Why Did You Summon Me?

When Baiyi noticed Mia staring at him intensely, he had to make do with an old trick in the book for those caught in embarrassing situations: faked coughing fit. “Uh… Uh-hem!”

He hurriedly pulled his hands away from his face and shoved the plushie into her arms, all the while hastily explaining, “Um, well, Anna came here some time ago, to return this to you, but you weren’t around. So now, well, I’m returning this to you on her behalf.”

Mia’s expression was unreadable, but she accepted the plushie and lowered her head. It seemed as though she had something to say, but no words left her lips. Instead, she walked up to her door, opened it silently, and beckoned him over with a gesture.

Baiyi entered the house quietly and sat on a chair.

“Please, let me change into something else,” Mia said. Before he could answer, she bolted upstairs.

A few moments later, Mia returned, and Baiyi could not help gawking at her.

She had changed into her old Celestial Fortress uniform! A white blouse covered her torps, and a dandy white short skirt shone below it. Further down her thighs was a pair of white silk socks, and there was a little Absolute Territory[1] visible above it. With child-like ponytails behind her head and the hammerhead shark plushie in her arms, she looked exactly like the little Mia that Baiyi first met ten years ago.

“You… You’re… Uh…” Baiyi stammered.

Mia chuckled softly and sat beside him. She stuffed the end of her ponytails into his hand and whispered, “If I let you braid my hair, will you stop being mad at me?”

When Mia was younger, this was the very same moe tactic she used whenever she realized she had crossed Mr. Hope, and back then, it had worked all the time. When Mia grew up, she considered herself too much of an adult to pull such a stunt, so the moe tactic made no more appearances, until now.

Baiyi felt like he had gone back in time. He caressed the end of her ponytails with his fingers, and his heart was filled with emotions as memories flashed through his mind.

Mia did not disturb Baiyi. She sat beside him quietly and swung her legs like a pendulum, waiting patiently for him.

It took Baiyi some time to collect his emotions. He patted her head and said, “You’ll always be my Little Mia.”

“Mm-hmm,” Mia nodded and inched closer, resting her head on his shoulder, after which she whispered, “And you’ll always be my Mr. Hope.”

They stayed that way for a while, and both were smart enough not to talk about the misunderstanding. After some time, Baiyi broke the silence with a question, “How long has it been? I can’t believe you kept this uniform.”

Mia flashed him a cheeky grin. “Well, I couldn’t bear to throw it away. Anyway, I didn’t expect it’d still fit me after all these years.”

‘Wait, doesn’t that just mean that your body has not grown much in the past ten years? But, I thought you looked… taller? Your legs seemed longer and leaner! Was that just a trick of my eyes?

Mia turned beet red; it was as though she had red Baiyi’s thoughts. She looked down with regret at her flat chest and said, “Um, it’s really…just the way I dress now. You know, heels and stuff? They give one the impression that I have grown…”

“Hmm. Well, you know what? This is for the best,” Baiyi murmured, failing to mention  why  growing up could not be considered a good thing.

“Hey, Mr. Hope? Could you tell me more about the research you’re working on now?” Mia moved away and asked.

This request took Baiyi by surprise. Mia was never interested in any reedy topics, especially not theory-heavy magical researches; Usually, not even her most admired Mr. Hope could rope her into an academic discussion.

“Well, if you insist. It’s like this…” Baiyi began, carefully explaining, in simple terms, the concepts and theories pertaining to the Scribble to Mia. He wanted her to understand it as much as possible. Mia listened quietly but intently, just like she did years ago, during her night classes with Baiyi.

Unfortunately, the scribble and its concepts were still too difficult for a Legendary-level sorcerer to understand. Baiyi tried his best to explain the complex concepts, but a handful of them were beyond the scope of Isythre’s current magical paradigm, making them seem metaphysical. In the end, all Mia could understand was that her lucky mishap in the past played a small part in the development of the research.

This realization made her face lit up. She smiled gently and said, “Honestly, I don’t really get it, but it doesn’t mean that I don’t know how amazing it is! I’m just glad that I helped somewhere.”

“Is that so?” Baiyi chuckled and nodded. “It’s fine to not ‘get it’ by now. I’m gonna write a lot about this topic in the future, and you can study them by then.”

He did not blame Mia, neither had he expected her to understand everything he had just explained to her. It was only natural that she did not understand all these for now. He was just compelled to share something he cherished felt immense pride for — a bit of knowledge that the rest of the world was oblivious to. Only he knew…and now, Mia did too.

“Me? Study them and understand them? Don’t hold your breath…” Mia mumbled a bit weakly.

She knew that she was mediocre in every way, and not gifted like Tisdale, neither was she physically-attuned to magic or combat the way non-humans like Nota and Mordred were. She was not made a messenger by a god as Attie had, neither was she born into a rich family like Vidomina was. With Baiyi out of the equation, there would be absolutely nothing worthy of attention in Mia’s life.

In the end, however, fate favored her. It was her, an average little girl, who had brought Baiyi into this world. In return, this average little girl had gained more care, protection, and affection than the other girls could hope for.

“Anyway, let’s get back to the point at hand. Since you’re the one who inspired the invention of this scribble, I figured it would be most apt that you name it,” Baiyi said.

“Huh? M-me? Are you… sure? Shouldn’t Mr. Hope be asking Grandpa about this?” Mia asked incredulously.

“Him?! How about… no. Do not let Grandpa know about this,” Baiyi replied hastily with a stern tone. “Anyway, just help me out on this one, okay? Please?”

“Um, if you insist! Lemme see…” Mia tightened her embrace around the hammerhead shark plushie and frowned — the same gesture and expression she had always worn back then whenever she tried to answer another one of Baiyi’s tricky homework questions.

It took her quite a long time before she finally spoke again, a bit sheepishly, “How about, um, The Ember of Hope?”

Her suggestion stunned Baiyi a little. Frankly, it sounded typical and unoriginal, and at the same time, it described the purpose and hope entailed in the Scribble’s existence perfectly: a little scribble that could connect the Void to the world of the living. It was exactly like an ember of hope amidst the bitter darkness. The name also managed to incorporate Baiyi’s name in this world, too.

Who knew that besides acting cute and adorable, Mia also had quite the budding talent in naming techniques?

“A most fitting name!” Baiyi nodded in approval and ruffled Mia’s hair. “Really, this name’s so amazingly apt that I have to use it!”

“Wait, are you sure? I was just winging this… you sure it’s fine?” Mia asked doubtfully.

“Nope, no problem at all!” Baiyi stood from his seat and produced a storage pouch from his inner pocket. “As a reward, here are some things you don’t get to have from this world!”

Indeed, this storage pouch stored everything he had pillaged from the Earth-resembling Moon World earlier. After opening the pouch and taking its contents out, the two found themselves facing a small hill consisting of all sorts of knickknacks as if it was Boxing Day.

“Oh my gosh! Are these—?” Mia was quite startled at the things before her eyes. She picked up a box of chocolate from the heap and looked at it carefully before asking, “Is this a desert from another world?” Then, she put the chocolate down and picked up a phone, pressing every button she could find and gave up, after which she gave Baiyi a questioning look.

Back then while raiding the entire shopping district, due to the deadline of leaving Moon World drawing near, Baiyi had resorted to the “Take All Without Discrimination” approach, grabbing everything remotely interesting without classifying whatever he had taken.

“Oh, that’s a communication tool from Earth. It’s not very useful here, though,” Baiyi explained, gently taking the phone away from her hand and gave her an impromptu demonstration on how to use it before giving it back to her.

“Whoa! The picture on it is so… Refined! It’s so clear and precise! Is it made out of magic?” Mia exclaimed as she scrutinized the phone, extending her fine fingers to poke on it experimentally.

“You can ask Santa and Anna about it. They probably remember how these were used,” Baiyi suggested. When Servants were being summoned to the real world by their human masters, they instantly gained knowledge of how to live in the current age and world they were being summoned to—or at least, that was how the lore of the Moon World was. Hopefully, that little detail did not change due to Baiyi’s “intrusion” back then!

“You know… You should ask everyone to come over and distribute all of my loots to them for me. Take whatever fancies you,” Baiyi said, watching Mia playing around with the gadgets he brought home with abject interest.

He fished out more storage pouches — each stored with even more goods from Earth, ranging from other gadgets, food, cosmetic products and more — and handed them to Mia. They were all meant to be souvenirs for his girls, yet he had not found the time to give them. At least now he could rely on Mia to be Santa Clause in his stead.

There were still a few storage pouches with him, though those were not meant for the girls. In fact, these would be the ones where the most important loots were stored in, and the only way to really utilize their good use was to pass them to the Voidwalkers.

After happily watching Mia pouring all of her attention to the otherworldly gifts he had brought home for a while, he gave her a few instructions and left her chalet hurriedly. Then, back at his office, he summoned the intelligentsia among the Voidwalkers — the Archmage, the Scholar Walker, the Engineer Walker, the Blacksmith Walker, etc.

“Here are some of the things I’d managed to raid from Earth, guys. Sorry that I didn’t give them to you earlier… I was a bit too engrossed in my work,” Baiyi explained simply and dumped the content of the storage pouch at once, causing an outpour of books.

Of all the places in the shopping district that Baiyi had raided, the bookstore and library were two places he raided the hardest.

“Can this be…?” Intrigued, the Blacksmith Walker grabbed one from the pile and studied the cover. “Are these the books that record the arcane knowledge of Earth?!”

“Er, sure, if you want to be dramatic about it. Really though, many of them are merely basic stuff, so not all of them are equally useful. I’ll leave the selection process to all of you,” Baiyi explained, grabbing one of the books from the pile with the title, “Dummy’s Guide to Basic Programming”. After flipping through some of its pages, he tossed them aside, decided that it was not useful.

Any rational person would not hope to fully replicate the technological system from Earth in a completely different world like Isythre since the Laws governing the two worlds were sufficiently different. Neither would that replication be necessary as well, since this world was governed by a system centered on magic, thus ensuring that its progress would deviate from the way Earth — governed by the laws of physics — had advanced.

The purpose of giving the Voidwalkers these books, therefore, was to inspire them enough to simulate Earth’s technologies with the methods and magical system the Walkers used. Far from complete replication, Baiyi’s intention was to galvanize the Walkers’ minds to see potentials in their own world’s development by using Earth as a reference.