With This Treasure, I Summon Primordial Weapons
Chapter 3: Darkness

Chapter 3: Darkness

Godric didn’t wait for the ceremony to end.

The moment his result was confirmed, he left the Awakening Hall.

He found himself endlessly strolling the academy courtyard, lost in thought, pondering over his failure.

Every single one of his plans relied on this one thing, him awakening and summoning a beast.

He had hopes that maybe it could be of a decent grade, good enough to make an actual difference and not just run around the easiest dungeons to make a living.

The stake of his house, his mother’s medical bills, his sister’s upcoming university tuition. The weight of everything quickly began to press down on him like an invisible weight.

After a few aimless circles, he found himself back in front of the five statues.

He stopped before his grandfather’s statue.

One of the Five Great Heroes.

A man who once stood alongside the other Great Houses, leading them through dungeon gates and endless beast tides nearly a century ago.

Godric’s fist curled into a fist as he stared the statue of his grandfather in the eyes.

He couldn’t fail. Not like this.

His father already brought shame upon their family, taking the once Great House and turning it into a laughing stock for others.

Godric could’ve accepted a lower grade beast. He could’ve accepted dying in battle. But this? Failing before he could even try to rebuild his family’s name?

That was not something he could accept.

A plan slowly began to form in his head, one that had to wait as the sun slowly descended across the sky, basking the academy courtyard in its golden radiance.

The awakening ceremony was long gone, and so were the opening hours of the academy to the public.

Luckily, the gates were never truly closed.

No one would be crazy enough to enter the academy during prohibited hours. The last person that did was sentenced to ten years in jail.

Safety of newly awakened toppled over everything else, so the government took the matters, quite often, over the top.

Godric waited as the sun descended a little lower, watching the once busy crowd thin out into a very occasional traffic of students moving between the training hall and the dormitory building.

Keeping his body pressed against the side of the building’s shadow, Godric moved toward the East Exit, which didn’t have a massive reception desk at the front as the main entrance did.

He entered slowly, checking his corners multiple times before moving swiftly through the long corridors.

It took him almost ten minutes before he finally reached the massive metal doors of the awakening hall.

The awakening orb was always there. It was not something that could be moved, at least not according to the public knowledge, so he had no doubts that it was going to be inside.

The problem, however, was the door itself.

It was made of reinforced metal designed to keep any wild magical beasts at bay if need be.

Of course, that would only work on the lowest-grade beasts, as even a Rare Grade Beast would tear the metal door open with ease.

Unfortunately, he was not a beast, nor an awakened with increased strength.

He was an ordinary human and so the metal doors before him should’ve been impossible to get through... should’ve.

Godric picked up two small metal pins from the bottom of his pocket.

As much as he mightve been the heir of the once great house, he did grow up in the city’s outskirts, which came with a couple of handy tricks.

With practised ease, he began to pick the lock with movements that looked far from being rusty.

It took merely a couple of sharp twists and turns before the sound of the door unlocking echoed faintly across the corridor.

"Seems like I still got it, huh," he said with a satisfied smirk, pushing the door open.

Without wasting any of the limited time he had before somebody would notice, he rushed toward the awakening orb and placed his hand onto the black sphere.

At first it looked as though it would go the exact same way as last time.

The orb seemed to darken upon his touch, turning into something that almost devoured the light around it before something suddenly shifted inside of Godric’s abdomen and the orb slowly began to take colour.

An array of colours slowly shifted through the orb, blue, green, red, purple, white, gold, and finally it settled on something that resembled each of these colours all at once.

Then, the colours vanished, and a sharp tug pulled at Godric’s stomach.

His consciousness slipped, and he found himself in a space that many describe as the confines of one’s core. Some suggest that it may be more so connected to the soul than the core, though there really isn’t enough information to support that.

Either way, when Godric’s eyes snapped back into focus, he found himself standing in the middle of a vast darkness.

Despite the lack of light, he could still make out some of his surroundings. The floor was made of black tile, and his own limbs, which he could see as if they were illuminated by something incomprehensible.

He read about this part of the awakening a thousand times. This was where you see your summon for the first time, the space they reside in while they are not summoned.

But even in his thousand times of reading, Godric had never heard of a place this dark, and this... empty.

He frowned.

His head whipped around, but no matter where he looked, there was no beast, no summon for him to control.

Then, he caught it, a dark object floating in the air before him.

A bird-like beast?

No.

It was too long, too thin and had no wings to fly, which only made his frown deepen.

How was it floating midair?

He moved toward it, his steps echoing faintly through the darkness, and as he took the final step, a recognition washed over him.

’It’s a sword.’

It had a black, two-sided blade that was roughly half his height. It hung in the air as if it was frozen in time, but as Godric reached for it, the object came loose immediately, falling easily into his grip.

The moment his fingers wrapped around the hilt, the sword shuddered.

A strange sensation flowed into him, and all at once, the darkness around him began to tremble.