Trial Of Monsters And Summons

I open my eyes slowly as I emerge from the land of sleep, it takes a few moments for my mind to catch up, but when I become fully awake I realize what today is. It's the day I've been eagerly awaiting ever since the start of this new era, that's right today is the day I turn 16 and I couldn't be more excited as my dream of becoming a summoner starts today.

I comes to me that my first summon is waiting in my storage watch, and with a speed that would make horses jealous I delve into the storage space and quickly find the core. It's nestled in with the few pairs of clothes I possess. (I don't own much due to me and Mira being relatively poor). With a thought, I summon the core into my hand and take a look at what will become my first companion on my journey of becoming a strong and hopefully wealthy monster summoner.

The crystal fits in the palm of my hand and is a greyish green color with an engraving of a small humanoid creature with a club on one of the faces that I presume to be the front. It doesn't look like much at first, but looks can be deceiving because when I take a closer look I recognize it to be a goblin. Not only is it a humanoid monster, which in itself is coveted amongst summoners for their intelligence and transferrable combat skills, but realize the greyish color of the crystal rather than the regular goblin green means that it is some sort of variant. After having realized this fact I am over the moon with joy, I can't believe my luck that I would start out with a variant humanoid summon. The chances of such a thing happening for a starting summon is about 1 in 500, with variants appearing in the wild around 1 in every 25 monsters. Variants have the potential to be strong, but much like what we know of mutations today can be as detrimental as they are helpful, so having a variant doesn't mean instant strength. (I feel my head starting to hurt at just the thought of the droning and monotone voice of my introductory teacher at the academy).

After calming down a bit I realize that I haven't bonded yet to my soon-to-be summon. Without hesitation, I grab a penknife from my tiny wooden study desk in the corner of my rather spartan room and prick my finger. Holding my dripping finger over the core, I let a few drops of blood splatter over it before s.u.c.k.i.n.g on my still bleeding finger to prevent any blood from spilling on the stone floors, it's nearly impossible to scrub out blood from the floors, it manages to sneak into all sorts of pockets and crevices and is eye-catchingly obvious for anyone looking at the floor. To avoid having to deal with the hassle of hand scrubbing the floor, which would put a serious damper on my day, I keep my finger in my mouth until I manage to find a tissue to staunch the bleeding with.

The core greedily s.u.c.k.e.d up all of the blood that had landed on it, and when it had finished absorbing the blood, it began to glow slightly. With that light growing and spreading over to me, I began to feel a mental connection establish itself between myself and the goblin core. All of a sudden I instinctively knew that the summon inside was a tier 2 iron-skinned goblin, the information rushed into my head at the same moment the bond was established. Impatient to see if my newfound knowledge was correct, I summoned out the goblin inside the core by infusing mental energy into it and tossing it on the ground just like I was taught in school and had seen many summoners do before.

As the core made contact with the ground, it instantaneously morphed into a childlike monster with thick-looking greyish skin that also happened to be holding a mottled and brown wooden club. Its face was rather ugly with a large hooked nose, sharp and spaced out teeth, cauliflower-like ears, and beady black eyes reminiscent of a predator. It's only clothing was a tattered burlap piece of cloth tied around its waist, which did little to hide its' disproportionately large genitals that were very obviously male.

Despite the unappealing appearance of the summon, I felt a distinct fondness for him, and any inhibitions that I may have had about him crumbled when he gave a crooked smile and quickly hurried up to me and gave my legs a deceivingly strong hug. I pat him on the head a few times consolingly as if he were a dog, and realize that he needs a name since calling him goblin just seems callous and lazy.

Thinking hard about what name would suit him, I eventually decided on the name Jareth, which was the name of a goblin king in one of my favorite movies. I inform the newly dubbed Jareth of his new name which is met by ecstatic jumping and running around with him saying his own name repeatedly as if to ingrain it in his mind, which could very well be true because despite him having some obvious intelligence it was more on the level of a human child. This wasn't meant to be derogatory, but considering he is just a few minutes old it is perfectly natural for him to be childlike, not to mention that since he was a lower-tier summon it was perfectly natural for things like intelligence to be low. It was only the really strong or special summons that were able to talk or think for themselves rather than only taking orders or simply acting on instinct like monsters.

After a few minutes of playing with Jareth and further bonding with him, I feel the drain to my energy and decide that I should wrap it up before I run out of the strength to keep him summoned. I bring Jareth over and inform him, "It's time to go back to the crystal Jareth, but I'll bring you out soon and I'll have a core ready for you to eat".

He seemed disappointed but eventually came to accept my decision after the promise of food. Smiling at the curious creature, I withdraw my energy from the bond and once more he is transformed back into a crystal. He is instantly transported into my storage through some type of mystic mechanism that is too foreign and unfamiliar for me to even attempt to explain. It is commonly thought that this function was created by the deity that brought about the summoning era and saved humanity from being wiped out and that it was made so that no summons would get lost never to be found again, which is a depressing thing to even think about. The thought of Jareth resting in some bush in his crystal form waiting an eternity for me brings a distinct feeling of sorrow to my c.h.e.s.t, this surprises me as it seems that I already consider the little bugger family alongside my only sister Mira.

Finished with my musing, I realize that I have no food to feed Jareth and so I head off to the core exchange center to purchase some cores to feed him as I had promised. Most summoners only give their summons cores when they are trying to make them evolve, but I figure it's only fair that I feed him since I had already made him a promise. I walk out of our small adobe-style apartment and begin heading to the center of the city, it's a long walk to get there and most people use summons as their transport to get to the center of the city if they have one that can be used as such. It makes much more sense that someone would have a summon like a dog or a horse to ride into town rather than something ridiculous like a spiny urchin.

To house the enormous population in one large city, the only direction to build is up, and so the city is crammed with giant skyscr.a.p.ers that act as large-scale apartments. The further from the center of the city the cheaper the rent is, but along with that is less space and lower class building materials as can be seen from my adobe-style apartment building which is the most basic and cheapest apartment available, and as such is on the outermost edge of the city.

After an hour of intermittent jogging and running, I finally make it to the core exchange right next to the monster gate and head inside after catching my breath from the continuous movement. The core exchange is a futuristic building with all sorts of screens within the building, spaced out are counters where one can deposit cores or buy them. The only reason the tech in this building is allowed is that it was created by God himself or whoever the creator of this new era is because they likely figured it would make things far more efficient to use something that most are familiar with to process transactions.

I line up to a kiosk and begin searching through the cores, there are 5 tiers to choose from with each tier costing more than the last. I select tier 1 cores and find some low-class goblin cores to buy, I select 6 for purchase and then move on to the tier 2 section where I find an advanced stage normal goblin core which can help evolve Jareth, after selecting it I find and purchase two other cores. The cores I find are a stone crab core as well as an iron-winged hawk core, both of which are perfect for guiding Jareth's evolution towards a defensive type.

Seeing that I still have to register at the Monster Summoner Association I head next door to the Association building. It is a large building made of large wood trunks stacked together like a giant Lincoln logs house. The décor is on the fantasy side, while the receptionists and their desks look like something seen in a fortune 500 company. There are people of all types milling about, with many summoners wearing some sort of armor, while in contrast, the guild workers all wear smart looking suits to distinguish themselves as guild workers.

I approach one of the open desks and gain the attention of the attendant there. The attendant is a tall man in a business suit with a serious face and short dark hair. He asks in a formal tone, "What can I help you with today?". I tell him that I have come to register at the Association as a monster summoner and bring out Jareth to show him.

With Jareth's appearance, the attendant shows a look of surprise at my apparent luck of getting a variant monster to begin with, but quickly adopts a practiced blank face and hands me a form to fill out. I go through the form fairly fast and fill all of the pertinent parts like name, address, birthdate, relatives, along with summon name and type. About two minutes later I finish filling out the form and hand it back to the attendant whose name I now know as Max because that's what was placed on the form I filled out.

He looks it over briefly, sees everything is filled out properly and motions for me to hold out my wrist, I do as he indicates and raise my left arm that has my storage watch attached to it. He takes my arm and brings it towards a scanner and after running my watch under it, he informs me that I have been registered as a summoner and could now sell monster corpses at the association which would be bought for a fixed price.

Seeing as the registering process has been completed I ask Max for a map of the continent and ask him where he recommends beginning summoners to start out at. He brings out a simple map from underneath his desk, it outlines the continents, the continental cities, and the locations of various environments. He also is kind enough to inform me that north from the monster gate is a forest with lower-tier monsters and that the further one goes into the forest, the stronger the monsters, so I should stay at the edge of the forest until I'm stronger. Thanking him for the advice I leave the association and head next door to go through the monster gate for the first time.

There is a quickly moving line full of summoners waiting to register at the entrance of the gate and get into the monster plane. I quickly move to the line and not 2 minutes later it is my turn to scan through, and just like at the guild I place my watch under the scanner and it quickly registers me and I am waved through by the guard in front of my gate.

I step through the gate and am left in a grassy field with other summoners milling about in various states of dress, with some in full plate armor of some sort and others in a simple shirt and pair of pants with no apparent armor on them. After looking around briefly I check the map once more and use my watch to find North and begin to head in that direction.

As I'm walking I decide to bring Jareth out and quickly toss his core in front of me, he emerges and gets into step with me as if understanding my intentions and with that, we quickly enter a copse of trees which I assume to be the beginner forest.

We walk around the forest looking for monsters to fight while staying to the outer edges, and eventually after about 5 minutes of walking we come across a tier 1 wolf. It has grey shaggy fur and begins to snarl at us as it senses our presence.

I am shocked at how well the fight went, and come to realize how much of a boon it is to be able to coordinate with Jareth while he fights. I quickly store the corpse in my storage and we continue searching around for monsters to fight. By the end of the day, we managed to defeat 10 more Tier 1 monsters before running out of space in my watch to store the valuable monster corpses.

As a reward for his efforts, I take out one of the tier 1 goblin cores as well as a stone crab core to help influence the growth of his evolution towards defense. Jareth managed to come out of all his battles today with only a few faint scratches on his arms and c.h.e.s.t due to his thick defensive skin that was effective against the weak tier 1 monsters that we fought today.

Before returning to the city I remember to remove the cores from each of the monsters while still preserving the corpse, just like I was taught in summoner school. While I am partially dismantling the monsters I go ahead and remove the hide from the first wolf that we killed to make a jacket out of its hide in commemoration of our first kill.

I unsummon Jareth before my energy completely runs out and begin walking towards the gate to enter the city. I immediately head towards the core exchange building next to the gate. Once I enter the building I head towards one of the empty booths closest to the door.

When I am in front of the screen it comes on and informs me that to deposit cores I need to just place them on the counter. It also says that all cores will be bought at a fixed price of credits with tier 1 cores selling for a credit each, so any valuable cores should be sold elsewhere. With that in mind, I decide to deposit 10 of the 11 cores that I managed to get today as none of them were especially valuable, keeping only the wolf core as a memento of my first hunt as a summoner.

As soon as I placed the cores on the counter they disappeared in a flash of light particles as if dissolving into thin air, and once all 10 cores were sold I placed my watch under the scanner which added 10 credits to my credit account on my watch. With the cores deposited I decide to head over to the Summoner Association building to exchange the corpses of the monsters.

I head over to the counter that Max is working at and hand in 10 of the 11 monster corpses, due to their relatively preserved quality I receive 3 credits for each corpse. In addition to those, I also turn in the wolf corpse minus the hide and receive 2 credits for that one.

With a total of 42 credits earned today, I leave the building in high spirits and head towards the commercial district to talk to a leatherworker to turn the wolf hide into a jacket for some basic defense and as a commemoration of my first-day hunting.

After finding a relatively decent quality store in the middle of the district I go in and talk to the leatherworker who is manning the desk. After informing him of my request I provide the hide and pay 3 credits for a jacket to be made out of the pelt. I leave after being informed that it will be ready for pick up in 2 days.

With 36 credits left in my account, I decide to pay the 25 credits to expand my storage space by a cubic meter in order to store even more monster bodies and then set aside the remaining 11 credits for rent and food at least until I earn more.

With my belly full and my legs tired I decide to head home to show Mira my new summon before falling asleep to recover fully from the grueling day only to hunt once again tomorrow.

Finding my way back on the dark streets, I eventually make it to our apartment door and enter while calling for Mira. I hear her soft voice from the living room and head there after leaving my shoes at the door so as to not track mud and dirt in.

I see Mira with her long silky brown hair tied up in a lazy ponytail on our only couch watching tv after an apparently long day at work and drop down to hug her before recounting my eventful day. I catch her attention away from the tv before pulling out Jareth's core and tossing it to the ground only for him to pop up with his club in hand but no apparent intention to use it.

She looks him over before realizing that he is different from normal goblins due to his grey skin, she looks questioningly at me and I tell her about Jareth being an iron-skinned goblin variant at the behest of her curious gaze. She instantly breaks out into a smile and begins vigorously congratulating me after hearing how I managed to get a variant monster as my first summon.

I motion for her to calm down before telling her about the rest of my day in the beginner forest and my many fights. At the end of my story, she seems rather shocked but happy for me and congratulates me on finally becoming an a.d.u.l.t.

Realizing that it's my birthday, she begins to frantically search through her watch before bringing out a small box with a small red ribbon wrapped around it. She quickly hands it to me and motions for me to unwrap it, needing no further prompting I tear into my gift to find a silver-colored necklace and on the chain is a pendant shaped in the outline of a snake in reference to Mira's snake summon Lyra with my Initials TV for Thomas Vaughn on the back.

I quickly crush her in a hug thanking her for the gift before realizing how wiped I am from the day I've had and quickly excuse myself so I can shower and promptly fall asleep. I unsummon Jareth as I head towards the bathroom, and once my shower is done I lay my head on my pillow and before I know it I succ.u.mb to the land of dreams.