After carefully reviewing every available option, Shane began thinking seriously about his summoning strategy this time.
The first thing he ruled out was the standard classes—his gaze locked onto the newly unlocked rare choices instead.
But that immediately created a problem.
Every rare class and rare attribute required three Trait Points to lock in.
Which meant: if he chose a class, he couldn't also specify alignment or legendary attribute; if he chose a legendary attribute, he couldn't specify class or alignment.
The randomness would become extreme.
"So I need to choose something with clear direction—something that'll make it easier for me to figure out," Shane murmured, quickly adjusting his plan.
He temporarily set aside the six special classes whose names alone were hard to make sense of, and focused on legendary attributes instead.
"Not only does it need to be directional, it also has to be strong… and ideally, it should boost my mana."
As he spoke, the terrifying pressure from that fire dragon flashed through his mind again.
With his chronic "firepower deficiency anxiety," he deeply felt his current strength still wasn't enough.
So he narrowed the candidates to four attributes that screamed "high potential" at a glance: [Heaven] [Star] [Dragon] [Divinity].
With a fourth-layer pool depth as the baseline, paired with a legendary attribute like that, he wasn't too worried about summoning something weak.
But after a brief consideration, he eliminated [Heaven] and [Star]—their scope was too broad, their "direction" too vague.
The painful lesson from Senji Muramasa's "blacksmith" surprise was still fresh; he really didn't want another round of "I guessed the beginning but not the ending."
That left only [Dragon] and [Divinity].
In myths and legends, powerful beings with either of those traits were countless—either choice guaranteed a solid floor.
As Shane thought, the dragon silhouettes he'd glimpsed during the major event, and the fire dragon that had roared at him just now, resurfaced in his mind.
That overwhelming presence, that pure sense of power—he couldn't forget it.
"Yeah… this world seems to have a big connection to dragons," he muttered.
"And didn't Ultear mention someone learning some kind of God Slayer Magic?"
"Then it's decided!" Shane slapped his thigh.
Decision made, he didn't hesitate. He focused, and solemnly invested all three Trait Selection rights into the [Dragon] attribute!
[Legendary Attribute · Dragon selected successfully!]
[Class: Random]
[Alignment: Random]
[Summoning Depth: Layer 4! Beginning summoning—]
The Book of Heroic Spirits shook violently; the text on its pages seemed to come alive.
The familiar, heavy vertigo arrived on schedule, peeling Shane's consciousness away from reality.
"Yup, here we go again…" he thought, already used to the hallucination that came with summoning.
"Please… let this one be normal…"
He prayed internally.
With a depth of four layers, he wasn't even asking for much.
"Anything's fine—like some massive red-bodied, snake-shaped being that sees by day and sleeps by night… or a black dragon gnawing at the roots of the world-tree… hell, even a feathered serpent would do!"
But none of the images he imagined appeared.
Instead, an icy, sluggish sensation wrapped around his whole being. The light around him dimmed, warped, as if he were sinking into deep water.
No—he wasn't as if.
He was sinking.
This time the hallucination was nothing like the previous observer-style visions. His consciousness was razor-clear—yet he had lost form, like a wisp of spirit attached to… something.
He could "see" the wavering glow above—the water's surface fading farther and farther away.
He could "feel" the pressure crushing in from every direction.
He tried to move, only to realize he had no limbs, no torso—no concept of "movement" at all.
He "looked" at himself.
No scales. No claws. No powerful muscles, no majestic silhouette.
He had become… a "thing."
A mass of flesh at the bottom of an icy lake—slowly rotting, swelling.
Dark red and corpse-pale interwoven, its surface nearly melted, sticky and boneless, not even a single hair.
Just a huge, chaotic, pure lump of meat.
"Am I a dragon? Am I really connected to dragons? Or… am I nothing at all?"
His consciousness grew heavier as it linked to the meat. The questions spread through his mind.
Yet even with doubts filling him, he couldn't even generate the emotion of "confusion."
Because he was meat.
Meat had no joy, no sorrow—no clear boundary between "life" and "death."
It simply existed there, in the lake-bottom silence, slowly releasing something essential.
Gradually, Shane felt his thoughts sink into a haze, as if he were being assimilated by the meat's blank, mindless stillness.
This was far beyond previous visions—not a sensory shock, but an erosion at the level of existence itself.
He felt his rational mind dissolving into the rotting mass's "being."
"End it… please end…" Shane resisted on instinct, desperate to escape the suffocating attachment.
But his hope failed.
Time had no meaning at the lake bottom—only the slow rot continued.
Worse still, as time passed, a stench so strong it felt physical began seeping from within the meat.
The clear lake water around it slowly polluted—turning cloudy, dark, and finally into a sticky, chaotic mire.
And the source of that filth… was him.
How long had it been? A year? Ten years? Or just an instant?
Just as Shane's consciousness was about to sink completely, that familiar clarity finally arrived—like salvation—yanking him upward.
His awareness ripped free from the meat, shot back along its path, broke from the lake-bottom darkness, and burst through the filthy surface—
"Gah!"
Shane sucked in air like a drowning man rescued at the last second. Cold sweat instantly soaked his back.
Before him was still the underground temple. The Eclipse Gate stood silent as ever, and the air still carried the lingering scent of magic after its violent release.
"That was terrifying…" he whispered, his voice trembling faintly.
This deep summoning confirmed something for him:
The deeper the layer, the more real the vision became—and the more invasive it was.
From merely watching Arash at first, to feeling Muramasa's scorching pain up close, to this fourth-layer depth—
He had fully attached to a rotting thing, enduring who-knew-how-many years of silence and pollution.
Shane's fear came late and hard.
What if… what if his consciousness truly got lost down there and never returned?
Only after a long while did his pounding heartbeat settle and the mental sting fade.
Then he noticed a dark-gold card resting in his palm.
On its face was a human silhouette holding a long spear reversed, the spear-tip angled toward the ground—poised, calm, wary.
"So… it's a Lancer." Shane sounded disappointed.
Not hitting a rare class was one thing—but what really bothered him was—
That lump of rotting flesh from the vision, something that polluted its surroundings simply by existing…
What the hell did it have to do with Dragons—and with a Lancer?!