By the fifth lizard the skeleton was absorbing more than it was dealing, as having to fight multiple at once proved to be more difficult. The cumulative damage was beginning to show, even its movement became slightly less fluid, the response to his directions carrying a half-beat delay that hadn't been there at the start. Though it hadn't fatigued, a few misplaced bones did a lot of changes. He pushed it through one more exchange and watched it shatter under a coordinated impact from two lizards hitting simultaneously from different angles.
Once again, he didn't feel any pain from his skeleton being shattered and forced back into his summoning space.
Now there were seven lizards remaining, all charging at Leon. He stood calmly, facing the incoming monsters. His calmness was unnatural and completely illogical to Alyssa as she watched.
'Does he have so much faith in me?' She thought to herself as she looked at the unmoving and relaxed Leon.
Suddenly, the air above the remaining seven lizards became, for a brief moment, something that visibly seared with heat. In an instant, for not more than a second, an attack faster than Leon could follow with his naked eyes struck the monsters before they could react, evaporating them in a flash, leaving the sand beneath in a gooey viscous state.
Leon turned to face Alyssa with his hands in his pockets. He stood there for a moment without saying anything.
"You managed five," Alyssa said, coming back to where he was standing. Her tone carried the particular quality of someone delivering an assessment they had already completed before speaking. "That's more than most newly awakened summoners would manage against a pack of twelve. You're stronger than average."
She said it in a rather dry tone. Leon knew more was coming. "I expected more." She said, without cruelty, but also without any particular warmth. "Given the phenomenon and the dungeon incident, I was expecting more than just five."
"Not like the heat helped, but I can't really say anything about that, can I?"
Alyssa shot him an eye, making him chuckle dryly, avoiding her fierce gaze. "You mentioned something about manifestation on our way here?"
"You didn't use it."
"Well, I don't know how."
The look that followed was briefly unreadable. "You haven't felt the connection with your summon?"
"No," Leon said. "I haven't felt anything I'd describe as a "connection." Not that kind."
Alyssa was quiet for a moment, and he could see her working through the implications of that rather than simply dismissing it. "Manifestation is a union," she said. "A deeper union between the summoner and the summon, allowing the summoner to borrow and embody aspects of the summon to boost physical abilities or use the summons' abilities without having to summon them. There are cases where manifestation grants even more power, and in some cases it doesn't change anything, or is even disadvantageous. Abilities aside, the physical boost alone changes what a summoner can do in a fight significantly, and of course, this in on top the physical boost you get as you progress in rank naturally."
"And if the summon is out at the same time?"
"It breaks. You can't maintain both simultaneously below a certain level of mastery. At high mastery, both are possible, but the power is halved across each. Most summoners don't reach that." She paused. "You genuinely feel nothing from your skeleton?"
"Nothing," Leon confirmed.
She turned and started walking toward the gate entrance, and now the exit. "Then figure out why. It might not matter much now, but without that, your growth is severely capped."
Leon followed her and thought about the door rather than his skeletons. That was his true summon after all, the way he understood it. It was the actual thing that had appeared at his awakening, which was the actual summon the ceremony had produced. The skeletons came through it, but the door was the constant.
If there was a connection to be felt anywhere, it wasn't with the skeletons.
'I need to try the door. But how do I even do that?' The thought was just too hard to process that he scratched his head in frustration.
They came back through the gate and into the unfinished concrete floor of the building, the construction site heat considerably more forgiving than what they had left. The woman outside startled slightly at their return, her eyes going immediately to Leon with an expression that had moved past confusion and into something more careful.
Seeing how much he was sweating, she rushed to hand over the bottle of water in her hand she had been sipping from.
After a brief talk with Alyssa, they headed back home.
…
That evening Leon sat on the floor of his room, back against the bed, and reached inward.
Past the skeletons, all six of them arranged in his summoner's space with their greatswords and their fixed expressions. Past the immediate layer of the space where the summons resided, Leon reached for the dormant door. He still couldn't feel it yet as he normally would when it could activate a summon.
He had never tried to feel it rather than use it. Every interaction had been transactional, a summoning initiated, a summon received, the door dismissed. He had never simply sat with it and looked for what was underneath the surface. Why would anyone after all?
He maintained his focused, eyes closed and breathed slowly and stopped trying to do anything at all.
He just looked and studied the door, going over the different runic makings all over it.
For a long time, there was nothing at all, and his waist was starting to tell him that very message. This body was not used to sitting in such a position, and certainly not for long hours as it had already been more than three.
Then, at the very edge of what could be felt, something vast, dark and patient shifted slightly, the way deep water moved when something large passed through it far below the surface. There was no warm feeling between summoner and summon as was described by most in any world. Nevertheless, the important thing was that it was present. Undeniably, immovably present.
Leon remained very still and didn't move toward it or away from it, he just let himself know it was there.
'You responded,' he thought.
The darkness didn't respond, but it didn't recede either, only brooding around him in a more present state.