Every summon pulled from the Tower carried a piece of the person who summoned it, whether it came from the summoning circle in a match or a card bought from Tier Shop.
Survey after survey had confirmed it over the two centuries. A summon’s intelligence tracked its summoner’s own.
It might arrive with a personality already stitched into it, but from there, its mood and its mind would develop to match whatever it saw in its masters. Their habits. Way of thinking. Sense of right and wrong.
They would have distinction, but they would share something with their master.
For example, someone constantly angry, disregarding, and cruel would also turn his summons like that. They would be cruel to each other and others.
Nobody could ever fully explain why. Only that it was true.
Naturally, commands from their master took priority. They would obey it willingly as if programmed to fulfil whatever they ordered, even if it cost them their lives.
...
While Logan slept, the base kept working without him.
Three hours in, a player stumbled onto it.
He carried an Epic-rank class and a Rare-rank Talent. His class was Magic Fisherman, a production type. His Talent was Crystal Lord. It had given him a body of living crystal, the ability to grow more of it at the cost of mana, and the means to shape it all into whatever weapon or wall he needed.
Four summons walked with him. One Epic, a lucky pull. Two Rare. One Uncommon. All of them level ten. He was level nine himself.
At the moment, only the Production units, the Tower Minions, Billy, Ironroot Sentry, and Stonewing Pugilist were anywhere near the base. Billy and the other two were taking a break from the labor.
The three hundred meters around the walls had been cut clean of wood and stone by now, open ground with nothing to hide behind.
The player didn’t get into the open ground, but they were still in thin areas that made it easy for Stonewing Pugilist to spot them.
He dropped down to Billy fast.
"Billy. Enemies approaching. Wake the lord."
Billy cracked one eye open, his leg-wheels already spinning up. "How strong?"
"A player, like Lord Logan. Four summons. One Epic, two Rare, one Uncommon. All level ten. Same as us."
Billy sat up. "Our lord’s finally sleeping. Let’s not wake him for something this small." He stood. "Signal Blitzhawk. Vex is out of reach, so don’t bother. Call the rest back from their sites."
"They are hiding pretty close to Bryowulf’s trap. We can use it." Stonewing Pugilist grinned.
"Oh? That’s perfect then. Go silently and call back Blitzhawk first. Don’t call the rest. The folks here are enough to deal with this trouble. I triggered a trap carelessly, and I was frozen solid for three seconds, and bound by frigid vines that took two seconds to break after I was unfrozen. Total five seconds of control. That’s enough to kill them."
"Alright."
Vex had already found two mines with the Treasure Compasses Logan had handed out before he slept, both more than four kilometers out, farther than Logan himself had traveled.
But a compass didn’t care about distance. It just pointed.
One find was a Tier-1 Rare-rank Crimson Iron mine. The other was a Tier-1 Epic-rank Entwin Crystal Mine. Vex was already working his third compass toward a third find.
The rest of the summons were out there mining alongside two Tower Minions, working a roofless wooden container rigged with vine rope, something Blitzhawk and Stonewing could carry between them once it filled, making the transport easy by flying.
It wasn’t full yet, so nothing had come back to base so far.
Every summon out there had reached level ten by now and had distributed their own stat points, since Logan was sleeping. He had told them to do so for better safety.
...
The player crouched at the tree line, studying the walls through a gap in the brush.
Nice, tall, layered, hexagram inside hexagram. A few sections caught the light strangely, sturdier than the rest.
’Those walls look tough. Some of them Legendary-rank? That guy got lucky with his production summon.’
He’d decided before he finished the thought. He wanted in.
One of his own summons was built exactly for this. Bomber Cannon Man, Epic-rank. Three human legs planted in a triangle held up a construction of iron and brass, a cannon barrel two meters long jutting out the front.
It only had two skills. One made three different kinds of cannonball. The other fired them.
One of those cannonballs dealt 200% extra damage to walls, on top of whatever it would normally do.
’Been waiting for a player to try that one on. Now I get Legendary-rank walls as an experiment. Even better.’
Then something moved above the trees.
Stonewing Pugilist, wings spread, circling.
’Shit. He got a flying unit? Lucky bastard.’ He dropped low. ’Hide first.’
He backed into the nearest thick bush, keeping his eyes on the sky this time. ’I wasn’t expecting a flying unit here. Did he already discover me? No. The trees are quite big. I should be fine.’
But he didn’t know the big bush he was about to move into to hide was exactly where Bryowulf had left one of his traps.
The ground gave way under the brush, and cold mist erupted around him and his summons both, thick and sudden. Frigid Vines ensnared them, trapping them further. They were frozen solid before any of them could so much as flinch, ice locking every joint in place.
Frigid Thorn Trap (Epic)!
A second later, lightning cracked somewhere above.
Blitzhawk made his appearance and hit them from directly overhead, holding nothing back.
Lightning Feather Rain (Epic-rank)!
Each feather came down stone-hard, wrapped in lightning, crossing the twenty meters between them at twice the speed of sound. There wasn’t time to see it coming, let alone dodge it.
He spent two thousand mana on the cast, making sure he gave the maximum possible damage.
The feathers tore through all five of them at once. His summons died where they stood, frozen and unable to so much as raise a hand.
He’d put most of his summons’ stat points into Arcane and Attack, because he trusted his talent to let him act as the vanguard while his summons finished them off. It worked so far, but that decision also made his summons fragile.
But his talent saved him now, crystal armor blooming across his body.
Considerable toughness bought him his life. It didn’t buy him a clean one, though.
He burst with Crystal Spike around his body and broke the vines.
He came out of it barely standing, blood running from a dozen small wounds the armor hadn’t fully covered.
"Hey, buddy. Nice to meet you."
Billy’s voice came from directly behind him, low and unhurried.
The player’s mind and body went cold.
’No...’
He felt the chilling ice at his neck.
Panic did the rest. Somewhere past the fear, a single thought screamed loud enough for the Tower itself to hear it.
’SURRENDER.’
Billy’s spinning blade had already opened a thin line across his neck when the world pulled him away, yanked clean out of the fight a moment before it could finish the cut.
Lucky.
The notification that woke Logan up read like nothing else had all night.
```
[ You have defeated a player. You are the first player to successfully eliminate a player in this match. You are rewarded with a Random Gear Box. ]
[ Player Elimination Leaderboard has opened. ]
[ What would you like to put as your name on the leaderboard? ]
```
’Wha the...’
Logan’s eyes opened, not fully, as he still wanted to sleep. He needed to.
So he just wrote L with his mind on the empty space that appeared for him to fill and went back to sleep.
[Player Elimination Leaderboard - Top 3 Rewarded with Tier Points by the end of the match.]
> Rank-1 | L | Eliminations: 1