The Chimera Summoner - Ch. 09

Ch 9--

The train pulled into a subterranean station, lit by blazing bonfires in huge hearths along both walls. We exited onto the dark stone platform, which like the rest of the station seemed to have been carved directly from the heart stone of the mountain.

"Welcome, new students!" A voice echoed enthusiastically to the vaulted ceiling high above.

A woman in full gold trimmed plate armor, with a huge tower shield on her back, boomed out to us on repeat.

"Gather round! Gather round! Leave your things! Gather round!" She called.

She had her dusty blonde hair in a big messy ponytail and a huge friendly smile plastered over her face. It looked like we were her long lost kids and she was overjoyed we'd come home.

I trotted over with the rest of the students. There must've been nearly two hundred of us, maybe more. It made it feel like winter festival in Emberdome, when the whole town would gather in and around the square.

Or rather, they used to. Hmmm. Bayloft usually has fewer students a year than this...? Were they expanding their acceptance rate?

"Welcome to Bayloft!" The blonde tank cried, razing her fists to the ceiling like we'd won a marathon. "I'm Brawly! Like BRAWL!! That's my real name! Isn't that awesome?!"

She threw a few expert punches that sent little gusts of air over our heads, shaking dust from the tall pillars.

There were some confused cheers from students who didn't know how to respond. A smattering of hesitant clapping went around.

The tank soaked it up like we were a stadium of roaring fans at a rock concert.

"YEAHHHH!" She cheered along.

Then she clapped her hands once, like an anvil being dropped on another anvil, from space. A slight breeze spread out from her along with stunned silence.

This woman must be an absolute monster. Long finished with leveling. Maybe even with some Ascensions under her belt, like Grace Valant.

"Let's get serious, kids." She proclaimed, eyes lit with an inner fire. "Listen up, your education starts now. You're here to become Wayfinders. The name is NOT a metaphor. A lion's share of diving the Dungeon will be finding your way. Get it?! So that's your first test!"

Some concerned muttering went around.

A test? We had barely arrived. Classes didn't even start for another day?! What could they be testing us on??

Brawly slammed her hands together in another cosmic boom that made me concerned about hearing damage, before I remembered I had Wayfinder stats now, albeit weak ones. I healed from regular shit like that now.

We fell silent again.

"Your first test," she grinned at us. "Is to FIND your WAY--" she wiggled her brows animatedly "--to the main campus. Behind me are a number of tunnels. Beyond them? Guess what?"

She waited expectantly.

"More tunnels?" Guessed a mousy girl who looked terrified of her own voice.

"YEAH!" Cheered Brawly. "More TUNNELS! and beyond that??"

"More tunnels." We chorused dumbly.

"YEAHHHHH!!" She roared, thumping her chest plate. "So!"

She got serious, again.

"You gotta make your way through these tunnels to the main campus. First one out gets a PRIZE! Ohhhh! Loftys are on the line!! What are Loftys you ask?!" She cupped her ear.

"What are Loftys?" We chanted.

"Not TELLING!" Brawly proclaimed. "Suffice to say, you'll WANT 'EM! And a butt load of them too. So scurry along my dears! Good luck! Wait! Two things!"

She held up two fingers.

"Clumbsy old me might've gone into the Dungeon and wrangled up some enthusiastic vermin and then released them into the tunnels, ohhhh a week ago. They'll be nice and HUNGRY now! So that'll be sweet!" She grinned like she'd given us a great present.

"SECOND! If you don't make it to campus by the time the first class starts, you're expelled. That's it! Leave your stuff! It will be transported to campus if you make it! Go go go go GOOOOO!"

A storm of protests broke out.

Brawly was immediately mobbed by girls demanding answers or concessions or exceptions from her. I thought I heard a lot of people mentioning their parents' esteemed positions in society. Brawly just grinned and weathered it, in classic tank fashion.

Another group of students frantically rummaged through their bags for things.

I was among those, snatching up a thick blanket and a coat, some heavier boots, my trusty camp knife, and a big water bottle. I stuffed these along with one granola bar that had made its way into my suitcase into the backpack I'd gotten for classes. The coat I put on now. It was a bit warm, but I suspected I'd be glad of it before long.

Plus, it was a little extra barrier to whatever 'vermin' were.

I watched as a few students disappeared into one or another of the various tunnel exits from the platform.

There were groups negotiating alliances. Forming parties.

Still a lot of people mobbing Brawly, who looked like she just liked getting attention.

A tap on my shoulder startled me.

I whirled, raising my water bottle threateningly.

"Chill." Said Jennie.

She'd changed into black rogue leathers, and had a pair of daggers strapped to her thighs. Now, she really looked like a stealth assassin. It was... very hot.

"Team up?" She asked, getting right to the point.

I hesitated.

"You don't know anyone else?" She asked.

I shook my head reluctantly.

"Well, I'm legacy, I knew this was coming, I'm prepared as you can see, I'm probably a level or two higher than you, and if you don't know anyone, I'm your only option besides going alone like a moron." She glanced at several people going in alone. Morons, apparently.

"There won't be other offers, this place is really cliquey." She added.

I looked around, and saw a lot of tell-tale signs that this was true. I had wondered how I'd gotten left in a compartment on my own.

I nodded.

"Ok." I extended a hand. "Let's do it."

Jennie shook my hand delicately, like a princess. I half expected her to ask me to kiss her hand.

Which I wouldn't have.

Not immediately. Probably.

"Let's go." She strode toward an entrance to a tunnel.

The tunnels ranged wildly in size and shape. The only commonality seemed to be that there were at least sparse lights, glow stones embedded in the walls at haphazard intervals.

"What are you, by the way?" Asked Jennie, eying the tunnel skeptically before rejecting it and moving to the next.

"Pardon?" I asked, nonplussed.

"What ARE you?" She repeated. "Like are you a tank with no gear? Or a mage with no gear? Or a--"

"I get it." I snapped. "I'm a chimera summoner, if you must know." I added sullenly to myself. "With no gear."

My camp knife felt childish, borderline comical, next to her matching pair of sinister daggers.

"BY THE WAY!" Brawly suddenly yelled, sounding like she had a microphone, even though she didn't. "Intentionally harm another student, and I will juice you like an ORANGE! Duh!"

I blinked.

"I wasn't worried about that." I muttered. Then eyed the other students with renewed discomfort. "But now I am absolutely worried about it. Hopefully no one is stupid enough to get juiced."

"Probably." Said Jennie absently.

A fourth and fifth tunnel were summarily rejected before Jennie found one she liked and immediately set off down it, with me in tow.

"Do you know the way?" I whispered. She was legacy after all, and had evidently known this test was coming.

"No!" She answered, looking at me scandalized. "That would be cheating!"

"Then what was with picking the tunnel so carefully?!" I demanded.

"In the absence of other guidance, always follow your nose!" She sniffed pointedly.

I did too, experimentally.

I shrugged. "I don't smell anything."

"Exactly." She said. "Monsters stink. Still water stinks, trapped gasses stink, corpses from wildlife killed by dungeon monsters stink, classmates stink. Mostly." She listed rapidly.

"This tunnel smells like nothing. Making it the best one so far. And I wasn't about to go sniff every single tunnel. That would be insane."

"Yeah that would be crazy." I agreed, wholeheartedly.

The tunnel that did not stink started to slope down and right.

Not the direction of campus, which must certainly be above us, in the mountains' north pass. Jennie did not seem concerned.

"So what kind of Chimera do you summon?" She asked conversationally.

I hesitated again. I was reluctant to let the details of my class get out.

"Oh my godszuhhh!" Moaned Jennie, dramatically. "I'll go first. I'll show you mine. I'm a rogue archetype obviously. Assassination type. I will disappear and then monsters will start dying around you for no reason and you'll think woahhhh Jennie is a super good, super hot, super nice party member. I'm so lucky she picked me, out of everyone in the class. Even though I am DOUR. Your turn."

I snorted a laugh.

Jennie wheeled on me.

I raised my hands innocently.

She eyed me, but then charged on down the winding tunnel.

Damn it, was Jennie growing on me? Or was it just that I liked how her ass looked wrapped up in tight leather and swaying aggressively as she strutted in front of me.

I directed my gaze firmly at the ceiling.

"I don't summon chimeras." I supplied.

"Gotcha." She said. "Makes sense, since you're a chimera summoner. No chimeras. No gear. Same girl. It's on brand for you."

I scowled. "I was saying...." I waited, to annoy her. It worked immediately.

"Oh my god EIR, I am literally dying. Will you PLEASE tell me what you do before I go get back on the train and set myself on FIRE?!"

That got a bark of laughter out of me.

Jennie stopped so abruptly I ran into her back, bumping my nose on the back of her head. The pain in my nose almost made me not notice her toned ass pressing into my hips. Nearly.

I backed up like I'd been electrocuted.

"Oh no, what an unfortunate accident, better watch where you're going and tell me how your fucking class works." She said flatly, resuming her runway strut.

I scurried along behind her, adjusting myself furiously.

"I am the chimera, I take on skills from my Familiars. Well. Familiar. Right now. I've got access to two, but I haven't bonded the second one yet, so. Familiar."

"...Bonded?" I could hear her raising a manicured eyebrow.

"Yeah." I said defensively.

"What kind of BONDED familiar do you have right now." She asked suspiciously.

I clammed up.

This was exactly the kind of conversation I had hoped to avoid for a good long time at Bayloft, by keeping my Class mostly to myself, and keeping who I'd gotten it from COMPLETELY to myself.

I had expected to spend the first week at least reading syllabuses, getting campus tours, moving in, meeting faculty. Not immediately get thrown into what amounted to a facsimile of the Dungeon.

"What. Kind. Of. Familiarrrrr. Do. You. Suuuuuuuuuuuu. Muuuuuuuuuhhhhn?" Asked Jennie.

"Rabbit." I said, as vaguely as I could think of, that wasn't literally a lie.

"A Rabbit familiar." She said flatly.

"Yeah." I activated [Tempest strike] and waved my windy hands around. "A wind rabbit."

"A wind rabbit. One. Wind rabbit." She said, irritably.

I turned off [Tempest strike] with a hiss.

"I don't know what to tell you, dude." I said.

"Ew, do NOT call me DUUUUDE." She made a repulsed face.

"Fair enough, Jennifer Amelia Montil-Valant three." I rolled my eyes.

She threw me an odd look over her shoulder, then snapped her head away abruptly.

I started to ask about it, when we came to a halt. The tunnel branched into two. One left and steeply down, one right and up.

"We're fucked." Said Jennie.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"How are we supposed to find our way to campus, like this?" I asked. I thrust a finger at the tunnels. "Up is good? But maybe not? This is insane. Do they want their freshmen class to be determined by what lucky idiot blunders their way into the school?"

Jennie chirped and hopped on the spot.

I coughed, covering a laugh.

"What sort of class DO they want?" She asked, like she was unveiling a grand secret.

"Do tell." I grunted.

"WAYFINDERS." She crossed her arms smugly.

"Great. So let's just Finddd our wayyyyy to campus, now that we know that's what they want. Brilliant."

"No." She rolled her eyes. "Wayfinders don't just wander around trying to escape the Dungeon. They try to get as deep as possible, to kill bosses and find treasure! They hunt monsters, not avoid them. We need to pick a smelly tunnel that goes down!!" She concluded with the air of a master detective.

I thought for a minute. It did make a kind of sense. Certainly, Jennie thought it did. She was practically salivating to get going down the tunnel downwards.

"Come ONNNNN!" She groaned, grabbing my jacket and getting on her toes to stare into my face. Her sweet breath hit my nose and caused a significant downstairs stirring in my pants.

I backed up, sharpish.

Follow your nose, dumbass. I shrugged.

"In the absence of a plan, follow your partner's plan. That's my motto. Now. As of recently. Let's go. Wheee." I waved her forward.

She yipped again, and shot down the steep tunnel.

With her gone, I took the chance to adjust my straining boner to lay hot against my stomach.

Lucy stirred unhelpfully, her lust radiating hot and steamy to me through our bond.

Down girl.

Which one of us am I talking to?

... yes.

The downwards path quickly led us into trouble.

It turned out that 'vermin' meant eight foot long rats with poison spines and prehensile tails.

Jennie vanished, reappearing a moment later to slam a dagger into the beast's spine, paralyzing it temporarily.

I charged up [Tempest strike] into my right hand and slammed it into the rat's skull.

I blessed my past-self for boosting my Spirit stat so high.

The rat's skull exploded inwards with a loud boom and a gust of air that whipped around the tunnel.

"Tempest strike." I said, in awe, to a wide eyed Jennie.

"I thought you were a summoner?" She asked.

"Yeah." I nodded, panting a bit from the adrenaline dump. I'd never fought a monster before.

"Doesn't that make you backline? Squishy?" She asked faintly.

I nodded. "Yeah." I had a big stupid grin on my face, but I couldn't help it. I bounced on my toes.

"Backline that sometimes punches monsters heads into smoothies." Clarified Jennie.

"Yeah." I nodded.

"What's your class, really? There's no summons, are there?" She demanded.

I laughed, clapping her arm.

"You'll probably meet her soon. I doubt we'll get lucky enough to only fight one at a time." I assured her.

"Meet HER?" Jennie asked, suspicion renewed.

"She's a real babe." I laughed.

"You are NOT sexualizing a rabbit chimera right now." Jennie stuck out her tongue and made bleck noises.

"I told you, she's not a chimera. Maybe the second one will be. Who knows. It's supposedly random." I said.

Jennie stopped blecking, "Summons are not RANDOM." She insisted.

"Okay." I said, not willing to fight her about it.

"They're not." She pushed.

"Got it." I said. "Let's get going. That was loud. Right?"

Reluctantly, Jennie got moving again.

We continued to take downward tunnels whenever possible. They wound and intersected and switched directions and doubled back on themselves. We made a game of cursing whatever psychopath had carved them.

"It's like wooo! What if, while I'm going up and left for a long fucking time, why don't I just end my fucking tunnel!" Jabbered Jennie. She took a lot of the turns in our game. "And where's the last chance to go somewhere else?? Wayyyyyy the fuck back in the vagina looking tunnel, next to the square one. Amazing design. Truly. Masterpiece of fuck waddery."

I held my sides. Jennie had kept me giggling for minutes on end now. She was nuts. For sure. But she was growing on me faster than I liked.

"And here we are back at vagina tunnel. I hate that I just said that so much. Should've known. Vagina is always the answer. Hate that even more. Ooop here's some more rat-- fucking OW!!"

A pack of giant rats rushed out of the tunnel that did in fact look just a little like a vagina. If you stood way back and closed your eyes and imagined a vagina.

The lead rat had gotten a good bite of Jennie. Her armor seemed to be holding alright but being leather, it wasn't doing much to stop the jaws from crushing her arm.

I snapped into action, spattering a chuck of a rat's side with a [Tempest strike]. It released her and screeched, retreating.

But there were a lot more.

I gave up on concealing my Familiar and summoned Lucy. We needed all the help we could get. I had no interest in ending up as rat food cause I didn't want people to see my sexy familiar.

As Lucy formed, Jennie vanished, with a curse at the rat who'd bit her.

Her arm seemed incapacitated for the moment at least. But she dutifully reappeared, slashing viciously at the rat inching up behind me. It went down screaming to her one handed flurry of attacks.

"You really do pick romantic places to summon me." Remarked Lucy, wryly, as she cracked her knuckles.

"I'll make it up to you, I promise." I yelped, Tempest striking and using the wind burst to keep another rat away from me. It retreated with only a bruised nose.

I needed more practice with my new skill, and I kicked myself for not taking it sooner.

"I'm collecting a lot of these promises." Said Lucy. "Don't think I'm not keeping track. I think I'll cash in the one about filling each of my--"

"What the fuuuck?!" Interrupted Jennie, reappearing in a swirl of white mist.

"Who's THIS?" Purred Lucy, opening giving Jennie an approving up and down.

"Whhhhhhhhhat the fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu--" said Jennie.

"Jennie! LUCY! RATS!" I barked.

"Fine, but we are talking about this later." Grumbled Jennie, reactivating whatever skill let her vanish for brief spurts of time.

"Yes, daddy!" Lucy said to me, rather loudly, dashing to obey my call to fight.

I made a mental note to discipline her, when I got time. Then speculated that might be what she was after.

The rats, put off their bite-y game by the sudden appearance of Lucy, were quickly dispatched.

Lucy made all the difference. With her speed to kite the rats around, keeping them occupied and off of me and Jennie, she simply took up too much space in the fight to ignore. The fight swiftly went from pretty close, to a landslide. I almost felt sorry for the brutes as I blew one up with a huge Tempest strike.

I couldn't get over how satisfying the skill was to land. Something about that deep booming whump really sat well with me.

Once all the rats were dead, their bodies dissolving in black smoke, Lucy sauntered up and wrapped her arms possessively around my neck and waited expectantly.

Blushing furiously, I nevertheless dutifully gave her the kisses she had so thoroughly earned.

"Have I been a good girl for you, Daddy?" She asked, with a smug look.

"What is with you calling me that again, all the sudden?" I asked, though it was certainly working on me. I'd always liked it when girls called me that. When Lucy did? Set my brain on fire and bury the ashes in a shrine to my lost dignity.

"Don't you like it when I call you... Daaaaaadddy?" She moaned it breathily into my ear.

I stiffened. I actually had to hold her closer, covering my pulsing, throbbing, instant erection with her plump hips. She wiggled delightedly when she felt it.

"Whaaaaaaaat the fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu-" started Jennie, staring with saucer eyes that looked like they had taken the opportunity to colonize her whole face. "--uuuuuuk?!"

"Jennie! Meet my charming Familiar, Lucy." I cut her off, spinning Lucy to face Jennie. "As aforementioned: she is not a lizard, lion, or snake."