Summoner's Shadow 1: A LitRPG Adventure, page 1
Summoner’s Shadow 1
A LitRPG Adventure
DB King
Copyright © 2022 by DB King
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
v003
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Contents
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Contents
Series by DB King
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
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Free progression Fantasy Novel!
About the Author
Series by DB King
Apocalypse Knights
Crafter’s Fate
Dragon Magus
Dungeon of Evolution
Elemental Mastery
Kensei
The Last Magus
Mage’s Path
Shinobi Rising
Summoner’s Shadow
The Last Magus
War Wizard
Chapter 1
Bran wiped sweat off his brow.
Mucking the stables was a far cry from being a spearman in the Kalaran Royal Army, but it was good, honest work.
Good, honest, backbreaking work.
Bran stretched out his back, then leaned against the alley wall at the stable’s entrance. He wasn’t supposed to be working that evening. He’d cleared it with the boss weeks ago. He had plans to meet with some of his squad mates—the ones who had made it back—at one of the less reputable taverns in the lower district, but Mr. Lettrige wasn’t one to care about other people’s plans. An important guest was on their way to the Wayward Inn, and that took priority. It always did.
But Bran was only working here until the next war broke out and he was called back into service. Nights like this, he felt a pang of guilt at hoping a war would break out.
No soldier hopes for war, but Bran didn’t fancy being a stable hand forever.
He let out a sigh and straightened, ready to get back to it, when he noticed the crowd on the street off one side of the alley parting. A few youths were pointing at something.
Bran frowned. Mr. Lettrige wouldn’t fault him for being away from the stables for an extra minute, would he? He wouldn’t even know—he never sets foot in them.
Bran shoved his hands in his pockets and strolled to the edge of the alley, peering out at whatever the crowd was looking at, figuring he knew what it probably was.
And he was right.
A giant of a man strode down Ealdor’s main street. He wore full-plate armor. Enchanted full-plate. It covered every inch of him, though he carried his helm by his side. The armor glowed a bright blue, illuminating the street better than the hanging lanterns outside the inn. He had a sword strapped to his back. Normally, having a sword sheathed on one’s back wasn’t the best place. They weren’t the easiest things to draw over the shoulder—not that Bran was much for wielding swords. His hands were made for holding a spear. At least, that’s what his sergeant had told him.
But this sword looked far too big to be strapped to the hip. The damned thing looked as tall as the man wearing it, and was thicker than any sword had a right to be.
Bran would have trouble lifting that thing, let alone wielding it in battle. And he was no slouch.
Bran’s gaze went to the man’s bandoleer, strapped around his midsection like a belt, knowing what he would find there. The bandoleer held four glowing crystals of varying colors. Bran knew the colors denoted something about the monsters within the crystals, though he wasn’t sure what.
The man was a summoner, and a high-ranking one at that, going by the look of him.
Bran let out a breath. He couldn’t help but stare. It wasn’t that he hadn’t seen a summoner before.
It was that he’d seen them in action.
They were legends on the battlefield. Gods among mere mortals.
Bran was a good soldier. A good fighter. But he was nothing compared to a summoner. When they entered the battle, the very ground shook with their power. Bran shut his eyes, and memories of the Battle of Heathland, the last he’d fought in, assailed his mind.
Summoners were supposed to fight other summoners. When they were let loose on normal soldiers? It was a massacre. A damned bloodbath.
But the Morkoth Empire didn’t much care for such things as battlefield etiquette.
In Heathland, the summoner had ridden on the back of a manticore. His hair had been jet-black, black as his eyes. The manticore’s tail had whipped out, running Jed through. The monster had caught Wilson in its powerful jaws, clamping down—
“Bran!”
Bran snapped his eyes open. He turned to see Mr. Lettrige staring at him from the inn’s front. His hands were on his hips, his prodigious gut threatening to spill out below his apron, deep lines cutting into his brow.
“Stop daydreaming and get back to work!” Mr. Lettrige jutted his chin toward the alley.
Bran stared back at the man with a steely gaze. Any other day, he would have just bowed his head and gotten back to it.
But he wasn’t supposed to be working tonight. He was missing the anniversary of the Battle of Heathland.
Sorry Jed, Wilson…
Mr. Lettrige seemed to deflate at Bran’s steadfast gaze. Was he staring at the scars on the stable hand’s face, wondering how he’d gotten them? Looking at the broadness of his shoulders, remembering he wasn’t just a stable hand, but a soldier?
After a moment, the proprietor of the Wayward Inn huffed. “No dallying,” he said, pointing a thick finger at Bran, then at the alley, before turning back to enter the inn.
Nothing about Mr. Lettrige was intimidating, especially to a man like Bran, but Bran probably shouldn’t have stared the proprietor down like that. The job might not be a glamorous one, but he needed it.
Bran glanced down the street, the summoner’s glowing armor standing out like a beacon among the city’s evening crowds, then headed back to the stables.
The animals, at least, were quiet tonight.
Bran finished mucking out the rest of the stalls and checking in on the steeds. The stables were mostly home to horses, the most common mount and work animal to those not of the summoner persuasion—which was most everyone. But there were other creatures in the stables tonight. Monsters. One of which was in the open section of the stables.
A raptor.
Bran whistled quietly, low enough not to disturb the animals. He glanced at the end of the stables, at the closed-off section. Hopefully his whistle didn’t disturb anything in there.
A moment passed, and Bran wondered if he’d see his friend tonight. Then the shadows in one corner of the stables began to darken.
“There you are.” Bran smiled.
Something formed within the shadows, becoming almost solid. The dark mass drifted out from the corner and headed toward Bran. It looked like a black cloud, hovering above the straw-strewn ground.
“An ominous entry as always, Shade,” Bran said to the drifting shadow with a low chuckle. He raised a hand. Shade hovered toward it, increasing its speed.
Bran couldn’t tell if the shadow was male or female, or if genders even mattered to the creature. Shade nuzzled his hand, becoming solid as he did so. Bran took a cube of sugar and offered it to the creature. A gaping maw formed in the amorphous shadow. Bran tossed the sugar into it and heard a crunch as the shadow chomped down on the cube.
Bran patted Shade’s head, or where he thought a head might be, and once again wondered what the shadow was. But he was getting distracted.
He nodded toward the raptor. “Ever seen one of those, Shade?”
Shade floated to the top of the raptor’s stable door. It tilted to the side a bit. Bran always took that as curiosity.
The raptor was a monster. But this one was low-level. It would have to be, for a normal human to have it as their mount.
Must have
Summoners were born, not made. Only a few were lucky enough to be granted the talent of taming a monster. But those who weren’t were still fascinated by monsters. Bran didn’t blame them. He was the same. He’d wanted to be a summoner since he was a kid. That desire had even landed him in trouble as a child. He’d almost gotten himself killed, venturing into a Monster Realm. And he would have died, were it not for sheer luck.
Even so, it was hard not to dream of being a summoner, even if it were impossible in reality. Their lives were filled with riches and excess, never having to wonder where their next meal would come from. And more than that, they had power akin to that of a god.
Bran’s squad had been decimated by a single man and his manticore. He shuddered as he recalled the memory.
Had it not been for another summoner, one on the side of the Kalaran Royal Army, none of them would have made it out alive.
A silver haired woman who could summon flames in her hands and control a flight of four dragons. She’d been old enough to be Bran’s grandmother, yet she wielded such ferocious power.
She was the only reason Bran and the rest of his squad had survived the Battle of Heathland.
Curious, Bran strolled over to his satchel stashed near the stable’s entrance and pulled his old scanner out. The thing had seen better days. Annie, the monster medic who worked on the other side of the stables, where summoners’ monsters were kept when they guested at the inn, had only given it to him because it was an older model she had no need of anymore.
The kindly, middle-aged woman was the main reason Bran hadn’t tried to find a job elsewhere. She knew how strong his interest in monsters was—knew he’d tried to become a summoner himself, when he was younger and had deluded himself into thinking he’d had the talent for it.
Bran shook his head and dusted off the scanner’s crystal. He tapped it lightly, and the dim glow returned to it. The scanner was nothing more than an enchanted crystal at the end of a furled scroll.
Bran walked back to the raptor, which was sleeping standing up in its stall. “Let’s see what level you’re at.” He leaned over the stall, pointing the crystal at the monster, careful not to wake it.
The monster standing was actually slightly shorter than Bran’s six foot two. It had a long, sinuous tail that took up almost the entire stall. At the end of its arms were sickle-like claws with three vicious looking talons.
It was almost strange, seeing a saddle on a monster like that.
After a moment, a bright glow emanated from the crystal. It moved up and down the raptor in a line. Then the crystal flashed green.
Bran unfurled the scroll and examined the raptor’s stats.
Raptor
Level: 0
Evolution Stage: Novice (1st Stage)
Affinity: None
Strength: 2
Toughness: 2
Agility: 5
Magic Power: 2
Personality: Eager
Summoner Bond: N/A
Future Evolutions:
[Mountain Raptor]
[Glade Raptor]
[Ember Raptor]
Level 0.
That was about what Bran had suspected, given the monster belonged to a non-summoner. There was no way the monster would remain docile, otherwise. It also explained the monster’s smaller size.
Bran rolled the scroll back up, then, not for the first time, faced the scanner toward Shade, knowing it would be futile.
???
Level: ???
Evolution Stage: ???
Affinity: ???
Strength: ???
Toughness: ???
Agility: ???
Magic Power: ???
Personality: ???
Summoner Bond: ???
Future Evolutions: ???
Bran sighed. Ever since he’d found Shade, alone in the corner of the stables one night, he’d wondered what the creature was. He assumed it had belonged to a patron at the inn and had escaped from the closed-off section of the stables, but Annie had been clueless as to the creature’s origin. He questioned all the patrons of the inn that day, but no one had laid claim to the amorphous shadow.
The readout didn’t make sense. Not even Annie had a scanner that worked on it. But if it weren’t a monster, the scan wouldn’t return a readout at all. Except it did, albeit one that couldn’t determine any of Shade’s attributes. Bran had avoided telling the authorities about the creature since he feared what might happen if he did so. Annie hadn’t been happy with that, but she had told him that so long as Shade kept out of sight, he could keep the creature. He knew that at some point someone would find out about Shade, and that it could cost Annie her monster medic license, so he’d eventually have to do something about the creature.
But that was a worry for another day.
Shade nuzzled Bran’s hand again and hovered around him in a circle. Bran might not know what Shade was, but he was glad he got to look after him.
The stables being as quiet as they were, each of the stalls mucked out, Bran glanced at the entrance, then shoved the scanner into his pocket and walked over to the closed-off section. He hadn’t seen Annie, the monster medic, that evening, but he knew there were a few monsters over there.
The closed-off section of the stables was even bigger than the side that housed the horses, which would have been unusual at most inns.
But most inns didn’t have a monster medic.
The Wayward Inn prided itself in catering to summoners, and there were always a few to be found in the common room.
Bran peered through the gaps in the wooden wall, catching glimpses of the monsters on the other side. There were two that he could see. He rarely saw the monsters as they arrived at the inn. The summoners had a private entrance to that side of the stables, and they summoned the monsters into being straight from the crystals on their bandoleers.
Bran’s eyes widened as he saw that one of the monsters was a small dragon.
At least, small for a dragon. It was still five times the size of the raptor he had just scanned.
The monster was resting. Snoring. Each time it exhaled, it released a small puff of smoke.
Bran stood up straight and let out a sigh.
He loved being a soldier. Fighting for his kingdom. Even the thrill of battle. And damned if he wasn’t good at it.
But battles weren’t glamorous things, and he could only make so much of a difference as a simple spearman. What he’d do to become a summoner… but of course, that wasn’t in the cards for him.
As much as he loved being a soldier, missed being out there with his squad mates, fighting the good fight… battle brought death.
He’d lost two of his best friends out there.
That was why Annie’s offer was so appealing.
Monster medics always had an apprentice. Annie’s apprentice, Marth, was almost skilled enough to ply the trade on his own. It would be hard for anyone to miss Bran’s interest in monsters. And Annie, seeing how keen he was, had offered him the opportunity to apprentice under her when the time came.
It wasn’t being a summoner, but it might be the next best thing. Especially if he were able to become a field monster medic. He could support summoners in battle, giving their monsters much needed care in crucial moments. Though the training would take him a few years, he was sure it would be worth it.
It was getting late. Gods, the late shift could be a boring one. He still didn’t know why Mr. Lettrige wanted him here. It was as though he imagined the horses would get out of their stalls and run through the inn the moment anyone important walked through the doors if there wasn’t someone there to mind them.
That would be a sight to see.
Bran walked down the stables, checking the stalls’ latches—especially the latch on the raptor’s stall—just to be sure.
An ear-piercing screech came from somewhere outside, loud enough to startle the horses awake.
“Whoa, whoa!” Bran tried to hush the horses.
The screech sounded again, louder this time.
He rushed to the entrance and scanned the skies. Bran frowned, unable to see where the noise had come from. As he gave up, turning back around, something crashed into the roof of the stables, creating a massive hole in the roof.
