The Hollow Estate rested deep in the green twilight of the Whispering Woods, a corpse of stone and decaying oak slowly being digested by the earth itself. Ivy vines, thick as a man's wrist, encased the grand pillars, and the air inside the grand hall had the taste of dust and damp age. Aleric moved through the ruin with the mechanical fluidity of an animal that had already calculated every factor of the terrain. He had chosen the location because there, the only noises were the creakings of the timber and the rhythmic thumping of his own heart.
He sat in the middle of the decaying library, his brown skin illuminated by the filtered sunlight piercing through the collapsed roof. In his hands was a leather-bound book, a remnant of the magic that a commoner like me cannot access before this. Until this point, Aleric had always scoffed at the idea of summoning with a calculating disdain. In his opinion, summoning a creature was a poor investment of limited resources. Biological summons were unsteady variables, and they needed constant mana to sustain their instincts, simulated hunger, and intricate physical complexity. To Aleric, this was "aesthetic waste," mana used for looks rather than practical use.
But as he flipped through the forgotten book, he noticed a discarded and simple form: The Faceless.
This was the variable I was missing, Aleric thought, his fingers tracing the diagram of the featureless, humanoid shape. It is not a beast. It is a void in the shape of a man. It has no skin, no eyes, no organs. If I remove the detail, I remove seventy percent of the mana overhead. It is a tool, a shadow given form.
His need was not companionship, but the gathering of data. He went to work customizing the template at once. He had created it as a "Zero Signature" entity. Its matte black body was not merely dark, but actually light-absorbing. He had created it to be very flexible, to allow it to shrink its frame, to flatten itself against the rough stone walls, or even to wrap itself around pillars as a second skin. He had created a Shadow-Blade, a black sword of the same condensed void material that reflected no light, to ensure it would be useful as a diversion or a silent killer.
Aleric began the process. He didn't tap into the magic that was in the room, he just injected the mana seed into his void space. Immediately, he felt a constant and quiet tug on his core, a parasitic drain on his life force to feed the darkness as it grew in the blackness of his storage space over the course of seven days.
Aleric didn't just wait around for seven days, however. He had requested a two-month leave of absence from the Academy to train for the Culling Examination, a brutal test match to weed out students who showed no improvement in their abilities. With a month and a half left on his clock, he turned his manor into a testing ground for exhaustion. He used what remaining mana he had left to swing his steel blade in mathematical precision and to "Mana-Purging," keeping his mana levels between fifteen and thirty-five percent to stretch his mana channels. When his heart got weak from the "Famine," he just opened his void space with a snap and cooked his salted Cinder-Drake meat over a fire to regain his strength.
By the seventh day, the "weight" in his void shifted. The gestation was complete.
Aleric stood on a mossy ridge overlooking a damp, foul-smelling cavern a mile from the manor—a nest for a local pack of Goblins. He did not descend into the filth. Instead, he stood perfectly still, pressed the tip of his middle finger to his thumb, and whispered, "Summoning."
The air rippled with a sudden, heavy pressure. A tall, featureless silhouette emerged from the space where Aleric's shadow met the stone. It was a six-foot-tall matte-black shape with no face and no sound. Aleric looked at the construct and gave it its designation: Tracker.
"Verify," Aleric commanded.
Tracker moved down the slope, not by walking but by flowing like spilled oil. Upon reaching the cave entrance, the Shade pressed itself against the jagged stone. It flattened its torso and limbs, merging so perfectly with the deep crevices of the rock that it seemed to be nothing more than a patch of darkness. Aleric closed his eyes, which activated the resonance in the Crimson Eyes.
Instantly, Aleric's vision split. He now saw the scene through the eyes of Tracker. Aleric could see the thirteen Goblins, all sharpening their rusted daggers. One Goblin gazed directly at the place where Tracker perched, flattened against the jagged ceiling of the cave. The Goblin narrowed its eyes, sniffing the air. Tracker had no scent or heat signature, but the Goblin's primitive brain simply could not distinguish the dark shape from the shadows of the cave.
Detection probability: Negligible, Aleric noted. It is not invisible, but it is unnoticeable. A perfect audit of the enemy's formation.
Aleric had now audited the den. He recalled the summon. Tracker peeled itself off the rock and flowed back into Aleric's silhouette. The final audit of the week: the endurance test.
In the courtyard, Aleric drew his steel blade. Tracker mirrored the movement, its own black shadow-sword sliding silently into a high guard. "Spar," Aleric commanded.
Tracker moved with liquid speed, its black sword whipping toward Aleric with the force of an iron cable. For an hour, the ruins rang with the sound of steel meeting condensed mana. Aleric pushed himself harder than he ever had, his mana-channels wide open. He wasn't just fighting a summon; he was testing his new reservoir. The shadow-sword was surprisingly durable, clashing against his blade with a dull, muffled chime.
Aleric felt the difference in his core immediately. Where he once would have been gasping for air at the forty percent mark, he now felt steady and cold. The walls of his mana-well had been reinforced. He fought until the sun began to dip, finally driving his blade through Tracker's core with a surge of power. The construct dissolved into black smoke, returning to the void.
Rate of stamina recovery: Up one quarter. Endurance in combat: Optimal, he decided. If I can create one Tracker in a week's time, then I can create a whole network of six or seven more in the month and a half I've got left. My surveillance will be total.
He extended a hand from his void and snapped his fingers to retrieve his cloak. He looked at his hands, steady and strong. He had made good use of his first week, and now the real work was about to begin. The Culling Exam was no longer something to fear; it was something to audit.
He settled back by the fire and let the cold spark of the second Tracker begin to germinate in his belly. As his vision focused on the massive iron gates of the Academy, Aleric felt a dark pleasure.