Namely — opening up a spatial gate, and from the other side of that gate, pulling over a target that shares some “causal connection” with himself.
The existence summoned over would have its body composed of magic.
In a certain sense, this was somewhat similar to parts of the concept of the Third Magic over on the Type-Moon side.
If you took the place in the Heavenly Realm where souls underwent reincarnation, and treated it as the Throne of Heroes, then in theory it really was possible to piece together a ritual logic resembling Heroic Spirit summoning.
But the problem, equally, was obvious.
With his current mental energy as a Lv.
1 rookie, how on earth was he supposed to forcibly drag down a captain who had reached Lv.
4 in life?
The Falna was, fundamentally, a transformation on the level of body and soul.
Even if the person had already died, the strength of their soul would still retain that same tier.
This was also why those ancient heroes, even after reincarnation, retained equally astonishing talents.
But Natsuka could feel it.
The cause of his failure wasn’t simply a matter of insufficient magic power.
“Your line of thinking, I think I roughly get.”
After closing her eyes and pondering for a moment, Astraea softly began to explain.
“In this world, when children die, their souls in the end all return to the Heavenly Realm, awaiting the next reincarnation.”
“As for the souls of Monsters — they too return to the Dungeon, to once again undergo rebirth.”
“Your failure this time — the cause may very well lie there.”
Natsuka furrowed his brow.
“You mean…
the former captain’s soul has already reincarnated?”
No, that wasn’t right.
Going by how things stood in the original story, that good-for-nothing elf of the future could even use her own magic to summon a phantom-image of Alise.
Sure enough, Astraea quickly shook her head and denied it.
“It’s not that.”
“Right now most of the gods have descended to the Lower World, and the gods responsible for managing the Heavenly Realm’s reincarnation have, on the contrary, become much fewer — so the cycle of a soul’s reincarnation gets stretched out very long.
Usually a single full cycle takes about a thousand years.”
“Then it’s even more strange.” Natsuka clenched his teeth, his heart unwilling to let it go.
“If a Goblin could be successfully summoned, why doesn’t it work when I try to summon the former captain?”
“Perhaps…” Astraea, after a slight hesitation, offered her own conjecture.
“For Monsters that die up on the surface — perhaps their souls aren’t immediately taken back into the Dungeon’s keeping any longer?”
“It may also be that, once they’ve left the Dungeon, it takes a very, very long time for their souls to once again return to the Dungeon’s system.”
Saying this much, she let out a soft sigh.
“In actual fact, even for gods, our research into the Dungeon is extremely limited.
Plenty of things, even we ourselves don’t fully understand.”
But that remark of hers, on the contrary, struck through Natsuka’s mind like a bolt of lightning.
That’s right.
Human souls return to the Heavenly Realm!
If even the Dungeon — sealed away by the gods — could intercept and manage souls, then the Heavenly Realm itself, as a higher-tier world, would only block off souls all the more dramatically.
This was no longer a problem of ordinary spatial distance.
It was a barrier between world and world.
One was like paper.
The other was like a steel plate.
Now that he had pinpointed the cause of his failure, the fire in Natsuka’s heart, on the contrary, was rekindled.
For him, discovering a problem was never something to be afraid of.
What was to be afraid of was not being able to find where the problem was.
Now that he knew it was the “barrier between worlds” that was hanging him up, then he’d find a way to smash this barrier to pieces.
And right in front of him — wasn’t there a perfect example of someone who had successfully crossed through that steel plate from the other end of the world and descended to the Lower World?
“Lady Astraea, I beg you, tell me — how can I anchor a world-coordinate?!
This matter is extremely important to me!”
“What on earth are you trying to do?” Although Astraea’s tone was calm, in her heart, she was already in turmoil.
Could this child possibly be…
planning to just run straight off to the Heavenly Realm and snatch someone away?
Unfortunately.
She had guessed correctly.
What Natsuka was thinking right now was: viciously punch a hole clean through the world-wall, and go fish someone out from beyond the world.
“Since we can’t pull a soul back across worlds directly, then all we have to do is open up a hole between the two worlds, right?!”
The more Natsuka spoke, the more excited he got — his eyes shining alarmingly bright.
“On the Heavenly Realm’s side, isn’t there a great lake that houses souls?
Any soul that hasn’t yet reincarnated would surely be drifting around in that area.”
“The way I see it, the Heavenly Realm is like the higher-tier Root, and that lake is the Hall of Heroic Spirits.”
“What I’m going to do is tear open a slit between the two sides, and then make my own self into the [Holy Grail] in the middle — and simulate the Heroic Spirit summoning ritual!”
He spread his hands wide, growing more and more confident as he spoke, his whole self carrying a kind of near-mad gleam.
“As long as that barrier between worlds gets cracked open, then not only the seniors — even those heroes who have already passed away aren’t without a chance of returning to this world!”
This idea sounded so wild, so flying-off-the-rails, it was almost absurd.
The thing is, though.
Natsuka really did have a chance of pulling it off.
After all, he was a person who had transmigrated across worlds twice.
The magic born of that very experience would, by its very nature, possess the potential to pry open the world-wall.
____
👻🔥Walnut-chan in “P” for more!🔥👻
🔥 New history: Danmachi: Summoning Ruri Gokou,