I Can Summon Legendary Figuress
Chapter 65: Black Flame dungeon 2
As the world formed around him, Ethan instinctively gripped his crossbow, his eyes scattering across the broken landscape spread out before him.
It felt like they were standing in open space, balanced atop a slab of moving rock. Above them, shattered structures drifted through the air, fragments of buildings and stone suspended and turning slowly as though gravity had simply given up on this place entirely.
The sky itself was wrong.
Two faint colors bled into each other overhead, blue folding into purple, with threads of bright light straining to pierce through the haze without ever quite succeeding.
"Stay together. Remember your designated tier 7 protector!!"
The elders moving through the group called out the instruction firmly, none of them summoners themselves, or at best low-level summoners sitting somewhere in tier 9, their authority coming instead from experience and rank within the Dracontis structure. They moved with purpose, steering the younger members into loose formations around their assigned guardians.
Toward Ethan, five young men not much older than himself gathered close, latching onto his side with the particular urgency of people who understood exactly how dangerous this place was.
One of them Ethan recognized immediately.
Lorn.
"I’m sorry about the past. I was impulsive and..."
The young man’s expression carried genuine apology, his shoulders slightly hunched, the bravado from before nowhere in sight. His whole life he had wanted to be the hero of his clan, had built himself around that role the way some people built themselves around a name or a title.
But that day in the conference room had taught him something he hadn’t fully understood before. Ethan had overpowered him without effort, without even trying particularly hard, and the lesson had settled somewhere deep. Don’t push too far with strangers. Especially the ones wrapped in mystery you couldn’t fully unravel.
"It’s fine. Stay close to me."
Ethan said it evenly, already summoning both Vlad and Morgana to flank his position, their presence settling into place without a sound.
The group didn’t waste time.
After plotting their course from the entry point, they began moving toward the dragon altar, boots finding uneven footing across stone that shifted subtly beneath them with each step.
"Flame corrupted skeletons. Hard to kill with brute force. Their bodies are tempered by black fire, so even ordinary flames will struggle to quench them."
A leader from the Dracontis family explained the terrain to the White Tower members traveling with them, his tone clipped, efficient, the voice of someone who had walked this path more times than he cared to count.
"Any extreme fire users? This pathway is the closest route to the altar. We can’t afford a detour."
He approached Hela first, his gaze settling on her with something close to familiarity.
He remembered her from years back, small and stubborn, throwing tantrums that had driven half the household to distraction. If he’d known then what those outbursts actually signaled, he might have paid closer attention to her training far sooner than anyone had.
"Ella has something similar."
Hela glanced toward her sister and nodded once, brief and certain.
Stepping forward, Ella didn’t summon a beast the way the others expected. Instead, a staff wrapped in white light materialized in her left hand, the glow steady and clean against the broken landscape.
"Fire pillar of light!!"
She called it out sharply, and a column of white flame erupted where one of the undead had been standing. Before the creature could even register the threat, the pillar tore straight through it, scattering ash and bone across the stone.
"Let’s keep going. She’s in the zone."
While Ella worked steadily through the corrupted skeletons blocking their path, methodical and unbothered, Hela pulled Ethan aside, drawing his attention outward toward the rest of the group.
"Among the younger ones here, you should pay attention to those three," she said quietly.
"One you already know. His name is Lorn. He’s my direct cousin, here through certain family arrangements. He’s trying to become a summoner."
Lorn’s mother had passed from illness not long ago. Arian had offered to take him in afterward, but he had refused each time, determined to carry his mother’s legacy forward on his own terms.
Unfortunately, that legacy required strength he didn’t yet have.
And strength wasn’t something easily handed to anyone, regardless of how badly they wanted it.
"The other two are Marie and Havo."
Hela didn’t soften the delivery. The situation here mattered too much for anyone to stand around looking composed while missing what actually needed attention.
"Marie is tied to the council of elders. She’s a significant name within the clan. Havo is a guardian’s son, exceptional talent by every account I’ve heard."
She paused, glancing toward where Ella was finishing off the last of the black flame skeletons with practiced efficiency.
"The clan has checked their bloodlines. Chances of them summoning dragons are extremely high. That would be a serious addition to the family."
She let the weight of that settle before continuing.
If anything went wrong here, it couldn’t touch those three. The consequences would fall on everyone involved, and the clan would not forgive the failure quietly.
Ethan didn’t fully understand the political weight behind her explanation, the layers of family obligation and inheritance that made three teenagers this important. But he understood the practical shape of the request well enough.
Don’t let them die.
That much he could manage.
At least until they reached the altar.
"That’s the last of them. Let’s keep moving."
Ella’s voice rang out clearly, drawing the scattered group back together, and they resumed their push forward across the shifting stone.
Over the stretch that followed, they encountered more creatures, twisted things born from whatever corruption lingered in this fractured place. But with the guardians navigating ahead, steering them wide of anything too dangerous to engage directly, the group made steady progress.
The guardians proved, without question, the most valuable asset among them.
In time, they reached the altar.
Or nearly did.
There, resting across the stone platform ahead, a dragon lay stretched out before them.