Tie’s eyes widened.

"A battery?"

"Yeah, a battery!"

But no matter how she looked at it, the thing Berugon was holding out didn’t look like a battery at all.

If someone said it looked like a flat donut or a protective wrist guard that athletes wear, that would have made more sense.

"Isn’t it a totas?"

Berugon frowned.

"I don’t know what a totas is, but look closely."

With that, he flipped the object over and showed a small golden circular disc embedded right in the center.

"This amulet acts as the battery. This part stores and absorbs magical power. And the outer ring becomes the circuit. So, isn’t the principle basically the same as a battery?"

Tie’s eyes started spinning.

What was an amulet, and what was a circuit?

No matter how you looked at it, it was obvious Berugon had drawn a lot of inspiration from a battery.

'How did a master manage to make something like this in just one day?'

While she secretly admired it, Berugon said:

"And also, this thing, you know. For a mage, you could call it very, very useful equipment. Do you know why?"

"...Um, why?"

"Because, if the theory is correct, this thing can compensate for the instability of a permanent summon."

Permanent summon.

That was what the members of Agavert called Kkamani.

When Tie blinked in confusion, Berugon burst out laughing.

"I heard you mostly fight using summoned creatures too. They say since you have a dark attribute, you summon all sorts of things."

Tie thought of her bone friends, the ghost ship, and her subordinates, and nodded.

"Yeeah."

Berugon’s face immediately lit up, as if that was exactly what he had expected.

"Then tell me, have you already managed to summon a permanent one? Your people said you carry something around with you."

A permanent summon...?

The word that had come up earlier appeared again.

But Tie couldn’t answer and only darted her eyes around rapidly. 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

Honestly, it was because she still didn’t really understand what it even was.

'A summoned creature is like a pet. Then what is a permanent one...?'

Anyway, Tie nodded.

If it meant something she "carried around with her," then she did have that.

Lucarion and Pupu.

At once, Berugon’s face brightened even more.

"I knew it! So, is it stabilized yet?"

'Stabili...'

Tie’s eyes started spinning again.

The longer the conversation went on, the more things appeared that she didn’t understand.

At that moment, a familiar voice came from below, from the staircase on the right.

"He’s asking how long a summoned creature can remain stable, Captain."

When she turned around, the members of Agavert were just coming up the dormitory stairs.

Their bags were stuffed full of new weapons and equipment.

Shock spread across Tie’s face.

"Everyone went to buy weapons without Tie...?"

"Sorry. You were sleeping so deeply we couldn’t wake you."

Saying it playfully, Bale shook one of the bags in front of Tie.

"But I bought everything for you too, so don’t worry. Here, it’s got poison needle rounds and everything you wanted last time."

Peeking inside the bag, Tie immediately softened.

Meanwhile, Basto asked Berugon:

"What brings the master here?"

"Ah, I just came to give your captain a little gift."

Berugon held out to the team the same device he had just shown Tie.

"I got inspired by something, you see. So I tried making equipment that could compensate for the instability of a permanent summon."

Everyone’s eyes widened at once.

"Equipment that compensates for the instability of a permanent summon? Is something like that even possible with equipment?"

Berugon let out a thoughtful hum and frowned.

From his perspective, though, the team’s reaction was understandable.

These days, summoned creatures that a mage could call were generally divided into ✪ Nоvеlіgһt ✪ (Official version) two major types.

The first was a "permanent summon," which, once called, remained until the summoner’s life came to an end.

And the second was a "temporary summon," used only for a specific battle or operation.

But summoning magic itself was such a high-level discipline that across the entire continent, you would be lucky to find even one in ten mages capable of summoning even a "temporary summon."

'Come to think of it, the King of the Dead became famous precisely because of that.'

At the gates, the King of the Dead had so easily summoned dark creatures, skeletons.

What other mages achieved only with extreme difficulty, coughing up blood and collapsing from total mana exhaustion, he demonstrated without any special formulas.

'But that was a temporary summon.'

And Berugon had focused specifically on the aspect related to "permanent summons."

"Until now, this was also considered theoretically possible. But no one knew how to implement it, so there haven’t been any meaningful results."

Berugon carefully showed the team the device he had brought.

More precisely, the amulet embedded in the center of the ring-shaped frame.

"I already explained it to the King of the Dead just now, but this here is the device that stores the summoner’s magical power."

With that, he ran his finger along the ring surrounding it.

"But the real point is this. A kind of circuit that makes the magical power circulate endlessly within the equipment and minimizes leakage."

Raul, who understood magical tools to some extent, frowned.

And no wonder—Berugon’s idea was truly innovative.

Smiling with satisfaction, Berugon added:

"I even gave it a name. Battery."

More precisely, it would be something like a rechargeable battery with a built-in circuit.

Looking at the team, Berugon continued:

"You all know Allerik, who is now called the most outstanding mage in the Empire, right?"

Basto frowned.

There was no one who didn’t know Allerik, the mage from Tregava.

"Even for him, a permanent summon doesn’t come easily. They say he recently managed to summon one, but according to rumors, due to low stability, that creature spends more time inactive."

A permanent summon was something that, compared to a temporary one, was ten—no, a hundred times harder to maintain.

Because if it was meant to last forever, it required a constant supply of magical power from the summoner.

But there was an even more serious problem.

'A mage is still human, after all.'

If the mage’s physical or mental state became unstable, their ability to control magical power declined.

And then, naturally, the already summoned permanent summon would often fall into an inactive state.

In the end, despite being a "permanent" summon, there were times when it remained active even less than a temporary one.

"Think about it. Has there ever been anyone who overcame these problems of permanent summons? No one. That’s why mages became a target of ridicule at the slightest opportunity."

Without realizing it, Bale nodded.

He, too, was well aware of the mockery directed at mages because of permanent summons.

Among people, there had even appeared a mocking term—"the wall of permanent summons"—used as a measure of a mage’s ability.

"They said he was a once-in-a-century genius. But this time, it seems even that mage couldn’t overcome the ‘wall of permanent summons.’"

"Ha ha ha! At this rate, maybe the term ‘permanent summon’ should be abolished altogether? No wonder mages always remain backline support."

Of course, the other team members also knew about this social phenomenon.

And yet they deliberately didn’t bring it up for one reason...

Bale’s gaze slid toward Tie, who stood there absentmindedly.

'Because they knew this little one wouldn’t understand any of it anyway?'

But now that the topic had come up, a question suddenly occurred to him.

Looking down at Tie, Bale casually asked:

"Captain, your permanent summon is a bit unstable too, right?"

He suddenly recalled the black little dragon Astie carried around.

"I think it was called Kkamani."

It was such an insolent little thing that it made you wonder how something like that could come from someone as cute as Astie.

"Come to think of it, since we arrived in the weapon district, I’ve only seen it once. Since it appears and disappears, it really does seem like a permanent summon."

Meanwhile, Tie, who had been listening, swallowed.

'Another emergency...?'

And it was no wonder.

Because from the very beginning, Kkamani had never been Tie’s summoned creature.

It was a spirit hiding its true nature, one of the hidden powerhouses—just like Tie herself.