84: Reaching The Capital

Reaching The Capital

~Dante's POV~2

The sun was just now rising up in the sky.

Extinguishing the last burning embers of the campfire, I slung my knapsack over a shoulder and turned towards Sara, who had just finished carving out a magic circle on the ground for me. She was holding a piece of paper that I had given her beforehand, following the instructions written down as best as possible.

I took a contemplative glance at the entire thing, scrutinizing it for any sort of mistake. Surprisingly, there wasn't a single one, and I thanked the girl for that with a gentle pat on the head.

Sara's blue eyes lit up for a moment, a pretty little smile crawling onto her face before the two of us became serious once again. However, she did feel the need to express a certain amount of confusion with the whole thing. "I still can't believe there's a branch of magic that's barely even used anymore. I figured that people would've clung to as much of it as possible, unwilling for any of it to go to waste or be forgotten by the masses."

"Feasibly obtaining a powerful spirit entity that manifests as a magical creature, which could also perhaps be capable of utilizing a unique elemental ability or something similar?" I asked as a rhetorical question. "Yeah, honestly, it really does sound weird as hell to neglect using for a couple hundred years."

There must have been something that happened back in the day for such a useful branch of magic to just be thrown away like that. I don't really know what else it could have possibly been.

Digging into a pocket, I eventually pulled out a small red mana crystal that I had gotten as a reward from one of my reputational quests back home. It was quite a satisfying thing to look at, but since I've been burdened with the bare minimum amount of magical energy inside of my body, I didn't want to risk using what I had left to power the ritualistic spell. This was simply a precaution in order to preserve my wellbeing.

The magic circle lit up a few seconds later, which forced Sara to quickly backpedal a couple of feet in a reflexive nature, raising an arm in order to protect her vision from the blinding light. Closing my eyes, I stood my ground as the ritualistic spell began to take effect.

As the summoning commenced, I could faintly recognize the mana crystal in my hand fading away all of a sudden, but I was simply too focused on listening for any signs of a new presence surrounding us to fully notice the unusual phenomenon. It wasn't long after that my supernatural perception of the things around me picked up on what sounded like a very large creature.

The smell, however, I couldn't exactly pinpoint. It didn't really have a distinguishable scent. It was either that, or I just haven't experienced enough in my life to know what I was currently sniffing out.

Eventually, I could tell that the magic circle had died down, which meant that the summoning was over. As a result, I slowly opened my eyes, and that's when my mind quickly blanked.

The creature that I had summoned was leaning down to my eye level, it's yellow cyclops-like eyeball staring into my red orbs with a childlike curiosity. Out of sheer shock, my entire body immediately stiffened, and I couldn't help but slightly panic from it's immense stature.

If it were to stand completely ramrod straight, the creature had a natural height of eleven feet. For such a tall being, I could tell that it also packed a lot of muscle under a scaly rock-like hide, which possessed a couple spikes on the elbows. However, what really caught my attention was the fact that it just had one big eye. Not only that, but the creature seemed to have two extra limbs as well compared to the four of an average human.

In conclusion, my personal familiar was a massive fellow that appeared to instinctively know that I was it's summoner... Honestly, with the way that it was closely examining my appearance, I wasn't sure how to feel exactly at this current moment.

The six-limbed creature eventually backed up a few seconds later, which is when I finally realized that I was no longer at the forest with Sara. Doing a cautious sweep of my surroundings, my small companion was nowhere in sight, and I couldn't help but grow a little wary as I faced my personal familiar once again.

I appeared to be in some kind of underground tunnel, multiple passageways going in and out of the large space that I had been transported, and beautiful stalactite-like crystals littered the mysterious cave. They all varied in size, but what surprised me the most was when my summon casually picked up a large chunk with seemingly no effort and opened his mouth wide, revealing a row of jagged and uneven teeth.

(For reference.)

Standing back in awe, I quietly watched as the creature ate the large hunk of crystal, biting down on it while faintly making grunting noises indicative of satisfaction.

"Uh, how's it going...?" I murmured hesitantly, slowly walking towards the big guy. At the sound of my voice, it was like the creature went into somewhat of a trance, focusing completely on me while small fragments of the large crystal fell to the ground from his maw.

With an audible swallow, the creature appeared to mimic my actions by leaning it's head forward, large mouth opening to speak in a guttural tone of voice. "Quite well, summoner. How are you?"

Blinking in surprise, I didn't reply for a couple seconds because my mind was still lingering on the sound of the creature's distinct voice. However, once I realized that it wasn't hostile at all, I quickly relaxed and got even closer.

There was quite a bit to discuss.

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Seemingly popping into existence right next to Sara a few seconds later, I spread my arms out in an over-the-top fashion. "BOO!" I scared her, a grin on my face.

Immediately backpedaling in shock, the girl quickly became upset once she realized that I was okay. "W-What just happened?! You disappeared all of a sudden and now you're back?"

Giving her a brief rundown of what occurred during the summoning spell, Sara eventually calmed down and decided that she needed one last piece of evidence to fully believe such a thing.

"Proof?"

With an amused smile, I opened my left palm and revealed what I had been holding the entire time, which was a small crystal that had fallen out of my personal familiar's mouth. Blue eyes widening, Sara leaned forward to get a closer look at the item. "Wow...! It's so beautiful!"

Nodding my head in agreement, I stowed it away and unconsciously adjusted the knapsack on my shoulder. "I think it's about time we left this place. If I'm not mistaken, and we continue at a decent pace, the two of us could potentially reach the capital of the Asura Kingdom by the end of the day."

Tilting her head in confusion, Sara told me something that I wasn't really expecting. "The capital of the Asura Kingdom? Erm... I'm not exactly sure what that is."

However, I quickly remembered that she had been living in horrible conditions for the majority of her life, and it wasn't all that surprising that the girl wasn't knowledgeable on things like this. I mean, to a certain degree, I was the same way. A sheltered lifestyle will do that to you.

Patting her on the head, I gave the girl a playful smirk.

"Ars, the largest city in the world."

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After some time passed during our trek towards the capital, Sara's early morning exhaustion had returned, and so I decided to carry her in my arms until she fell asleep. For a while, all she felt was embarrassment and couldn't really go to sleep, but the warmth that my body naturally exuded at all times just served to accelerate the process.

In about an hour, Sara was like a corpse in my arms, dead tired from our one week long camping trip. However, the exhaustion most likely came from all of the lessons that I had given the girl concerning her legitimate aptitude for archery. After a couple hours of her introduction to it, I was able to recognize that she was almost instinctively correcting her flaws every time an arrow didn't hit the target.

Apparently, I had somewhat of a prodigy on my hands.

Taking advantage of the fact that she had fallen asleep, I decided to cover a lot more ground as the sun continued to lower over the horizon. Silently opening a rift, I gently placed the girl on a comfortable mattress before shifting into my bat form and flying off towards the city.

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~Nobody's POV~

The next morning, Sara woke up on a bed in an unfamiliar place.

Quickly rubbing the fatigue out of her pretty blue eyes, she sat up and glanced around in order to take in her new surroundings. It only took a couple seconds to realize that there was another bed next to hers, but nobody was currently occupying it.

However, just as she moved to sit on the edge of her bed, the sound of a door opening caused the girl to perk up in surprise. A pair of footsteps audibly got closer until Dante walked into view, revealing a more notably cleaner black haired boy compared to the last time that she laid her eyes on him. Not only that, but Sara quickly noticed that he wasn't shirtless anymore.

Honestly, it was sort of odd that he wasn't because she had grown so used to seeing him without a shirt for a whole week.

Refusing to acknowledge the small part of her that felt slightly disappointed, she redirected her attention onto the mysterious leather case strapped to his back.

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~Dante's POV~

"Oh, hey! Did you just wake up?" I greeted the blonde haired child, not expecting her to wake up right as I came back from buying something for the girl. Once I spotted her eyes lingering on the item strapped to my back, I quickly peeled it off before laying it on her bed.

Nodding in confirmation, Sara moved closer and grabbed ahold of it. "...Yeah, I did. What is this though?" She uttered, more focused on the mystery that was currently laid out in front of her.

"Take a look. It's for you, after all." I said, crossing my arms with a crooked grin.

With careful movements, she opened the leather case, unable to hold back the gasp that rose out of her chest a few seconds later.

Chuckling in amusement, I spoke up. "Now, do you remember what I said about the different kinds of bows there are? Give me the name of that one."

"...This is a recurve bow, right? You said that it's also a good choice for people that are just starting out with archery too, I think." Sara recited from her memory, glancing between me and her newfound bow with tears brimming in her eyes.

Proudly nodding in confirmation, I spread out my arms with an expectant look on my face. She quickly understood what that meant as the girl placed her bow down and practically jumped into my chest.

"Atta girl." I laughed, gently rubbing her back.

In return, all I got was a quiet sniffle, a bit of her snot probably getting on my shirt as well. However, I didn't really mind it. It was always sort of adorable whenever she got emotional like this.

Tossing the girl back onto her bed after a while of standing like that, which caused her to yelp in surprise, I gave the blonde a playful smirk. "Alright, enough with the sentimental bullshit. Let's go get something to eat. I'm hungry!"

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