Dimensional Summoner: Infinite Growth in a Leveling Apocalypse

Chapter 5: The Multiverse’s Cheapest Option

The door exploded inward.

I didn’t see all of it—I was too busy scrambling backward, one hand slamming against the System window and the other clutching my dented mystery can like a holy relic—but I heard it. Wood screaming. The barricade collapsing. Something heavy and wet dragging itself across my floor.

The Pale Crawler was roughly the size of a large dog, if dogs had been designed by someone who hated sleep. Hairless white skin stretched tight over a narrow frame. Six limbs, bent wrong at too many joints. Black claws clicking against the floorboards. Its face—if that vertical split could be called a face—opened and closed like a mouth trying to remember how mouths worked.

It had smelled blood. My blood: the dried traces near my eyebrow, and the trail I’d left through the stairwell after escaping the shelter.

Wonderful. My face is bait.

[One Blind Call Charge Consumed.]

[Searching Unregistered Realities.]

The text sat in my peripheral vision while I backpedalled toward the kitchen. The Crawler squeezed through the doorway, pale flesh compressing and expanding, claws scraping grooves into the floor.

[Establishing eligible grade bands.]

[Rolling Eligible Grade.]

I watched the grade bands flash past.

Yes. Yes, please. Dragon warrior. Sword saint. Demon queen with a grudge and a very large weapon.

Still good. Still absolutely acceptable. Battle mage. Vampire noble. Anyone who knows which end of a sword is the dangerous one.

Getting nervous. But B is respectable. Elite knight. Skilled hunter. Moderately angry wizard with poor impulse control.

C is fine. C is perfectly fine. I’m not picky. I would accept a competent baker with a rolling pin at this point.

D.

[Eligible Grade: D.]

[Summon selected.]

[Physical manifestation initiated.]

The selection stopped. I stared at the screen while the Crawler’s vertical mouth split wider, showing rows of pale teeth arranged in a spiral.

My EX class had searched infinite realities. It had examined countless warriors, monsters, saints, and supernatural beings. It had access to the rarest potential in existence—and then it had selected the multiverse’s cheapest available option.

"D," I whispered. "I got a D."

The Crawler lunged.

And a woman fell out of the ceiling.

She didn’t descend dramatically. There was no glowing portal, no billowing cloak, no drawn weapon. The dimensional connection flickered open about four feet above my head—a circle of dark silver light, unstable and crackling—and she dropped through it sideways, directly onto me.

We hit the floor together. My bruised ribs screamed, my head bounced off the boards, and the mystery can rolled away into the darkness like it had better places to be. She landed mostly on top of me: light, compact, athletic, built like someone who needed to climb things and fit through small spaces. My Vitality 2 body did not appreciate the distinction.

For one frozen second we stared at each other.

She had short black hair, messy and practical, chopped like she’d done it herself with a knife. Dark cat ears rose from the top of her head and swivelled independently. Amber eyes with narrow vertical pupils. A long black tail that had gone rigid behind her. Her face was sharp, pretty in a feral sort of way, smudged with old dirt and newer sweat. Worn leather armour, several knife sheaths, a full chest compressed beneath the leather and currently pressed against mine, strong thighs straddling my hip, practical boots that had seen years of hard use.

She smelled like smoke, leather, and rain.

Her ears went straight up. Her pupils dilated. The tip of her tail puffed.

"Oh," she said.

No. Not again. The last goddess started with ’oh’ and ended with my dignity in a headlock.

"You look terrible," she added.

"Thank you."

Her gaze drifted down my chest—what was visible through my torn shirt—and back up to my face. Something flickered in the amber. Not the lazy hunger Velisara had worn; this was sharper, the look of someone who had braced for a monster and found something confusing instead.

"I didn’t say unattractive," she murmured.

Before I could answer, the Pale Crawler screeched.

The cat-eared woman—my summon, apparently, D grade, because the result had arrived with the timing of a joke—rolled off me just as black claws raked through the space where her head had been. She came up in a crouch with both hands already full of short knives drawn from sheaths I hadn’t seen her touch. Her tail lashed once. Her ears flattened.

Then she launched herself at the monster, and her body moved wrong.

I saw it immediately: the hesitation, the stumble. She had expected to cross the room in one fluid bound and her legs didn’t carry her far enough. The Crawler’s claw caught her shoulder—not deeply, but enough to spin her sideways. She hit the wall, used it to redirect, and landed badly near the broken bookshelf.

"What did you do to me?" she demanded.

"I summoned you!"

"Into the body of a sick child?"

A window appeared in my peripheral vision. She couldn’t see it.

[Temporary Manifestation Link Established.]

[Combat-Language Synchronization Enabled.]

[Coordination Link Enabled.]

[Spoken instructions are transmitted clearly. Compliance remains subject to the summon’s judgment.]

[Lethal-Action Safeguard Active.]

[A deliberate lethal action against the summoner will terminate manifestation before completion.]

[Threats, refusal, opposition, accidental harm, and deliberate non-lethal harm do not trigger termination.]

The link made my words clear. That was all. It could not control her mind, manufacture loyalty, force intimacy, erase her judgment, or make her obey me.

The safeguard was just as narrow. If she genuinely tried to kill me, the Call would return her before the attempt landed. Everything below that line—including abandoning me, restraining me, or hurting me without lethal intent—remained possible.

"That is my level!" I shouted.

She stared at me, then at the Crawler extracting itself from the wall, then back at me.

"Your level is offensive."

I couldn’t argue.

More windows.

[Summon Identified: Liora Venn.]

Race: Night-Tail Catkin

Age: 23

Summon Grade: D

Native Level: 21

Manifested Level: 1

Manifestation Status: Temporary

[Advanced native skills restricted.]

[Physical attributes synchronized to host level.]

[Combat knowledge retained.]

[Technique memory retained.]

[Instinctive threat assessment retained.]

And then, privately, visible only to me:

Desire: 72/100

Trust: 4/100

Resonance: 1%

I nearly choked. Seventy-two. Seventy-two percent Desire, while I was bleeding, filthy, starving, and dressed like a failed burglary.

Apparently Charisma one hundred considers hygiene optional.

The Crawler screeched again and threw itself forward. Liora ducked under the swinging claw, rolled across my overturned desk, and came up with both knives reversed in her grip.

"Pretty boy!" she shouted. "When it jumps, pull that shelf!"

I blinked. "Pretty boy?"

"Would you prefer ’weakest man I’ve ever met’?"

"No."

"Then pull the shelf!"

Coordination link. Right. She can hear me clearly. That is not the same thing as being in charge.