Dimensional Summoner: Infinite Growth in a Leveling Apocalypse

The seal failed in pieces, and every piece took an option with it.

Pale light withdrew from the top hinge. Wren forced more energy into the ward, but it re-formed thinner and farther inside the frame.

"It will hold the centre," she said through clenched teeth. "Not the edges."

The left wall rang under sustained pressure. Something heavy was not striking the concrete now; it was leaning into it. Above us, the chewing remained patient and steady. Dust fell onto Teo’s tarp in a widening cone.

I helped Marek upright and got two steps before the geometry ended the attempt.

The narrow throat lay across eight metres of open bay. Marek would need support over broken rock. Teo had almost nothing left. Wren could not release the seal until they crossed, and the moment she released it, the bay would fill.

Our false trail could distract part of the colony. It could not hold a one-person gap.

I could not hold it either.

That mattered more than pride. I possessed stealth, senses, coordination, a rifle, and a body that had finally stopped losing arguments with stairs. None of those things made me a frontline fighter capable of standing before a coordinated B-grade colony.

I had one resource that might produce such a person.

I also had no control over who it produced.

Now. While there is still a door.

I lowered Marek beside the cabinet, cleared two metres of floor, and activated Blind Call.

[Blind Call activated.]

[Eligible Grade: B.]

My breath caught. The first roll had given me a chance. Nothing more.

[Previously Encountered B-Grade Preserved Signatures Detected.]

[Preserved Signature Repeat Roll: Successful — Aria.]

[Summon selected.]

[Physical manifestation initiated.]

For one stunned instant, the name refused to become real.

Aria’s preserved chance only existed after Blind Call happened to roll B. Ilyana’s signature belonged to the same grade. I had selected neither woman, and danger had changed no odds. Randomness had simply produced the one knight I already knew could hold a gate.

Then the wall boomed again.

Luck had found Aria. I could understand how impossible that was later, if we had a later.

The air compressed in the corner.

She manifested in the middle of a step, one hand already moving to the sword at her hip. Wherever the Call had taken her from, she had been outdoors at night. Rain darkened her jaw-length hair, and a green surcoat lay damp over fitted mail and plate. Her armour was not the ruined equipment I remembered. It was repaired, mismatched in places, and scarred by use. A pale new line ran beneath her left ear.

She remained tall and powerfully built, full through the chest and strong through the hips and thighs, with the balanced weight of someone who wore steel as naturally as clothing. More important than any of it was the command in her face. High cheekbones, firm mouth, eyes that entered a room and immediately began assigning survival.

She smelled of rain, woodsmoke, and horses.

She was alive.

Time had continued in her world. The repaired armour, healed injuries, and new scar made that undeniable. She had returned to her collapsing gate after leaving me in the tunnel and lived long enough to acquire more history I knew nothing about.

Relief had no place in the room. It arrived anyway.

Her gaze swept across the door, ward, survivors, weapons, and exits before stopping on me.

[Combat-Language Synchronization Enabled.]

[Coordination Link Enabled.]

[Manifestation Remaining: 74:58.]

"Adrian."

Just my name, spoken as if she had considered it when I was not there and would deny doing so.

Her eyes moved down and back up. She saw the rifle held as a tool instead of a promise. My balanced stance. The muscle that had finally begun covering the beautiful joke body she had once carried through Eastbridge.

"You survived," she said.

"You told me to."

Her attention paused on my face for half a heartbeat longer than battlefield assessment required.

"And grew strong enough for the road to find you again," she said.

"A very small road."

"It was enough."

Something nearly became a smile before duty killed it.

"Report."

The coordination link carried urgency without requiring drama.

"Underground mine. Coordinated insect colony. Scouts, heavies, restraint castes, burrowers, and ranged variants. Three injured survivors. Wren is maintaining the seal. Teo is depleted. Marek’s leg is splinted. One team member is dead behind us. One is missing deeper. A Broodmother controls the colony, and we are not fighting it."

"Exit?"

"Across the bay, through a one-person throat, back to the pump station, then a northern crosscut and forty-rung ladder. Approximately eighty minutes at their pace."

"When the seal falls?"

"The bay fills."

Aria placed one hand against the door and tilted her head, reading the vibration through steel and stone.

"How many outside?"

"I don’t know."

"Good. You did not invent a number."

She turned and rearranged the room in seconds.

"Wren. How long between releasing the ward and losing it?"

"Two heartbeats."

"Release only on my order. Teo, you go behind Marek. If he falls, you drag him; you do not stop in the opening. Marek, sling the crossbow and put both arms over their shoulders."

Then she looked at me.

"The throat floor?"

"Loose stone. Ankle-deep."

"You cross first and clear a path with your boots. Your route is sound, but wounded people will move more slowly over rubble than your estimate allows."

One correction. Obvious after she said it. Potentially fatal if she had not.

"The gap is the fight," she continued. "Whoever controls it decides how many enemies reach the bay."

She ordered Wren to abandon the cracked supply case and wrap her shield strap around Marek’s torso as an extra support. Teo moved their remaining restorative vial into a pocket he could reach one-handed. Every instruction shortened a delay or removed an object someone might die trying to retrieve.

"Aria—"

"You have people to move. I have a timer. Do not waste either by arguing."

It was the same practical cruelty with which she had once tightened my bandages and told me pain was information.

The right wall split with a sound like a gunshot. A black burrowing head forced through the concrete.

Marek fired his last useful shot into its open mouth. The bolt emerged through the back of its shell, and the creature thrashed hard enough to trap itself in the hole.

"Now would be excellent," Marek said.

Wren looked to me. Aria could hold the passage, but the extraction was still my decision.

I nodded.

"Open it," Aria ordered.

The ward vanished.

Wren hauled the door inward, and Aria passed her in the same motion.

The loading bay had filled with moving shapes. Scouts came low and fast. Resin glistened between raised limbs. An armoured heavy drove up the centre with its head lowered.

Aria did not meet its mass with her own.

She reached the throat first, placed one foot against solid rock, and angled her blade across the narrow opening. When the heavy charged, she turned its front plate with steel and a sharp pivot, using the wall to steal the width it needed. Chitin struck stone. The creature jammed sideways, blocking the castes behind it for one precious moment.

Aria cut into the softer joint beneath its head and stepped back into position before the body finished falling.

Sword, footwork, stone, and a passage too narrow for numbers to matter.

The first time I had seen her, she had stood at the last gate of a fortress with civilians behind her.

You never left that gate. You only keep finding new ones.

More legs scraped through the dark.

Aria settled her stance, blade ready, and looked back once.

"Get them out," she said. "I will hold this passage."

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!