Testing

Ten days had passed since he first learned how to summon.

It was now past noon, around the time he woke from his nap. As he gazed at the Grimoire's cover, he thought about what to do next. Allen's status was displayed on it.

Thanks to spending the past ten days summoning whenever Telesia wasn't looking, he had learned quite a bit about the Grimoire and summoning.

First, the Grimoire.

・Thinking “Grimoire” makes the Grimoire appear.

・Thinking “Status” displays his status in silver letters on the Grimoire's pitch-black cover.

・Thinking “Create” displays in silver letters on the cover what he can create.

That was about it for the Grimoire's functions. Since then, he hadn't received any further messages from the god of the other world.

Next, the cards he had created.

・He can store up to ten summoned creatures as cards.

・He can summon up to ten creatures at once.

・He receives Blessings for each creature he keeps as a card.

・He can summon a card and turn it back into a card freely, as many times as he likes.

It seemed the Grimoire had a storage limit: he could have only ten cards in total, whether they were summoned or stored in card form. If he tried to create an eleventh, a message appeared on the cover telling him to delete an existing card first. The same applied even when his summons were out.

He had also tested Beast H during those ten days.

【Type】 Beast

【Rank】 H

【Name】 Chorosuke

【Stamina】 5

【Magic】 0

【Attack】 5

【Durability】 2

【Agility】 3

【Intelligence】 1

【Luck】 2

【Blessing】 Stamina 1, Attack 1

【Special Skill】 Running Around

Results of testing Beast H

・Beast H took the form of a mouse (a fairly large one).

・Like the grasshopper, it hardly listened to him at all.

・It would use its Special Skill if he said the command out loud or thought it.

As the [Name] field on its status said “Chorosuke,” he could give his summoned creatures names. He could create and summon it by its nickname instead of calling it Beast H. Having abbreviated names would certainly make testing and analysis easier, but still, he wanted to give them names.

He didn't need to say anything out loud, either. Just thinking was enough.

The Insect H grasshopper was named “Denka.”

So far, they didn't listen to him at all, perhaps because they lacked intelligence. He'd thought training might help, but there was no sign of improvement.

Although they lacked the intelligence to follow any instructions, there was one thing he could command them to do.

It seemed summoned creatures were assigned a Special Skill. With Beast H, saying “Run Around” or “Special Skill,” or simply thinking it, made it perform that action. It didn't seem to use any Magic, so it would do it as many times as he wanted.

Even now, he was staring intently at the Beast H mouse, desperately trying to make it obey him with what felt like telekinesis.

Allen held his breath and continued his tests without making a sound. Incidentally, Telesia had turned the grasshopper into light about three times over the past ten days. Their house was little more than a shack. It had almost no insulation or soundproofing, and there were plenty of gaps for bugs to crawl through. The summoned grasshoppers seemed to be a little bigger than ordinary ones, which apparently made them creepy.

Those ten days had been spent enduring sleepiness and hunger while desperately keeping an eye out for Telesia.

(Chorosuke, I know you can do it. Come here.)

From a distant corner of the room, Allen spread both arms and beckoned it over. Perhaps it heard him, because for a moment, Beast H met his eyes.

“Oh!”

The word slipped out before he knew it.

He was delighted, thinking he had finally succeeded in taming a summoned creature. But Beast H promptly looked away and scurried about at random.

(N-no, this is no good. And they call this a Job that surpasses the Demon Lord?)

That said, summoned creatures did have their uses.

(Summoned creatures aren't useful in battle, but having ten mice stored as cards in the Grimoire raises my Attack by ten. I was shocked to find I could even lift the wooden beams around the house at one year old.)

Thanks to awakening to his power as a Summoner, he had become stronger than an ordinary one-year-old.

By repeatedly creating and summoning creatures, he had also begun to understand how to develop himself as a Summoner.

(Still, as you'd expect of Hell Mode, leveling up is tough.)

In Hell Mode, leveling up took a hundred times longer than in Normal Mode. They said you could discover a single truth if you mastered it, but developing your character demanded extraordinary, unrelenting effort.

【Name】 Allen

【Age】 1

【Job】 Summoner

【Level】 1

【Stamina】 4 (40) +8

【Magic】 0 (20)

【Attack】 1 (10) +8

【Durability】 1 (10) +2

【Agility】 2 (25) +2

【Intelligence】 3 (30)

【Luck】 2 (25)

【Skills】 Summon〈1〉, Create〈1〉, Delete

【Experience】 0/1,000

・Skill Level

【Summon】 1

【Create】 1

・Skill Experience

【Create】 24/1,000

・Summons Available to Create

【Insect】 H

【Beast】 H

・Holder

【Insect】 H 2 cards

【Beast】 H 8 cards

(Only 24 Skill Experience so far, huh? So the amount of Magic consumed gets added as Skill Experience? Well, that's only a hypothesis. I don't have any Skills that cost anything other than 2 Magic.)

These were the results of his tests on Magic and the conditions for gaining Skill Experience.

・Creating an H-rank summon card consumes 2 Magic.

・The Magic consumed is added as Skill Experience.

・Turning a card into a summoned creature doesn't require Magic.

・Turning a summoned creature back into a card doesn't require Magic.

・His Magic fully recovered after he slept for about half a day.

He had learned that to raise his Create level, he just needed to use Create as much as possible.

(Still, since creating a card consumes 2 Magic and my maximum Magic is also 2, if I create only one card a day, it'll take five hundred days to raise Create to level two. It looks like my Magic fills up in about six hours, so I should aim to create two cards a day. Even then, it'll take two hundred and fifty days.)

He was beginning to grasp how endless leveling up in Hell Mode could be.

Since his Magic had fully recovered after about half a day of sleep, he assumed it took around six hours to refill.

He was an infant who needed twelve to fifteen hours of sleep a day, and without a clock, those ten days had made it difficult to wake up at regular intervals—even if he could recover his Magic up to four times a day.

Some days, he had managed to create cards three times, while on others he could only do it once. From now on, he planned to create at least two cards a day.

(I wish the Grimoire had a memo function for recording my observations. It's so thick—let me write notes in it!)

He wanted to record as many of his observations from the past ten days as possible.

Any gamer knew it was only natural to use spreadsheet software to analyze levels and stats. He wasn't asking for anything that fancy, but he at least wanted to record his test results.

Hoping his plea would reach the god of the other world, he kept wishing he could use the blank pages for notes.

As he grumbled about the Grimoire, Rodan's voice came from the earthen-floored entryway.

“Telesia, I'm back!!”

(Oh! He's back. From the sound of it, he got a good haul!)

Joyful excitement came through in Rodan's voice, and Allen's heart leapt at his father's return.