Chương 16: Sir, a second succubus has hit the team

The islands looked nice in the late afternoon light, especially with noticeably fewer people moving around. Everyone was busy trying to settle the chaos I had caused. I entered my building, kicked off my shoes, and sat on the bed. The room still smelled of Astarielle, which probably wouldn't ever resolve itself. I focused, pulling my consciousness inward. The world blurred. I sank into my soul chamber. In the old house, I walked to an outer wall with nothing on it and focused. A door formed in the wall.

I walked through into a new chamber I had created. I summoned Astarielle. She appeared, together with the rubies and the tree.

"Need the steel too." A few resummons later, she brought it all in here. I unsummoned her afterward. With a focused thought, I pulled Ashy's saved summon here. What pose should I make her statue into? I wasn't fourteen anymore, but creating her into a normal position felt boring. Well, she had a fun pose in the summon, so I went with that. Using the image as a template, I willed the steel into the shape of the base, and the wood into the arched pose with one leg and both arms raised.

It looked kind of cute when I finished it. Finally, I opened the box and moved thirteen rubies on her, using them as decorations for the statue. With all set, I sat cross-legged in front of the statue and pulled on her. In a burst of pink light, she appeared. She stood normally, but looked the same. Razor thin, with curved ram-like horns, long black hair, dark red skin, wearing a cropped top, tiny skirt, and impractical heels, all bright pink. She also had a tail that I didn't see originally, for some reason.

"Ashy, I suppose," I said. She looked around, at the statue, at me, and a huge smile ate half her face.

"Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, I'm getting summoned! That's so awesome! Squee!" Oh, she was loud. With a high-pitched, piercing voice, too. The character sheet had nothing about that. I motioned in front of me.

"Take a seat. We need to talk about your contract."

"Sure!" She hopped to me, caught my shoulder, and started sliding into my lap.

"On the floor," I specified.

"Right! Sorry. I got overly excited. I can't believe I'm getting summoned. It's literally the best day ever!" She let go of me and sat down, squirming a bit to hit a mightily impractical, but very enticing pose.

"I need to see what you can do in combat."

"Right! Sure!" She sprang to her feet, jumped, and arched her body, turning into steel. Within a moment, she transformed into a steel frame of herself, a handle stretching out from her throat, arms and head angled to function as a cross guard, her legs slowly turning into a massive blade with her tail as its spine that stretched well beyond where her feet would have been. In the form of an eight-foot-long, single-bladed greatsword, she floated in front of me.

"I can fly!" She flew around the statue in a circle.

"I can slash!" she cut through the air, pretty fast in spite of the size.

"And I can stab!" She stabbed the air, and then returned to be floating in front of me. Not the precision weapon I had imagined. When I saw her, I expected her to turn into a flying saber or two daggers or something of a normal size. This was what, half a ton of floating steel? Well, not a precision weapon, but definitely useful. I nodded.

"Turn back and sit down." All the steel withdrew into her, returning to her normal shape. She landed and sat down. I summoned the contract between us. A seventy-page document materialized on the floor.

"This is my standard contract for my summons. I'll need you to sign it before I can summon you." Well, to be precise, my contract with Elsha was written on a napkin. The one with Astarielle was a sheet of paper I tore out of my notebook at school. But I did study law in the meantime, so this was the new standard. This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version. She looked at it, her smile slightly fading. She flipped open the first page.

"Do I have to, like, read all this? What if I don't want to?"

"If we don't agree on a contract, then I'm banishing you back to Hell, and never summoning you again." I smiled.

"But I need it signed, not read. Just sign with your blood over there." I pointed at the bottom corner of the first page.

"Awesome!" She bit her finger to release a droplet of blood and used it to sign herself. She wrote down Ashy, with a tail going from the y, and added a little heart behind it. I took the contract. This was binding in the purest sense. It physically stopped her from violating any of its three hundred clauses.

In broad terms, it forced her to do everything I told her to, even if implied, never do anything that would go against my interests, and to behave like a law-abiding citizen on Earth unless I told her to do otherwise.

"I'm Damian," I said.

"I know. Astarielle has been super-full of herself about having a summoner who takes her to Earth regularly. None of the actually powerful succubi do, and so they're super-salty about Astie having all the privileges they'd love. And she loves to gloat. Even more than she loves to gossip. She really loves gossip. Pretty much every succubus in Hell has at least heard about you, multiple times over." Oh, did she? I wasn't sure if I even wanted to know what Astarielle gossiped about me. Nah, I didn't.

I activated the contract, binding Ashy to it, both her and the contract to the statue, and all of it to me. The skin on my right forearm burned. The binding seal of the contract, a pink tattoo with a symbol of a sword, a bunch of infernal runes, and decorative hearts and horns, appeared on my skin. It wasn't all that big, only a few inches in each direction.

Astarielle's tattoo was larger, crimson red, taking most of my right biceps, with its symbolism of three eyes, a whole lot of infernal runes, and the obligatory horns and tails. All the energies set into place. Ashy vanished, her power absorbing into the statue. I focused on the rune markings around it. They looked different from Astarielle and Elsha. Less complex, with more space to work with. That probably matched the grade.

Elsha came with two default engravings, the mana cost reductions, and I haven't been able to put any of my own. With Astarielle, she came with zero, and it took me a year before I could put the first engraving on her. Here, I already saw space for two of them. I focused, putting quick summon and quick unsummon into the pattern. I had a feeling I was going to need to emergency-unsummon her often. With everything set, I returned to reality. My consciousness returned to my body, waking up back in bed. All right.

The sun was just setting outside, so I was going to be right on time to go meet Cassandra and pull more on the tower shop. But before I did, I needed to start deepening my bond with Ashy. That was normally done by doing stuff together. But having her summoned also worked, so I needed to just keep her around. First, I summoned Astarielle. She appeared, I told her to bring the worm, and unsummoned her. After a few moments, I summoned her again. She appeared in a flash of crimson flame, holding a cage on a chain.

Inside the cage squirmed the white worm we took from the tower. I took it from her and flung it over my shoulder. Heavy, but not too much.

"I've made the statue for Ashy. I'll summon her now, and I'll need you to teach her how this works."

"Sure." She grinned, baring fangs.

"I've got no problem with breaking her in." I pulled on my power. Ashy. In a flash of pink light, Ashy appeared. She wore the same barely an outfit as she did in the soul chamber.

"Oh, WOW!" she shouted the second she appeared.

"So, this is Earth! This is so awesome! I can smell! I can probably even taste something. Oh, hey, Astie!" She locked onto Astarielle.

"I'm sorry, Astarielle! You're so pretty! We haven't met yet, but I've heard all about you! Are we going to be best friends? I think we're going to be best friends!" Astarielle looked at her. Then at me, her expression screaming what have you done?

"Right, so I'll be off for a while. Get used to each other and don't leave the room." Ashy frowned.

"Where are you going? Isn't this my welcome threesome?"

"No," Astarielle said, hopping on the bed, crossing her arms underneath her head.

"Damian here thinks he's being sneaky. He's got a new human girl that he likes, so he pretends he's busy with work and keeps me imprisoned here in the room. Now, he summoned you to keep me busy and not suspicious." Urg. Straight hit.

"Another girl?" Ashy shouted.

"How could he even look at someone after being with you for like ten years? He should have long been your pleasure slave already." I narrowed my eyes. Her what? Astarielle only smirked at me.

"He's got too much mana for that. This also isn't the first time he's been trying that. We broke up three years ago. Back in university, he even did over a year of complete abstinence to break the addiction to me. I was so heartbroken when, after he did all that, the girl failed her finals and had to move back to Spain. It was tragic." Yeah, well, that did happen. In my freshman year, I realized that I was never going to have any relationship with any non-succubus if I didn't break the addiction to Astarielle.

So, we broke up, or at least I did from her. That wasn't an easy year, to say the least.

"Oh, no, that must have been heartbreaking." Ashy jumped into the bed next to her.

"I can't imagine how you managed. But still, are you just going to let him go hit on someone else?"

"Why wouldn't I? We are broken up, and the end is always the same, anyway. All I need to do is to wait, watch the relationship attempt crumble, and let everything return to how it should be." I rolled my eyes, threw the worm cage over my shoulder, and headed out. The succubi giggled as I closed the door. The evening air carried the sound of the islands winding down. Construction had stopped, but the central hub still hummed. A few climbers passed me, heading for the bars.

Someone was playing music somewhere in the Yamato section. I walked through the hub, past the leaderboard, past the restaurants, past the spot where Kareem's hookah café sat empty. Time to meet Cassandra.