I Can Summon Legendary Figuress
Chapter 64: Black flame dungeon
After the long meeting, a team was finally established.
It hadn’t come together quickly. Coordination with the Dracontis family took time, credentials had to be verified, roles assigned, and only once every piece was locked into place did the group set off from White Tower, pushing past the mountain range and deep into the kingdom’s wilderness beyond.
The road out was long.
Trees gave way to open ridgeline, then to bare rock, the terrain shifting with every hour that passed until the air itself began to feel different against the skin.
"Cough, cough!!"
The air grew thinner the further they traveled, dust kicking up from the trail beneath their boots, fine and grey, clinging to sleeves and collars no matter how carefully anyone stepped.
Among those sent were, naturally, Ethan, Hela, Ella, and Fin.
Four names that carried weight in different directions, pulled together under one banner for a single purpose. White Tower wasn’t holding anything back on this one. Whatever resources needed to be spent, whatever names needed to be attached, the organization had committed fully.
It wasn’t lost on any of them what that meant.
"The dungeon was discovered inside an inactive volcano a long time ago."
One of the escorts spoke as they walked, her voice carrying easily over the wind. Her hair was black, silky, draped loosely over one shoulder, and she wore a black spandex shirt fitted tight against her frame, practical in a way that suggested speed mattered more to her than appearance.
"Ever since then, the Dracontis family has been suppressing the volcano with high-end magic."
Codename Banshee.
One of White Tower’s Tier Fives.
Unlike Arian, she wasn’t a summoner. Her path ran differently, built around a class most people outside a small tribal enclave in the kingdom of Bark had never even heard of.
A Sonic Witch.
High level. Rare enough that her existence alone had been the reason her class was discovered by White Tower in the first place. No records. No prior documentation. Just results too impressive to ignore.
"Basically, you might go in and come out to an active volcano, haha."
She laughed at her own joke, loose and easy, fully aware that nobody around her found it particularly funny.
No one laughed with her.
She didn’t seem bothered by that either.
Her boots kicked absently at loose stone as she walked, hands tucked behind her head, the picture of someone who had made this trip before and stopped finding it impressive a long time ago.
Ethan’s gaze, meanwhile, had settled on the volcano itself as it grew larger with every step, its dark silhouette rising against the horizon like something carved rather than formed.
He studied it without comment, cataloguing the shape of it, the stillness that didn’t quite match what he knew was sleeping inside.
Smoke didn’t rise from its peak. No heat shimmer bent the air around its base.
Whatever magic the Dracontis family had poured into holding it quiet, it was doing its job well enough to fool the eye completely.
That alone told him something about the scale of what they were dealing with.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Some time later.
"Welcome, honored ones."
At the base of the mountain, several guards stepped forward to receive the group, their posture rigid, their attention sharp as they moved through the process of checking credentials one by one.
Every scroll was read twice. Every seal was checked against a ledger before a single person was waved forward.
These were children of the honored Dracontis family, here to undergo their summoner rituals in a place few outsiders were ever permitted to see. Honored barely scratched the surface of what that title actually carried within the kingdom.
"Thank you, sworn guardians. Your sacrifices do not go unnoticed."
An older man at the front of the group bowed his head slightly toward the guards, each one draped in the distinct Dracontis colors, their stance unshaken despite the clear exhaustion carved into their expressions.
Dust clung to their armor in a way that spoke of long shifts, of days blending into each other with little relief.
These were the same guards, posted here year after year, season after season, their presence the only thing keeping this hidden dungeon firmly under Dracontis control.
Without them, none of this existed.
Their importance ran far deeper than anyone passing through would ever fully appreciate.
"So many pleasantries. Can’t we be going already?"
At the back of the group, Banshee spoke up, her voice carrying just enough mockery to be noticed, though not quite enough to warrant a direct response. Loud, but calculated. The kind of comment meant to needle without crossing into open disrespect.
A few of the guards glanced her way. None of them answered her directly.
White Tower’s dislike for the layered politics of noble families ran deep, ingrained into its members from the moment they joined, and it had clearly settled into Banshee just as thoroughly as it had settled into Arian before her. There was little any of them could do about the ceremony, the formality, the careful dance required to keep the Dracontis family satisfied.
So they endured it.
Ethan said nothing through any of it, watching the exchange with the same flat patience he carried everywhere else.
"You may come in."
After a long stretch of pointedly ignoring Banshee’s comment, the guards finally stepped aside, nodding the group forward into the mountain’s interior.
The passage beyond was cool, the walls close on either side, torchlight flickering against stone that had clearly been shaped by hand long before any of them were born.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,
At the very center of the dead volcano, a small portal shimmered faintly in the open air, its edges rippling with a soft, contained light. A set of Dracontis guardians stood positioned around it, maintaining the seal with quiet, practiced focus, their expressions unreadable.
The portal pulsed once, steady, waiting.
It didn’t hum or crackle the way lesser gateways sometimes did. Just a slow, patient rhythm, like something breathing.
"Remember, straight to the altar. No detours."
Banshee’s voice cut through the quiet as she stood just behind the shimmering threshold, arms crossed, watching the younger members of the group step forward one after another and disappear into the light.
No hesitation. No lingering questions.
One by one they vanished, swallowed by the glow without so much as a sound left behind.
Ethan approached last, his gaze fixed on the portal’s surface, the faint distortion pulling at the edges of his vision the closer he stepped.
"Maximum effort."
He muttered it under his breath, more habit than declaration, and pushed through the shimmering curtain without slowing.
The world on the other side hit him all at once.