Unruly Summon Chapter 5: Temptations (Patreon)

I managed to get through the rest of the training session without crippling myself again, even if I did devote far too much of my thought process to very carefully not picturing mana doing anything whatsoever. It helped that Christine refrained from any further superhuman exploits I might have been tempted to copy.

Despite her warning, the mana potion hadn't tasted that bad. It had the texture and taste of one of the worse sorts of smoothies; the type you get by blending together too many green things like cucumber and lettuce. It was even coloured green, instead of the blue of a stereotypical mana potion.

"You were so cool, Master!" exclaimed Mary as we walked back into the castle.

"That display was certainly impressive," agreed Christine. "You already exceed my baseline strength, and equal me in dexterity and speed."

"I didn't land a single blow on you!"

"I have many seasons of experience. I'm more than capable of substituting my lacking strength with skill. But even so, you're picking up skill just as quickly, too. At your rate of improvement, a few more sessions and it's likely I'll no longer be your match without resorting to body strengthening, or other techniques."

"Other techniques?"

"I'll teach you when you're ready. If I give examples now, there's a dangerous possibility you'll decide to test them out in bed, or something equally stupid."

"Sorry..." I mumbled.

"Master isn't stupid!" pouted Mary, acting cute.

"Umm... Mary, please can you call me by name? Not 'master'. I have no intention of being anyone's master."

"Of course, if that's what you want," she nodded. "Hmm... Mr Smith? Thomas? Tom?"

"Not Mr Smith. It makes me sound too old. Possibly some sort of middle-aged secret agent."

"Tom then!"

I shook my head in exasperation. The girl seemed far too happy and energetic given her situation, in my opinion, but it wasn't as if I had a full understanding of her life. I certainly wasn't about to convince her she had no right being happy, and should be all gloomy and depressed instead.

We entered a spartan changing room—little more than a few benches and some shelving—where Mary helped me get the armour off, just like she'd helped me get it on. As embarrassing as it was having a girl my own age help me get dressed, the equipment wasn't as easy to pull on or off as a t-shirt. Still, I was carefully noting which straps went where, and was fairly sure I'd be able to manage it myself tomorrow.

More embarrassing was Christine, who was standing around watching.

"Do you have to stare at me in my underwear?" I complained.

"I'm your bodyguard. I would be a poor bodyguard if I left your side."

"Doesn't mean you need to stare."

Christine obligingly turned her back.

"Most boys your age would be happy to be in a closed room with multiple girls and not enough clothing," came another voice, Princess Stephanie sweeping into the room without so much as knocking first and treating me to the sort of stare that on Earth would be likely to trigger police involvement.

I quickly pulled on my jeans, much to her apparent disappointment.

"So, how did the training go?" she asked, as if she hadn't just... whatever it was she just did.

"His abilities exceed expectations, but he's lacking common sense," tersely replied Christine.

"Lacking common sense?" asked Stephanie.

"Nothing to be concerned about. He is simply too eager in some respects."

"I see..." said Stephanie, who obviously didn't. "In that case, I came down to invite you to dinner. My father would like to meet you."

"Your father?" I asked, my brain quickly running through the logic. It didn't take long; there weren't exactly many steps. "The king?"

"The one and only. Really, given your importance, he should have been at the summoning, but he was stuck in a war council. No doubt he wants to apologise."

The thought of eating a meal with a king caused an eruption of nerves, but thinking it through logically, I wasn't completely sure why. I was already dealing with royalty. It helped that Stephanie had been there from the beginning, and was acting friendly. The king was still just a nebulous idea, someone whose existence I was aware of but knew neither name nor face.

Wait, a princess had been ogling me. Should I be flattered? Surely being a princess gave her the pick of pretty noble boys or knights? She probably wouldn't be hanging around them in their underwear, admittedly, but even so, I didn't think there was much about me to ogle.

"We need to get you washed if you're going to visit the king!" exclaimed Mary, distracting me from my thoughts. "Is his room prepared?"

"It is," confirmed Stephanie. "The baths aren't available right now, because we removed the fire crystals to repurpose into weapons, but I've already asked for hot water to be brought up. We should have prepared clothes, too, but..." started Stephanie, finishing her sentence by peering down at her own grubby dress. "We'll have some changes of clothes ready by tomorrow, even if they won't reach the standard we'd like to offer. Again, I can only apologise for the conditions here, but if they were better..."

"Then you wouldn't have needed a hero," I finished for her. It wasn't as if I was about to complain. I was a university student, for goodness' sake! Fresh clothes every day? What sort of alien concept was that? Heck, I had my own maid! She obviously wasn't the only one around, either, if someone else was bringing water up. The topic of my meals hadn't come up thus far, yet I already found it rather unlikely that anyone was going to ask me to cook or wash up any dishes. The bathing situation sounded rather unfortunate, and I was going to miss my shower, but aside from that, this was an increase in living standards.

And so I wandered the corridors of the castle once more, accompanied by my bodyguard and maid. This time, I was led to a better furnished room. The furry hide of some sort of long-dead animal covered up a part of the floor, placed in front of a single bed. A candelabra was placed on a night-stand, but instead of candles, a small orb of light floated above each arm, looking like a weaker version of Lux. There was a desk against one wall with a simple wooden chair in front of it, and a wardrobe against another. Instead of windows, the room had arrowslits, which made a sort of sense since this was obviously a castle. It was stranger that the room I was summoned into had a full window.

It did, however, mean that the room had only the one exit. An exit that Christine positioned herself in front of. Again, perfectly normal behaviour for a bodyguard, but it did nothing to help my nerves. It wasn't as if I'd have been able to escape from the window of the tower room—being able to fit through didn't help when there was a five story drop on the other side—but the feeling of being blocked in was uncomfortable.

One corner of the room was blocked off by a privacy screen, a gentle mist of steam rising up from behind it. Apparently, the hot water had already arrived, although when I poked my head around, all that was there was a large bucket with a cloth draped over the side.

"Okay, get your clothes back off, and I'll wipe you down," happily offered Mary.

"Uhh... No offence, but I'll do it myself..."

"Are you sure? Don't you at least want me to do your back?"

"I'm okay. Honestly..."

Yeah, I wasn't going to stand around naked while some poor slave girl washed any part of me. Just because I was considering mass murder against a race I'd never even met was no excuse to let my morals slip in other areas, no matter how tempting it was. I mean, I was nineteen and male! Whatever my mind insisted, my body had its own independent opinions. Thankfully, my mind also reminded me that Eve was waiting for me back home, and I had no intention of betraying her trust.

... Wait.

"Are you doing this on purpose?" I asked, squinting at Mary.

"Doing what?" she asked, cocking her head in confusion. She radiated nothing but pure, innocent incomprehension.

"Apparently not. Sorry."

If they were to be believed, the fate of their kingdom depended on them finding a hero to fight for them. It didn't have to be me, but now that I'd agreed, they'd begun to invest resources into me. How far would they go to ensure those resources weren't wasted? Surrounding me with girls all close to my age? Girls who kept expressing interest in odd little ways? Were they trying to get me attached to them? Although they were all there before I arrived, so if it was deliberate, it would imply they knew my gender and approximate age beforehand...

As I wiped away the sweat of my training, hiding from both bodyguard and maid behind the privacy screen, I couldn't help but feel that I was dancing in the palm of someone's hand. I wasn't even sure whose.

Thanks to that training session, I was also starting to feel it didn't matter. Christine was supposedly on the stronger side for a human, and she thought that within a few days she'd need to use body strengthening to beat me. What she didn't factor in was that within a few days, I'd bet I could learn to use body strengthening myself. And if that was after a few days, what could I do after a week?

At that point, if I decided to leave this city, could anyone stop me?

It was with that rather violent thought in mind that I redressed myself in my jeans and t-shirt and set off to meet a king.

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"Something's wrong," commented Fang Zorzomon, observing the walls of Fort Mertti via the image produced by a Prospectus spell.

"How so?" asked Claw Thazremath, watching the same image. "I've seen no signs of them sneaking food or water past the siege. They've not made any successful strikes against our forces. Each of our attacks wears them down, at minimal losses to our own side. The defenders have no hope."

"Perhaps despair is all that it is, but one should never trust to optimism in war."

"Perhaps I'd be able to offer some better insight if you cut out the philosophy and spelled out what you've noticed."

"True. You said that they've not made any successful strikes, and that's true, but for two days now they have made no strikes. They've changed strategy. They aren't even trying to break the siege."

"Maybe they've realised they can't break the siege, and are buying as much time as they can in the hopes of a miracle? It's true that we've fallen a full day behind our projected schedule, but I really don't see what holding out for an extra day or two would buy them."

"A miracle, huh?" pondered Zorzomon, frowning. "We never did manage to block their communications, even if we've prevented them teleporting in supplies. Tell me, have our spies reported any interesting movements in the human capital?"

"Nothing that was judged to be of great importance. The most juicy gossip was that the king ordered a quantity of furnishings to be ripped out of the castle and traded to the dwarves for weapons, but the amounts involved weren't great enough to be considered strategically important, so the report wouldn't have made it as high up as you. It almost seemed a publicity stunt, to show the people that the king was prepared to put himself through hardship too, except that news of the deal was actively suppressed among the general population. The current theory is that it was a display put on to cajole uncooperative nobles. Why? What sort of movements were you hoping for?"

"I was wondering if the foolish human king had completely taken leave of his senses and summoned a hero, and had ordered the army to buy as much time as possible to train them."

"You think the humans summoned a hero?" asked Thazremath, not looking at all disturbed about the prospect. "Oh, I really, really hope so. That would make everything so much easier. We should have our agents in the capital begin a search immediately."