A Dual Crest Summoner In Infinite Summoning World

Once again, night fell. Another temporary camp. The small animals they had caught on their way were enough as food for the day.

It wasn't just the small animals they had fought throughout the day though. They were tired after slaughtering a pack of wolves, a surprisingly large and angry moose, and some wild foxes. It was a heck of a day. The wildlife above the waterfall was quite different from that below.

Mostly, it was the eldest son of Earl Breagor, the two sons of Earl Cornvell, and the Baron-lord's brat who did all the fighting.

They had only three swords at first, but they found two more from dead bodies—five in total now.

Two were held by the oldest among them, the 21-year-old Oswin Cornvell and his younger brother, 19-year-old Wilfred Cornvell. One was held by 16-year-old Lionel Vashil (Earl Breagor's eldest son), one was in possession of the Baron-lord's son, Magnus Thornfield—15 years old.

One was in the hands of the younger son of Breagor Vashil, the 11-year-old brother of Althea, Caius Vashil. Petricia (17 years old), Althea, and Auren himself were without any weapons.

Though Auren had seen a glimpse of a hidden knife in Petricia's clothes, she had decided to keep it hidden, so he didn't mention it either. So only Auren and Althea were without any weapon in truth—yet they both were hiding an unknown ability, so it would be unfair to say either of them was truly defenseless.

They were pretty good fighters, Auren could tell. There were some distinct mistakes some of them made while fighting, which could be improved. The best were, unsurprisingly, the two oldest Cornvell brothers. Those two had taken down the moose with the help of their jaguars.

The Baron-lord's son, Magnus, was also quite a useful addition to the group with his eagle. The scouting was entirely left to him. Lionel Vashil, with his wolverine, was also a fearsome fighter. Their sword skills were somewhat okay, but the addition of their summons—which they could control like an extension of their own bodies—was what made them troublesome foes. Each had named their summon, and each summon had a distinct personality like Maru; yet, when it came to battle, none of them said a single word, controlling their summons purely by instinct and mind, though a few used gestures.

Unsurprisingly, Auren had yet to see the wolverine summons of Althea and her brother Caius. No matter how intense the fight was, they did not call their summons for help at all. Clearly, something was not adding up with those two, but the elder Vashil boy stopped anyone who might say something to the two children. According to him, they were not yet ready to control their summons—which all of them knew was a clear lie.

"What's that?"

Auren heard Magnus Thornfield murmur from the opposite side of the fire their food was being prepared on. He looked towards the guy—Magnus's eyes were pure white. His vision was being shared with his eagle. It was really creepy to look at. All day, Auren could see nothing more than just a teenager in them, but then there were uses of some of their abilities like this that reminded him he was in a completely different world.

"What is it?" Oswin Cornvell asked.

"Fire," Magnus said. "It's not clear, but it has to be that. Some 2 kilometers ahead in the forest."

Fire? In this cold night, that only meant one thing—humans. Others had survived.

"Do we go now?" Petricia asked. "Two kilometers at night is not very safe."

"She's right. We will have to search for them in the morning," Caius said, and Lionel Vashil nodded, agreeing with his younger brother.

Auren said nothing. After dinner, he once again scaled a tree and made his black particle cage the same as last night. Today too, the others kept telling him to stay with them and not get separated. The height helped against most thralls, but when fire-spitting ones were mixed in, they usually burned whole trees to get to the humans. But Auren refused.

Looking at the distant, weird, half-zombie-like creatures, Auren suddenly realized he had missed something very important about the thralls. They only attacked humans. All other creatures roamed around the night monsters without any problem—in fact, the animals were so nonchalant around thralls, Auren was not even sure if they could see the dreaded night creatures at all.

But summoned creatures could see them, and thralls also attacked summoned animals. That was a very odd thing. It was clear to Auren that the thralls and echoes were something connected with this world's supernatural elements—the summoning thing. Earth had no such thing, so the conclusion was simple enough to reach.

Once the morning came, they resumed their journey after eating some of the remaining meat from last night. The noble children were very disgusted at eating such things without any seasoning, but no one voiced it—not even Petricia and Althea, the only two girls present.

Hunger triumphed above all.

Magnus led them to the place where he had noticed the fire burning last night. There were indeed signs of people who might have just left the place. After a couple of hours of tracking and chasing, they finally found them.

Five people—four boys around 15 to 18 years old and one girl the same age. All were Barons' children who had been with them when they all fell down the valley. Two boys had saved the other two after regaining consciousness at the riverbank. Their story was also wild—apparently, they had fought a bear on the very first day. Only one of them had a sword; the bear was injured but very much alive as they ran away, crossing the river even with its dangerously powerful flow.

They had come downriver since then, and they too had buried a couple of dead bodies like them. Unfortunately, they had not seen any signs of their parents either above the valley, and they were far too scared to go back, knowing an injured bear was waiting for them.