Why Did You Summon Me?

“I feel like I’m living in a bloody nightmare,” muttered the middle-aged rider, who was clinging to his seat at the back of the sky-ski.

Although the rushing wind felt like knives on his face, every second of the experience felt unreal to him. It was only natural because he was following the monster that reaped a dozen lives in one second. Here he was, tagging along with the scary thing, who could make anyone shiver just by standing closeby.

The nightmare began when his dearest nephew finally lost his marbles. That’s right; his nephew went mad. After the monster destroyed all enemy sky-skis and made for their ships, his dearest nephew rushed out of the crowd, fell to his knees, and began to beg the monster to allow him to fight by its side.

It happened too quickly for anyone to stop him. To everyone’s surprised, the monster decided to spare the foolish youth. It examined him, instead, with its red eye and said, “I’ll give you two minutes.”

The rest was history. Lear the Resplendent — young, bold, and absolutely insane — forcefully dragged his dear older partner, whose face was as white as a ghost, to hell with him. The youth seized a sky-ski and zoomed off with the monster, both charging into enemy territory together.

These two had to face three bloody steamships, which were on the other side. For them, this was no different from diving into the pits of hell.

The enemies reacted to their brazen provocation in a manner that was expected of them. Around twenty sky-skis took flight from the steamships and sped towards the enemies. When the metal monster saw the incoming sky-skis, it slowed down and asked the youth, who had dragged his older partner — who he considered an uncle — along, “Who are those?”

“They are the Black Rubber Guild! A den of foul pirates!” Lear answered loudly.

“B****, please. Is there anyone in your world who isn’t a pirate?” The Engineer Walker — the pilot of the marionette — murmured under his breath, after which he pulled up the screen, and the approaching targets were locked onto.

Ten minutes later, Lear followed the marionette aboard one of the enemy ships, and on the deck, they were met with a crowd of groveling people. It was unknown who were sailors and who were captains everyone was already on their knees with the marionette arrived.

If they had not surrendered, they would have suffered the fates of the other two steamships. The first steamship was left a burning fireball, which left a trail of black smoke as it crashed downward.

The second steamship had its engine room forcefully broken into by the marionette, who proceeded to tear the ship’s core out. With its power source gone, the steamship succumbed to the call of gravity and fell. No one from either ship had survived.

The marionette looked around and said, “Follow the ship in front of you. It’s heading to the closest city.” No one argued with the order. The ship’s captain nodded immediately and issued an order. The marionette had destroyed the two ships that he was allied it, utilizing a technique called “bashing everything head-on”. It was a traumatic experience the ship’s captain would never forget.

The marionette turned to Lear and said, “You, stay here. Make sure they heed my command.” It pointed a finger at Lear, casting a simple surveillance spell on the youth.

Then, the marionette shot into the sky with the new core. The marionette reached the portal to Isythre only a short while later, after which it shoved it through to the other side.

“Al-right! You go ahead and play; I got something planned for the rest of the day!” The Engineer Walker placed the console controller on Baiyi’s lap and rubbed his hands together in anticipation, walking towards the core propped at the portal. The Orbment System seized his interest the instant he laid eyes on its design. Now that the Engineer Walker had the chance to uncover its mysteries, he did no longer wished to play with his robot.

“Press Square for light attack; press Triangle for heavy attacks; chain combos by stringing these two. L1 defends; R1 releases Fin Funnels; push both left and right circular pads to activate Trans-Am¹. It’s not stable, though, so don’t abuse it! As for the rest… Meh, you can figure them out on your own,” the Engineer Walker said to Baiyi. Then, he shouted at the Scholar Walker to help transport the new core to his workshop.

‘Why does a scout even need any of these ?’ Baiyi stared at the console on his hand, nonplussed. ‘Why can’t you just make a single strike that outputs 999 damage? Or maybe I can hit one button, and it will instantly release a killer move that eradicates everything in sight?’

“Urgh, just give it to me. Look at how confused you are over video games; you’re an embarrassment!” The Archmage drawled the moment he saw through Baiyi’s awkward inaction. He snatched the console away from the man and began to compute a series of commands.

“Hey, I know it’s powered by the Void, but you gotta’ be mindful about its limits there,” The Blacksmith Walker, who had helped the Engineer Walker in making this marionette, reminded good-naturedly before departing to the Engineer’s workshop. He was just as interested in the Orbment System as his friend.

“Alright, I’m gonna check on Mia. You have fun on your own,” Baiyi remarked and left the Voidwalkers, who were still interested in this new world, to their own devices.

Baiyi found the little girl at her own residence. Since reuniting with Noirciel in their last immersive simulation, the two had become nigh inseparable. While Tisdale and every other Baiyi’s girls had quickly thrown themselves into efforts to rebuild Arfin, these two cooped themselves at Mia’s place for their little fashion show, creating different combos from Mia’s collection of dresses.

Baiyi could get behind Noirciel’s possible reasons, but what excuse could Mia have? He wondered if the girl’s mental maturity had been frozen together with her age. Why was it that despite how busy everyone else was, Mia had the leisure to discuss with Noirciel important topics, like whether black silk socks would complement the latter’s wings more than its white counterpart?

Swiftly, the Fifth Walker picked up the girl by her neck as though he was lifting a kitty.

“Yay, Mr.Hope! You’re back!” In lieu of frightful guilt, Mia flashed Baiyi her sweetest grin and spread her arms for a hug. Noirciel, on the other hand, did not follow suit to ingratiate herself on him, preferring to focus on her reflection in the mirror for her last verdict on the black silk socks. After concluding that they were not matching her wings, she took her clothes off right in front of Baiyi and Mia before scouting for a new dress from the chaotic pile, naked.

The Fifth Walker immediately turned away from her and hugged Mia. “Why are you so idle while everyone’s busy, young lady?”

Mia giggled. “I don’t know why, but everyone’s being really nice to me and didn’t make me do anything. They said all I have to do is to take care of Lulu,” She explained, rubbing her cheeks against Baiyi’s metallic cold chest plate.

“Well, you clearly failed to take care of her common sense, since she changed right in front of me,” Baiyi pointed out with a hint of helplessness.

On cue, Noirciel stared at Baiyi and said calmly, “You are my Master. You own everything.”

Baiyi feigned a few coughs. He had no idea why an Angel would think like that, but after giving a few more thoughts, he admitted that it was probably not all bad. Probably.

“Mr.Hope?” Mia patted Baiyi’s mask with her little hands to draw his attention. “When can we explore the new world?”

“Oh, uh, about that. It’s gonna take a while,” He replied, taking a seat by the head of her bed and covertly combing Mia’s slim waist with his fingers.

Baiyi had decided to spend the rest of his day with Mia and Noirciel in her chalet for the rest of the day. When dusk fell and his other Angels could take a reprieve from their work, he invited them to Mia’s to enjoy a scrumptious dinner personally prepared by himself as gratitude for their sacrifice.

‘Everything will work out, no matter how slowly,’ Baiyi thought, his heart swelling with fulfilling happiness while he enjoyed the peace of the girls’ chatter around the table.

The next few days were purposeful and hectic but peaceful. There were so many things in his to-do list: rebuilding Arfin; dividing the Church’s remnants with the Walthart Empire; planning the mass exodus starting from its announcement, just to name a few.

The Fourth Walker’s epic proclamation during the war had pinned Arfin’s surviving area as an eternally-floating city, which severely limited the size it could restore. Expanding a small neighborhood that was now perpetually suspended in midair was incredibly challenging, so the Walthart Imperial Family gave it up and transferred Arfin’s ownership to Baiyi.

As an exchange of goodwill, the Fifth Walker gave up a few of the bounties plundered from the Church, though these were mostly unmovable assets such as land. Anything else that could be packed up and transported was loaded into carriages heading towards Arfin.

That was not all. After the defeat and the fall of the Church, nobility previously on their side began to lavish the Walkers with all kinds of material gifts in the hopes that Baiyi would not come after them. Every day, several carriages packed full of their peace offerings lined up on the road to the war-torn city. As a result, what was supposed to be a war-devastated wasteland below the floating New Arfin returned to its previous, mercantile bustle like a mega-bazaar.

All of the processes were overseen by poor Tisdale and Vidomina, who could feel their blood pressure rising. Vidomina, in particular, had always been the head of these affairs, so even with the help from her sisters and students, the girl bore the most of its brunt. Stress had killed a good few pounds from her body — except a certain womanly feature that refused to sag or shrink from the mountains that they were.

Meanwhile, in the realm of politics, the nascent questions on the power restructure in Isythre had risen to the Imperial family’s focus. Baiyi was disinterested and withdrew himself from the power-grab, but not without requesting the Empire to never interfere with migration around his territory.

Limited by their lack of knowledge and foresight, the Empire did not understand why Baiyi felt compelled to make such a request. The Emperor never had any reason to care about the human capital flight before! In the absence of an explanation, the Empire reasoned to themselves that Baiyi probably just wanted to restore the population of his city.

As it did not harm their interests, the Empire agreed.