Hellmode ~A Hardcore Gamer Becomes Peerless in Another World with Retro Game Settings~

The analysis of <Summon> Level 6 continues late into the night.

The new Spirit species card showed a girl in a fluffy dress. And

(What? It gives three blessings. The other C-ranks give two. It also has mana.)

In the lower right corner of the card, there were indications of [Endurance] +50, [Intelligence] +50, and Increase Physical Resistance. It didn’t seem like something that only raises my status.

I checked the Spirit’s details on the Grimoire.

The C-rank Spirit looks like a female doll.

[Species] Spirit

[Rank] C

[Name] Maria

[Strength] 200

[Mana] 300

[Attack] 290

[Endurance] 500

[Agility] 350

[Intelligence] 500

[Luck] 210

[Blessings]: [Endurance] +50, [Intelligence] +50, Increase Physical Resistance

[Special Skill] Psychic

(She’s totally a French doll. Her face is about the size of a five-year-old, and she’s kind of cute. She doesn’t look that big, so let’s summon it. Maria, come out.)

Then a girl wearing a Western-style dress about 30 centimeters tall comes out.

“Nice to meet you, Master Allen. Thank you for summoning me, Death.”

Floating in the air, she bowed her head and greeted me. Perhaps because she is a Spirit, but I could see the walls of the room behind her.

“Oh! You can talk!?”

This is the first time a summon has spoken. I will verify later whether it’s the influence of [Intelligence] or not on the other C-rank summon that I haven’t summoned yet.

“Hmm, I can talk, Death.”

She boasted that she could talk with a fearless smile on her face. She put her hands on her hips and puffed out her chest. She was apparently very proud about surprising me.

“Your name is Maria. I’m looking forward to working with you.”

“Thank you for the name, Death.”

(Hmmm… high status in general, very high [Intelligence], and the ability to speak. I guess they’ll be useful for defending the base. She looks and sounds like a ghost, so when she ends her sentences with “desu”, it sounds like “death” instead.)

Basically, while I am awake, the Eagles and Hollows are scouting the area around the base while flying. This world doesn’t have good security. This is also a place where many adventurers live. They might get wrong ideas knowing only children live here so I use them to monitor the base.

If Spirits have high intelligence and are small and unobtrusive, it might be a good idea to leave one in the base. Since I now have 60 spaces in my Holder, I can afford to keep two or three of them around.

“Master Allen, what’s wrong?”

I was thinking while looking at Maria, when she came close to my face and asked.

“No, it’s nothing. That being said, can you slip through walls and doors, Maria?”

“What? A wall, Death?

As I asked this, Maria stuck her face into the door. Her head sank into the door and when she pulled her head back, there was no hole in the door. It seems that she was able to slip through the door normally.

“Great, I see. This will be useful in the dungeon.”

The number of summons that can slip through walls have increased. In addition, fish can also swim in the ground. Though even when I use <Sharing> on a Fish, I couldn’t see inside the ground because it was pitch black, so I had little use for it. I see a lot of potential in C-rank Spirits.

(She’s got an ego and seems like a unique character. I need to communicate with her and understand her personality well. Okay, now for the <Awakening>.)

The next step is to verify the skill <Awakening>. In the meantime, Maria was left floating in the room.

I used <Create> and created a single H-rank Insect card. I always experiment with the H-rank Insect first.

(All right, Awaken!)

Then, the colorless blank space on the card glowed with rainbow colors.

“Whoa! It worked. Now, Denka, come out.”

I summoned Denka and a faintly glowing grasshopper appeared in my room. As I watched Denka jump around, I checked to see what’s different about it other than the glows.

I checked the status column of the H-rank Insect in the Grimoire, wondering what changes <Awakening> caused because I couldn’t see them.

[Species] Insect

[Rank] H

[Name] Denka

[Strength] 3

[Mana] 0

[Attack] 2

[Endurance] 5

[Agility] 5

[Intelligence] 1

[Luck] 2

[Blessings]: [Endurance] +1, [Agility] +1

{Special Skill] Hop

[Awakening] Form a Flock

(Huh? There’s a new thing called [Awakening] here. Denka has one more skill now. Does it have the same effect on other summons?)

I looked at the status of other summons in the Grimoire, but there was no such addition. Apparently, it is added only to the status column of the summon that I have used <Awakening> on, not all the same rank and species summons.

(Well, I don’t know anything about it. I should check what it does. Denka, [Form a Flock].)

Denka glowed faintly and…

“Huh?”

One Denka has grown to about a hundred Denkas. The room was filled with Denkas. There were Denkas jumping around everywhere, and I felt like I was having a bad dream.

It was a swarm of grasshoppers that I had seen in videos in my previous life.

“Hey! Denka, get back to normal!”

Perhaps in response to my words, only one grasshopper was left in the room.

“Well, that was great. Let’s try it again.”

I regained my composure and tried to make Denka use the <Awakening> skill again.

(Huh? I can’t do it again? Maybe one card can only use it once?)

I try to take it out again, but the awakening skill is not activated. I try to figure out why it’s not working.

(I’ll have to see what’s causing it not to work. First, let’s summon another Denka and try it out.)

I <Create> another Denka and activated the <Awakening> skill. I could feel my mana being consumed. It seems that I can still use <Awakening>.

(Now, let’s try to use it again.)

I prepared myself and summoned Denka again, and let it use [Form a Flock] skill. The same thing happened and about 100 Denakas swarmed the room. I immediately stopped and returned Denka to the card.

(Wee, I could use it with another Denka. Well, I guess that’s it for experiments for now.)

I recorded the results of the verification in the Grimoire.

Consumes 100 manaEach summon can use <Awakening> once (For now)

Questions left

Can I use the <Awakening> skill twice with the same summon after some time?

Can I only use <Awakening> skill once per card? If it were an A-rank summon, I’ll have to use new A-rank magic stones every time I use the <Awakening> skill. For now, I’m going to trust that it has a cooldown, and I’m going to give it some time.

When I was playing games in my previous life, I remember that skills had a kind of cooldown set for them. For example, you could only use it once every 10 seconds or so. I remember that some skills could be used once every hour or so. I think the more powerful a skill was, the longer it’s cooldown would be.

(Now I just need to make sure I know which summons have what <Awakening> skills and are available for use.)

<Awakening> skill seemed to have a greater effect in battles than the [Special Skills]. I need to verify which summons have what kind of <Awakening> skills.

This time, I summoned the rat-like H-rank Beast with <Awakening>.

[Species] Beast

[Rank] H

[Name] Chousuke

[Strength] 5

[Mana] 0

[Attack] 5

[Endurance] 2

[Agility] 3

[Intelligence] 1

[Luck] 2

[Blessings]: [Strength] +1, [Attack] +1

[Special Skill] Run

[Awakening] Multiply

(Hmm, [Multiply] ? I have a bad feeling about this one.)

I summoned Chousuke and made it use its <Awakening> skill.

Then one Chousuke increased to two. The number of summons increased to 4, 8, 16, and so on. Eventually, there were about 100 of them.

“It is just like Denka’s!”

“Why are you screaming? What is this…”

(Hey! We are around the same age, you can’t just come into my room without permission!)

Then Cecile, wearing a negligee, opened the door and came in. And when she saw my room overflowing with rats, her blood started to boil.

I heard some noise upstairs, so I had a feeling that she might be coming. I apologized for the disturbance and returned Chousuke back.

“Allen, what’s wrong?”

Then Kurena, wearing a nightgown, who also heard the commotion came into my room.

Furthermore, I heard footsteps in the corridor of the room. It seemed that Dogora, who had been ignoring the commotion of my experiments with my new skills and had been asleep, finally woke up because the three of us were floundering around.

“…Oh, hey what’s going…, gef!

“Hey! I told you before! Get dressed!”

Dogora came into my room in just his underwear. When Cecile saw this, her face turned red and she punched Dogora’s cheek. Dogora usually dressed like that in summer in Kurena Village.

“Do you know Master Allen?”

“Yeah. He’s one of mine, Maria, and I want you to be good to him.”

“Awe, Death.”

Maria looked at the lively situation with enjoyment.