Dimensional Summoner: Infinite Growth in a Leveling Apocalypse

I made one final circuit before using the charge.

Both gates secured. Noisemakers clear. Rifle on the hooks. Knives on the bench. Nothing obstructing the cleared floor or either door. Water, food, blanket, clothes, medical kit.

Then I stood at the edge of the arrival space and said the honest version aloud.

"It rolls the grade first. It does not know what I want."

[Blind Call activated.]

[Eligible Grade: D.]

My mouth went dry.

[Previously Encountered Preserved Signature Detected: Liora Venn.]

[Repeat Selection Chance: 50%.]

The interval lasted less than a second.

[Preserved Signature Repeat Roll: Successful — Liora Venn.]

[Summon selected.]

[Physical manifestation initiated.]

[Manifestation Duration: 10:00:00.]

Liora came through mid-step with a pack over one shoulder and rain caught in her black hair. She wore lighter travelling leathers than the ones I remembered, with a rust-red wrap beneath them and a dark coat tied across the top of her pack.

She took two steps into the office, saw me, and dropped the pack.

There was no inspection of the room. No glance at the exits or weapons. She crossed the cleared floor, caught my face between both hands, and kissed me hard enough that I stepped back to keep both of us upright.

When she pulled away, her ears were flat and her breathing had lost its rhythm.

"You’re alive."

"I’m alive."

"I have had days of not knowing whether the last time was the last time." Her fingers tightened against my jaw. "No message. No track. Nobody I can threaten for an answer."

"I know."

"You know from the side with a charge counter." She kissed me again, shorter this time, then began checking me with the focus of a field inspection. Her hands passed over my ribs and shoulders before she turned my palm upward. "This is fresh."

"Reopened this morning. Cleaned and closed properly."

She looked at the adhesive sutures. "Voluntarily?"

"There were no witnesses."

"Suspicious."

Liora pushed up my sleeve and found the older cut along my forearm. She checked my shoulder, then stepped back and studied how I was standing.

"Level sixteen."

"You can tell?"

"Your left knee is no longer trying to resign." Her ears lifted at last and turned toward the compound beyond the walls. "Where are we?"

"Home," I said.

The word came out before I could inspect it. I did not take it back.

Her expression changed, but she only picked up her pack. "Show me."

The tour took forty minutes. Liora found nine faults, approved of six repairs, and declined to classify the vehicle-gate weld as either.

She walked both entrances, tested the pedestrian bar, and made me demonstrate the alarms. She approved of the cleared southern approach and the reinforced washout at the north-east corner. The ridge line nine hundred metres away concerned her more than the fence.

"A rifle can cover most of the yard from there," she said.

"I know."

"Knowing is not cover."

"I have not worked out how to move the ridge."

"Start with screens around the water tanks and a covered route between the office and workshop."

The workshop stopped her for longer.

The lights were on above the clear bench. Tools hung in order on the wall. Drying racks stood beside the trade materials, and the second storage unit held cleaned hides, bones, and labelled salvage rather than a pile I intended to organize later.

Liora stood in the doorway with her tail completely still.

"You built this."

"I repaired it. Most of the structures were already here."

"It was a fence around a hound den. You removed the hounds, repaired the water, powered the workshop, and made the gates close." She faced me. "The last time I saw you, you were recovering in a rented room with everything you owned packed beside the door."

"I remember."

"Now you have a room prepared for someone who might arrive afraid."

"It was for whoever answered."

"Yes," she said softly. "That is why it matters."

She inspected the site office properly on the return pass. The main door passed. The washroom exit did not, because a fallen cabinet could block it from the other side. She approved of the window only after opening it herself. The cold shower earned a startled curse and then a second attempt because she did not quite believe it.

"You have running water."

"Cold running water."

"Adrian, I have spent weeks on caravan roads where bathing required a shovel. You have running water."

We ate at the workshop bench while the rain from her world dried in her hair.

I told her about Carrow Deep from the beginning. Ashmark entering at 0714. The mine failing to reset. Bram Kessler turning back alone. Sela trapped behind a wall. The Broodmother learning which routes we intended to use and sealing them before we arrived. The maintenance raise and the resin-covered hatch.

I told her about reaching Level 16 and allocating the points. Then I told her about Aria.

There was no sensible version where I hid it.

"The Call rolled B," I said. "Her preserved chance succeeded."

Liora chewed slowly. "The knight."

"The knight."

I explained the loading-bay throat, the climb, and Aria holding the base of the raise until everyone else was above her. I told Liora that the fortress in Aria’s world had fallen only after the civilians crossed, and that Aria now guarded the rear of a refugee column of roughly four hundred people.

"And after she saved you?" Liora asked.

"She hugged me."

Her ears angled forward. "How long?"

"About three seconds."

"Did you count?"

"There was a manifestation timer."

"Of course there was." Her tail made an elaborate turn behind the stool. "What did she say?"

"That I kept my promise."

"You are collecting grateful knights," Liora informed me. "A sword knight, a shield knight—"

"Ilyana is not a knight."

"A woman with a shield who looks at you as though you personally invented competent planning. At some point, one of them is going to refuse to leave."

"They cannot refuse the timer."

"I know how it works. I am expressing displeasure. Stop repairing it with facts."

I ate another mouthful and waited.

Liora set down her fork. The teasing eased from her face.

"I am glad Aria answered," she said. "If she had not held that passage, I might have arrived in an empty room tonight. I have been living with that possibility since I returned home."

"She kept all of us alive."

"Then I am grateful to her." Liora picked up the fork again. "I will also be unreasonable about the hug for a little while. Both things can be true."

"That seems fair."

"It is extremely fair. I am showing historic restraint."

Her jealousy lasted less than half an hour and gradually turned into complaints about my improved cooking. By the end, she sat barefoot on the bench with her tail curled around one leg and my second serving in front of her.

When the bowls were empty, she noticed the copied greenhouse map beneath one of Pell’s cases.

"What is this?"

"The next bad idea."

Liora pulled the map toward her. "Good. I was worried homeownership had made you sensible."

She read the notes once, then again more slowly.

"It notices displacement," she said.

"That is the problem."

Her claw tapped the sentence I had written at the bottom.

Convince the water to report something else.

"No," Liora said. "That is the beginning of a solution."

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