Why Did You Summon Me?

Six thousand years after the Sage-Emperor of the Magi was cast into the Void, various prodigies and powerhouses in the field of archaeology and gravedigging popped out one after the other, to do dig out his artifacts, and they soon found themselves running out of places to search. Many of them were even as good as the Sage Vagabond, the Explorer Walker, who was not only famous for his encyclopedic knowledge, but also for the fact that he actually possessed magical abilities.

With the aid of his magical abilities, the Sage Vagabond was just as good as an entire excavation team of prodigy archeologists. Hence, if there was one person who should have been able to locate any hidden magus lab — especially the Sage-Emperor of the Magi’s lab — it should have been the Sage Vagabond.

“I think he hid the entire lab in a super-massive, unique dimension — the same type of dimension that storage pouches are based on; this would explain its obscurity. Even if the unique dimension was within Isythre, it would remain sealed until its owner opens the space himself,” Baiyi said. “Furthermore, this dimension would move wherever its master did, just like a storage pouch. How is anyone supposed to find a mobile dimension, let alone enter it? If it had not emitted any frequencies at all, I bet no one would be able to pinpoint its location at all!”

“Being able to extrude a pocket dimension out of a realm, which is large enough to displace his entire lab alone…! What pulchritudinous feat! Perhaps this is the reason why it was able to emit a frequency so widely-propagated that we managed to detect it,” the Scholar Walker exclaimed in awe.

“He never told me much about this dimension… Now that I think of it, maybe he had been keeping it a secret for a day like today. Even though he isn’t here to tell me how it works, I’m still sure a forbidden space magic spell was utilized,” Baiyi deduced. “That soft concrete the barbarians found must have come from the hidden dimension because of that frequency, right?

“Tomorrow, I’ll go and visit the place these soft concretes were taken from. If I see that the soft concretes only appeared recently — right when the magical frequency began to emit — then it would tie into the leads we have perfectly, and our inference would be confirmed!” Baiyi concluded.

After a night that seemed longer than normal, Baiyi wasted no time in waking the barbarians up and hurriedly urged them to wear their metal backpacks. They exited the manor and got the mountain goats and Cuckoo out of the stables. Then, with the animals in the lead, they began their journey. It did not take long before they arrived at the little village town the barbarians had purchased the corncobs. Not long after that, the posse found themselves in front of the stone wall that the barbarians had picked the soft concretes out of.

The stone wall was very low, and an adult human could cross over it without leaping. It also seemed to have been erected recently.

The local villagers were not happy to have been woken up by loud guffaws that resounded in the sky from the flying barbarians. When some villagers came out to see who was making all the racket, Baiyi quickly approached a man and asked him if he knew where the rocks used to build the stonewall had come from. He promised the man a gold coin for his help.

The villager brought Baiyi to a shallow creek. The side of the creek was littered with large pebbles that had the same color as the rocks on the stone wall. Baiyi made good on his promise and gave the villager a gold coin, and watched the man depart with a smile of satisfaction on his face.

Baiyi strode along the side of the creek, and he reduced the range of his psychic energy closer to his body so that its detection capabilities would increase, as he tried his best to gain any little leads.

Suddenly, Baiyi sensed a very gentle magical frequency wave that came out from the bottom of that part of the creek. He willed his mana to pierce through layers of mud until it reached the bottom of the creek, and Baiyi spotted a black coin laying there; it was the same size as a normal gold coin.

Baiyi quickly searched his memory and realized that this small black coin was similar to the gold coin that the Ancient Rohlserlian Empire had used. However, after laying at the bottom of a creek for such a long time, the black coin had lost gold color and turned black. However, it could still be considered a keepsake from the Ancient Rohlserlian Empire.

When the Ancient Rohlserian Empire began to mint its coins, it was plagued by the issue of forgery. One of the empire’s emperors suggested that the empire mint its coins with magic, which would make them emit a special frequency, and this would make them very hard to fake. Since that time period was one where almost everyone could perform some level of magic, the new minting method was widely embraced and began to spread.

Thanks to this method of minting, Baiyi was still able to detect weak magic frequencies emanating from the small black coin. Even after thousands of years, it was still able to emit magic frequencies that could be detected. This made him feel like applauding those who minted coins back then.

“It’s no wonder he believed that only I could find the Book of Servitude. If it was anyone else, they would not have come this far. After all, they would not know about his secret magus lab, neither would they know about the coins of the Ancient Rohlserlian Empire,” Baiyi said. He picked up the small black coin carefully and put it into his storage pouch.

As Baiyi had found the ancient relic at the bottom of the creek, it was evident that it may have only appeared recently. This meant that the entrance to the magus lab — or more specifically, the entrance to the hidden dimension — that he sought was somewhere around there.

“Even after drastically minimizing the range of my psychic energy, I am unable to discern any more magical frequencies. How I am now supposed to enter that place?” Baiyi murmured, feeling frantic, as he stood by the creek. The treasure seemed so close yet so far.

“Just ask those mountain goats to help, C’mon! You know that animals are more sensitive in certain aspects than humans, right?” the Explorer Walker reminded him curtly. The Voidwalker seemed lively, probably because of the excitement from excavating a thousand-year-old mystery.

“Good point!” Baiyi nodded in approval. He remote-controlled the metal backpacks and brought the barbarians over to where he was, putting an end to the terror he was sure they were wracking in the little village. He briefed the barbarians on his current problem, and they whistled for their mountain goats, who had been laying waste to the villagers’ crops ¹ .

The mountain goats, however, did not nibble on the shrubs at the side of the creek; instead, they began to circle a patch of barren land strangely. It was as though they had discovered something.

“This… is this what you’re looking for?” Huskar strode over to where the goats had stopped and picked up a pebble. His hand closed around the pebble, and it was shattered into powder. “These rocks seem normal. So frail.”

‘Only you would think so,’ Baiyi mumbled internally as he walked over and began to inspect the land. He spread out his psychic energy and caused it to burrow deep within the ground underneath him, sensing the state of every grain of sand and speck of dust within the earth.

He found nothing. He stirred his mana and made it surge around the small patch of land by the creek, but there was no reaction.

“What are you even looking for, Brother Hope?” Zar’Zar and Char’Char walked over and asked.

“A door… A door that we can’t see,” Baiyi answered, using an analogy that he was sure that the Barbarians would be able to understand.

“If it cannot be seen, then how can it be found?” Huskar asked, a little philosophically.

“I know, I know!” Char’Char exclaimed in excitement. “I remember when Mama told me stories about invisible doors. She said you just have to say the secret spell, and the door would open!”

‘Huh. So the barbarians have stories like these, too?’ Baiyi marveled silently. He turned the idea over in his head and decided that to try it.

“Open.. sesame!” He yelled.

Nothing.

” I’m Level 10, please portal me to Dalaran! ² ”

” O Warlock, please open the door and then go away! ³ ”

“If ya have the balls to steal mah man, then ya have the balls to open this muthafarken door!”

” I… I have tapped my train ticket on the scanner so many times already… ⁴ ”

Soon, Baiyi had shouted a dozen door-related-phrases, but the door he needed opened refused to let its guard down. The barbarians were staring at Baiyi incredulously; they had no idea what he was on about.

Baiyi felt like an idiot…

“You i-di-ot! You can be so stupid sometimes! You’ve been using phrases from your previous world. Back during Master’s time, he knew nothing about the words you speak now, did he?” The Assassin Walker chided him.

‘Oh? What a miracle! The stupid girl actually came up with a pretty sound rebuke! But why are you calling my teacher “Master”? Despite seeing enough of his antics, you still want to be his student?’

Baiyi proceeded to say the previous phrases in Ancient Rohlserlese.

At this point, the barbarians were even more perplexed. Their eyes held even more confusion within them.

“L-l-look at what you made me do! You actually made me repeat these idiotic lines!” Baiyi jabbed the Assassin Walker twice in fury.

“Ow! Ow ow ow!” Lady Assassin cried out. However, she did not retaliate because she had realized that she was really at fault.

“Don’t panic,” the Warrior Walker cooed. “Think back to everything Master said to you before all this. You might find some clues in those words.”

‘Oh! So the Warrior is always the smarter of the two.’ Baiyi quietly nodded in approval and cast his thoughts back to the words the Archmage had said to him after the Void Walker descended into the Militia Armor Set. Baiyi pondered really hard.

However, all he could remember was the Archmage being adamant that he retrieve the book, as well as assuring him that the book would his and his alone. The rest of that discussion had been normal banter about names of new techniques and the Archmage demanding money from him.

Baiyi decided to think even further back than that. He cast his mind back to the battle between the Archmage and the Demigod Lich. In that battle, the Archmage had displayed two territories, and he used them to easily overpower the Demigod Lich—

Hold on. Two Territories…?

Baiyi remembered exactly how the Archmage utilized the second Territory and how the Demigod Lich’s titanic Grim Reaper had bowed its head in subjugation. Back then, the Book of Servitude turned into a scepter.

Now that Baiyi thought about it, he began to suspect there was never any real need for the Archmage to use his second Territory to fight off the Demigod Lich’s ‘Gehenna’. His second Territory was more effective and visually captivating than his first Territory.

Although the Archmage was one who loved acting cool, his fighting style was usually more guarded and conservation. He would normally not show his trump card easily without being sure that his opponent had no other tricks.

That was actually quite risky… and quite extreme.

Could it be that the Archmage used his second Territory not just to act cool but to tell Baiyi something?

‘He’s not asking me to use his second Territory to open the door, right?’ Baiyi thought.