Messenger

At dusk, before a low table in Sno's house, Sno had already prepared the ritual for summoning a spirit world creature.

He had no intention of summoning some pretty young lady, a demigod, or any other sort of messenger. Or rather, the incantation he would use to summon a messenger had long since been decided.

He took out a costly bottle of "Amber" Men's Perfume and lightly sprayed it around. At the same time, he invoked the power of White Horse is Not a Horse, equating the perfume with herbs and Essential Oil before twisting it into "a scent capable of pleasing all creatures."

It was not that Sno begrudged the cost of that Essential Oil and Pure Dew. This was simply his method of screening his summoning targets.

Through the statement, "Spirit world creatures can be pleased by specific herbs and Essential Oil. Perfume contains herbs and Essential Oil, therefore perfume can please spirit world creatures," he twisted the ritual's range of targets. At the same time, however, that twist meant that every target he attracted would be something affected by the ability Concept Swap.

Those unaffected would not be drawn in by such an improper ritual as perfume and thus would not appear.

In other words, Sno could use this method to exclude all spirit world creatures unaffected by Concept Swap from the summoning list. This indirectly ensured that he would not fall into danger by accidentally summoning something he could not handle.

With those preparations complete, he took out a piece of Contract Paper worth two hundred gold pounds. It looked no different from an ordinary sheet of A4 paper, but in its lower-right corner was a golden emblem bearing a sun symbol—the mark left by Old Master of the Eye of Wisdom using a Sun Domain Mysterious Item, as well as the source of this Contract Paper's power.

Everything was ready. Sno took a step back and recited in Ancient Hermes:

"I!"

"I summon in my name!"

"Spirit wandering amid illusion, friendly creature available for command, being of unimaginable speed."

Yes, that was the incantation. The one K had once used in the original work.

As the ancient, peculiar syllables of Ancient Hermes echoed through the spiritually sealed space, a chill wind appeared from nowhere. The flickering candlelight took on a murky green hue, and a bone-deep cold spread with it.

Then, in that instant, a blurry figure abruptly shot out, so fast that it nearly exceeded the limit of what the naked eye could catch.

But Sno had prepared for this long ago. The prepaid Pavlov's Dog ability activated, and almost the moment he saw the shadow, his preset conditioned reflex was triggered. Nearly at the same instant, he threw the one-penny coin engraved with the symbol "∞" in his hand.

"Flying Arrow Motionless!"

As the Ancient Hermes incantation left his lips, a strange power distorted the rules within the sealed space. Everything became choppy. Objectively speaking, the high-speed spirit body was still incredibly fast, but its speed seemed to have been completely broken apart, making each instant of its movement appear motionless.

More precisely, it was still moving at a speed that humans—and even many high-level beings—would find impossible to track. Yet whenever Sno wished to observe it, he would definitely catch the instant when it was "still."

That bizarre sense of distortion startled the high-speed spirit body. It desperately accelerated, but all it accomplished was leaving more "motionless" versions of itself throughout the space.

And Sno finally saw what it truly looked like.

First of all, it was a typical spirit body, entirely translucent blue-gray. At first glance, it looked rather like a snake with an arrow-shaped head, but upon closer inspection, one could see that it had actually pressed its hands against the sides of its body.

It was nearly three meters long. Although it was slender and snake-like, judging by those two arms roughly comparable to human hands, carrying a high school student's backpack should not have been a problem—though whether that would affect its speed was another matter.

"Doo doo doo!"

Apparently unable to adapt to this choppy state, the spirit world creature of uncertain species let out a somewhat pitiful sound. Its pale golden eyes looked at Sno pleadingly.

"I want to find a messenger. Are you willing? Well, a messenger is someone who helps me deliver things to other people, or brings things back to me from them. Right, you can't secretly open them, and you can't take them away."

Sensing the confusion it conveyed, Sno could only explain what a messenger's job actually was. Yet inwardly, he grumbled. In the original work, even something shaped like a safe knew what a messenger was.

"Doo doo!" The spirit body nodded its arrow-shaped head, conveying the thought, As long as you let me fly freely, anything is negotiable.

"Then let's sign a contract. Well, I'm not some devil, after all. Is there anything you want?" Sno picked up the Feather Quill and unhurriedly drafted a messenger contract on the Contract Paper, though he still democratically raised his head to ask.

"Doo doo (You cannot restrict my speed)." The spirit body quickly stated its demand. Sno raised an eyebrow and nodded.

"Fine, but when delivering a letter and when summoned, you must remain before the target for at least ten seconds. Well, you don't have to stop, but you must at least ensure that they can see you. You can ignore this if you encounter danger."

"Doo doo (Okay, so hurry up and let me go)!" The spirit body moved awkwardly through the air at high speed, trailing a series of paused selves behind it.

"Don't rush. Check whether there are any issues. If there aren't, sign it." Sno added that clause to the contract, then checked the format. Only after confirming that there were no obvious loopholes did he write the honorific name "Traveler from Distant Time and Space; Contradictory Spiral of Logic and Wisdom; Reflection of Knowledge, Reverse Side of Truth" in the space for "Contract Witness."

As soon as he wrote down the honorific name, the sun mark in the lower-right corner of the contract suddenly emitted a burst of light. It then transformed into an emblem of a mysterious eye with ∞-shaped double pupils.

The instant the emblem changed, the blue-gray spirit body became noticeably more obedient. Still, it did not think much about it. All it wanted now was to break free of this strange restraint. After roughly glancing over the contract, it hurriedly left behind its spiritual imprint.

"It doesn't know what a messenger is, yet it can understand the contract's contents. Ancient Hermes truly is a miraculous language." Sno muttered inwardly, then seemed to recall something and added,

"Do you have a name? What should I call you?"

"Doo doo (Call me whatever you want, just hurry up and let me go)!"

"Then I'll call you Dodo from now on." Sno shrugged and wrote his spiritual imprint together with his name on the paper.

A few seconds later, the Contract Paper slowly turned to ash, and a connection formed between the two of them. Dodo blinked its large pale golden eyes, looking so adorably dazed that it did not resemble a spirit body at all.

Feeling the urgency Dodo conveyed, Sno promptly released the Paradox Charm. The space that had been forcibly divided became "continuous" again, and Dodo immediately began accelerating wildly, as if trying to make up in one breath for everything it had been deprived of earlier.

Unable to track Dodo's speed at all now, Sno found the sight somewhat amusing. With a thought, he simply dismissed the summoning. As Dodo vanished completely back into the candle flame, a relaxed smile suddenly appeared on Sno's face—

"Mm, no demigod, angel, or weird bootlicker popped out. Looks like I'm really not some big shot's backup plan..."

Dodo's appearance was based on Dragapult, since Drakloak was a little too chubby. As for the name, it was originally going to be Doro, but some sleazy guy always popped into his mind, wanting to swear brotherhood by chopping off chicken heads and burning yellow paper. So Dodo would do instead. It even matched Lily's name.