Sitting in my room in silence, the purple flames burned on my palm with full intensity, the purple sparks falling from my hand, and wherever they fell, a tiny layer of ice began to form.
This was something I had already sensed; these flames didn't carry the bone-melting heat. Instead, they carried bone-chilling cold.
I couldn't stop myself from smiling like a fool, because this was the power that I needed to turn my life around.
In the past few years, all I had been doing was just getting along with everyone, trying to fit into a society that has no special place for me.
"Um, let's see what else I got."
I began playing with the system screen, in the process, my eyes automatically pulled to that gift bag lying in the corner.
I was genuinely excited to open this gift bag, just a random drink sharing had given me that hellfire, I couldn't imagine what this gift bag might give me. Maybe a legendary sword, or another magical power, or something new entirely.
But soon this element of surprise ended, as I opened the gift bag.
[Congratulations, Host, you have been given a new talent.]
[Talent: Summoning]
"Summoning… nice," seeing my new talent. I was quite delighted with it.
Because becoming a summoner, roaming the world with my beast army, was also a part of the fantasy I had while reading novels.
It wasn't just a new talent, but there was even a change in one of my stats.
[Mana: 198/200]
Mana, which was initially only 100 now risen to 200, with a new talent flashing in my talent section.
Now, it was time to see this new talent, again, sit straight and focus. I began to imagine a giant dragon with big translucent wings and shiny crystalline scales, with a crystal crown on its head. I had read about this crystal dragon king in a novel, according to which, she was the mother of all dragons, Ausarion, the dragon of hope and light.
After a few minutes, I opened my eyes and found nothing had happened, "Huh, did the summoning fail? Or I just simply couldn't summon beings from my imagination?"
I thought about it for a while, finding it meaningless to think about it so much, after all, I got the information panel on my system that should be things designed for beginners like me.
In the information panel, I looked into this summoning talent of mine, and yeah, there was an article for it.
"It looks like I'm going to skip lunch today."
Lying on my bed, I began reading this 53-page-long article, which, for some reason, has almost all the information that I needed to know about, even giving me the rough way to use it, or I can buy the summoning manual too. But the shop… was locked for me. Maybe in the future.
At least now I know what I need to do to get my perfect summon. For summoning a beast, a medium is required that will connect you to that beast or summoning plane, where that beast might exist.
Fortunately, I already have the medium in my hands, which was my hellfire; it can connect me to hell, and dragging a weak monster out from there shouldn't be that hard. Because, according to that article, both hell and the summoning plane have the nine layers. And the beasts that wander on the upper plane are usually easy to summon.
I stretched my hands a little, warming up before pulling out the creature from the underworld. The feeling of excitement that runs through my veins was making it hard for me to control my joy.
I closed my eyes once again, starting the summoning process once again, but this time, the hellfire was guiding the way. As I close my eyes, I find myself standing in a pitch-black world, everything swallowed by the darkness.
Suddenly, the purple hellfire burns through the void, forming a path of fire for me to step on. I took my step with hesitation, but as my feet landed on the ground, the scenery had changed completely.
I stood in the middle of the forest filled with charred trees, and the sky was red with dark red clouds, surrounding the black sun in the sky. When I looked at the ground, the soil was bloody red, with a few scattered bones lying around everywhere.
"So, this is the underworld," I muttered. This was a little different from my imagination, but still, 90% of the things matched what I had already imagined. It's just that there was no blood rain happening right now, or cursed souls whispering in my head. All of this was really lessening the fear of hell from my heart. But told myself that it was just the first layer of hell, it was already meeting 90% expectations.
While I was thinking about how bland the underworld looks, it seemed to hear my inner voice, as a monstrous roar echoed through the forest.
"Awu…"
Followed by a bunch of footsteps, as I realised something was wrong, multiple black shadows emerged from the charcoal forest, leaving me no escape.
These were wolves, with half their body being eaten, rotten flesh sticking out from their body, some of them even had the strange green pulp dripping from their eyes. At this moment, I realised that I was unable to smell anything here, which was saving me from straight-up vomiting.
"Gur~ Gur…"
These wolves were circling me, slowly shortening the distance between us.
At this moment, I didn't have any way out in a sense, but there was thing I could try out. I summoned the hellfire on my palm, and a small cluster of purple appeared on my hand.
As the hellfire began to burn on my palm, the surrounding temperature instantly dropped to zero degrees Celsius. But surprisingly, I wasn't much bothered by it, and a smile appeared on my face as the realisation struck me. The Hellfire seemed to become far more terrifying here.