They’d experienced more diverse challenges during their service to him. They’d gained combat experience against varied opponents across multiple worlds. They’d benefited from whatever intangible advantages the summoning contract provided—the healing upon binding, the attribute enhancents, the guaranteed drops that ensured superior equipnt.
The accelerated domain developnt was just another manifestation of that superiority. His summons weren’t just bound servants—they were elevated beings operating at capabilities beyond what their base ranks would suggest.
Even those who hadn’t completed their domain awakenings yet would likely succeed within days or weeks rather than the years or decades it took wild creatures. That gave Arthur a tiline—soon, very soon, he would command not just four domain-capable summons, but potentially dozens.
An army of second-order beings, all bound to his will.
With that assessnt complete, Arthur prepared to return to Earth. The demons were still attacking, his allies still needed support, and he wanted to test his newly awakened domain in actual combat rather than just experintal demonstrations.
But before he could activate his spatial manipulation to teleport, a telepathic ssage arrived from Neko. Her ntal voice carried unusual urgency despite its aloof delivery.
"Master... Your sister. She is about to wake up."
Arthur’s entire world stopped.
Every calculation, every strategic consideration, every thought about domains and power and advancent—all of it vanished in an instant, consud by those six words.
Charlotte was waking up.
His hand moved before conscious thought, activating his spatial manipulation with desperate intensity. Reality folded around him as he prepared for long teleportation, burning through mana reserves without care or hesitation.
"Winter Beast! Flamingo! Return to summoning space—NOW!"
His summons vanished without question, sensing the urgency in their master’s command.
The forest of the Grieving Hollows dissolved around him as space compressed and folded, carrying him across impossible distances in defiance of conventional physics.
Village #419.
Arthur appeared directly inside Neko’s domain with a spatial ripple that disturbed the golden motes drifting through Fortune’s Favour. The warm, comfortable atmosphere that the primordial cat had created barely registered in his consciousness.
All he could see was Charlotte.
She lay on the dical table, Jasmine standing beside her with a smile of exhausted satisfaction. But the healer might as well have been invisible. The room itself faded into irrelevance. Arthur experienced true tunnel vision for perhaps the first ti in his life—his entire awareness focused on the small figure whose eyes were beginning to flutter.
He moved forward without conscious thought, his feet carrying him to her bedside as if pulled by invisible strings. Every step felt both too fast and agonizingly slow.
Charlotte’s eyelids moved weakly, struggling against the weight of unconsciousness that had held her for so long. Her breathing remained steady but shallow, her pale features showing the toll that cancer and extensive healing had taken.
Then, slowly, her eyes began to open.
Arthur stood frozen at her bedside, watching with held breath as consciousness returned to his sister. Her eyelids lifted increntally, a millitre, then another, light filtering through the narrow gaps before her eyes fully opened.
Brown eyes, the sa shade as his own, stared upward with confusion and disorientation. They wandered unfocused for a mont before finding Arthur’s face hovering above her.
Recognition flickered across Charlotte’s features.
Arthur’s first instinct scread at him to embrace her, to pull her into his arms and confirm that she was real, alive, awake. But caring for her fragile health made him hesitate, his hands stopping halfway to reaching for her.
He turned sharply to Jasmine, his voice cracking slightly with barely contained emotion. "Can I...?"
The healer looked at him with a wry smile, understanding exactly what he was asking. She nodded, exhaustion and satisfaction mingling in her expression. "Yes. She’s stable now. Be gentle, you are really strong, but... yes."
Arthur didn’t need to hear anything more.
He imdiately reached down and gathered Charlotte into his arms, lifting her carefully from the dical table. She was so light, her body still recovering from the ravages of her previous condition, but she was warm, breathing, alive.
Charlotte’s confusion lasted only a heartbeat before recognition fully blood and instinct took over. Her thin arms wrapped around Arthur’s neck with surprising strength, clinging to him as if he were the only solid thing in an uncertain world.
"Arthur?" Her voice ca out hoarse, barely above a whisper, rusty from disuse. "Is it... is it really...?"
"I’m here," Arthur managed to say, his voice thick with emotions he’d kept buried for months. "I’m here, Charlotte. You’re okay. You’re going to be okay."
He held her tighter, feeling her fragile fra pressed against him, confirming through touch what his eyes almost couldn’t believe. She was awake. After everything—the desperate searches for herbs, the Alliance of Fla assassination attempt, the constant fear that he wouldn’t find a cure in ti—she was awake.
Charlotte’s grip on him tightened, her face buried against his shoulder. He felt wetness seeping through his shirt where her tears fell, her body shaking with sobs that mixed relief, confusion, and overwhelming emotion.
"I thought..." Charlotte’s words ca broken between sobs. "I thought I was dying. Everything hurt so much, and then... then nothing. Just darkness. I couldn’t feel anything. Couldn’t hear anything. Was I...?"
"No," Arthur cut her off firmly, one hand moving to cradle the back of her head protectively. "No, you weren’t. You were being healed. Jasmine—" his voice caught slightly, "—Jasmine saved you. You are okay now, everything will be alright."
Charlotte pulled back just enough to look at his face, her brown eyes swimming with tears and desperate hope. "Really?"
Arthur nodded, not trusting his voice for a mont. When he finally spoke, the words ca out rough with emotion. "Really. You’re going to be okay. We’re going to be okay."
Fresh tears spilt down Charlotte’s cheeks as the reality sank in. Not tears of pain or fear, but of pure relief—the kind that ca when impossible burdens finally lifted. She pressed her face back against Arthur’s shoulder, her thin body shaking with sobs that seed to drain months of accumulated terror and helplessness.
At that mont, both brother and sister didn’t realise sothing important due to the mont.
Charlotte was speaking with her vocal cords, no longer a mute.
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