As Wilfred stepped into the circle, the light shimmered, and he could see its reflection in the eyes of every noble in the front row. Hundreds of people leaning forward.
"See the light from the circle, it's really bright." One of the nobles in the gallery nudged his companion. "He might even summon something greater than a dragon."
"This truly is a historic moment." The other clasped his hands together. "I'm so happy to be here."
The light around Wilfred coalesced, pulling inward, tightening into a shape on the stone floor beneath him.
Something small.
Something very, very small.
At the same time, Wilfred saw:
[You have awakened as a Peasant rank Summoner]
[You have summoned a Peasant rank Soldier Ant]
The hall went quiet, the crowd had collectively failed to process instantly what they saw. Those close enough to the circle stared at the ground, searching for what should have been a beast, a spirit, a creature of war. Those farther back craned their necks, confused by the absence of anything worth seeing.
"Where's the announcement? What's going on?"
"Host! Announce our dragon!"
The host's voice came late, and when it did, it cracked.
"Wilfred Von Argentine... P-p-peasant rank... Soldier Ant!"
The silence held for one breath. Then two…
Then the hall erupted, but not in the way anyone had imagined.
"What?" The word rolled through the crowd in a wave of stunned unison.
"Wilfred Von Argentine summoned a soldier ant?"
"Good stars." Another, a man with glossy black hair and downturned eyes, shook his head with a subtle chuckle. "Maybe he was too weak for his own potential?"
"I knew this was going to happen." A woman behind a silk fan shook her head. "Those people were getting too confident. Serves them right."
"What a disgrace."
High above, the Duke of Swords watched with the same indifferent expression he wore for everything. Next to him, Duke Hermes leaned rigidly on the terrace, the shock plain on his face. Even he had not expected this.
In the line, Harvett was grinning.
'I'm going to crush that bastard. I'm going to enjoy every second of it.'
But Wilfred wasn't listening to any of them.
He'd dropped to his knees the moment the light faded, placing his hands flat on the stone floor. The ant found them, climbing onto his palm with six deliberate legs, and Wilfred raised it slowly, eyes wide, a stunned smile spreading across his face.
He couldn't stop staring.
At first glance it resembled the trap jaw ant, but only because of its mandibles, two curved blades like miniature scythes fused at the base. Beyond that, the resemblance ended. Its body was a glossy onyx, almost polished, and it was as large as Wilfred's middle finger.
The largest ant he had ever seen.
'Bigger than the Amazon ants.'
Its compound eyes caught the hall's light and refracted it in tiny prismatic flecks. Its exoskeleton had a faint segmented texture, each plate fitted against the next with the precision of crafted armor. This was no species he recognized. Not from any continent, any textbook, any expedition log he'd ever read.
This one was familiar in shape but alien in everything else.
While the crowd laughed and whispered, Wilfred didn't hear a word of it. All of his attention, every last shred of it, belonged to the creature sitting in his palm.
He returned to the line with the ant still in his hand, still staring. Around him, the other students were quiet. A few scoffed. Others muttered.
"It's a shame."
"He's forever going to be Harvett's slave."
Wilfred, still smiling, turned to Vixra.
"You shouldn't look down on—"
Vixra turned her face away. Her gaze drifted upward, finding her father in the gallery above. The Duke's eyes were already on her, and what they communicated needed no words.
Wilfred's smile didn't quite leave, but it shifted into something that understood.
'Ah... I see.'
In a single moment, tables turned and Wilfred realized he was alone.
The host continued calling names. More summons emerged from the circle, some impressive, a few genuinely astonishing, especially among the royal family.
None of it was enough to drown the whispers still circling Wilfred Von Argentine.
The ceremony ended. Quietly, Wilfred slipped away from the crowd and into his room.
He set the ant on his table and leaned down until his eyes were level with it, watching the way its antennae swept the air, the way its legs tested the surface beneath them.
Then he remembered. When the ant had appeared, there had been something else. A text, a familiar text.
He closed his eyes, hoping this would actually work and that he wouldn't die of embarrassment if it didn't.
"Status!"
[Summoner's Status]
Name: Wilfred Von Argentine
Rank: Peasant
Summon: Soldier Ant (Level 1)(Unevolved)
Abilities Gained: 0
[Summon's Status]
Summon: Ant Summon
Type: Beast
Level: 1/10
Rank: Peasant
Evolution Stage: 0 - Unevolved
Abilities: [Bite], [Harden], [Detect], [Carry]
[First time note: Every time your ants evolve you will gain one of its evolved abilities]
[First time note: There is no ceiling to your ant's evolution. Your summon can evolve infinitely]
Wilfred read through everything twice. The abilities were, on the surface, simply a codified version of what any real ant could do.
[Bite: Your ant's mandibles can pierce through anything except armored skin above its rank. This ability will evolve once your summon evolves.]
[Harden: Your ant is denser than a natural ant would be. It can take a direct blow from a creature twice its size without cracking. A direct hit from anything above Peasant rank can break its exoskeleton.]
[Detect: Your ant perceives her surroundings through pheromone detection and air particle analysis rather than sight or hearing. The range is roughly five meters at Peasant rank. She can identify living creatures within that radius, distinguish hostile from neutral, and track a scent trail up to an hour old.]
[Carry: Your ant can lift and transport objects significantly heavier than herself.]
Wilfred sat back.
'No ceiling.'
The words burned in his mind brighter than all the rest. An ant that could evolve infinitely.
The evolution had to be intentional. If he wanted to develop this ant into something perfect, he couldn't just throw cores at it and hope. From the former Wilfred's memories, he knew that was how most summoners did it: combat experience and monster cores, straightforward and predictable.
But Wilfred knew ants.
Ants were the most adaptive creatures on earth. Their evolution was never random. It responded to the colony's needs, reshaping bodies and behaviors to fill whatever role the colony required. Soldier, worker, flier, farmer. The colony's need shaped the ant's form.
Right now, the colony was just Wilfred and this little ant.
And what shaped evolution wasn't generic fuel like monster cores. It was what the ant consumed. The materials. The carcasses. The specific substances that its body would break down and rebuild itself from.
He searched his room for something metallic. The candlestick was too thick. The clasp on his trunk was too hard. He didn't want to shatter her mandibles testing a theory.
His gaze dropped to his own clothes. The small metallic button on his collar.
He pried it loose and placed it on the table in front of the ant.
"Here, buddy. Eat this."
The ant's elbowed antennae twitched, reading the air. Her compound eyes found Wilfred, held him for a moment, then shifted. Six legs carried her toward the button in an unhurried march.
She climbed it with her forelimbs. Her mandibles closed around its edge.
[Your summon is using Bite]
The scythe-like mandibles sheared through the metal with almost no resistance. She tore through it in pieces, consuming shard after shard until nothing remained on the table.
[Your Soldier Ant has consumed light metal]
[Level Up!]
Level 1 → Level 2.
Wilfred pushed back from the table, his breath caught somewhere between his chest and his throat. His theory worked. A theory that, by every rule he knew about summoning in this world, should have been impossible.
But ants didn't follow rules. That was the whole point.
A grin broke across his face, wide and unguarded, and he leaned back toward the table to study the ant again when a loud bang on the door killed the moment dead.
His grin vanished quickly turning to a scowl.
"These damn boys, don't they have their own business?!"