Why Did You Summon Me?

Baiyi’s bombshell revelation stunned the Voidwalkers silent. They quickly sat on the floor, cross-legged, waiting for an explanation.

Baiyi kicked the Archmage, who was on the floor, a little to see if he was still alive, and when he saw that the old man was fine, Baiyi’s gaze shifted to the crowd. “The War God wasn’t idle when we were making our efforts. Remember the time that the Green Grandruler kicked me to an alternate world — from which I returned with bags of souvenirs and two lolis? That feat inspired our friend to learn a new facet of the Spatial Laws and gain enough understanding to open portals to different universes.

“Granted, humans in Prehistoric Times had done similar researches before, but after breaking through the limit of this universe only to discover no sign of life and civilization beyond, they gave up. But my incident with the Grandruler had prompted the War God into seeing the Laws in a new light and gained new understanding. Problem is, opening a porthole and maintaining its stability c0nsume way too much power, which is why the job of exploring the worlds beyond fell onto me instead.”

After the War God-possessed Attie suddenly handing Baiyi her sword last night, he wasted no time reading the Spatial Laws imbued within it. It was a radically different experience than his struggle with the Temporal Laws. If Baiyi characterized his Temporal Law learning experience as “studying a heavenly master’s esoterica with an intelligence score of 10”, then learning the Spatial Laws would be “reading a rudimentary textbook with an intelligence score of 500”. It went so swimmingly that Baiyi had no trouble understanding the War God’s intentions and meanings.

“Anyway, I’ve performed a few tests on this thing for a while now, you know, tossing everything into it, including magic. But there was never any observation… except for this one.”

Baiyi tore off his arm and hurled it into the black hole and waited. A few seconds later, he caught the arm zipping out of the portal unharmed and lodged it back into place.

“This means that wherever we find ourselves after going through this portal is probably safe, right?” Baiyi said, flexing his arm. “Mana and psychic energy can penetrate through this portal uninhibited, which was how I controlled my arm into flying back to me after it went to the other side. But for some reason, any surveillance magic failed to work over there. Oh, by the way, there’s proof of intelligence on the other side.”

He picked up the spanner the black hole had spat out earlier and what looked like a note in an unfamiliar and undecipherable language. “You guys already know about this spanner, but I’d received this note from there a while ago. I can’t read a single word from it; I used a translation spell on it, and still nothing. I think I might have gotten the decoding part of the spell wrong?”

The Scholar Walker, the Void’s nerdy introvert with heavy thick-rimmed glasses, promptly took the paper from Baiyi’s hand on cue and went to a corner to begin doing what she did best: decoding and translating an unfamiliar text with magic.

“Well, if it’s so safe there, why don’t you just detach your head and throw it through the portal?” The Archmage asked while climbing to his feet.

Baiyi glared at him. Just because his arm made through the portal without problem did not necessarily mean his head would be just as safe too!

“Look, don’t you still have a scout marionette to spare?” He asked the Engineer Walker. “Throw one through this, would ya?”

“Oh, good idea — hey. Why didn’t you come to me last night when this happened?” With a nod, the Engineer began to search for the dragonfly scout he has used during the Just War.

“Well, now that you people have restored your human bodies and adapted a normal human’s daily schedule during our last game, nighttime becomes off-limits. I couldn’t possibly disturb your rest at that late hour,” Baiyi explained as he watched the Engineer pulling out all kinds of weird knickknacks from his storage pouch until there was a pool around his feet. Among the pile were replicas of PDA made from magic and Isythre engineering; figurines boasting even better craftsmanship than their originals on Earth; large Gundam models so well-made that one could catch the severe and somber quality from their looks and styles. Everything a self-respecting Advanced-tier otaku should have.

“Did you just use the funds I’ve supplied to you to buy resin robots?” Baiyi asked sharply, picking up one of the most gorgeously-rendered Gundam from the pile. The artisanship, the coating, and even the way it felt against Baiyi’s hand rivaled the genuine article from the original company on Earth. Imagine making a one-to-one clone like this in Isythre! The price of its making must be astounding.

“Oy, you touchy me no likey!” The Engineer Walker hissed, swooping the model from Baiyi’s hand before carefully placing it back into his pouch. “I got this by saving every penny I can from the nobles’ investment, plus some donations and monetary help from my lovely students, okay? It’s one of my most prized treasures!”

‘Which means you didn’t just raise a school of perverts but also Gunpla¹ enthusiasts! Seriously, have you ever step back and question the direction of your teaching?’

Baiyi trapped the rant in his throat for the sake of the Engineer’s aid. Instead, he urged, “Are you done rummaging through your junks?”

“I think I might have used all of them…” The man explained, evidently embarrassed as he tucked a doujin art series of unknown anime girls into his pouch. “Making that sort of marionettes is meticulous, complicated work. It’s all made by human hands. And then the war cost so much that I might have run out of scouts a while ago.”

“Really? Then allow me to help you with that!” Baiyi said and grabbed a Gundam model with a greenish coat from the floor. “This thing right here should be movable, if I’m not mistaken.”

He prodded the model and the single red eye in its roundish head lit up. Two pairs of wing-like accessories fanned out behind its back like a blossoming flower. “Enchant a bit of surveillance and object-manipulation magic, and we have ourselves a last-minute scout!”

Baiyi was just about to cast his spells when the Engineer Walker jumped with his hand stretched. “No, please! I’ll make a new one for you from scratch; I’ll do it!”

“Pssh, it’s only a Zaku¹. Why so dramatic, man?” Baiyi dismissed, showing no sign of returning the model to its master. He quickly added his spells on it and hurled it through the portal.

“You have no idea what it was that you’ve just thrown through the portal!!! That was my Kshatriya!¹” The Engineer Walker wailed, tugging on Baiyi’s leg. Once images of the other side the scout had captured appeared in the living room, he instantly ceased his sobbing and lay on his stomach, watching with interest with the other Voidwalkers.

A magical screen was erected in the middle of the room. There, the first thing that fell into the Walkers’ sight was a large, seemingly endless dome of clear, cerulean sky. The scout scanned around with its single red eye, revealing that it was handing in midair. There was no sight of land but layers of white clouds. The portal had opened in high altitude.

How did the spanner and a paper note manage to leap through the portal? What sort of intelligent beings could rise to the stratosphere just to throw their tool and a piece of paper? Or do some kind of hawk-people and a stellar industrial civilization populate this world?

The crowd was still baffled by this strange new world when the sea of cloud below the scout began to roll into a tide. The white cotton candy abruptly parted, and a sizeable steam-powered ship broke out. It was like a cruise sailing through the ocean as it rode through fluffy white tides towards the portal.

The ship stopped at a close distance to the portal, and a fleet of smaller boats resembling snowmobiles moved out from it. Every snowmobile appeared to be piloted by two humanoid creatures in large, thick fur coats and a pair of goggles; they looked like World War Two pilots swooping close to the portal.

One of the riders had a musket-resembling gun on their hand and was aiming at the portal. Their partner, meanwhile, produced a handful of objects before tentatively throwing them into the hole.

A few moments later, metallic trinkets exited from Baiyi’s side of the portal. They appeared to an assortment of badges, keychains, screws, and bolts. A few of them, however, were small metallic plates inscribed with strange letters.

‘What a peculiar civilization!” The old geezer exclaimed, having already recovered from the wrestling match with his student. “It’s not easy to make such a gigantic vehicle fly at this altitude! Too bad other objects they have displayed so far aren’t that impressive, huh?”

As his experiment, the Archmage flicked the tiniest fireball he could manage through the portal. About as weak as a candle flame, the fireball clashed against the shell of the closest snowmobile. It elicited a few sparks, but there was otherwise no damage.

“Oh. They don’t seem to have any barriers or protection surpassing our expectations neither, huh?” The Archmage commented a little lamentably, shaking his head.

His little test, however, had frightened the other side. The humanoid creatures shrieked in an unintelligible language and steered their snowmobiles away from the portal in a chaotic scramble. Amid the furor, the musket fired off, leaving a trail of green smoke in its mouth.

Smack!

Baiyi caught the projectile flying out of the portal casually and studied it. It was a round bullet made from an unidentifiable metal, but it looked like something straight out of the Age of Imperialism. Whatever its material was, it was not particularly sturdy, since Baiyi crushed it into powder just by closing his hand into a fist.

No matter how he looked at it, the disparity of technological advancement between their muskets and that steam-powered flying ship was too jarring. They were so different that it was as though one of them was displaced in a wrong timeline.

“Whatever this weird civilization is, let’s get a closer look, shall we? A look at their ship?” The Engineer Walker suggested to Baiyi’s nod of approval. The former began to control the scout so that it flew closer to the ship in the clouds.

Then suddenly, the scene turned black. The scout had lost its connection with Baiyi and plummeted onto one of the lucky snowmobiles cruising below.

Baiyi and the Engineer Walker stared at each other. A while later, the owner finally sobbed. “I’ve been so busy with the war that I’ve forgotten to charge her, and now she’s out of mana — nooooooo! My Kshatriyaaaaa!”