Chapter 563: Summoning Circles
"Don't tell me… The divinity in my blood or body is actually the reason for me to summon divine beasts all the time?"
Charlotte smiled. "Most likely. In the current version of the summoning circle, these three are combined into one, which means it will recognize everything you put into the circle as a part of it.
"Of course, this also means your body, which is also inside the circle, is also considered as a part of the Sacrifice. In other words, your blood will become a catalyst without you realizing it or not… Then again, I don't think it's a bad thing, considering you get all these powerful divine beasts as your familiars.
"The previous summoning circle is hard to use because you need to come up with those three things. Hence, only the academies or other big influences are able to summon their next familiar. That's why they combine it into a single one.
"Next will be Link. This is the connection between you and the familiar. You can say that you first form this link before being able to call your familiar into this world.
"This is also the one allowing a certain memory to be transferred to establish the mutual link. After all, familiars have the right not to come as well.
"This link is important to the question you have in mind, which I will explain after the last one, Contract.
"Looking at the current version, the contract is about equality between summoner and familiar. The summoner can't deliberately do anything that violates the familiar as a living being.
"It must have been improved because of the slave uprising where familiars were treated poorly.
"In exchange, the familiar can't harm their summoner, which gives the minimum mutual trust between them. Both you and your familiars should notice it as well… In fact, all familiars—the moment they're summoned—will already recognize their summoner and have a certain mutual understanding, right?
"That is because of this contract. To put it simply, the summoning circle is where the summoner is telling the familiar, 'Hey. This is a bit of my memory to show you what kind of human being I am. This is also your favorite food or snack and this will be your vessel. I will transfer this amount of ena, so will you come with me?'
"If the familiar accepts, the summoning ritual will succeed. If the familiar doesn't want it, it will move to other familiars similar to them until someone accepts it.
"That's why the quality of the sacrificial item will depend on the quality of your familiar. It's basically matchmaking from the best, the second best, the third best, and so on."
Nathan contemplated for a moment. "In that case, what about the skills themselves? Which part of it is restricting the skills? Is it the link? You mentioned it was related to my question."
Charlotte nodded. "Indeed. Link is definitely the main reason. Link is like a rope between you and your familiar.
"Just imagine it as if you are at the top of the cliff while your familiar is at the bottom. You have to pull your familiar with this single rope.
"However, if your familiar is stronger, you can imagine it as your familiar's weight being so high that you won't be able to pull him up. That's why, to lessen the burden, they have to seal their power."
"Seal their power, huh? But this analogy seems incomplete. I mean, how do they seal their power?"
Charlotte smiled. "Didn't I mention the cliff? Instead of you pulling them by yourself, they can help you by climbing the cliff, no? And what about the cliff itself? In this analogy, what is the cliff?"
"The summoning circle?" Nathan tilted his head in confusion.
"No. It's the world itself. The world is the 'cliff' and facilitates everything, including your familiar's record."
Nathan widened his eyes in shock. "Isn't this… I used my power to actually pry the information of Selena's familiars because I thought the world had the record…"
"Hmm…" Charlotte blinked a few times, not expecting that Nathan was already aware of it. He even tried it and his ability could actually affect the world itself.
"Doesn't this mean the world will have the record of us? What about the past record? Is it erased?"
"What are you talking about?" Charlotte tilted her head in confusion.
"I'm talking about load and save. A basic feature of video games from my world. I thought about using the time element and the contract to create a load and save function to manipulate my body's time to a certain extent. Just a concept yet, so I don't know."
"That's an interesting concept, even though I don't fully understand what it means by load and save. It's probably something like turning back in time. Even though I want to learn more about it, it's better to return to the main topic.
"The world is the one recording this information so that they won't lose their abilities. But instead, they will be locking their abilities. If you are able to seek the world's record itself, you might be able to unlock it by altering that record.
"Of course, the price will depend on how powerful that ability is. In addition, you have to consider your familiar's current body. Will their current vessel be able to withstand that power?"
Nathan looked down, falling into deep thought. "So, this link is a rope while the strong familiars can be considered 'fat,' which is impossible for humans to pull them up under normal circumstances.
"Hence, they are locking up their 'fat' within the world. But how are they able to do that? If I can find this information out, I might be able to extract a bit of the 'fat' they've stored."
Charlotte nodded. "Indeed. The answer is the link. How do you think the world is getting their information and locking their skills? What is the first connection established with the world, which allows for such a transfer of information?"
"The link!" Nathan squinted his eyes.
"Exactly. If you look at the record of the link, you will be able to see the record of that skill yourself."