Dark Fantasy Guide for the Summoner - Chapter 5

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 5.
Express Circular Train Armand V
In the game, the train derails and combat begins almost immediately. Typically, this is the player’s first battle in the Forest of Shadow.
Of course, the enemy isn’t a Shadow.
Shadows aren’t particularly frequent encounters, after all.
So who exactly is the main threat in this game?
At this point, it helps to recall the game’s very name.
Forest of Shadow.
Forest.
That is, the forest itself is the primary stage of this game, and all manner of grotesque creatures dwelling within it are the Delver’s true enemies.
……Naturally, Magical Beasts are among them.
* * *
Thud, boom……
The Shadow—the black octopus that binds and crushes—draws ever closer.
Current position: Cabin 7…… or perhaps Cabin 8?
I could guess well enough why its pursuit had paused.
‘It’s feasting on corpses.’
Cabin 13 lies five cabins ahead. Given its size, it won’t take long to dispose of every body in the spaces between.
‘Damn it.’
How many times is that I’ve cursed today?
Feels like I’m spewing out a year’s worth of profanity in a single day.
“Th-thank you.”
Just then, the man in the robe spoke to me.
Dark violet hair, a fine robe. Angular features that sat strangely with his timid, hesitant expression. Tall as a bean pole—clearly well-fed and well-raised.
From his expression and bearing, he didn’t seem to be nobility.
“If you hadn’t saved me, I’d be……”
“Hard to believe.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Alec, wasn’t it? How did such a careless fool end up leading the group?”
The broadcast, the voice—the more I thought about it, the more things felt off.
Any proper Delver would suspect the moment a voice echoed from Cabin 4. That’s the natural response.
The man swallowed hard and spoke.
“Ah, I… I understand your doubts. From Cabin 4 onward, only elite Delvers were aboard. That all of them were wiped out—even I find that difficult to accept.”
“Not all of them.”
“Sir?”
“Probably only Cabin 4 took the hit. The ones ahead of that have a good chance of surviving.”
“Then the creature in Cabin 4……?”
“Who knows. Probably the Delvers in front of Cabin 3 had it temporarily restrained. Until some idiot smashed the lock.”
The lock had been silver.
That alone was enough to contain the Shadow within.
The mage’s expression shifted, as if he’d grasped the chain of causality, at least in broad strokes.
“Ah……! Then if we stay quiet and wait, the Delvers from the forward cabins will come to rescue us!”
“……Maybe not.”
Fat chance of that.
If they’d been so conscientious about rescue, they would’ve dealt with that Shadow long ago.
Merely sealing it away meant they avoided unnecessary risk.
‘That’s just how Delvers are wired.’
……So what now?
We’d run all the way back to Cabin 13, so our survival odds had dropped to roughly one in ten at best.
Boom, boom……!
The bastard won’t even give me time to think.
The sound had grown closer than before.
I was grimly turning over possibilities when the mage—still not fully grasping the situation—spoke to me.
“I’m Kazen. Your name is Kaindle, yes?”
Introductions? Now?
Perhaps there really is no time left.
“Yeah.”
“And that one is Cria.”
“Kazen and Cria?”
Now that I thought about it, they had the same hair color.
The mage smiled wryly and spoke.
“She’s my sister. And those people just now…….”
“We don’t have time for pleasantries. You two—what are your classes?”
“Ah. I’m a mage.”
When I turned my gaze toward her, the younger sister replied in a sluggish tone.
“I’m a summoner…….”
How could anyone feel drowsy in a situation like this?
My composure shattered at the sound of her sleep-laden voice.
What’s more, her hair was so long that I could barely make out her face.
Still.
‘A mage and a summoner?’
I’d thought them useless, but both of their classes were actually noble ones.
I felt a flicker of hope stir within me as I asked.
“What spells can you cast?”
“Light.”
“And?”
The mage blinked both eyes.
Why did he look so anxious?
“That’s all there is……?”
…….
A joke rose to the back of my throat, but I swallowed it.
“You can only cast one spell?”
“I-I’m sorry……!”
“What about you?”
His sister blinked slowly, then averted her gaze and mumbled something.
“I made a contract with Silpi…….”
“A low-rank wind spirit. Anything else?”
…….
…….
The self-proclaimed summoner fell silent, her eyes deliberately turned away.
‘Damn it…….’
A mage who could only cast Light and a summoner contracted to a single low-rank spirit?
How in the world did they qualify as mage and summoner?
A light bulb and a hand fan—that’s what they were.
‘So they really are useless after all.’
The three who’d died earlier were difficult to work with, but at least they seemed competent.
“Kaindle. What do we do now……?”
Unlike the ones who’d just died, this mage asked my opinion openly.
It wasn’t because he possessed some admirable moral compass that made him indifferent to hierarchy or slavery.
‘He just hates taking responsibility.’
In a crisis like this, people like him were always the first to shirk the weight of decision.
My head throbbed, yet something felt oddly familiar about it.
Yes. This was the taste. This was what the FoS was really like.
Most of my early partners had been missing a screw or two.
‘Though with some of them, it wasn’t just one or two screws—it was dozens.’
……For now, let me assess the situation.
As I said, high-rank Shadows are pouring into the forward cabin constantly.
Which means rendezvous with the first-class Delver they mentioned is impossible.
‘What about jumping from the train?’
I looked out the window.
The landscape streaming past seemed to be moving faster than before.
Whether it was my imagination or not, we’d clearly already exceeded sixty kilometers per hour.
‘Did the train go into runaway mode when the conductor died?’
At minimum, we were doing eighty kilometers per hour, perhaps more…….
Jumping from a train moving at this speed was no different from hurling myself from a ten-story building.
Even now, with my physical abilities significantly enhanced, the odds of survival were slim.
Which left only one option…….
‘Hide in Cabin 13 and wait it out.’
The one where Derek’s corpse was—or was it already gone?
In any case, I needed to return to that room where I’d first regained consciousness.
‘In the game, I survived that way.’
As a veteran player myself, I’ve run the Instant Death Route more than a few times.
Naturally, I’ve hit game over before.
But across all those playthroughs, I’d never died in a train derailment.
‘So……’
Could I trust that pattern now?
The train could tip before that shadow bastard arrives, and I could slip away in the chaos, alive.
Throb—
Just then, pain flared through my ribs. The gouges Derek had left.
“Ha……”
A laugh escaped me.
What, because the game went that way, this would too?
Fat chance.
Like I said before—the flower garden in my skull withered and died long ago.
“Kaindle?”
Caught between narrowing my eyes, laughing, and acting like a fool, even the mage’s expression grew serious.
The sight of him waiting for my answer anyway struck me as ridiculous.
“Let’s head further back.”
“Further back? Isn’t Cabin 13 the last passenger cabin?”
“For paying guests, yes. But beyond that lies the cargo hold.”
“The cargo hold……? Ah. Food storage and supplies, then. There might be tools there that could help……!”
Hope flickered across the mage’s face, but I shook my head.
“Nothing. Just food, rusted farm tools, and coal packed in tight.”
“Then why go there at all……?”
“……Just follow me.”
The thumping sound grew far louder.
Two cabins left, maybe? With that bulk, it devours corpses quickly.
‘About five minutes per cabin, so roughly ten minutes remain.’
We passed through Cabin 14, the food storage, and Cabin 15, the supplies and coal hold, before reaching Cabin 16.
The final cabin of the Express Circular Train Armand V.
“Ugh……!”
The moment we entered the last cabin, the mage pinched his nose.
“What in the world is this stench?”
“Beast waste, probably.”
I’d caught a whiff of something similar at a zoo once.
“B-beasts?”
“To be precise—”
I opened the door as I spoke.
“Magical Beasts.”
Growl……!
Dozens of pairs of eyes—hunger and malice intertwined—fixed on my face.
A presence different from the Shadow. More primal, raw—a fear that cut closer to the bone.
The reality hit me then: what I was about to attempt was a reckless gamble, pure and simple.
‘Damn it.’
No matter how I thought it through, this was my best shot.
“Urgh……!”
That’s when it happened.
The mage clamped a hand over his mouth and bolted for the corner. A retching sound followed.
‘Is this bastard actually vomiting?’
Even I couldn’t laugh at a spectacle this pathetic.
I glanced over at his sister—at least she wasn’t spiraling into the same shameful display her brother was.
I left the pair to their devices and surveyed the space around me.
[Lv.18 ‘Sickle Mantis’]
[Lv.17 ‘Black-Scale Crocodile’]
[Lv.13 ‘Three-Eyed Crow’]
The names and levels of the caged Magical Beasts became visible to me.
Some of the higher ones broke level 20, but naturally, that wasn’t nearly enough.
‘It has to be somewhere here.’
These Magical Beasts—they were supposed to be fought only after the train derailed.
‘When the train flips, the impact shatters their cages, and they break free.’
By that point, a player would have secured at least a weapon.
In other words, these creatures were the first combat encounter a player faced when progressing through the Instant Death Route normally.
‘And since the player’s level starts at 10…’
It wasn’t unusual for their levels to fall somewhere between 10 and 20.
‘As long as the difficulty was Hard or below.’
But if I had set the difficulty for this run—
Then it would be neither nor , and the probability of it being was even lower.
‘Hell Difficulty.’
If it was that most brutal, most unreasonable, most wretched difficulty—
Then there had to be a specific type of creature present.
I suppressed my anxiety and scanned the Magical Beasts meticulously, and…
“…!”
I found it at last.
[Lv.33 ‘Silver-Maned Wolf’]
A level jutting out like a nail, standing alone and conspicuous.
Unlike the other Magical Beasts that snarled and raged, this one sat quietly among the pack.
“Huh…”
Either way, I’d successfully threaded the first needle of the strategy.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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