Hug Me and You'll Die

13: You're so awed by my brilliance you can't even speak?

It was then that the mixture very slowly started to bubble. Strangely enough, the more heated the mixture became, the more its colours changed from purple-red to a deep green.

The real question is how? How am I going to find out about the novels' plot from inside the novels? Agh, now I wished I had read those back cover synopses more carefully when they were right in front of me!

Her face tensed as she wrapped her head around this dilemma.

Damnit, there really isn't a way is there? The only way for this plan to work is if I could somehow find a way to contact someone at home who'd be able to investigate the novels for me.

Her gaze abruptly shifted to the spot on her shoulder blade where her fourth brother's divine imprint would've been seen had it not been covered by her clothing.

For fourth brother to have placed a divine imprint on me, a strand of his soul has to be residing in my body right now. If I could devise a way to extract that strand from me, I might be able to use it to summon him into this world. Aside from the delay in development, spiritual arts seems to work the same way here...But damnit! I can't remember all the things I'd need to create a summoning array to summon an immortal.

It didn't need to be said but Desmia did not have too much experience with summoning. Like most immortals, she had been able to conjure up an image of a mighty beast with an incantation for fun or in battle, but those images were merely physical manifestations of her spiritual power. They did not "exist" prior to her bringing them forth. This was opposed to real and tangible summoned beings and creatures possessing spiritual consciousness that would've existed prior to her calling for them and would continue to exist once she sent them back to whence they came.

An authentic summoning required the use of a summoning array, an elaborate magic circle created by placing magical artifacts and materials in specific formations. Summoning was tricky because there were as many arrays as there were living things in the Mortal and Immortal Realms and a summoning would fail if even the slightest of errors were to occur whilst the array was being laid down. However, for humans, summoning was highly regarded because even a mortal without spiritual aptitude could become a summoner. Summoning only drew magic from the arrays laid down by the summoner, not the summoner themselves.

Two centuries ago, Desmia had once summoned a baby unicorn to the Underworld palace against her ex-tutor's objection because she had found a pill recipe that called for the tears of a unicorn.

When the unruly baby unicorn refused to shed tears for her, she had resorted to bullying him to achieve her purpose. She did this by convincing the unicorn that his family had sold him off to the Underworld royal family as a pet because his horn, the source of pride for a unicorn, wasn't as sharp or as shiny as his siblings.

Her bullying had worked splendidly as the poor baby unicorn had ended up not just crying, but sobbing and profusely at that. He sobbed so grievously that her entire private residence had flooded. This not only resulted in the washing away of some of her prized medicinal herbs but also a formal complaint later filed on behalf of the entire unicorn clan to her parents. No one was surprised by this development since it had long been known that the unicorn race as a whole was extremely protective of their offsprings.

To appease the unicorn clan, in addition to Desmia being punished with writing reflection letters for an entire year, the Twilight Goddess had also confiscated all of her summoning books and forbade her from summoning anything ever again.

Despite her mother's prohibition, as she still held some interest in summoning after the year, and as she honestly felt some guilt towards the baby unicorn and wanted to make it up to him, Desmia found a way to secretly gather the materials needed to summon the baby unicorn again.