rapid Growth?

Just outside the estate’s grand wrought-iron gates, the Queen and Princess were preparing to board their ornate royal carriage. Queen Leandra Breeze had finally finished probing Thorin for clues regarding his mysterious connections to Earth. Satisfied, or perhaps merely content for now, she turned her gaze toward Loki.

Noticing the lingering look of longing on Princess Lana’s face, Leandra gestured toward the radical political banners hanging from the estate walls.

"Perhaps those can come down soon?" the Queen asked, her voice carrying a melodic but firm undercurrent. "I believe we have resolved these minor misunderstandings. As the Principal of the Royal Academy, it distresses me to think of such propaganda spreading further, haha~"

Behind Loki, Taki Tsuki averted her gaze, her face burning with secondhand embarrassment over the inflammatory slogans Loki had posted. Even Thorin looked down, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly.

"Sure thing, Your Majesty," Loki replied smoothly, offering a casual nod.

As he spoke, Loki caught the eye of Gondul, the towering Valkyrie guarding the royals. He was suddenly reminded of the way the entity had spoken directly into his mind earlier—a telepathic connection unique to high-level Summoners and their Summons. Gondul hadn't utilized an Summoner's eighth-circle Summons Telepathy spell; rather, she was relying on her race's innate biology.

In the lore of Myst, this fundamental link between Summoners and high-tier beasts was known as Soul Language. Native to the Twelve Outer Elemental Planes, entities like Gondul possessed the rare ability to communicate directly via the soul. While it allowed for perfect cross-species understanding, the magic required them to be face-to-face to interact dynamically.

The exchange made Loki wish he shared a similar tether with Taki and Yin Meng. As it stood, Shehuang was the only Summon with whom he could converse entirely without words.

As the carriage finally pulled away, taking the royal women and their formidable guard with it, Loki clenched his fist. A sudden, burning resolve settled in his chest. Tonight, I make the push to hit the Third Circle, he thought, even if I have to neglect my Vanguard training a bit.

Of course, this sudden urge to lock himself in a cultivation room had absolutely nothing to do with avoiding Ayala, the terrifyingly brutal Amazon instructor awaiting him at the academy. None at all.

As the royal carriage rounded the cobblestone street corner, the figures of Thorin, Loki, and his eclectic group of Summons finally vanished from view.

"Stop staring, Lana. They aren't there anymore," Leandra remarked dryly.

The Queen's sudden voice made Lana snap her head back around, her cheeks flushing crimson with shame. "I... I think Loki knows I’m a Half-Elf,"

Lana whispered, nervously adjusting her jewelry. "But I don't understand how. My Ring of Disguise is top-grade. It's supposed to perfectly conceal my ears from human sight."

"The ring I gave you is flawless, darling," Leandra sighed, leaning back against the velvet cushions. "The fault lies with me for sitting beside you. The boy is exceptionally sharp, and his mind is broader than most. Don't worry, I doubt he will betray our secret. Right, Gondul?"

The armored, fallen-angel-like warrior nodded, the slight chinking of her heavy plate armor echoing in the carriage cabin. "He didn't even flinch when I addressed his soul directly," Gondul observed, her ethereal voice steady. "His soul strength mirrors Master Owen’s. In fact, it may even be stronger."

Lana gasped. As a fellow Summoner, she understood the terrifying weight of that statement. The power of one's soul was the ultimate ceiling for their magic. "But Father is the strongest Summoner in existence," Lana pressed, her eyes wide. "If Count Loki possesses a stronger soul, doesn't that mean his growth rate will completely eclipse everyone else's?"

Gondul nodded solemnly. "What you say is true. However, surviving to see the end of that path—as my King did—is a different matter entirely. Talent, soul strength, and raw power are merely tools. The real test is whether the Second Summoner can defend against the most elusive, malicious force in the cosmos: Fate."

Leandra watched her daughter's frantic expressions and let out a soft, teasing laugh. "My, my. Is Thorin already a thing of the past? You seem to be worrying about Count Sky an awful lot, Lana. You do realize he is a married man, yes? Duchess Sylvia Sky is his primary wife. Don't tell me you're already scheming to become a secondary concubine?"

Lana panicked, her hands flying up in a desperate wave. On one hand, her manipulative older half-brother, Prince Vali, was already making political moves and held a dangerous amount of leverage over her secrets. On the other hand, she couldn't deny the unexplainable, fluttering feelings that had developed in her chest whenever Loki was near.

Aware that both her mother and the ancient Summon could see right through her, Lana bit her lip and told a desperate, shameless white lie.

"Thorin isn't off the table! Vali favors him greatly," Lana stammered, her voice pitching higher. "As for Count Sky... he is simply a fellow Summoner. I view him as a benchmark, a goal I wish to eventually overcome! That's all. I absolutely do not have any impure, scandalous thoughts about him!"

Queen Leandra sighed internally, letting the girl have her delusion. Yet, she had to admit, Loki had thoroughly impressed her during their meeting. The young Count had actually managed to keep his eyes fixed firmly on her face rather than staring shamelessly at her notoriously voluptuous chest. In Leandra’s experience with human men, that alone was a rare feat of absolute willpower.

Back inside the estate gates, Thorin led the way toward the main manor, his face alight with the crude, breathless wonder of a displaced Earth pervert.

"Holy shit, Loki! The Elf Queen was absolutely stunning!" Thorin cheered, throwing his arms up. "She’s like literal perfection. That's it. I’m traveling to the Elven Kingdom. I need to find myself an Elf wife right now, haha!"

Loki opened his mouth, fully prepared to foolishly agree with his friend’s enthusiastically horny sentiment, but Taki Tsuki spoke up first. Her flat, deadpan voice immediately cut through the locker-room excitement.

"Sir Thorin, you cannot see it because my eyes are currently closed," Taki said, stepping out from the shadows, "but please know that I am rolling them aggressively at your naive comments."

Thorin blinked, deflating slightly. "How so?"

"Human Queen Leandra Breeze is notorious among both the High Elves and the Dark Elves," Taki explained, a smug satisfaction creeping into her voice as she watched the two men lean in. "You could say she is a household celebrity in our lands... specifically for being a 'Human-loving slut.'"

Thorin and Loki froze mid-stride, their expressions identical masks of absolute bewilderment.

"Allow me to clarify," Taki continued, thoroughly enjoying their shock. "Leandra was originally nothing more than a common maid serving the royal Elven palace. She possessed no noble blood, but she did possess one defining, evolutionary trait: an absurdly massive chest. Cow tits, to put it bluntly."

Loki choked on his own saliva.

"When King Owen saw her, it was love at first sight," Taki said, gesturing dramatically. "He literally upended the Elemental Planes and tore through the Myst to woo her. He called it a 'Cinderella Love Story.' Ultimately, he took her away by absolute brute force just to rescue her from the constant ridicule of the Elven court."

A Cinderella Love Story?! Loki’s mind raced, a cold sweat breaking out on his neck. Is that just a bizarre cosmic coincidence, or is there an existing fairytale in the world of Myst that I completely missed?

Oblivious to Loki's existential panic, Taki finished her historical lecture. "Now, Leandra flaunts her status to spite the Elves, protected entirely by Owen’s unconditional love. The fact that she cast aside her Elven pride to happily roll around in bed with a human completely rubs the Elven nobility the wrong way."

Thorin entirely missed the terrifying political implications of the story, focusing instead on his ruined fantasy. "Dang," he muttered, disappointed. "So you're saying no other Elf woman can surpass Queen Leandra?"

"Sadly, that is a anatomical fact," Taki replied smoothly. "Her body acts as a literal dimensionality reduction attack against standard Elven women. That is the one single topic that High Elves and Dark Elves actually agree on: a shared, bitter hatred for that woman’s proportions."

Thorin smirked, turning a mischievous gaze onto Taki. "So... does that mean the High or Dark Elves are going to call you a 'Human-loving slut' pretty soon?"

Taki froze. Her fair skin instantly turned a deep, dark shade of mortified purple as the realization struck her like a physical blow. For centuries, her culture had taught her to look down on the Queen for giving in to a human. Now, a chaotic montage of her own recent, passionate nights with Loki flooded her mind.

"It seems..." Taki coughed into her fist, her voice suddenly small and strained. "I need to re-evaluate my stance on the Queen. I believe I understand her choices a bit better now. Lord Loki... I will go check on Yin Meng's duties. Goodbye."

Before Loki could utter a single word, the ninja spun on her heel and sprinted down the hallway, using her high-tier agility to flee the room.

Loki burst out laughing, clapping a hand on Thorin’s shoulder. "Brother, outstanding work. You just made a high-level ninja use an escape jutsu out of pure horniness!"

Shaking his head, Loki walked back out to the front yard to finally start dismantling his ridiculous propaganda posters.

Following a hearty dinner, Loki escorted his lovely companions to their quarters, kissed them goodnight, and promptly locked himself inside his private magic cultivation suite.

For a certified genius Mage, progressing through the lower tiers of the First Circle up to the third was a rapid, almost effortless affair. The real bottleneck arrived at the Fourth through Sixth Circles, which routinely took months of grueling study, while the legendary Seventh through Ninth Circles demanded decades of dedication.

Loki had spent every spare second of his free time devouring advanced Third Circle Summoning grimoires and probing Shehuang for her vast reservoir of magical insights and ancestral experience. The rest of his time was spent cross-legged inside his high-grade Meditation Chamber, actively absorbing the premium Air Cores and Life Cores gifted to him by his immensely wealthy wife, Sylvia.

And that, Loki thought with a grin, is exactly why she is the First Wife. It has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that she’s drop-dead gorgeous, incredibly compliant, took my virginity, and is currently pregnant with my future child. Nope. Purely business.

Skipping past the tedious, agonizing hours of channeling raw mana through his meridians overnight, the dawn brought a mixture of triumph and exhaustion. Loki opened his eyes, feeling the vibrant, upgraded hum of energy radiating from his chest.

He was happy because his magic core had successfully breached the threshold of the Third Circle. He was sad because, looking at the complex formulas required for his new tier, it was going to take him at least forty-eight hours of intense etching time just to safely cast his new spells.

Later that morning, Shehuang—who had completely betrayed Yin Meng's autonomy for her own amusement—was meticulously adjusting the sharp red, black, and silver-accented trim of Loki's new academy uniform.

"Master, please, why must this be the arrangement?" Yin Meng protested softly from the side of the room. "I thought I was supposed to act as his personal maid at the school?"

Loki silently echoed the sentiment, but Shehuang—clad in a scandalously tight, micro-cut maid outfit she had supposedly 'retired' from—merely scoffed, tightening Loki's collar with an authoritative tug.

"Now that our Master has finally bedded you, you think you can revolt against your rightful Summoner?" Shehuang purred, her eyes flashing dangerously. "Humph. It is precisely because that unhinged Amazon bitch wants to punish our Master that I must accompany him to campus. Frankly, Yin, you are nowhere near strong enough to protect Loki if that woman snaps."

She turned, pointing a manicured finger at the submissive masochist. "So, until Master is powerful enough to completely suppress that crimson whore, I will be the one shielding him for the sake of all three of us. When he achieves that strength, you can take over your school duties. Until then, you are on indefinite bed-warming duty at the manor until you successfully pop out a child for us, hehe~"

Yin Meng’s face flushed a delicate pink, and she looked over at Loki for help. Loki, however, found himself looking away with a guilty, slightly excited cough. Shehuang completely ruled the roost when it came to domestic affairs, but he honestly couldn't find a single flaw in her logic. Her plans were chaotic, but they heavily benefited him.

Defeated by her master's silent approval, Yin Meng bowed her head, her voice a soft whisper. "Very well... I will prepare the master bedroom for a child, Master and... Master."

Standing by the doorway, Taki Tsuki crossed her arms, her dark eyes narrowing as she muttered under her breath, wondering aloud when exactly her turn in the rotation was supposed to happen.

At the grand, columned entrance of the Royal Academy, Loki and Thorin arrived side-by-side on horseback, drawing immediate stares from the gathering crowds of noble students.

Shehuang was clinging tightly to Loki’s back, her barely-legal uniform making it blindingly, shamelessly obvious to the entire student body that Count Sky not only slept with his maid, but that his maid was a high-tier, sentient Summon. It was a staggering display of raw flex.

Unlike the rigid, bureaucratic institutions of Earth, the Royal Academy operated on a system Loki thoroughly respected. Each professor was allocated a vast, private class-office, which they kept open from 8:00 AM to 12:00 PM, followed by a one-hour lunch break, and reopened from 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM, six days a week.

There were no fixed lectures or mandatory seating charts. Students were simply assigned a roster of mentors. As a student, you could wander into any assigned professor's office during their four-hour blocks for independent study, individual tutoring, or casual seminars. The only caveat was that you had to log at least one full four-hour block per week with each of your minimum four selected teachers, or face immediate expulsion from their course.

For Loki, this meant he only had to endure a single, agonizing four-hour block with the Amazon maniac Ayala once a week. The rest of his schedule could be juggled with absolute, lazy freedom. Furthermore, the school lacked traditional grades or a pass-fail system; you simply carried a Year One or Year Two designation, with a hard cap of two years total before graduation.

It was infinitely superior to Earth universities. The relaxed nature stemmed from the fact that most students were high-ranking nobles who already possessed inherited titles and landed duties, rendering standard military conscription unnecessary unless they were commoners.

As they led their horses toward the academy stables, Thorin looked over with a hopeful gleam in his eye. "Hey, Loki, are you sure you won't come to my Knight Training class today?"

Loki's face went completely blank, his mouth responding on absolute autopilot. "Pass. I prefer to actually learn things, Thorin, not get brutally pulverized into the dirt for a sadist's personal amusement. Tell me, does my face look handsome today?"

Thorin chuckled, playing along. "Extremely. Just a fraction below mine, of course."

"Exactly," Loki said, narrowing his eyes. "I intend to keep my face handsome for as long as possible. I'm scheduling Ayala's class as my absolute last block of the week. That way, when she inevitably beats me into a coma, I can just sleep it off over the weekend."

Thorin shrugged in understanding, but before he could reply, a loud, smooth voice cut through the courtyard air.

"There you are, Sir Thorin! My sister has been looking all over for you, haha. Oh, and Sir Loki, what a pleasant surprise to see you actually graced the academy with your presence today... Good luck out there."

Prince Vali Balder approached them, flashing a perfectly manicured, political smile. His casual use of 'Sir Loki' wasn't an insult; in Myst, any noble ranking from Count down to Knight could be addressed casually as 'Sir' in academic settings to foster a sense of peerage.

Loki looked past the Prince, noticing that Princess Lana was standing a few paces back, her expression incredibly strained and abnormal.

Recalling his past interactions with her via their puppet communications—and the distinct resonance of her soul when they had touched—a sudden, shocking epiphany crystallized in Loki's mind. This girl... she doesn't have Thorin in her heart at all. She's looking at me.

Loki immediately wiped all emotion from his face, resolving to play completely dumb. Acknowledging her feelings right now would only bring absolute ruin. It would break Thorin's heart, destroy Lana's standing, and play directly into her snake of a brother's political trap.

Furthermore, touching a member of the royal family outside of an officially sanctioned dueling class carried a mandatory prison sentence. In a world where cultivators lived for centuries, spending a decade in a magical dungeon was a psychological death sentence far worse than any prison on Earth.

Even if he wanted to pursue her, the royal family would never sanction a union. He was already deeply wed to Sylvia as his primary wife; a princess would never be permitted to sit as a secondary concubine. If he pushed Lana into a romance, Thorin would feel utterly betrayed, and Loki refused to break brotherhood over a cute Half-Elf princess.

Most importantly, keeping his distance was the only way to shield Lana from Vali. He could clearly see the subtle, manipulative strings the Prince used to control her secrets. If Loki drew her in, Vali would undoubtedly use her as a weapon or harm her to get to the Sky estate.

Yes, Loki reasoned, his mind working with cold calculation. My absolute indifference is an act of pure, unadulterated chivalry. I am ignoring her entirely for her own protection.

They could still be civil friends, considering the Principal had mysteriously arranged for them to share almost the exact same roster of professors. That setup alone screamed of a conspiracy. If he were the Elf Queen, he would have separated them instantly to protect the kingdom's deepest secrets.

Loki couldn't fathom why the Queen had suddenly taken such a volatile interest in him, even going so far as to allow her vulnerable daughter to wander around a wild wildcard like himself—especially with King Balder, another powerhouse Summoner, watching from the capital.

The King either wanted Loki dead within the next two years, or he was actively trying to buy his loyalty. Either way, Loki had exactly twenty-four months to grow strong enough to make their opinions utterly irrelevant.

So, for now, Loki thought, casting one last passing glance at the golden-haired Princess, I have to look at this gorgeous Half-Elf and firmly resist the urge to throw a Poke-ball at her. For her own good.

"Good luck, you say, Prince Balder?" Loki spoke aloud, a confident, arrogant smirk spreading across his lips as he adjusted his cloak. "I appreciate the sentiment, but Lady Luck and I are already intimate lovers. My luck is functionally infinite."

With Shehuang clinging tightly to his arm, projecting an aura of absolute lethal beauty, Loki stepped past the royal siblings without a shred of hesitation. He didn't look back as he threw a lazy, cocky hand-wave over his shoulder.

"You guys enjoy playing your little game of 'fake friends' out here in the dirt," Loki called back, his voice echoing off the academy walls. "I'm going inside to actually learn some high-level shit and take my place at the absolute peak of Myst and the Twelve Planes. See ya later."

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