I reappeared back in my room at the academy and not in Somhagen Exports where I had been summoned from. This spot had been designated as my return location, and it appeared it functioned no matter where I was summoned from. Eventually, I hoped to make Earth my designated return location, but that didn’t seem like it was going to happen anytime soon.
In my brief time in the UK, I could see that the system integration hadn’t occurred yet. Cars, electricity, and the like seemed to be operating normally, which told me the elevated mana levels hadn’t reached the point where they’d interfere with technology. That was coming, and I could only hope that those in charge of Earth were making the right plays to keep the integration from turning into a disaster for us.
The summoning was brief, and I hadn’t had a chance to interact with people or get a message to Agent Lopez. I wondered if he, or whoever had forged the contract, knew when I managed to complete a mission. They might not know, but the system did. I had gained a new rank and flashing message in my interface told me the system had something else for me.
One of your class abilities has improved.
- Life Tap. The efficiency of this ability has improved, and it will now heal you for twice the amount of life you pull from a minion. You may now also target foes, draining a small portion of their life force and using it to heal yourself for half of what you drain. The range of this ability is equal to 100 feet per tier of the caster.
It was a solid upgrade, and I glad to now have it available as a ranged offensive spell. Using it on a foe was much less effective than using it on a minion as far as healing went, but being able to both drain your foe and heal yourself could help turn the tide of a fight. The cooldown of one minute hadn’t changed and given the limited duration of most of my fights, that meant I could probably get one or two Life Taps off before the hostilities were over one way or the other.
I was only one rank away from rank five and every five ranks seemed to unlock more for my class. The extra rank I’d gained also made my minions a bit more powerful. There hadn’t been any system notices about minion abilities improving, so I figured the changes going from rank three to four were just minor increases in health and combat power.
It was the weekend at the academy, and I hoped that I’d be summoned again to Earth. Before that happened, I wanted to get back to Somhagen Exports to collect my rewards. Leaving the tower, I could see the festivities at the tournament were still going strong. I was tempted to stop and watch, but the loot hound in me was laser focused on getting to the shop and the rewards waiting inside, not to mention that Melvin was already pestering me to stop at the food carts in town.
The day was warm without being oppressively hot, and lots of townsfolk were out and about today. There was the normal smattering of adventurers, but today, townsfolk shoppers outnumbered the adventurers. Somhagen Exports was busy enough, and I spotted Ingrid behind the counter before one of the clerks could catch me.
Ingrid waved me back to her office and the other clerks ignored my presence once they saw that I was being helped. Back in the cramped office, Ingrid had me sit in the chair I had used before while she began to dig through the desk drawers looking for where the system had dropped my reward.
“Ah, there it is. Please give me a moment, Rico,” Ingrid said. I sat there impatient but quiet as her gaze shifted in a way that told me she was focusing on system information.
“Thank you for your patience. I suppose these summonings will happen at random times and will have different durations. I won’t always be here, so the system gave me the option of designating a specific location for your rewards to arrive at. I’ll have one of the lockboxes behind the main counter set aside for your rewards. When you need to pick something up, just tell any available clerk that you’re here to pick up a special order for Rico Kline. They’ll know what to do,” Ingrid explained.
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“Does the system compensate you in some way for handing all this?” I asked as Ingrid pulled a small pouch of coins and a scroll from her desk.
“It does, and while I won’t get into the details of the shop’s operation, or my personal class, rest assured I and Somhagen Exports are fairly compensated for our efforts,” Ingrid assured me as she pushed the rewards across the desk for me to examine.
“Thank you, I was hoping that I wasn’t pestering you or wasting your time,” I said.
“No, your patronage is quite welcome, though I must take my leave to deal with another issue. Feel free to use my office for as long as you’d like while you examine your finds,” Ingrid said, squeezing past my chair to leave the office.
The coins went into my inventory, and I examined the scroll to see what the system was rewarding me with. As I began to read the scroll, the system explained what was happening.
An ability from your previous class, Foe Commander, has been added to your new class. You have reactivated your Revive ability. This ability can be left active on a designated minion. When the designated minion is destroyed, they will instantly revive and reform at your side.
The minion will reform with half its health, mana, and any remaining consumables. This ability can only trigger once every 24 hours. Any temporary status condition effects, both positive and negative, are removed during the Revive process.
You will now choose the designated minion and will be offered the chance to change your choice when selecting minions for the next contract. Which minion do you wish to designate as the recipient of Revive.
- Mana slayer drone.
- Elida Silverbarrow.
- Glem.
- Glamb.
- Glurk.
It wasn’t too hard of a choice. The goblins were out as I could only designate one of the goblin trio. I was tempted to go with Elida, as she was our healer, but after thinking about it for a moment, I decided on the best recipient, and the minion I’d got the most mileage out of, was the drone.
You have selected the mana slayer drone as your current Revive target.
I was essentially going to have an extra drone on each summoning now. Any spells or effects on the drone would be removed when it revived, but I was fine with losing some buffs if it meant the minion could shed any negative status effects that it might have. Having only half its health was a downside, but I had healing magic to help with that.
Not wanting to take up the shop’s limited office space, I headed out and back toward the tournament. Along the way I had to stop at two food carts. Melvin was hungry, like always, and I wasn’t going to pass up a snack either. At one cart, we enjoyed marinated skewers of chicken and vegetables. Melvin had three, and I just went with one.
When we got back to Earth, I was going to have to remember not to take Melvin with me on any trips to the grocery store. It might bankrupt me if he got loose inside there. For our final snack, we had another one of the fried dough desserts that reminded me of a funnel cake. The cake even had powdered sugar sprinkled all over it.
Thankfully, Melvin’s armor form saw to any stray bits of powdered sugar that I managed to drop on myself. Yeah, having a gelatinous cube armor buddy was great for keeping yourself clean of anything that was edible. When the tournament came into sight, I could see the crowd was all gathered around the furthest field, the one for the highest tier and rank challengers.
It looked like the tournament finale was about to kick off and that was something I wanted to see. I’d never watched the minions of two high tier and rank summoners engage in battle. This was the heavyweight division, and I hoped that I might catch a glimpse of what the future would hold for my class during this match.
I spotted Melody in the crowd and navigated my way to her. She saw me coming and politely asked the nearby spectators to clear enough space for me. The announcer was just walking off the field when I arrived.
“Rico, you almost missed it, Headmaster Glorine agreed to have his minion go up against this year’s champion,” Melody said.
The entire field was being used for this match, and it was easy enough to spot the glowing headmaster at the far end. At the other end of the field there was none other than Professor Izbix who taught the classes for summoners with mechanical type minions. This was going to be a good fight.