Dimensional Summoning

"Teacher Tang Yue~~"

"What?!"

"Do you know much about the Summoning Element?"

"A fair amount."

"That's wonderful. I need to use Summoning Element to get into Pearl Academy, and unfortunately I've found that books on Dimensional Magic are incredibly scarce in the market. So I had no choice but to turn to my dear Teacher Tang." Mo Fan said with a grin.

She couldn't say why exactly, but Tang Yue could hear a faint trace of something underhanded in Mo Fan's tone.

That wasn't the main point, though — she was far more surprised that Mo Fan had actually awakened Summoning Element.

"Where are you?" Tang Yue asked directly.

"I'm at... actually, forget it. I'll come find you." Mo Fan said, as blunt as ever.

"Fine. Come to West Lake."

The lodgings weren't far from the high-speed rail station. Mo Fan boarded the next train and shot straight toward Hangzhou.

On the subway ride toward West Lake, though, he couldn't help but wonder — if he actually completed a full Summoning and called forth a creature he could ride, wouldn't that basically give him a free, impossibly cool personal vehicle?

BMWs, Audis, Land Rovers — sure, the dream rides of every red-blooded man. But tearing down the highway in one of those? That couldn't hold a candle to the sheer wild freedom of commanding a powerful, awe-inspiring Summoned Beast. Nothing even came close.

Mo Fan arrived at Tang Yue's residence — an upscale apartment complex where opening the window revealed nearly the entire sweep of West Lake.

He looked at the building. He looked at the lush, flowering gardens surrounding it. Then he thought of his own barren suburban wasteland where nothing ever grew.

*Money. Poverty is becoming an increasingly pressing problem. Once I'm in university, I really need to find some work.*

In her bedroom, Tang Yue leaned close to the mirror, deliberating. The brighter, more vivid shade of lipstick — or the softer, dewy-looking one?

It was perfectly normal to put on a little light makeup. It was just that her mind had suddenly drifted back to that breathless kiss in the back of the taxi — the one where she'd nearly forgotten how to breathe entirely. Her lips pressed together on their own, and warmth spread across her cheeks uninvited.

*What am I doing? Didn't I tell myself I wasn't going to see this guy anymore?*

Even though that incident was already a year in the past, the thought of meeting him still made her face burn.

*Fine. Other people face their exes with total composure. I'm a grown adult — there's no reason to make a big deal out of something so trivial.*

Besides, she'd been cooped up at home training for far too long. Having someone to take a stroll along the lake with wasn't the worst thing in the world.

Mo Fan, waiting patiently downstairs, finally saw the graceful and alluring Teacher Tang Yue walking toward him — a radiance and vibrancy she wore as naturally as breathing, needing no effort to conceal or enhance. A year apart, and she was still just as beautiful.

*Tsk. If my old high school dorm-mates knew I was this close to Teacher Tang Yue, they'd die of envy.*

"Let's take a walk," Tang Yue said with a light smile. "Summoning Element is a complicated topic — I'll explain it as we go."

Mo Fan noticed she seemed to be in a particularly good mood. He couldn't quite put his finger on why.

*Mature, intellectually alluring women just have a certain quality about them. Easy and generous — unlike those prim, white-lotus types who are honestly just boring.*

"Sure," Mo Fan said. "I've actually never wandered around Hangzhou before."

Growing up poor meant growing up without travel. Before eighteen, he really hadn't been anywhere.

They walked along the shore of West Lake. People were scattered everywhere — men, women, young and old — and now that summer vacation had arrived, families with children out sightseeing were beyond counting.

Weeping willows trailed their branches at the water's edge. The lake mirrored the sky in perfect stillness. It was a scene like a painting. And yet the women strolling across Broken Bridge — steps as unhurried as lotus blossoms, figures swaying like willow branches — were a finer sight than any landscape. They admired the view in serene contentment, unaware that they themselves were the finest scenery of all.

Teacher Tang Yue drew stares wherever she went. Heads turned constantly, and Mo Fan couldn't help feeling thoroughly smug about it. After all, not all men were truly living — some were just single dogs. And the barely-concealed envy radiating from every last one of them only made his own position look that much more enviable.

The two of them didn't jump straight to business. They talked about recent goings-on, chatted about a few other things, and only then did the conversation properly turn to Summoning Element.

"Summoning is probably the most variable of all the magical elements," Teacher Tang Yue said. "Use it well, and you become untouchable within your domain. Use it poorly, and you're no different from an ordinary person out walking their dog."

Mo Fan nodded. The examining professors at Pearl Academy had said much the same.

When you thought about it purely in terms of combat power — a Basic-Level Mage versus a Servant-class Demon-Beast, the Demon-Beast won without contest. Basic-Level Mages typically needed to form entire squads just to bring one down.

But a Summoning Mage who could call forth a creature with combat power equal to a Demon-Beast? That single Mage would start out operating at the level of a full Basic-Level Mage squad. That was genuinely more broken than even the Lightning Element.

"Dimensional Summoning itself is a skill full of unknowns," Teacher Tang Yue continued. "When you cast it, your consciousness is transported into a plane that doesn't belong to our world — it's called the Summoned Beast Plane. While there, your consciousness races through the entire expanse of that plane, searching for the nearest living creature..."

"Your consciousness actually goes to another plane??" Something stirred in Mo Fan's chest.

"The planes of this world are not singular. I've even heard older Space Element mages mention that many mysterious planes exist in perfect parallel to ours, with only certain special nodes where they ever overlap... but none of that is particularly useful for you right now. The point is, the Summoned Beast Plane is one of the smaller planes humanity knows fairly well. More precisely, the Summoned Beast Plane is actually attached to our world — it's a dependent plane."

Tang Yue steered the conversation back before Mo Fan could drag her further down that rabbit hole.

Mo Fan's mind, however, was quietly spinning. *After all — he was technically someone who'd come from another plane himself.*

"As your consciousness drifts through the Summoned Beast Plane, the creature you encounter will be completely different each time... That's precisely why Summoning is the most volatile element of them all. In the very beginning, when you first summon — what comes through is anyone's guess."

"I see," Mo Fan said. "So Dimensional Summoning is basically wandering into a zoo blindfolded and grabbing whatever's in front of you — could be a mouse, could be a lion?"

Teacher Tang Yue gave a soft, elegant smile and inclined her head slightly. "More or less."

"That actually sounds pretty exciting!" A spark of genuine anticipation kindled inside Mo Fan.

The Summoning Element had so many more variables than any other element. That was exactly the kind of magic that appealed to him — the kind that would be genuinely fascinating to master.

"Given your Mental Intent as an Intermediate-Level Mage driving the summoning, you should most likely be able to call forth creatures with considerably greater power," Teacher Tang Yue said.

"So the strength of one's own Mental Intent affects what you get?"

"Yes. Dimensional Summoning — the entry-level Summoning spell — when used well, has the potential to be more overwhelming than a high-tier spell."