For a moment, Eren couldn’t process what he had just seen.
[SSS Summoning Allowance × 3.]
He didn’t fully understand what a Summoning Allowance was, but a bit of ordinary human logic told him it had something to do with summoning spirits.
He was still chewing on that thought when the interface popped up again.
[Summoning Allowance Description: Summoning Allowances allow the Spirit Summoner to carry out summonings based on the rank of the allowance.]
[Ranked from F to SSS, the Spirit Summoner can only summon an SSS-Rank Spirit with an SSS-Rank Summoning Allowance, an A-Rank Spirit with an A-Rank Summoning Allowance, and so on.]
"Interesting," Eren muttered. "Even if it sounds completely crazy."
He was still staring at the screen when something else caught his eye.
[Available Summoning Allowances:]
[SSS-Rank Summoning Allowance × 3]
[F-Rank Summoning Allowance × 10]
Eren’s eyes widened slightly.
"Ten F-Rank allowances too?"
He hadn’t noticed them before. They were nothing next to the three SSS-Ranks, but ten extra summons was still better than only three. And if spirits could grow stronger over time, as he suspected, their starting rank might matter less than their potential.
He would look into that later.
For now, there was something else he needed to understand.
His Class.
Eren had heard about Classes long before he ever entered Dominion Expanse. Obtaining one was among the most anticipated parts of stepping into that world.
Dominion Expanse was nothing like Earth. Mana filled the air, ancient creatures wielded extraordinary abilities, and many things simply couldn’t be explained by ordinary science. Humans who entered it slowly adapted to its mana-rich environment, but the moment they arrived, the Expanse itself decided whether they awakened a Class.
There was no fixed requirement. Some people awakened combat Classes that enhanced their bodies. Others received magical Classes that let them bend the elements. And a lucky few were given rare Classes that changed their futures completely. A Class shaped a person’s growth, their career, and even their standing in human society. Mages, Warriors, Archers, Healers, and countless other professions all came from this.
But nobody could predict which Class a person would receive.
That was why the Confirmation Examination mattered so much. The examination decided a person’s Path. Dominion Expanse decided their Class.
And that was exactly where Eren’s problem began.
He had received his Class announcement from the Ultimate Summoning System.
Not from Dominion Expanse.
He frowned and opened his personal status through the Dominion Expanse Information Interface. A translucent panel appeared in front of him.
[PERSONAL STATUS]:
Name: Eren Blake.
Age: 19.
Path: Settler.
Class: ???
Title: Lord Of "Unnamed Territory."
Rank: F.
Level: 1 {0/100}.
Weapons: Utility Knife (Common Grade).
Remark: A stranded lord with no subjects, no resources, and no forces worth mentioning.
Eren ignored the rest of the information and only stared at the three question marks beside his Class.
"...What?"
He blinked and checked again. The question marks stayed. He closed the panel and reopened it. Nothing changed.
Slowly, he turned his attention to the other screen.
[Class: Spirit Summoner.]
His eyes narrowed.
The human interface had registered his name, his Path, and his territory without any trouble. Yet when it came to his Class, it showed nothing but question marks. Maybe it just hadn’t finished processing him. But the Ultimate Summoning System had already announced his Class clearly, and if Dominion Expanse had granted it, shouldn’t its own interface recognize it?
Unless...
A troubling thought crossed his mind.
What if the Human Faction’s interface couldn’t recognize his Class at all?
Humanity had spent thousands of years studying the Expanse. But understanding a phenomenon wasn’t the same as understanding its source. The interface was a human invention, a way to read and organize information that Dominion Expanse provided. It wasn’t Dominion Expanse itself. If the Ultimate Summoning System had given him something outside its known classifications, then perhaps the technology simply had no way to identify it.
He didn’t know whether that was correct. It was just the only explanation he could come up with.
"Well, that’s reassuring," he muttered dryly. "I just got here, and I’m already an unidentified case."
He closed the panel.
Whatever the reason, he couldn’t spend the whole day investigating it. His situation hadn’t changed. He was still in the middle of nowhere, and his territory was still dangerously unprepared. Enjoying the story? Read on at NovelPing.
But now he had a way to change that.
His gaze returned to the three SSS-Rank Summoning Allowances.
Three chances. Three spirits at the very peak of the known classification system. Eren had no idea what kind of spirits they would be, but he knew one thing: if he wanted to survive in the Ashen Frontier, he needed every advantage he could get.
And there was no reason to wait.
He selected the first allowance.
[SSS-RANK SUMMONING ALLOWANCE SELECTED.]
[Confirm summoning?]
Eren took a deep breath and muttered.
"Confirm."
The response came instantly.
[SSS-RANK SUMMONING ALLOWANCE ACTIVATED.]
[Searching for a suitable spirit...]
For a moment, the wilderness stayed silent.
Then the ground trembled.
[TARGET IDENTIFIED.]
[An SSS-Ranked Spirit has been successfully summoned!]
[Spirit arrival in 10 seconds.]
"Ten seconds?" Eren blurted. "Wait, that’s it? I don’t even get to..."
[10.]
A crimson light bloomed several meters ahead of him, spreading across the barren earth in a vast circle. Strange symbols crawled along its edge, glowing like veins of molten blood.
[9.]
The wind rose. Dust and ash lifted from the ground, and the dead branches of the nearby trees began to rattle.
[8.]
Eren took a step back.
[7.]
The air grew heavy. Breathing felt like pulling water into his lungs.
[6.]
[NAME: VAELZARA VEYRATH.]
Eren’s breath caught as his eyes widened in utter awe.
[5.]
[TITLE: THE CRIMSON CALAMITY.]
He knew that name!
[4.]
[RANK: SSS.]
Every student who had studied the history of the Great War knew that name!
[3.]
[CLASS: DEMON QUEEN.]
Vaelzara Veyrath. The last Demon Queen of the Veyrath Demon Kingdom. The Crimson Calamity, a figure whose name was carved into the darkest Chapters of Dominion Expanse’s history. According to the official records, her kingdom had been annihilated in the Great War, her armies destroyed, her people wiped out. The Queen herself had died in the final conflict against humanity.
Thousands of years ago.
[2.]
"No," Eren whispered. "No, no, no. That can’t be..."
[1.]
The crimson circle erupted.
Blinding red light swallowed the clearing, and the ground roared like something ancient breathing out for the first time in an age.
Then the light collapsed inward.
And a figure stood in its center.
She was tall and slender, with an elegant, almost regal bearing. Long white hair, smooth as silk, flowed down her back to nearly her waist. Her skin was pale, and her eyes were a deep crimson, with narrow, slitted pupils that gave her gaze an unmistakably demonic edge.
Two black horns curved back from her head, framing a face of terrifying beauty.
She wore a deep-red oversized hoodie over fitted black clothing, with black combat boots on her feet. In that ancient, desolate wasteland, the outfit looked completely out of place. Yet she carried herself with such effortless composure that even the hoodie seemed to belong to her.
She was breathtakingly beautiful.
There was something deeply wrong about the woman in front of him. It wasn’t her appearance. It was the pressure she gave off, as though the very air around her remembered what it once meant to kneel.
Her crimson eyes opened fully, and the wilderness went silent.
Eren couldn’t move.
He had always assumed the stories about the Crimson Calamity were exaggerated. The soldiers she slaughtered. The armies she forced to retreat. The wars she ended with a single stroke. Standing in front of her now, he wasn’t so sure.
His heart pounded violently.
’That’s the Crimson Calamity.’
’The real one. The woman who fought in the Great War. The woman who died thousands of years ago.’
’And I just summoned her!’
His mind went completely blank.
For one brief moment, he thought about running. Then he remembered that running from the woman he had just summoned was probably the stupidest decision he could make.
Besides, where would he run to? Into the wilderness? With no weapon, five loaves of bread, and two liters of water?
He would rather not die of embarrassment before the Demon Queen even got the chance to kill him.
Eren swallowed hard and straightened his back. He was her summoner. He had to act like one, even if his legs were threatening to betray him.
She studied him as her gaze moved slowly over his face, lingered on his eyes, then drifted down to his trembling hands.
Eren immediately clasped them behind his back. He lifted his chin, trying his best to look like a man who had deliberately summoned one of the most terrifying beings in history.
Then suddenly, she opened her lips and spoke.
"You summoned me."
Her voice was calm, almost gentle.
That somehow made it worse.
"Y-Yes."
The moment the word left his mouth, he wanted to slap himself.
’Excellent, Eren! Absolutely magnificent. You summoned the Demon Queen, and your first contribution to the conversation is a stutter.’
Vaelzara tilted her head slightly. For a moment, her expression was unreadable.
"How curious."
She took one step forward. He nearly took two steps back.
A faint smile touched her lips, as she titled her head.
"You’re afraid of me."
"No, I’m not," Eren immediately objected.
The answer came out far too fast.
Vaelzara stared at him while Eren stared back. The silence stretched between them.
Then she smiled. It was not a warm smile, nor a reassuring one. It was the smile of someone who had just found something far more entertaining than she had expected.
"Is that so?"
She stepped closer, and this time Eren did take two steps back.
"Relax, Master. If I wanted you dead, you would have been dead the moment I opened my eyes."
She lifted her gaze to the gray sky, the dead trees, the endless ash. Her smile slowly faded.
"Tell me something. How long has it been?"
Eren’s mouth was dry, but he hesitated and tried to respond.
"Since... since the Great War? About five thousand years."
"Five thousand years." She said it quietly, like she was testing the weight of a stone.
Then she laughed, a soft, hollow sound.
"Do you know the strangest part, Master? I remember all of it. Every day. They say the dead feel nothing..."
"They are wrong."
Her crimson eyes found his, and the wind went still.
"The dead don’t sleep. We lie awake in the dark, remembering. And the moment you called my name, every single one of them heard it."
A slow smile spread across her face.
"Every goddess. Every dragon. Every hero who ever fell. All of them awake, all of them listening, all of them wondering whose name you’ll call next."
She leaned in until her horns nearly touched his forehead.
"And some of them are going to be very, very jealous that you chose me first."
Eren couldn’t breathe, trying to grasp what she was spilling out casually. But one thing that crashed unto his thoughts.
Something that felt... relieving.
’She is calling me... Master???’