Nightmare Realm Summoner

If everyone in Mirrorwane had been busy before, then a whirlwind now. Not a single person within the town sat around for more than the time it took them to meditate. Mirrorwane was awash with preparations for the auction. People raced to fill Harvesters with cores from Mirrorlands monsters, training and pushing themselves to seek out stronger and stronger monsters with every crap of energy they had.

Alex barely saw any of the others for more than a few seconds at a time. Everyone had their own tasks. Orchid was hard at work directing the teams she’d been training — who had now started to venture deeper into the Mirrorlands around the town on minor missions without her supervision. He only caught one or two glimpses of May and Aaron, who only returned to 274-50 to quickly drop off their spoils of war.

Claire had entered the Forsaken Grounds and reappeared several hours later, passed out on the doorstep — where Alex had promptly deposited her right back in the soft bed that he’d been put in a short while ago.

He’d also filled Rhyss in on exactly how the Forsaken Grounds worked. The town Advisor had gone and informed everyone else about it, ensuring nobody would stumble into the room unprepared or risk wasting its benefits.

Alex caught little of Wess, Derek, and Alyssa. All three of them spent the majority of their time in the Mirrorlands, along with most of the town. Both Wess and Derek seemed to be exclusively going out on solo missions. Alex saw Alyssa speaking with Orchid a few times, but he didn’t spend the time figuring out exactly what they were talking about.

He was too busy training himself. It wasn’t that he expected there to be a fight within the auction. He was pretty sure auctions were generally the kind of thing that were won with money and rare items. But this was 274-50, after all. There was a nonzero chance somebody decided that the best way to settle a competing bid over an item was to try to rip each other’s throat out.

It never hurt to be ready.

And his training went even better than expected. Claire had been right about his newfound strength. Refining his body had done even more than he’d thought. His skin had been toughened from the first time he’d entered the Forsaken Grounds. Now it was on an entirely different level.

Some weaker monsters were entirely unable to hurt him. The stronger ones — not so much. Alex found that part out the hard way whilst testing his limits when a sleek, shadowy panther in the Mirrorlands opened his stomach up like a ripe orange.

He was pretty sure its claws had been magic or it had used some kind of ability to sharpen them. It didn’t matter. Body Tempering was incredibly powerful, but it wasn’t a writ of immortality. He could still be hurt, and he could still be killed. It also didn’t seem to do much in the way of stopping magic.

That said, he was definitely a lot faster and stronger. When he used his Chainsword, he found himself tearing through early Adept level monsters with only some mediocre difficulty. The fact that he — a summoner class — was able to put up this much of a fight in melee range was more than satisfactory for him.

He also tested out his anchor to see if his newfound strength made wielding it any easier.

It hadn’t.

Despite the fact that he was definitely at least twice as strong as he’d once been, it was still completely impossible to lift the heavy white metal under his own strength. It felt like he hadn’t gotten stronger at all… or the anchor had gotten heavier.

The only way to budge it was with the Singularity Core. Still, the reinforcements to his body made it considerably easier to let himself get yanked around by the massive weapon whenever he threw it around.

He split his time training between the anchor and the Chainsword. As strong as he felt, the reminder that the Outworlders had years upon years to train never left the back of his mind. There was no room to get complacent or overly satisfied with his strength.

Alex wasn’t the only one getting stronger. And while he was unlocking things for the first time — many of the Outworlders were just getting back old tools that they already knew well.

He couldn’t fall behind.

And neither could his monsters.

Alex gave all the the Soul Flames he got to Glint, pushing him past 100% of the way to evolution. He could have improved him on the spot — but there was no way he’d be doing that when he knew that 200% was a possibility. Alex wasn’t in so much of a rush that he was willing to burn potential. It was definitely taking a lot longer to get him full than it had the previous time he’d evolved Glint.

Stolen from NovelFire, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

That really wasn’t too much of a surprise. Every evolution seemed nearly exponential in power growth. It wouldn’t make sense if the same amount of energy was sufficient when Glint was magnitudes more powerful now than his former form had been.

Alex also kept an eye on his other monsters to see if anyone would reach out to contract him for them. But nobody did. Things were still quiet. In some ways, that was probably a good thing. He and Ein’Zahl were still getting used to working together properly. There was no need to rush ahead into more contracts until they had a really reliable battle strategy.

He was also more than pleased to note that strength hadn’t been the only thing that Mirrorwane had been improving in. As it turned out, the soft bed he’d woken up in wasn’t the only one in town. The townsfolk had been hard at work making furniture, building new cabins, and improving the actual livability of the town.

Mirrorwane wasn’t just a fortress crossed with a campsite anymore. Roads that had once been just scorched earth and beaten down grass were now paved with carefully-laid stones. The houses almost all had beds, and Mite was working with Rhyss on figuring out a proper plumbing system that would let them get running water. It was looking like it would cost one of the town’s more minor boons — but Alex didn’t mind in the slightest.

Even though he would have loved to keep Mirrorwane secret forever, Alex was more than aware that dream was nothing but smoke. It would be found. Sooner or later, someone would figure out where their town was. And when that happened, it had to be able to stand completely on its own. He’d also eventually need to be able to recruit new people. Ones that were worth having. And if the whole place was a backwoods shithole, that was going to be a hell of a lot harder.

Things were progressing nicely.

And, as the days slipped by and the timer on the ticket ticked closer and closer to zero, that continued to be the case. Claire woke the day before the timer hit zero, then immediately set out to test out her new strength and re-familiarize herself with her body.

Time ticked on.

The remaining day turned to mere hours and those turned to one.

People gathered back in Mirrorwane, returning from their missions and gathering all the supplies they’d readied in the center of town. Mite, who had been hard at work on several of his own projects the entire time, re-emerged from his cabin.

Mirrorwane was more crowed than Alex remembered it being. It had been a long time since practically the entire town had gathered in a single place. There was quite the crowd.

He kept reflexively checking the ticking numbers on his ticket. The time until the auction begun was nearly out. But he wasn’t so much stressed as he was excited. All the work they’d been doing up until now was finally going to pay out. They weren’t going to be showing up to this thing empty-handed.

And, on top of all the stuff we’ve got to sell, there’s the Key that Wess kind of stole from Crimson that they’re going to have to buy back as well as the Corruption Core Class Shard. I don’t really have a scale for what counts as a rich town right now… but with all the stuff we’ve gathered, I don’t get the feeling we’re going to be at the bottom of the pack.

“Here are the normal materials and items we gathered,” Mite said, holding a Spatial Ring out to Alex. “The Key from the Golem for that dungeon that Crimson were interested in. Harvesters full of cores. Some weapons and shit. Few pieces that I couldn’t figure out what to do with that Orchid didn’t want for the garden. There’s got to be at least a thousand Credits worth of stuff in there. Maybe even more. I don’t know, to be honest. Maybe a lot more. And we’ve also got this.”

He held out another ring.

“A second? Did it not fit in the first?” Alex asked, taking the other one.

“No. It would have fit, but the first one has the better stuff. This has the extras. I wasn’t sure how many Mirrorlands Cores we wanted to show we had, so this is the weaker ones,” Mite explained. “Just in case. I don’t know what you’re planning, but it can’t hurt to have things sorted out beforehand.”

Alex nodded. He slipped both rings onto his fingers. “Thank you. Anything else?”

“No. Those rings have everything,” Mite replied. “Everything else is all on you… and whoever else is coming. Who exactly is coming? We can take 5 people, right?”

“I’m going,” Wess said from the front of the crowd. “I brought have the shit. There’s no way I’m missing this all fall out. It’s going to be too funny.”

“I am as well,” Claire said.

“I’ll stay in Mirrorwane,” Orchid said. “Derek should as well. We need to keep a strong fighting force.”

“Works for me,” Derek said with a shrug.

“I’d prefer to stay and train as well,” Alyssa said. A small frown crossed her lips. “I’m not too much in the mood for politics or bartering. I just want to get stronger.”

“Mite. You should come,” Alex said.

Mite blinked. “What? Me? But I’ve got projects! Why—”

“Because you know what materials would be useful for the town,” Alex said. “More than I do. And I can’t bring Rhyss. That means you’re the second best option. What if we pass up on a useful energy source or something because we don’t know what it is? I need someone that knows how to do stuff other than fight.”

Mite paused for a moment, but the idea of getting new toys to play with was clearly too much for him to pass up. He folded.

“Okay. I’m in.”

“Then we have room for one more,” Alex said. “Anyone want to come? We don’t have to fill the space. It’s not mandatory. So—”

“I’ll come.” A voice came from behind Alex.

He blinked, then turned.

Standing behind him was Aaron. He looked… different than the last time Alex had taken a proper look at him. Aaron was still thin and lean, but there was definitely more muscle on his frame. He was also undeniably more confident. Whatever he’d been doing for training, it had been working.

A small grin crossed Alex’s lips.

“I guess we’ll know when we might need to win a bet. That makes five.”

They had their group.

Now it was time to go rinse the shit out of some Outworlders in their own auction.