The Trash Summoner - Diya

Useless Summoner—Diya

Bang.

A figure flew up, then came crashing down, dropping straight to the ground like a scarecrow two meters away. He lay there, coughing in low, muffled bursts, yet still struggled to climb back up. For him, however, even that seemed an arduous task. After several seconds of effort, he collapsed again, powerless.

"Trash. You don't have a shred of magic power, and you still want to be a summoner?" A disdainful snort came from a boy's mouth as he slowly withdrew the foot he had kicked out. The boy had short brown hair and a rather handsome face, but at that moment it was thick with contempt and mockery. The two beside him, one male and one female, wore the same expressions.

Judging from these two boys and one girl, they were not very old, around fifteen or sixteen. From the clothes they wore, the two boys were dressed in light armor that looked quite bright and polished. On the left breast of each suit of armor hung a round badge, and on each badge two four-pointed stars were emerging. The base color of one badge was red, while the other was cyan. At their waists, each carried a one-handed longsword.

As for the girl, she had a head of fiery-red long hair and wore a fiery-red robe. At the position of her left breast, a round badge the diameter of a ping-pong ball could be seen. On the badge were two extremely clear pale-red flame patterns, as if they were blazing fiercely. Her right hand held a fiery-red round staff about a meter long, and at the top of the staff was inlaid a red gemstone the size of a thumb.

"Cough, cough."

The boy on the ground finally pushed himself into a sitting position, allowing his face to be seen indistinctly. His messy black hair just covered his ears. Though his hair was black, it looked somewhat like withered dry grass. His thin face had a sallow cast, and beneath the scattered hair that faintly covered his eyes, his pitch-black pupils revealed a vicious gleam, icy and violent, as they fixed tightly on the boy who had kicked him. His thin lips were pressed together.

"What are you looking at? You want to die, is that it?" Facing those eyes devoid of emotion, the brown-haired boy felt an involuntary twinge of guilt and shouted with a fierce voice and harsh expression—

Clang.

The one-handed longsword left its sheath, and he chopped straight toward the boy on the ground. Before the blade had even reached him, the forceful wind had already struck his body.

Clang.

A long ring of metal on metal rang out. The other boy had drawn his longsword at some point and stepped in ahead of time, blocking the necessary path of the brown-haired boy's blade and intercepting it.

"Frank, why are you saving this trash?" The brown-haired boy turned his head and coldly questioned the other boy.

"Porter, this is the academy. If someone dies here and it gets investigated, with your status as someone who hasn't inherited a noble title yet, you'll get yourself dragged into it," the boy called Frank said calmly.

"What trouble could there be? With my family background, it wouldn't be hard to settle it." Porter spoke indignantly. Though his mouth was stubborn, he withdrew his longsword and put it back at his waist. Frank was right. If he killed someone in the academy, then even though he had some power behind him, the price he would have to pay would not be small, and it might even endanger his life.

"Porter, if you kill him now, won't we have one less toy in the future? Hee hee." The red-haired girl laughed softly, her voice so crisp that Frank gradually calmed down. "Besides, a powerless piece of trash like this isn't worth you killing him."

"You're right, Clarena. This trash still has to be kept around. Otherwise, in this last year of ours at the academy, we really would lose a bit of fun," Porter said with a smile, his tone carrying quite a bit of an intent to curry favor with the girl.

The girl called Clarena smiled faintly and said nothing. Instead, she moved lightly on her feet and walked up in front of the boy called trash. Looking down from above, she gazed at him like a queen, then stretched out her magic staff and brushed aside the scattered black hair on the boy's face—

"It's still there. So pretty." Clarena immediately smiled as she spoke, looking at the flame-shaped mark on the boy's left cheek, as if it had been deliberately carved onto him.

The boy's hands, pressed to the ground, contracted and clenched tight, grabbing at the earth. Deep finger marks appeared one after another, tinged faintly with blood. The boy's eyes turned to Clarena, and the iciness in them was undisguised.

"I like that look in your eyes. It's just like an ant trying to resist. Hee hee." Clarena immediately laughed again, laughing so hard she bent forward and backward. Her lovely figure, full in front and curved behind, showed beneath the soft magic robe, making Porter, who stood behind her, swallow a mouthful of saliva.

"All right, let's go. We still have something to do tonight," Frank said, then turned and left. Clarena curled her lip and also turned to leave. Porter followed beside Clarena and began saying something, and peals of laughter rang out.

Watching the three of them go farther away, the boy slowly exhaled. His tightly clenched fists also slowly loosened, and fine grains of sand spilled from between his fingers, carrying a few traces of blood. In the gaps beneath his fingernails, a smear of red could faintly be seen. From the sleeve of his black robe, a flash of silvery white slid down. It was, astonishingly, a tiny sword shape.

Putting away the little sword, he struggled up from the ground. The boy's body swayed unsteadily, as if he were about to fall again. At last, after great effort, he steadied himself. The boy coughed several more times in succession, and a bitter expression appeared on his face. This body was truly too terrible. It was completely at the level of not having the strength to truss a chicken.

Otherwise, he would not have been kicked and failed to fight back. It was truly not that he did not want to fight back, but that he did not have the ability to fight back. Under such circumstances, once he struck back, he would certainly suffer every humiliation, or even be killed on the spot. Since he understood temporary forbearance, he naturally would not joke around with his own life.

After all, transmigrating to this world was equivalent to gaining a chance to live again. He had to properly grasp everything for himself, work hard to become a peak powerhouse, and no longer let others bully him as they pleased. Instead, he would trample everything beneath his feet.

Thinking of this, the boy clenched his fists fiercely. At that moment, the intense pain coming from the nail gaps in his fingers swept through his whole body, making him tremble slightly. He could not help but sigh.

Although he had such ideals in his heart, in reality, the current situation made it impossible. This world was completely different from Earth. There was no technology here, only martial force, magic, and summoning.

And to become a peak powerhouse, one had to cultivate either martial force, magic, or summoning. As for the sort of thing in novels where the protagonist transmigrated and immediately had a formidable martial arts manual, then relied on Chinese divine skills to sweep across a foreign continent, that seemed to have nothing to do with him. Although he, too, was a transmigrator, the gap was truly too great.

So great that it made him not know what sort of method could be used to make up for it. Just now, those three fellows, two boys and one girl, were the people who often bullied him. Relying on their families' power and influence, as well as their own cultivation talent and resources, they always liked bullying students who had no real talent, as if they could gain satisfaction from it.

This academy was an intermediate academy—Carlos Academy. It was located within Carlos City, a southern city of the Taskro Empire, one of the three great empires in the eastern part of the Brahma Continent. It sat against mountains and by the sea, with quite good geography, so this city was relatively developed as well, second only to the imperial capital—Tax—and some major cities.

Just like junior high in his previous life, Carlos Academy also had a three-year system. Basically, the students studying at Carlos Academy were all between thirteen and sixteen years old.

And the boy's age at this moment was precisely fifteen, the same age as the three people who had humiliated him. He studied in the third year of Carlos Academy; it was just that his department was different.

Porter and Frank belonged to the swordsman class of the warrior department, while Clarena belonged to the magic department. As for the boy, he belonged to the summoning department. If the assassin department was included, these four departments could be considered the major departments of every academy.

Porter, Frank, and Clarena were all noble children of Carlos City, and the three of them all had quite enormous family backgrounds. At least within Carlos City, they were like local emperors. Porter's and Frank's fathers were barons, while Clarena's father was an imperial viscount and also the city lord of Carlos City.

Therefore, no one in Carlos City dared provoke Porter and the other two, and among them, Clarena's words were the standard for how they acted.

Under normal circumstances, at the lowest level of every profession, such as a swordsman at the soldier level, one only cultivated basic sword techniques and trained the body, preparing for the cultivation of battle aura. When one advanced to a guard-level swordsman, one could officially cultivate battle aura.

However, what intermediate academies taught was all low-level battle aura with no attribute, cheap goods of the main road. Only students like commoners without power or influence would cultivate it. As for people like Porter and Frank, with the power of their families, it was not difficult to get one or two cultivation methods for attributed battle aura.

What Porter cultivated was fire-type elementary battle aura, so the base color of the badge hanging before his chest was red. The two stars indicated that Porter was a guard-level swordsman. As for Frank, he was a wind-type guard-level swordsman. Although both of them had only broken through to guard level not long ago, at this age, they could already be counted as geniuses.

As for Clarena, the two faint red flames on the badge before her chest indicated that she was a fire-type guard-level mage. Of course, she had also only entered the guard level some time ago. And mages, on this continent, were even more precious than swordsmen. Unless one did not have the talent and potential to become a mage, one would not choose anything else.

As for the summoning department, like the boy, look at his chest—he did not even have a badge. That was because he could not even reach the soldier level as a summoner.

They were the same age, yet the gap between them was like a chasm. No wonder he was mocked as trash. And on the boy's left cheek, that mark which looked just like a blazing flame was left some time ago when Clarena had just broken through to guard-level mage. She had Porter and Frank seize the boy, then controlled flames to burn the boy's face, leaving behind a humiliating mark, saying it was for celebration.

Moving his feet, staggering step by step, the boy walked toward the academy gate. This side belonged to a corner of the academy, and usually very few people came here. This place, however, was where the boy passed through.

Porter and the others had known long ago that the boy had this habit, so this time they had followed him to this place with the mindset of teasing him. In fact, even if the boy had not come, he would still have suffered the three people's humiliation all the same. Compared to being humiliated to the limit in front of everyone, in this place where there were no others, he instead felt a little better in his heart. Perhaps this was a kind of psychological self-comfort.

After spending some time, the boy walked with difficulty to the academy's main gate. At this time, all the students who did not live on campus had already left. The gate was cold and deserted, with only one guard still staying by the gate.

Looking at the boy walking over from the corner, his thin, weak body wrapped in a black robe, a somewhat blurry footprint on his stomach, as well as the boy's staggering steps and pale, thin face, the guard could not help shaking his head, but he said nothing.

This boy was quite famous in Carlos Academy. He had already followed his class up to the third year, yet he was the weakest existence in the academy. Even the junior schoolmates who had just entered first year were somewhat stronger than him.

Fortunately, intermediate academies like Carlos did not have any admission requirements. As long as one's age was suitable and one could pay the gold coins, one could enter an intermediate academy to study. And Carlos Academy was a large academy that included both a primary academy and an intermediate academy.

The boy had entered this place when he was very young, and there were no special requirements for advancing from the primary academy to the intermediate academy. This was also why the boy was able to study all the way to the third year of the intermediate academy. Otherwise, if there had been an assessment of strength, who knew where this fellow would have been kicked off to.

Ignoring the gate guards' stares, he had no idea how many times he had seen looks like that. Though each time he would cry out in defiance inside, each time he still had to endure it all the same. By now, he had grown somewhat numb.

Dragging his feet with difficulty, he left the academy and headed toward his home, his heart full of bitter laughter. This body was so rotten it left him speechless. He had once questioned the heavens, but received no answer. He could only swallow all of this himself, forcing this already weathered heart and young body to shoulder it head-on.

The boy's home was in Carlos City. Compared to the nobles, it was nothing, but compared to commoners, it was somewhat better, an existence caught between the two.

"Young Master Diya, what happened to you?" An anxious cry startled the boy out of his thoughts. Only then did he realize that, without noticing it, he had already reached the entrance to his home. An old man with graying hair came running out from the doorway, hurrying to the boy's side and supporting his arms with both hands.

"Young master, did those nobles bully you again?" The old man's voice trembled faintly, revealing worry and concern from the bottom of his heart, along with a helplessness.

"Uncle Fu, I'm fine." Seeing the look on the old man's face, the boy called Diya immediately felt a warm current overflow in his heart, warming that somewhat numb place within him. Though it was like this every time, each time Diya felt very satisfied. This must be what it felt like to be cared for.

"Young master, how about you stop going to that academy?" The old man hesitated slightly, then said.

Diya smiled and shook his head, but did not say much. He knew that the old man was thinking of him. To be honest, whether he attended Carlos Academy or not made no difference to Diya. After all, in these ten-odd years, he had not even entered the most basic soldier rank. Going to the academy was nothing more than a waste of time.

The old man, however, knew that there were always some noble children in the academy who liked to bully commoners. If someone had decent strength, they would use the name of a challenge to find an opportunity to humiliate them. If someone had no real strength, they would resort to insults, mockery, and other methods. So the old man's words were also for Diya's own good.

The old man known as Uncle Fu did not say much more either. He repeated words like these almost every day, but every time, the boy would refuse.

Uncle Fu's real name was Fu Ka. He was the old steward of Diya's household. Long ago, when Diya's parents were still around, he had already been the steward of this family. By now, his parents had long since disappeared, the whole family had declined, and only Fu Ka and the boy remained.

Simply put, Diya's soul did not belong to this world, but had crossed over from Earth. He had just happened to be reincarnated into the belly of a merchant's wife in the imperial capital, Tax, becoming their child. After he was born, he was named Diya. But for some unknown reason, the newborn Diya's constitution was abnormally weak. Back then, Diya's father spent a vast amount of gold coins, searching everywhere for potions and methods to improve Diya's constitution. Yet every attempt returned without success. Instead, it consumed a great deal of money, causing the family to begin its decline.

As a merchant, his father's main task was to earn money. Diya's father had spent enormous wealth on Diya, and if he wanted to continue searching for a way to improve his constitution, he needed even more gold coins. Fifteen years ago, when Diya had only been born a few months earlier, his father received a business deal. A few days later, Diya's father had Fu Ka take a bag of gold coins and carry Diya away. At that time, Fu Ka was still a middle-aged man not yet forty. Following Diya's father's intentions, he took Diya and left. After many twists and turns, they arrived in Carlos City.

After spending some gold coins to buy a rundown house in Carlos City, Fu Ka took Diya and lived there. For a grown man to raise a small child, especially a child with such frighteningly poor health, how arduous that was.

Of course, whether it was Diya's parents or the old steward Fu Ka, none of them would know that Diya's soul came from another world and possessed the thoughts of an adult. He had tightly engraved everything from birth until now in his heart, only never mentioning it.

Back then, after Diya's father had Fu Ka secretly take Diya away, Diya knew something had happened. Though he did not know what it was, it certainly could not be anything good. It was just that over the years, Diya had never brought up anything in this regard, and the old man had never told Diya about these matters either. In the end, there was only one reason—strength.

Diya knew that with his current miserable state, even if he learned what had happened to his parents, aside from feeling lost, there was nothing else he could do. He had an adult's soul, and he had only spent a few months with his parents. It was very hard for Diya to feel that sort of bond where blood was thicker than water. On this point, Diya felt that the relationship between himself and his parents was instead inferior to the relationship between himself and Fu Ka.

At the very least, one was the person who had raised him for fifteen years. Moreover, there was one thing Diya feared deeply. He felt that he seemed to be the type of person born thin of feeling. Even if his own kin died before his eyes, he might not be too pained or too heartbroken. Every time he thought of this, he felt very afraid—afraid that one day, Fu Ka might suddenly die, and how he would face it then. Would he be plunged into extreme grief, or remain indifferent? It was like a nightmare, always making him deliberately avoid it. Or perhaps, even now, he still had no sense of belonging to this world. It had already been fifteen years.

Everything, perhaps, was because of strength. If he wanted to rise above others, then aside from possessing strength, there was no other path he could take.

But Diya's constitution was abnormally weak. He could not even swing the lightest sword properly, and he would pant after walking a little longer than usual. He was basically fated to have no connection with training as a swordsman. Even more unlucky was that his damned constitution could not gather any magic power at all, which also meant Diya had no fate with practicing magic.

The only thing worth praising was his mental strength. Perhaps because his adult soul had crossed over and become an infant, his mental strength was abnormally powerful, more than ten times that of others his age. Theoretically speaking, he was the ideal candidate for practicing summoning arts.

However, even practicing summoning arts required a certain amount of magic power as assistance. Only with mental strength as the main force could one successfully summon a battle pet. Yet Diya not only did not have the slightest bit of magic power in his body, he was also unable to gather magic power. This was why, over the past ten-odd years, he had never once succeeded in summoning, and also why he had been unable to enter the soldier rank.

It was not that Diya had never worked hard. As a shut-in from his previous life who had often sat in front of a computer reading novels, he combined the experience from countless novels and trained himself painstakingly, wanting to use the methods he knew to change his constitution. He did not delude himself with dreams of becoming like a humanoid Magic Beast; he only wanted to be normal.

But after working hard for a period of time, not only was there not the slightest improvement, his body instead felt as if it had been hollowed out and became even weaker. He had tried every method he knew, but they all had the opposite effect, forcing Diya to stop exercising. Yet he still did not give up. He wholeheartedly wanted to find a form of summoning that relied only on mental strength and did not consume any magic power. This was also why he had never left Carlos Academy.

At the academy, he could study abundant theoretical knowledge, and that knowledge was his hope. Though it was very faint, perhaps a hope that could never be realized, only by laying a solid foundation could he put it into practice.

Only, more than ten years of effort still had not produced any effect. If it were someone else, perhaps they would long since have given up and abandoned themselves to despair. But Diya, whose personality contained a somewhat stubborn streak, insisted on fighting it out to the end. He could be considered someone who fought again and again no matter how many times he was defeated.

The house Fu Ka had bought was roughly one hundred square meters, located in a relatively remote part of Carlos City. On top of that, the house was old and worn, so the price had not been expensive either.

There was a courtyard of about twenty square meters, followed by a hall—around thirty square meters—and then two bedrooms, each twenty square meters. The remaining ten square meters were the kitchen and bathroom.