Why Did You Summon Me?

As what was previously a war council blew up into a circus of derailing topics, Baiyi left the hall quietly. By this point, the Voidwalkers had broken off into multiple factions centered on different topics.

There was the WarCraft 3 section where a debate on whether the Druid of the Claw or Tauren was the superior terranean fighter. There were the StarCraft II geeks, who were discussing whether the Terrans’ mechanical hybrid unit, Viking, was better than the Protass’ warship, Tempest. Then, there was the classic Voidwalker obsession, DoTA2, among the mix; its fans passionately arguing if the Troll Warlord, when outfitted with the best equipment it could come across, could ever overcome the Chaos Knight.

There was even a Pokemon group at the fringe of the hall where someone started throwing in the possibility of a Caterpie evolving into a Rayquaza ¹ . Finally, before Baiyi left, he even caught a debate beaking out from Gundam geeks about whether the Hi-V Gundam even had wings.

However pointless and off-the-rails these crazy discussions were, they managed to go on until the crack of dawn. At no point had anyone even thought of returning to formulating a battle strategy against the Angels. Even Lady Assassin — the consort on shift today — had been completely occupied with how cute the Angels would likely be with her two best friends instead.

Truthfully, every single Walker thought that war affairs had always been completely under the Fifth Walker’s jurisdiction. Their job, meanwhile, was only to serve as advisors, offering opinions or ideas — a job they could not even carry out at the moment simply because none of them had ever seen an Angel before. To form a plan despite knowing nothing about these Angels was essentially an exercise on imagination, which was something only a Type-Moon fanboy would revel in.

The Voidwalkes were simply too dignified to do something this childish and ridiculous!… Even though what they did end up doing was, objectively, equally childish and ridiculous.

Forced to remember that he could not lean on these weirdos for help, Baiyi became his own war council and finally came up with only three basic battle strategies:

Option A: he would do whatever it takes to crank up his own power. It would be the best if he managed to shrug off any caps on his original power — an ideal that harkened back to the fight against the Lawful Marionette so many years ago. However, he was cognizant that the limiter on his powers was only temporarily removed because of the War God’s divine help; on his own, there was no actual way to raise his own power level.

Now that he was up against the Angels, he was sure that the War God — being a friend of the Angels due to his identity, regardless of his allegiance — was unlikely to lift the power limiter from Baiyi; logically, why would the War God do something that automatically meant hurting a fellow colleague’s lapdogs?

Thus, the only way Baiyi could do would be to forcefully jack up Little Mia’s own power level, since her progress automatically and proportionately improved Baiyi. Obviously, the stronger he was, the better chance he had at overcoming the Angels, even if it was by a smaller margin than having the War God helped him.

His option B would be to weaponize the Voidwalkers appropriately so that instead of fighting alone, Baiyi could fight in a team. This strategy, however, was completely antithetical to the first because for now, Baiyi’s consciousness was the Walkers’ only tether to this reality. The more Walkers Baiyi deployed, the more he had to divide his consciousness to house each of them, and the more resources he would have to share among them. Essentially, he would be spreading himself thin.

Would it better for Baiyi to fight with his powers theoretically at peak performance though it meant disadvantage on numbers, or would it be better to fight with a group of savants from different fields and knowledge, although at a cost of his own powers?

Baiyi could not answer that question. There was simply too little information regarding these Angels to even choose his main strategy.

There was still an Option C: he could join forces with those who were friendly to the Voidwalkers. This would include the Alpine Barbarians, Aya the dragon lady, who was still dreaming about the day she could be Baiyi’s wife, and her Dragon Knights, his students and other lecturers in Da Xue, the nobles who shared such important business connections with him that the Voidwalkers’ demise would automatically would spell a major loss to them, such as Undine and the Northern Duke; and finally, Baiyi would not mind roping Vidomina’s biological pops, the Southern Duke, into his fight if he must.

Frankly, out of the faces Baiyi had conjured in his mind, he knew that the only ally he could truly rely on was the Alpine Barbarians. The nobles were, without a doubt, useless in a fight; much like one’s deadweight teammates in a video game, they might even end up becoming his undoing. On the other hand, bringing Aya and Da Xue students into the war introduced another tension to the problem — Baiyi worried that they might get hurt or even die in the battle.

After much musings, Baiyi became less and less confident that he should mobilize these people at all. Any of their help would be dwarfed by the troubles they bring.

To be honest, not knowing his enemies became a hindrance to coming up with any effective strategy. If he really wanted to form a plan, he would need to first gather intel.

The name of a specific organization materialized in his mind almost immediately after that thought. He departed to his office; after locating the drawer he had in mind, he pulled it open and fished out a nondescript sheet of paper. He folded it into a plane and then cast it out of the window, his eyes following its course as the paper plane sailed lazily to reach outside.

No sooner when the plane made a few inches outside his window, it combusted on its own until all that remained were specks of ash drifting into the wind.

A few minutes later, an inconspicuous slit in Baiyi’s office door slid open quietly before sliding shut with a soft snap. A second or two later, a disembodied voice boomed from within his office, “Our most esteemed Honorary Elder, Umbra is here to heed your orders.”

“Take a seat,” Baiyi replied, pointing at the couch in his office.

In a blink, a middle-aged man was there on the couch, the cushion sagging under his weight in such a way that one would have thought he had been there all along.

There was nothing remotely memorable to his facial features. Leaving him out of one’s sight for just a few seconds would already cause one to forget much of his face, let alone try to spot him from a sea of people.

The man casually lifted his hand, letting his sleeve drooped a little to display a gauntlet wth three marks carved on its leathery surface. He was a Scar-level Assassin.

“You’re quicker than usual this time,” Baiyi prefaced his request with a completely unrelated observation out of his curiosity. “Besides, do I really need someone of your level to do my bidding?”

“Honestly, I’ve been around these few days to help set up our upcoming Advanced Class. When I saw your message, I came over,” The assassin replied rather humbly.

Per the agreement between Baiyi and Umbra, Lady Assassin was to host an Advanced Class every once in a while. Hence, it was not abnormal to have an assassin or two present in the academy, even if no one would normally notice them.

With that out of the way, Baiyi went straight to the point. “I need intel on ‘Angels’. The more the merrier, the more details the better, regardless of sources. I don’t mind them coming from folklore, legends, or even top secrets guarded by Church authorities.”

The assassin tilted his head slightly to a side and thought for a while. Finally, he answered in a raspy voice, “Might take a week.”

Baiyi nodded. “Be swift.”

As sudden as his appearance, the man vanished in a blink of an eye.

Curiously, there was no mention of payment nor the difficulty of the mission, because Umbra offered intel to Baiyi for free as per the aforementioned agreement. Even though Baiyi’s request entailed having veteran Umbra assassins to potentially sacrifice their lives by breaking into the Church’s underlying malicious shadows, Umbra would still carry out Baiyi’s bidding for free.

Now that he had Umbra to take care of his intel, Baiyi left his office and went straight to Little Mia’s chalet. As the girl was not given invigilation duty today, he was sure that she was still on her bed, especially since it was still morning.

To his surprise, Mia woke up earlier than he had expected and was already enjoying her breakfast. It was a fragrant, scrumptious cake packed with butter fillings; after finishing them in small nibbling chunks, Mia licked her fingers as if she was reluctant to let the taste fade so soon.

Then, suddenly, she bolted towards her room as if she remembered something important. She stopped sharply before her full-length mirror and spun around, flexing the side of her waist multiple times from different angles. After concluding that her waist was still delicately slim, she let out a sigh of relief.

As she was still checking her body size, Baiyi had arrived. Since he had expected the girl to be asleep, he had forgone knocking on her door and instead snuck into the house quietly as to not wake her up. Since Mia had not expected a visitor at this hour, she had rolled up her nightgown when Baiyi came into her room, allowing him to witness his youngest daughter looking into the mirror with an exposed belly before finally letting out a sigh.

It was a scene ripe for misunderstandings. In fact, Baiyi found himself frozen like a statue before finally stuttering, “Wha… What are you even doing? You’re not pregnant , are yo —”

“Good morning, Mr. Hope. I didn’t know you’ll visit me today,” Mia cut in quickly after recovering from her own shock. Then, pretending to be unperturbed, she straightened her sleeping gown so that it fell back over her body.

“I… Uh hem, I have something I want to talk to you about. Or more accurately, I have something to ask of you,” Baiyi said with his best serious tone.

“There’s something I can help Mr. Hope with? This is wonderful! Please, tell me what can I do — I promise I’ll help you with the best of my abilities!” She replied giddily, her previous embarrassment completely forgotten.

Not even an hour had passed before Mia began to regret saying those words already. Without answering her, Baiyi had dragged the girl into his Magus Lab and had her changed into a for-serious-occasions-only sorcerer’s training robe. It was the beginning of Baiyi’s latest devilish training to fast-track the girl’s mastery of sorcery.

Of course, Baiyi had given the girl a secluded and safe area to change into her robe. It would have been incredibly unethical otherwise, he was sure.

The devilish training he had planned for her consisted of almost every practice under the sun aimed to improve a sorcerer, including meditation, spellcasting, theory learning, and more — all without breaks. Even Mia’s sleep was to be replaced by meditation.

In other words, Mia could say goodbye to her favorite confectionaries, her soft, inviting bed, and even the upcoming semester break in general. At Baiyi’s order, she was to completely devote her time and effort into her training to improve her power level as soon as possible.

Of course, Mia was characteristically reluctant to do all of that. She was just about to use her standard cop-out card by coquettishly weasel out of the deal — she even had the shaft of her hair ready to be stuffed into Baiyi’s hands for a braiding session — when the Fifth Walker told her about the Church, the Angel Corps they were trying to summon, and the imminent doom the Voidwalkers were facing. To make it sound a lot worse and more desperate than it really was, he even added a lot more exaggerations and drama into it.

That did the trick — suddenly, Mia ceased complaining, her erstwhile resistance completely replaced by a burst of determination, as if she had finally found the purpose of her life. Motivated, she conjured a formation and began to practice her magic.

To her, Mr. Hope was more important than her games, the pleasures in life, and any of her indulgences. Mr. Hope might even be more important than everything in her life.

‘I’ll be the one to protect you this time, Mr. Hope!’ Mia pledged, clenching her tiny hands into fists.

Baiyi had originally planned to keep the girl’s company as well as stopping her from shortcuts and errors, but his plan changed upon receiving an emergency message from the Sorcerer Association: he was invited to attend an emergency meeting hosted in their Babel Tower, with the issue of their discussion linked to the missing students’ case.

From the way the message was framed, it seemed that Mount Parazonium was not the only micro-realm affected by the Church’s summoning ritual. In fact, panic was brewing among even the common folks, who were supposed to be exempted from these high-level politics.

Perhaps this was the perfect time to drive a wedge between the Church and the other organizations. With that goal in mind, Baiyi quickly departed to the Babel Tower.