Ever since Franka joined Raythean Medica, Lucas Reeve's life had gradually settled into a peaceful routine. With nothing much to do each day, he'd wake up, exercise, and randomly pick a physical body for his daily forging session. In the morning, he would chat with Jessica; in the afternoon, he'd visit the Reunion Movement to chat with Alina; and in the evening, he'd return to Columbia to chat with Jessica, Franka, Zumama, and the others.
It was a free and easy life.
The main reason was that no new soul fragments had awakened recently, leaving Lucas Reeve with a lack of things to do for a while.
At home, he spent most of his days with the High Priest, researching how to modify the Titan, and working with Zumama on the research and design of a new mecha. This time, thanks to the incredibly abundant energy source provided by the Active Originium Crystal, Lucas Reeve and Zumama planned to design a large-scale mecha nearly twenty meters tall.
Otherwise, it would be a real waste.
However, the workload for this project was immense.
If Lucas Reeve were to do it alone, it would take a very, very long time—at least on the scale of years, not months.
After Zumama joined Raythean Industries, thanks to Jessica, everyone in the company was kind and pleasant to her. Plus, Zumama was very good-looking.
In a research and development department dominated by men, she was like a phoenix landing in a flock of vultures—far too conspicuous.
Researchers were human too, and humans have desires. Who would refuse a beautiful junior colleague who shared their hobbies and work?
These days, whenever Zumama had any questions, someone would be guaranteed to rush over to help her at the first opportunity.
Even the head of the R&D department acted as Zumama's 'master,' personally explaining concepts to her starting from the very basics. Although he often got high blood pressure from Zumama's almost absurd, wildly imaginative, and abstract designs, he had to admit it.
This young lady from the primeval forest was a genius when it came to mechanics.
However, in modern science, just knowing mechanics wasn't enough. Modern machinery is intertwined with various other professional fields. For example, a medical cart involves mechanics, artificial intelligence, and automation. As for Patriot's power armor, it was a mix of other fields entirely.
To delve deeper, mastering just one field was useless. One needed to integrate all subjects to truly become an expert.
Therefore, Raythean Industries enrolled Zumama in Columbia University for advanced studies.
For a top-tier institution in Columbia, one of the top five universities in Terra, a dream for the vast majority of ordinary people, getting in was as easy as asking for Raythean Industries... After all, a major shareholder of the university was Raythean Industries, and sixty percent of its equipment was donated by them.
Perhaps this was... the privilege of the wealthy.
Zumama had never imagined that she would one day be able to attend university, having never even been to elementary school. If her classmates found out, they would probably all collectively get high blood pressure.
And over these many days, the idle Lucas Reeve had also been using his unparalleled forging talent to continuously invent all sorts of items.
For example...
Bows and arrows.
Since firearms were not widespread, arrows were the mainstream weapon on Terra. Lucas Reeve, based on different types of arrows, imitated Hawkeye and invented a variety of other arrow types, such as arrows that could ricochet continuously after being shot, arrows with splitting heads, or grappling hook arrows and explosive arrows, though he didn't know what use they had for the time being.
Or he would upgrade some drones. Lucas Reeve planned to create a drone capable of transporting a Titan across all of Terra. However, while creating the drone was simple, figuring out signal positioning was a problem. On a Terra without satellites, this task was actually very difficult.
Just a few minutes ago, while studying drones in his workshop, Lucas Reeve inexplicably sensed that a soul fragment far away in Siracusa, one that shouldn't have been awakening for a long time, was recovering at an extremely rapid rate. Lucas Reeve had never encountered such a phenomenon before.
It felt as if some external energy was constantly being transmitted, trying to awaken it.
Furthermore, Lucas Reeve's main consciousness could clearly feel a strong call, as if something outside that soul fragment in Siracusa was beckoning him. Although with his current power, Lucas Reeve could completely ignore this call, he found it somewhat familiar, seemingly tinged with desperation and a plea for help.
So, after giving Jessica a heads-up, Lucas Reeve's main consciousness willingly gave up resisting and followed the call, descending into the soul fragment in Siracusa.
After that, what happened was completely different from any previous descent of his consciousness. Lucas Reeve's consciousness first found itself in an unknown space. Then, from all around, power continuously flowed in. It was a very strange sensation, as if it was providing him with a different kind of power, reshaping a new, special body for him.
This body was marvelous.
It could support him in the material world, yet it wasn't a true body of flesh and blood; he was still in a spiritual state.
Then, a memory seemed to voluntarily input itself into Lucas Reeve's mind. This memory acted like a guide, helping him understand how he got here and what he needed to do next.
Shikigami...
A very special and mysterious type of Originium Arts from Higashi.
However, this type of Originium Arts was different from others that could only be performed by specific people. This Originium Arts only required the user to possess the purest bloodline of Higashi to be cast, summoning nearby spirits and forming a contract with the summoner.
The summoner could use their own power to allow spirits, which were originally unable to roam the material world, to manifest just like a normal physical body. Moreover, the power a spirit could wield was closely related to the summoner. However, for the same summoner, the stronger the spirit's own power, the greater the power it could use.
A Shikigami and its summoner complemented each other.
And such a person in Higashi was called an Onmyōji.
Interesting...
To think that Siracusa had someone with a pure Higashi bloodline.
However, there was one point where Lucas Reeve was completely different.
Although Lucas Reeve was a spirit, he was completely different from normal spirits. Normal spirits were so weak they couldn't be seen by the naked eye of an ordinary person, but Lucas Reeve could. Moreover, Lucas Reeve's spirit body could temporarily materialize itself.
And the reason this little girl could summon him was purely due to good luck.
The summoning medium she relied on happened to contain one of Lucas Reeve's soul fragments.
After Lucas Reeve effortlessly smashed the heads of all the mafia members, the special physical state the little girl had granted him began to fade. Hearing hurried and somewhat frivolous footsteps from outside, Lucas Reeve sighed, and his body disappeared, returning to the girl's 'Omamori.'
*Clang.*
The locked door was sliced open by a sharp blade.
With a loud crash, a woman rushed in like a bolt of lightning, the sharp blade in her hand like the Grim Reaper's scythe harvesting lives. Then, just as she was about to strike, she suddenly realized that all dozen or so mafia members in the secret room were dead.
Their deaths were incredibly gruesome.
Every single one had their head exploded. A few lucky ones merely had their chests caved in like rotten meat. In an instant, the small secret room had turned into a living hell, its walls splattered with blood and chunks of flesh.
*Huff...*
*Huff...*
The woman gasped for breath. Her injuries were very, very severe; there was even a potentially fatal piercing wound at her waist. Her legs and arms were also covered in deep and shallow cuts. The flowing blood had long since dyed her tight, black dress an even darker shade.
For an ordinary person, such injuries would have already caused them to pass out from blood loss.
But the woman held on.
She was beautiful. It was hard to imagine she was a mother with a twelve-year-old daughter; she looked more like a young woman in her twenties.
She stumbled into the innermost room. When she saw Lisa lying on the floor, her heart clenched, and she threw herself over to her daughter's side, checking her from head to toe. Only after confirming that Lisa had just fainted did she let out a heavy sigh of relief.
However, she then noticed the formation drawn entirely in blood beneath Lisa's body.
She was all too familiar with this formation.
She had seen her husband draw it before. It was a formation from Higashi for summoning a Shikigami.
Combined with the dozen or so dead mafia members outside, she instantly wondered if her daughter had successfully summoned a Shikigami at the last moment to kill them.
Although her daughter had tried to summon one many times before without success, it wasn't impossible that she had unleashed her potential in a moment of crisis.
*Phew...*
The woman breathed a sigh of relief.
Dragging her exhausted body, she picked Lisa up and stumbled out, her steps unsteady. She had no desire to deal with the corpses on the floor. She didn't even have to guess to know they must have come from the other candidate for leadership within [Famiglia Venezia]...
Although harming family members was officially forbidden within the mafia, that was only on the surface. Secretly, many high-ranking mafia members kept their own private assassins, using methods like kidnapping family members to force their rivals into submission. As for being exposed?
Impossible.
There was no evidence to prove that these people were sent by the other party.
Siracusa was too chaotic now. The Syracusan government was completely inept, and various regions of Siracusa were controlled by different powerful mafia families, leading to nationwide chaos and a lack of order.
And Lisa's mother's childhood dream had been to end the current chaotic state of Siracusa. She became an assassin to eliminate any destabilizing factors that threatened order for her superior.
But...
She had kept the fact that she had a daughter an extremely well-guarded secret. No one had known for all these years. The only ones who knew this secret were a few high-ranking members...
*Tsk...*
Lisa's mother clicked her tongue, her expression incredibly cold.
She could be certain.
There was definitely a traitor in the faction she served! In other words, someone in her own faction wanted her dead...
She had to find a way to send Lisa away. Now that Lisa had been exposed, Siracusa was far too dangerous.
Moreover, Lisa's mother didn't dare to go to a hospital.
If there was a traitor in the faction she served, then going to a hospital was definitely not safe. She couldn't even return to the family, nor could she go back to where she usually lived.
Fortunately, she had made preparations long ago...
After an unknown amount of time, Lisa slowly woke up from her sleep. She seemed to remember having a dream where, after being kidnapped, she successfully summoned a Shikigami. And why was that Shikigami in human form...
And his name seemed to be...
Lu... Lu...
Lu something?
"My name is Lucas Reeve..."
A strange male voice echoed by Lisa's ear.
Startled, she abruptly opened her eyes.
What she saw was not the secret room from her last memory, nor was it that burly man, but... her mother.
"Mom!!"
Lisa, overjoyed, dragged her tired body and threw herself into her mother's arms.
Tears of excitement streamed from her eyes.
She almost thought she would never see her mother again!!
After crying her heart out, Lisa rose from her mother's embrace. It was only then that she noticed her mother was covered in all sorts of bandages, and her once radiant face was now incredibly pale.
"Mom! Your body..."
Lisa's voice trembled, and her tail shot straight up behind her.
"My dear daughter! It's all mom's fault for being useless. Mom didn't protect you!!"
Lisa's mother, filled with self-blame, hugged Lisa tightly. She regretted it now, truly regretted why she had brought her daughter from the safety of Higashi to Siracusa. Although working at the shrine in Higashi was boring, it was... safer than being in Siracusa...
"Mom..."
Lisa's voice trembled slightly, her eyes welling with tears.
And this scene was seen clearly by Lucas Reeve inside the Omamori.
*Tsk, tsk,* how interesting.
A killer mom, a daughter with special Onmyōji abilities, and a husband who works at a shrine.
This scene seemed somewhat familiar, as if he had seen another version of it somewhere.
"My dear, you rest first. Mom is a bit tired and needs to rest for a bit. This house is very safe; no one knows where it is."
Lisa's mom gently kissed Lisa's forehead, then walked towards another room with unsteady steps.
Lisa was about to get up to help her, but she found that she had no strength to stand. All the power in her body had been completely drained when she summoned the Shikigami...
Shikigami...
Did I really succeed in summoning a Shikigami?
Lisa was a little uncertain.
She suspected that what she saw before passing out might have been a figment of her imagination. After all, according to her common sense, Shikigami shouldn't be humanoid...
Could it be that she never summoned a Shikigami at all, and it was her mother who saved her?
But...
Why did the name Lucas Reeve pop into her head...
Lisa thought for a moment and tentatively called out.
"By my command! Heed my call, swift as the law's decree!"
This was the incantation for summoning a Shikigami. She tried chanting it.
However...
After waiting for a few seconds, there was no reaction at all.
Whenever her father chanted this incantation, blue flames would burn around him, and then a beautiful little fox would appear on his shoulder.
But she had nothing...
Lisa was a bit unwilling to give up.
She repeated the chant a few more times.
But...
Just like before, there was absolutely no response.
So it's true...
Lisa lay back on the bed in disappointment.
Was successfully summoning a Shikigami just a hallucination...
*Sigh...*
And I thought I had succeeded....
"Mr. Shikigami... do you really exist? Or are you just my hallucination..."
Lisa murmured to herself.
At that moment, the same male voice rang out in Lisa's mind.
"I think it probably wasn't a hallucination..."
The sudden voice startled Lisa. Then, she saw a figure float out from the Omamori she wore close to her body.
Black hair and black eyes, extraordinarily handsome.
It was him!!
Lisa suddenly remembered that the person she saw before she fainted was indeed this person!!
"You are... my Shikigami?"
Lisa couldn't quite believe it.
A spirit...
A Shikigami is indeed a spirit.
But humanoid...
Can Shikigami be humanoid? Didn't Dad say that Shikigami can't be humanoid? That they are all sorts of monsters...
This time, it was Lucas Reeve's turn to be silent.
"Um... how should I put this... yes and no. I did come in response to your call."
Lisa let out a sigh of relief.
It really was her Shikigami. She had succeeded!
Although she didn't know why it was humanoid, but... whatever.
"Then why didn't you come out when I chanted the spell just now...."
"Huh? Was that supposed to be for me? I was just wondering what that stuff you were saying was; I couldn't understand it..."
Lisa: "......"