Kays Translations

Chapter 28: Flames and the False God

So… with the arrival of a new day, could I really summon the mage’s familiar once again?

If I rephrased what Musa Mein had explained, did it mean that a mage was limited to only one familiar summon per day?

Could it be… that this “once per day” restriction extended not just to mage familiars, but to all summoned creatures in this world? A fundamental law of the plane itself?

But… something didn’t quite add up. Yesterday, I had summoned twice. The first time, on the beach, when I conjured that flashy Bumblebee sports car. The second time, inside the fractured shard of Musa’s conjured battlefield—the “Great Battle of Coriasa”—where I had successfully brought forth Alice, the heroine from Resident Evil.

And yet, the Bumblebee car on the beach had lasted barely a heartbeat before collapsing into fragments of light, while Alice, summoned within the projected shard of the battlefield, had endured for far longer—lasting until I reached the Valkyrie ship’s fourth cabin of Isumenas. If not for that unfortunate, ill-timed cannon strike, Alice might have remained by my side for an even longer stretch.

Later, when I returned to the real world and was ambushed by the shadowy assassin Xionado, I attempted a third summon in desperation, hoping to call forth another figure to protect me. But instead of a heroic rescue, all I managed to do was faint on the spot.

It was as though in the real world my ability was classified as weaker than even a novice mind sorcerer’s, but within Musa’s illusory plane fragment, I was treated as a Circle-1 mind sorcereric Master—a complete contradiction.

And another detail: whether in reality or inside the plane fragment, it seemed I could only create a single crystal servitor. A second attempt always failed.

Ah, but I wasn’t a mage—I was a mind sorcerer.

Then what, exactly, were the rules of this world for mind sorcerers summoning their crystal servitors?

…Forget it. I could wrestle with these riddles later, perhaps when I had the leisure to study Van Helsing’s mind sorcerer Scrolls. For now, the only thing that mattered was simple: could I summon again, here and now?

Although my mind spun in circles around these questions, outwardly only a fleeting silence passed. To Musa Mein, it looked like I had merely paused in thought for a brief second.

Finally, with a firm decision, I prepared to test the summon again.

But now a new problem emerged: who should I summon?

The paradox of choice… When too many options were available, hesitation itself became a trap. For some poor souls afflicted with true “choice paralysis,” the weight of alternatives could delay them into indecision forever.

Fortunately, I wasn’t so hopeless. Though I hesitated for a moment, within half a minute I had resolved my decision:

Alice.

Yes, again Alice from Resident Evil. But this time, when she materialized beside me in the co-pilot’s seat, she appeared not in her iconic crimson dress and high heels, but clad in rugged military combat fatigues, built for battle.

Two vicious kukri blades crossed in their sheaths across her back. And in her hands, gleaming with a cold silver-white sheen, were two massive-caliber revolvers, ready to roar death at any enemy.

The instant she appeared, the familiar tug of our shared psychic connection surged back into me.

I gripped the wheel of the steam car, pressing the engine to full throttle, and sped toward Chunxi Road. Though this was an otherworldly contraption of brass and gears, its controls weren’t all that different from Earth’s automobiles. After skidding and twisting like a lunatic for the first thirty meters, I managed to get the hang of it.

Even so, I couldn’t bring myself to simply plow through pedestrians. Yes, this was a false world, a conjured projection—but my own moral bottom line still held. At worst, I could justify wrecking another car, demolishing a streetlamp, or shattering a bench if I had no choice. But ramming into people? That was a line I wouldn’t cross.

Luckily, the simulation placed us in the wide avenues of White Sand City’s Oshana District, not the perpetually congested streets of the Empire’s capital.

By weaving recklessly through the roads, I managed to reach the Chunxi Road intersection in one piece, the car battered but still functional.

“We’ll continue on foot!”

Slamming the warped steam car to the curb, I yanked out the ignition key and barked to Musa Mein, who sat in the back seat.

It wasn’t the thrill of reckless driving that pushed me to stop, but something far more pressing: through the glow of raging fire ahead, I had spotted him—the one I had expected all along.

The mysterious elven mind sorcerer.

He walked against the frantic tide of refugees, striding calmly into the heart of Chunxi Road as though strolling through a quiet garden.

Musa Mein raised no objection. He understood his role perfectly: a guide and assistant, nothing more.

So, the three of us pushed against the current of terrified townsfolk, following the lone elf at a cautious distance.

There was no doubt in my mind now—this was the same enigmatic mind sorcerer I had encountered twice before.

And soon, I noticed something even stranger. As the elf advanced, it was as if he carried with him a two-meter aura of repulsion.

Panicked civilians, desperate to escape, veered around him instinctively, just as a river bends around an unyielding rock. Not a single person dared brush against him, nor even seemed aware of their own detour.

No curses, no angry protests—nothing but silence and avoidance.

By contrast, we—following close behind—were jostled and shoved constantly by the stampede. But with Alice’s gleaming revolvers and Musa’s crystalline nail-gun aimed at their faces, few dared linger to argue. Survival instinct won out every time.

Was this too a manifestation of a mind sorcerer’s power?

The thought stirred something in me—an eager curiosity. My hunger to master the mind sorcerer’s path grew sharper with every step.

At last, the fleeing crowds thinned, and I finally laid eyes on the Durel tribesmen in all their horrific glory.

They were not tall, their dark-brown skin glistening with an oily sheen. Their faces bore symmetrical, chitinous ridges like hooked blades carved into their cheeks. Most grotesque of all, their squat bodies were burdened with four unnaturally long, spindly arms, reaching nearly to their knees.

And yet, despite their slenderness, those arms brimmed with monstrous strength.

I watched as one Durel slave, using all four limbs, effortlessly lifted a broken-down steam wagon and hurled it into the flames of a nearby burning house. The two-story building collapsed with a thunderous crash.

But more terrifying still was the figure that led them: a priestess of the false god Balto.

She was a woman of the Durel—hair like brittle, dead grass, face smeared with gaudy paints, torso bare save for the heavy swell of her chest. In her hands she brandished a pale bone staff, perhaps carved from beast… or from human thigh.

And behind her towered a phantasmal colossus: a crimson, eight-armed Durel avatar, its eyes closed in a mockery of slumber.

With every stride she took, the buildings around her roared into greater conflagrations, the flames leaping skyward in cascades of fury.

Worse still, the corpses left smoldering in the streets—those burned alive in the buildings—gave rise to black, shrieking spirits. Twisted, writhing, they streamed toward the phantom like moths to flame, vanishing into its monstrous form.

“Balto,” the elf mind sorcerer spoke at last, his voice calm, unshaken. “Enough. Return to your pit of origin, to the chains of the Furnace Hills. Now.”

And then—

The crimson phantom’s closed eyes snapped open. Two searing beams of fire burst forth, enveloping the elf in incandescent wrath.

From the priestess’s lips came a guttural, hate-filled roar, the voice no longer hers but that of the false god itself:

“I know you! I know you!”

“It’s you—child of Eshilia, Nephthu–Ekramon! This time, you will not foil me again! Never!”

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