Chương 4: Little Horn

Your brother would one-shot you. That line walked me home. I replayed it in different tones. Playful. Mocking. Warning. None of them helped. Cassandra said it like an undiscussable fact. Peter. My twin brother. The one who never showed a flicker of magical talent. The one Mum had to actively pretend didn't exist while she smuggled me into the attic to practice shielding techniques.

The one who effectively won the lottery when he got assigned grunt work at Lucielle Legal because that was the only type of work where his utter lack of mana wouldn't show. But Cassandra also said I was level zero, visibly surprised. If the System really gave one power just for fighting things, then I indeed didn't have anywhere to have gotten any levels. I never went to fight any monsters, because why would I? And the few times a mage almost picked a fight with me, it always ended the second I summoned Astarielle.

Even the occasional overly curious FBI agent instantly reasoned this assignment wasn't worth his life. Maybe the talentless twin wasn't so talentless anymore. Maybe the System could provide enough of a power-up to make even him a powerful mage. I had to get in on that. The Golden Sands section was quieter at this hour. The construction had long since stopped for the night, and the few people still up were either smoking or arguing near the cafeteria. The gold decorations looked slightly less absurd under moonlight.

Slightly. But I needed things, like clothes, money, and a phone. I couldn't ask Cassandra for her number if I didn't have any way to call her. Finding Kareem took an embarrassing amount of effort. I asked one group of guys, then another, and then an hour of searching and asking around later, I wound up at a small outdoor café tucked behind the main mosque. He sat on cushions under a canopy, hookah pipe in hand, tea steaming on the table, plate of dates half-demolished. I walked to him.

"I see you're busy with work."

"Habibi!" he spread his arms, smiling.

"I was just about to come find you." Even Astarielle lied better. I only glared at him.

"I swear on my mother's life." He took a drag from the hookah.

"Sit, sit. I've been running around all evening trying to track you down." The hookah coals were white. He'd been here for at least an hour.

"Must be a mystery how you didn't find me at the very pods where you sent me to go." He shrugged, gesturing to a cushion.

"I must have just missed you. I figured I'd find you in the morning, and you'd manage in the meantime." I sat down. The cushion was obscenely comfortable.

"I need things."

"Of course you do." He reached into a small bag beside him and produced two items. A credit card, black with an Arabic script embossed in gold, and a phone. Sleek, thin, clearly custom-built for the island.

"The card works everywhere on the island. Restaurants, services, whatever you need. The phone works on our internal network only. No outside calls." I took both. The phone had one contact saved. Kareem.

"Who pays for whatever I charge?"

"The Golden Sands." He waved dismissively.

"Within reason, Habibi. You are not buying a yacht."

"Can I buy clothes?"

"Of course. There are no shops yet, but once they build them, you can all have the tailored Armani suits you need."

"That's too late. I'll be watched by an army of people tomorrow. Can you order some?"

"From the mainland, yeah. That's fast…ish."

"I need two suits, and two pairs of shoes." I added the size details. I'd been buying the same things for years.

"And add a casual outfit or two. Whatever looks decent." Kareem typed it into his phone with a speed that said he'd done this before.

"Shoe brand preference?"

"Expensive. I'll be watched by an army of important people, so I've got to look the part." He snorted, but kept typing.

"I can see why you've got so much debt. I'll have it by morning."

"Get the stuff. And thanks." I headed to my place. A quarter hour of walking later, I barely recognized my new abode. The door looked different, and the outside AC exhaust glimmered in the moonlight. I opened the door. The smell was gone, replaced with red-smoking incense. All the insides were clean, arranged, and often freshly painted. Astarielle sure earned her mana cost. From the bathroom, I heard splashing. Of course. I walked to the bathroom and pushed the door open.

Astarielle lounged in the bathtub, surrounded by candles that she'd definitely stolen from somewhere. Bath foam covered the water, and she'd arranged her hair up in a complicated knot held together by what looked like a chopstick from the cafeteria. Her red skin glistened in the candlelight, horns poking up through the steam. She looked up, smiling the kind of smile that always got me going.

"Welcome home." She shifted in the tub, foam rearranging in ways that weren't accidental.

"The water's perfect. There's room."

"The place looks great. Thanks."

"It took a lot of effort, Damian. A lot of effort. The toilet alone was awful. I deserve a reward." She extended a wet hand toward me, fingers curling in a beckoning gesture.

"Come celebrate with me."

"Not the time, sorry." I pulled on my mana and pushed a couple hundred thousand into her. Performance bonus. For demons, mana was life. The entire summoning deal was that I get to summon them, and through the process, they get mana to sustain themselves.

"I really need some rest for tomorrow." She smiled a bit.

"While the mana is appreciated, I was hoping for more hands-on rewards. You can sleep when you're dead."

"Astarielle." She sighed, sinking into the water.

"Yes, yes, the tower is important, I get it. What do you need?"

"Cast a sleep spell on me. Four hours exactly. I need to wake up on time." She raised an eyebrow.

"And then?" Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

"Clean my suit. It's covered in sweat marks. Clean the shoes too, if you can. Then unsummon yourself and get some rest."

"More chores." She flicked a bit of water.

"You really need to pull a proper servant."

"I've been trying to."

"I know." I headed for the bed, undressing as I walked.

"Four hours. Don't accidentally make it fourteen."

"I would never." She chuckled, stepping out of the tub. I heard her wringing out her hair as I stripped all my clothes and slipped into the beautifully arranged bed. She pounced on the bed next to me, placing her hand on my chest.

"Are you sure you can't get some energy drinks to keep you up tomorrow?"

"It's really important tomorrow." As her eyes lit up, I focused. The spell hit just as I ejected my consciousness from my body. The spell wasn't to make me fall asleep. It was to ensure I wouldn't wake up prematurely. My consciousness sank inward, the world blurring and collapsing until I arrived at my soul chamber. It looked like the house I grew up in with my mum and bro. It just had blur in the windows, and a few extra doors in the walls.

I crossed the living room, reaching the door that had my succubus contracts. One door had a big red NOPE! Written on it. I opened the other door. Inside the circular chamber stood an obsidian statue of her, capturing her in a very provocative pose, bent over, back arched, hands holding her knees. The sculptor, myself, when I was fourteen, found it funny. My current self was happy no one would ever see this, because I couldn't exactly remake it. Not without a convenient pile of obsidian delivered to my door.

A runic inscription ran in circles around the flower, as if written in blood. Most of it was the binding arrangement, which we once arranged. Its center, a sheet of paper with the contract I wrote on it at school, lay in front of the statue's base. Astarielle was my age, so back then, we were two teenagers who accidentally found each other. She wanted to get out of Hell, and I needed a demon to summon. The rest of the runes were engravings. So far, I could manage four addons for her.

I wove into her summoning decreased summoning mana cost, decreased maintenance cost, faster summoning, and faster unsummoning. I knelt by the outer ring. This was the university setup, where I needed to summon and unsummon her instantly to never get caught, and I kept her summoned for entire days. And not just to do all the home assignments and projects for me. To climb the tower, I needed other stats on her. Upon my concentrated thought, the patterns rewrote themselves. Spell power. Casting speed. Reaction speed.

Increased mana capacity. I had no idea what awaited in the tower. But if I had to fight, I would do so by summoning Astarielle. The words reformed, and I looked over the text. It had almost expanded enough to weave a fifth engraving in. After tomorrow, I had to figure out if I couldn't get extra engravings faster. I walked out of her binding room, gave the door with nope one more glance. Not today. If things went poorly in the tower, I was going to have to revisit it. But not today.

Instead, I headed to the basement. The summoning circles awaited me there. One written with crimson light into the basement's floor, matched by the second one, which was made of burning candles in the shape of a pentagram. I walked to the center of the one made of candles, the discovery circle, and placed my palm at the central symbol. Since I used no mana today, I had enough to spare. A sleep regenerated about seventy-five million mana for me. An attempt to discover a new demon to summon cost fifty mil.

I did nothing but mana training in my early life until I got to this point. I focused, pushed the mana into the symbol underneath me, and reached through. My mind grabbed onto the layers beyond, all the way to hell. It found a random demon and showed its image to me. About a foot-long tentacle worm with one eye in the front and a growing spike on its tail. I sighed. How many of these fuckers were there in Hell? I did these summons every day since I was eight years old.

From all those attempts, I had precisely one good hit. The rest were tentacle worms. With a sigh, I saved his identification pattern and tossed it into my storage in the cellar. The energy faded, the mana gone. I returned to reality, instantly falling asleep thanks to the spell. Four hours later, I woke up to the second. No grogginess, no lingering haze, but an absolute nightmare of a boner, my entire body heated up. Sleep spells were clinical in timing.

They shut one down and booted him back up with no side effects, unlike regular sleep. But I underspecified Astarielle's instructions, so after she finished the chores, she slipped into the bed, spent the whole night crawling all over me, and unsummoned herself three seconds before I woke up. She scraped about three million mana off me. Ten times more than her full summoning cost. Not great. I could still feel her phantom touch all over me, her scent and heat filling the bed.

The room was dark, early morning light barely creeping through the taped window. On the chair by the bed, my suit hung on a makeshift hanger, perfectly clean and pressed. She'd somehow gotten the sweat marks out of the jacket and restored the crease in the trousers. The loafers sat underneath, polished to a mirror finish. I went to take a shower. Afterward, I dressed up and stopped in front of the mirror. I pulled on my power. Astarielle! In a burst of crimson flame, Astarielle appeared.

She wore a bright yellow hazmat suit. Rubber gloves up to the elbows, the head cover comically stretched due to her horns. I snorted.

"Now you're overdoing it. The work on the suit is great, thanks. Help me arrange it a bit. Today, I must look perfect." She removed the suit's gloves, stepped to my side, and got to work. She straightened my collar, arranged my jacket, and handled my hair. With a smirk, she centered my belt buckle.

"You seem nervous. That's unusual." I shook my head.

"The next time I summon you, wear clothes for combat. We might be watched by a whole army of very important people, so we need to look the part. And we're likely going to fight." She smirked.

"We will have something to celebrate tonight, then." With a flick of my wrist, I unsummoned her. I headed out. The quarters were in full buzz. People moved everywhere, and since I was early, I took a walk to the main dome by the tower. By my rough estimate, I was going to arrive before Kareem started looking for me. The dome by the tower was unrecognizable from last night. People swarmed everywhere, both in carts and on foot. In my suit, I looked like an administrative worker, so I fit right in.

Until I found the arrow with the text Climbers. I walked there, straight into a room where everyone wore some sort of armor. Yeah, I was at the right spot. Almost everyone's eyes flashed. They all scanned me using the system I didn't have access to yet. I stood by a wall, awkwardly. The man next to me, an absolute unit of a guy in combat armor, his biceps thicker than my thigh, glanced at me.

"Sir, you seem to be in the wrong place."

"I'm a climber." Just in case, I pushed out my shields. Invisible, barely an inch above my clothes, they completely covered me. His eyes flashed. He probably re-scanned my level. With a scoff, he let me be. I waited for a while. More climbers gathered. Most people were in some sort of combat armor. Some had a lot more medieval combat armor, others futuristic-looking power armor. A few guys had medieval-wizard style robes, and one gal even rocked the traditional witch hat.

Who stuck out the most, though, was one woman. She was blonde, hair messed up, overgrown to the shoulders, face pale, wearing a black pullover with loose pants and sneakers. She measured easily seven feet, and she stood a bit bent, as narrow as a stick. Not a build I've ever seen, and she was the only other person not dressed up for a fight. Well, I was dressed up for a fight, just in my own way. The room filled up. The curtain at the end opened, and a woman from the staff motioned us to go in. We filed out.

People filled the room with the pods. No sign of Cassandra, but about a dozen people moved around the pods. Both medical stations were filled, and an announcer stood by a small table in front of the pods. Tall, dressed in a crisp suit, handsome enough to pass for a Hollywood movie star, he smiled as we entered. The tribunes were already filled with a wild mixture of people. The only thing that connected them was that they looked rich. From all continents, most with tablets or laptops in front of them.

The staff directed us to sit down underneath the tribunes. Other staff brought a large wheel. I could see names on it, though not mine. A smile spread over my face. No way. They brought the wheel to the host's table. A few minutes later, everything started falling into place. The staff cleared the stage, the lights went on, and a few people in the audience even looked up from their screens.

"Good morning, everyone!" the host shouted into the microphone.

"The secret societies may not be all that secret anymore, but we still have our things, don't we?" A laugh passed through the crowd. Even I chuckled.

"Today marks a historic moment," the host continued.

"The first expedition into the Tower of the Dead God. Do we send our best and brightest? No, of course not. That's not our style." Another laugh from the crowd, louder this time.

"But we do have our climbers. What's in the tower? Is there anything in the tower that would justify all the money spent on these artificial islands? Will anyone even return from the first floor? Nobody knows. But we have just the right people to go find out for us. Our climbers." He motioned at us, and the lights focused on us. A murmur ran through the tribunes. A few scattered claps.

"Now, since everyone wants to go first to make history, we have prepared a definitely-not-rigged wheel to select the climbers." He motioned at the wheel.

"Not that I had done anything to it myself, but knowing our community, I'm sure each society has rigged the wheel overnight. Haven't we?" Even I laughed. Yeah, they chose the right man for the job.

"So, let's see who rigged it the best." He stepped to the wheel and spun. The wheel turned, marks on its edge clicking on the arrow at its bottom. The wheel spun, slowed down, and stopped.

"And we have our first climber. Please welcome the first man to enter the tower, from the Golden Sands, at the mighty level zero, hand-picked by Gilgamesh himself, please welcome, The Little Horn, Damian O'Connor!"