Why Did You Summon Me?

The Voidwalkers and Umbra had been on friendly terms with each other for years, and this resulted in frequent partnerships. This was all thanks to the efforts of the Assassin Walker.

They mostly partnered in technical support and intel exchange; Umbra had never asked the Voidwalkers to lend them a hand in assassinations.

When Lady Assassin Walker’s identity as one of the Voidwalkers was discovered, Umbra sent her, their legend, invites to return to the organization. They even went as far as offering her the position second direct-in-command, but she rejected them, stating that she wanted to be a housewife of the man she loved. According to the codes of Umbra, this constituted as a perfectly legitimate reason for an assassin of her caliber to retire, so in the end, the only position Lady Assassin Walker accepted was being Umbra’s spokeswoman.

The girl definitely did more than just promoting the Umbra brand, though. In her spare time when she was not busy pining for Baiyi’s attention, she had occasionally helped Umbra trained a handful of newbie assassins, who in turn, crowned her the moniker “Phantom Master”.

Of course, this meant that when the girl was pining for Baiyi’s attention, she had loved to gloat with a “Hey, Doofus! Do you know? Those kids call me the Phantom Master! Pretty cool, huh? Way cooler and mature and more awesome than you’ve ever expected of me, huh?” After that, she would put on that wistful expression that screamed “Cool, right?!” and “Praise me now, Doofus!”

‘Pretty sure those newbie assassins lost their eyes during one of their past mission or something to see you as a master of any kind,’ Baiyi had thought to himself back then. However, the result soon spoke for themselves. Those who went through the Phantom Master’s short seminar improved so dramatically that they soared in ranks, turning into the organization’s most promising assassins.

The Phantom Master’s short-term seminar started becoming a legend of sorts within Umbra. By then, those who were sent to her class were no longer unskilled newbies but genius assassins who show exemplary talents, or even A-rank assassins who were struggling with a bottleneck in their mastery.

Soon enough, joining the Phantom Master’s secret seminar quickly turned into the best reward anyone within the organization could ever get on top of it being the highest honor one could be bestowed. It quickly became something exclusively awarded only to an assassin who had made an exemplary contribution to Umbra or was deemed to possess an unequivocally bright future. Any mission that featured the Phantom Master’s Secret Seminar as a bounty become a surefire mean to turn the mission into a hot cake among these assassins.

Thus, over time, Da Xue had slowly and inadvertently become an unofficial training camp for Umbra; Then, after a while, the seminar turned into a yearly event in the name of “Advanced Drills”.

Is Lady Assassin really that good? Baiyi had found himself wondering about this every time he thought about the seminar. To be honest, Baiyi had always thought that this cute-but-dumb chick was pretty much on the same level as Mia. Their best talent was only in acting kawaii…

Nonetheless, the existence of the girl’s seminar had pushed Umbra into working together with Da Xue even more closely than ever before, to the point that Da Xue could be considered as an extension of Umbra’s intelligence-gathering department. Because of that, the Voidwalkers constantly seek Umbra’s help for various tasks as well.

This drew one back to the case with the Lich. Obviously, it was Umbra who had given the Lich all of the arrest orders, assassination requests, and bounty. Even the targets’ location — as well as their related whereabouts — were provided by Umbra while the Lich served as their contract killer. Clearly, it was quite a team-up. Umbra needed the Lich Walker’s help in completing many of their missions, while the Lich used the opportunity to obtain powerful souls to enrich its Green Souls of the Enslaved v2.0.

“Quite a mutually beneficial relationship the two of you share there, huh?” Baiyi remarked, amused. “Aren’t you worried that I might just snatch my Saint Quartz back?”

“But I’m buying it from you. That’s the money right there,” the Lich Walker replied with unexpected swagger.

“What the?! You think this little bit of money is enough to buy my bloody Saint Quartz Staff?!”

“Ergo, I’m requesting to pay by installment,” the Lich Walker replied so smoothly and confidently that one had to wonder if it had scripted its replies long before this conversation had taken place. “I trust that a righteous man who proudly represents the Lawful alignment like yourself will not reject my perfectly reasonable and humble request, yes?”

Baiyi was choked into silence. In the end, he returned home with a heavy heart—not because he thought the money was terribly inadequate, but because that Saint Quartz Staff was the very first gift his goddaughter, Vidomina, had ever given him. To have that very special thing be stolen by that crafty bag of bones just… Just pissed him off!

Would the girl be dismayed if she knew about this?

The answer was, quite honestly, no. In fact, at the moment, the youngest Vice Principal of Da Xue was completely occupied by something else.

Her arms closed around her mother tightly. Their beautiful faces were still bearing faint but sure trails of tears while their eyes were red and puffy. The two of them had only just bawled their hearts out, their memories mingling with an outburst of emotions they had repressed for years. Now, they sat quietly as if they were licking the wounds made from peeling off the scabs that had previously covered them.

“Hush now, my dear. Dry your tears. You’re an important, powerful woman now, aren’t you?” Lady Harllotte cooed as she gingerly stroke Vidomina’s back. It was such a familiar sensation that it took Vidomina back to her childhood when her mother would do the very same thing as she did now to coax her out of her weep.

Overwhelmed by that memory, she buried her head into her mother’s bosom and sobbed, “I’m… Not important… in any way….”

“That’s not true! Why, even when I was out of the loop, I heard just as much about you, my dear. They call you ‘The Rising Star of Da Xue’! The ‘Iron-blooded Big Boss’!” Lady Harllotte said, her hands gently wiping the tears away from Vidomina’s face. “From that alone, I can tell that your godfather thinks very highly of you.”

“C-come on! It’s obvious that those students are just teasing me!” She protested. She might have nothing to say about being “the rising star”, but to be called “The Iron-blooded Big Boss”? That was just the students’ obviously unkind jab at her!

She was beautiful, but her line of work did not exactly make her popular. She was the head of the disciplinary department, and since she followed her godfather’s less liberal and uptight manner — right down to the way she carried herself, rarely smiling or softening up her expression. Naturally, the students did not find her endearing, causing her general standing in popularity polls to be as low as her godfather himself, while her sisters such as Mia, Nota, and Attie enjoyed endless love and adoration typically reserved for k-pop groups on Earth.

To make matters worse, she occupied a position way above all of these students’ favorites, which thrust her “uptight, oppressive” persona even more frequently to the public, which in turn caused more students to hate her…

She was just the Vice Principal, so why called her “Big Boss”? There was no way it was out of any form of respect; Vidomina was sure that the word “big” was just a snide remark on something else ! ¹

Much like anyone of Baiyi’s Angels, Vidomina had, too, received quite a handful of pink letters. When she did open them in anticipation, she found out that all of them were filled with graphic requests such as “please flog me hard”, “please spank me”, “please stomp over my body while wearing only black thigh-high socks”… Suffice to say, Vidomina never opened those letters since then.

She did not try to identify whoever sent them neither, because there was nowhere in Da Xue’s codes stipulating that sending love letters warrant a boot out of the academy. Besides, seeing all of the other girls receiving a flurry of fluffy love letters on a day-to-day basis made Vidomina itch to receive some for herself as well, even if hers were a little more explicit…

She candidly ranted about these with her mother while she was bathing, causing the woman to guffaw in glee. Then, after making some pretty explicit assessment of her daughter’s supple skin and her sexy body, Harllotte teased, “Can you blame little boys to not understand what true beauty looks like?”

After that, she suddenly buried her face in Vidomina’s bosoms.

“M-mom! Mom?! What are you do— Don’t! Don’t lick there…” Vidomina exclaimed. [1]

A few moments later, the two exited from the bathroom, their face red with blushes. After putting on a nightgown covering every inch of their skin, Vidomina sat before her mirror while her mother stood behind her, conjuring continuous gust of warm wind to blow her pink, silky hair dry.

Since Harllotte had always retained her youthful look without as much as a faint scar of age on her skin, the mother-and-daughter pair looked more like two sisters radiating sublime beauty.

“I’m a little curious, Nina. Have you found anyone you fancy?” Harllotte asked as she brushed her daughter’s hair.

She shook her head. “Well, no such luck. Besides, Godfather is very strict about all of this. I’ve seen how he punished any brat who dared get near Mia or Big Sister Dale, so…”

“I’m not surprised. Very few men deserve a woman like you, especially considering your current position,” Harllotte murmured in a low voice as if she was reminiscing her unhappy past. It was likely her bad experience that made her come to support Baiyi’s overprotectiveness. “I’m jealous, dear child. To have someone so strong and wise to look out for you… To make sure that you never be harmed…”

“Yes. Godfather is the greatest man I’ve ever met. He’s the most compassionate man I’ve ever met,” Vidomina replied earnestly. “Which is why… The man I will marry one day will have to be someone who’s just like Godfather — strong, wise, intelligent, and very gentle.”

“Few men out there could match that description, my dear. But I’ll support you all the way,” Harllotte said. With her painful past as a reminder, the woman knew better than to hurriedly marry her daughter off.

“While we’re talking about the future, what’s your plan for it, Mom?”

“Me? Nothing really. After everything I’ve been through, I just want to stay by your side in peace now,” Harllotte replied earnestly. “I just hope that Master Hope isn’t going to hold my past against me.”

Vidomina shook her head, “He wouldn’t, I’m sure. You know why?… Mom, do you know what exactly happened just now, during the auction?”

“No, I can’t say I do,” She replied. Truthfully, she joined the auction without actual knowledge of what was transpiring, so to her, everyone was just offering extremely hefty things in exchange for some unimpressive placards. It seemed that the human trafficker did not find it important to explain what was happening to her.

After hearing Vidomina’s explanation of the academy’s sponsorship system, Harllotte finally understood why everyone in the hall — all rich noble families of the Empire — were paying so much for a placard. They were trying to get into a prestigious school, yet the human trafficker had gotten in not by offering anything substantive, important, or even rare.

He got it just because he presented Harllotte.

‘He… He gave away one of these precious seats to a human trafficker… In exchange for a dirty sinner like myself? A thought sprang into Harllotte’s mind. Then, as her old habit as a noble kicked in, she started overthinking, Why would Hope do something like this? Is it really just for Vidomina’s sake? …Or is he just lusting after my body?’

She had remembered looking straight into Baiyi’s eyes ten years ago. Twice they had encountered each other, and twice she instinctively felt the same lust of a man in him. His lust may be lukewarm, it may be controlled and reserved, but as a woman with an acute instinct, she could feel it. Hope was just like any other man, Soul Armature or not.

What happens if he started acting on that lust? What could she do? Can she reject him? Will that sour his relationship with Nina? Will her precious child’s future be jeopardized? Or should she say yes, and by doing so, thrust herself back into the same painful situation she once was?

As Harllotte mused, she found herself drowning in a self-made quandary…