A Dual Crest Summoner In Infinite Summoning World

Dante took a couple of days to prepare for the trip. The city in which the Duke of Summer lived was quite a distance away from there—if everything went fine and Dante spent 2–3 days there before returning, it would still take him 13 to 17 days, depending on the paths they chose and the weather.

The month of January had ended, and February had just started. Leaving aside the first half of March, when the harvest festival was held, the second half would mark the official time for raids by Barons, lasting till the end of April. After that, the Grove Keeper would invite everyone to his home city; the whole of April would be gone in that event.

That left the official raid time for Earls and Dukes for May and June. Meaning the earliest Dante could be back—with or without Sable—would be in late June or July. Five months.

Dante had already informed everyone in the village. The elders and Hanzo(the second-best warrior in the village) were in charge while he was gone. Technically, when a knight in charge of the village was not present, the responsibility would pass to the next male member of the knight's family. The requirement was that the member had at least taken part in one raid from the village in question. So Dante's clear choice was Hanzo, the person nearest to their family. Hanzo was not a knight, but he had fought in battles before as a soldier alongside Dante. Both of their families had gathered to see Dante off.

"I will be back in two weeks at the earliest. Look after everyone for me," Dante said, after hugging Sable with Theren in her hands—even Auren was not spared. Everyone nodded. It wasn't clear who he had said it to, but it could be applied to all of them. Chаptеr prоvidеd viа М|V|L@ЕМРYR.

Then Dante turned his face towards Hanzo. "I should be back before they come, but show them the way if I don't make it on time. Do not participate in the hunt. Let them do their thing."

What was this now? Auren kept the questions for later. It was time to see Dante off.

The black steed moved forward, slowly gaining speed. It was named Zurakai by Dante—in their language, it meant Sky-runner. A famous heroic knight had a horse with the same name; that story was from Redwilds, though, not Greenvale.

They watched him go as long as they could still see him. Even Theren did a "bye-bye" till the very end. He was more excited by the fact that all of them were smiling at his gesture than by missing Dante, though. Once everyone moved back to Auren's house, he asked Hanzo what hunt Dante had been talking about earlier. All present had their ears perked up—guess none of them knew about it.

The middle-aged hunter sighed. "He shouldn't have said that. But I guess we'll soon have nobles gathering here, so it was just a matter of time."

"What is it, father? Why will nobles come here?" Kenzo asked impatiently.

"Some time ago, Dante and I noticed many wild animals coming too close to the edge of the forest. So we searched for a reason—and found it. At nearly forty kilometers deep in the forest—an adult Basilisk."

Everyone around Auren gasped. It was indeed a very scary thing, but his senses were fucked after watching giant monsters in movies and stuff. For others, a Basilisk was a giant snake-like monster that was often portrayed as an evil spirit beast in stories. They only had nightmarish images in their minds to go along with it.

The distinction between wild animals and spirit beasts was very simple for people of this world: animals did not use any mysterious attacks made of Chi; spirit beasts, on the other hand, as the name suggested, used this mysterious force called Chi in their daily lives.

"You guys didn't mess with it, did you?" Sable asked in not-so-nice a tone.

"Of course not," Hanzo said defensively. "Dante said it was way out of our league, and I completely agree with him. In fact, even if he had said we were gonna fight it, I wouldn't stand there at all. That thing was scary!"

The way he said it made Auren chuckle, and he wasn't the only one laughing. Hanzo also smiled, then continued,

"Dante sent a letter to the Baron in secret—we didn't want everyone panicking. We warned anyone coming into the forest not to go too deep in. Called it a mating season for bears while we waited for a reply.

It was too much for the Baron too. He could potentially hunt it and kill it, but Dante assumed he wouldn't waste his men so close to the raid. So the letter reached the Earl, and fortunately for us, Lord Cedric seemed to get a fancy about the beast—he made a social event out of it, and even other nobles and Earls might join in too, with their children. The Baron's letter mentioned they might do it at the start of next month."

"A Basilisk hunting, huh.." Granny said. "The last time someone entered our forest for hunting was half a century ago. They said someone had spotted a golden wyvern—for a year they searched for it, turned the whole forest and village upside down, and found nary a thing."

What a fuck-all timing this was. Auren had read enough novels and seen enough TV shows to know that such a gathering of nobles and their proud knights could not happen without incidents. It would both be a great business opportunity for their village—and a time to be really careful.

There was no way the Duke of Summer would have known about it or written a letter to Dante at exactly this time—it had to be a coincidence. His paranoid mind was just overthinking things. Auren had thought these two weeks would end with little to nothing new happening, but now he was not so sure.

If the Earls were coming with their families, then it wouldn't get too wild—but that was just hopeful thinking. Well, if nothing else—it would at least be something of a change in scenery.