Why Did You Summon Me?

Although Earth was more developed than Mia’s world, the latter was not completely inferior to the former. It was even superior in some aspects. In the field of medicine, Mia’s world, which has alchemy and restorative theurgy magic, was more advanced. On Earth, advancements in medicine solely depended on scientific breakthroughs.

With the differences in the natural laws and world systems of both worlds in mind, Baiyi decided to salvage the little time he had left before his forced emission e to select the kind of books he should rob. Hence, he discarded books on Earth’s geography, history, and biology, and prioritized books on modern telecommunication and engineering. Mathematics books were also chosen, as the subject was the foundation of almost all of Earth’s knowledge. Such an important subject would serve as the foothold that Mia’s world needed to be revolutionalized.

In the hope that the Astrologist Walker and the Bard Walker could see the error of their “gentlemanly” ways one day, Baiyi also plundered Astronomy and literature books. This may not guarantee a change in the two Voidwalkers, but one could always hope.

Baiyi brought a large number of books home, but he did have a little regret: due to time constraint, he had managed only the only to visit common bookstores and the local library. This meant that he could not bring home anything more advanced than a rudimentary knowledge of these fields.

“Remember, the key to Earth’s technology is math. Once you own math, you own everything else,” Baiyi helpfully said. [1]

“Must you point out the obvious?” The Engineer Walker muttered without raising his head. His attention was completely focused on the mathematics books, which he had already claimed for himself.

“Fellas, fellas! Check out muh latest prized babe !” The Blacksmith Walker’s voice rang out from somewhere close by. The Voidwalker was holding a detailed manual on machinery. “You know what, fellas, what I envy the most about Earth is that they’ve got all these stuff!”

“Oh, look at you, getting high over something boring like that. As for me, the cream of the crop is this,” the Archmage said, pointing at a pile of books about software development.

Baiyi could not help but feel that his master’s secretly nursed plans to develop a gatcha-type mobile game, which would function no differently from his favorite game.

“A friendly reminder from one scholar to the next, Sir Archmage: the subject that holds your fascination will continue to elude you unless you familiarize yourself with its preliminary materials. Behold!” The Scholar Walker said. As an expert in runic magic, she was unsurprisingly hooked on books on programming languages. Baiyi, however, considered them useless in this world.

The Alchemist Walker was not as satisfied, unlike the others. “Where are the Chemistry books, huh? You got a bone to pick with me?” He complained.

“Please, I didn’t think those books would be useful in this world, so I didn’t go out of my way to look for them. But, hey, look inside these. Maybe there’s more in there,” Baiyi replied, pulling out even more storage pouches, each of them filled with just as many books.

“Alright, everyone. Please lend me your ears as you choose,” Baiyi announced after clearing his throat. “Look, it would take who-knows-how-many years to thoroughly understand and appropriate all this knowledge by ourselves, so I suggest that you all form special research teams to work together on chosen topics.”

“Then, maybe you should open up a new class for this Software Development thing for the coming semester? At least, something that resembles it,” the Archmage immediately replied.

“No problem to be expected from us Engineering Faculty. I’ve already appropriated concepts and theories from Earth into my curriculum since the very beginning, so adding even more Earthling content should be easy,” The Engineer Walker said before finally lifting his head up and staring at Baiyi. “Why didn’t you spend more of your mortal time studying these things, huh? If you did, I would have never fallen to the dark side!”

‘Oh ho. Now it’s my fault that you’ve fallen to the dark side, huh? It’s my fault that you turn into a good-for-nothing whose obscene dream is to lick some woman’s thighs, huh? How do you explain the fact that not everyone who shared memories with me descended into that abyss along with you?’ Baiyi retorted quietly in his head.  ‘Ever wondered if the reason could be yourself?’

On the outside, however, Baiyi replied, “Do however you see fit. Just remember to get yourself familiarize with math before everything else; it’s the foundation for everything. As for Earth’s Laws of Physics… well, there are many differences in the Laws between this world and Earth. Hence, I expected that more time would be needed to bridge that schism.”

The technological advances from Earth took thousands of years of progress, accumulated from the fruits of millions of humans standing on the shoulders of their predecessors, just to reach its modern, present form. Even with the existence of magic speeding up this world’s development, it would still take quite an amount of manpower, money, and other forms of resources to bring out the essence of Earth’s marvels. Thus, it would be unreasonable to expect all of that from the Voidwalkers alone. They would need to enlist some help.

Luckily for them, Da Xue was now famous and a haven for the best talents this world had to offer, and it could still attract young rising stars, no less. One would not be exaggerating if they described Da Xue as a treasure trove of talents.

Arrangements were quickly made. With the Voidwalkers taking lead, teams specialized in researching different fields on Earth were assembled from the ranks of capable academic staffs and genius students. The teams’ topics of interest may differ, but all of them shared the same general goal — to incorporate Earth’s advances into Isythre and slowly, the rest of this universe.

This revolutionary project, naturally, meant that regular programs and lectures in Da Xue would be stalled along with the academy’s regular research. Baiyi, however, had taken responsibility to handle these new problems.

By the next day, every Walker had assembled their respective team and was showing them to Baiyi. All had enlisted a somewhat dependable team, except the Archmage, who roped in the very two students who left Baiyi a burning impression — Chazz and Wallace, the “Card Duelists”.

Baiyi had to wonder if the Archmage was really doing this for academic research purposes, or if he was just finding an excuse to reunite with his gaming brothers…

“Listen up, Son. You have your reasons to doubt your old Master in many things, but you should never doubt my professional eye for talents! These two lads here are brilliant beyond comparison, I promise you. Remember, they actually got into Da Xue through their own effort,” The Archmage said matter-of-factly. “Oh, by the way? Please refine our Memory Anamnesis and Memory Exchange techniques. I believe that you understand their significance in passing down knowledge from one to another, yes?”

‘Oh, good point,’ Baiyi thought.

“Now, now. Your assistance is currently not needed. Ergo, you should turn your attention to your other duties,” The Scholar Walker reminded him without lifting her head once from her book on Higher Mathematics; she was studying calculus.

“Speaking of that, you’ve got quite a ton of meetings you should be attending, don’t you? Vidomina had complained so much about them to me already,” the Archmage chimed in. “Now that you’ve made a definitive step forward in your research of that ‘Ember of Hope’ or whatever on top of bringing in so much knowledge from Earth to our world… I foresee a great change to dawn upon this world, bring forth by us. Yes, it is time for us to raise our voice.”

“Got it. Good luck, all of you,” Baiyi replied. Admittedly, since throwing himself into the research on the Ember of Hope, he had accumulated quite a heap of troubles for himself, too. Now that he was finally relieved of his research at the moment, he should really get back at his role as the Grand Principal of Da Xue.

He left his office and pulled out his communication slab. “Dale, tell me. Which meeting requires my attendance most urgently?”

“Are you free now, Sir? If yes, please come over here to the Imperial City! It’s urgent… The Church’s holding a council and it’s not going well for us at all,” Tisdale answered in a low voice.

“Hmph. Tell them to wait,” Baiyi replied flatly and rose into the air.

A few moments later, he arrived at his destination through a transporting portal.

The main point of this council, frankly, was to rile the nobles and upper-class society up against Da Xue — a rising hostility led by the extremist faction within the God’s Grace faith. Over these ten years, many changes had been brought to the internal power structure of the Church. The old Pope and the Chief Judge, who had been tolerant and accepting of Baiyi and the Voidwalkers, were slowly losing supports within the Church. The hardliners, unsurprisingly, took the opening to galvanize Church members into joining them.

As the Pope inched closer to mortality with each passing year, these new factions began to wrench more and more control of the Church’s overall stance.

The bulk of these factions’ beliefs and convictions were similar to the Church’s older stance, yet they differed sharply on the subject of the Voidwalkers. As Baiyi made his contrarian stance clearer and clearer, the relationship between himself and the Church became more and more bitter to the point that heated arguments had broken out publicly, with both sides’ reluctance to use actual force as the only silver lining.

While being ushered into the council by a servant, Baiyi wondered why the Church had become emboldened enough to challenge Da Xue and himself directly. Had the Church gone mad, or had Baiyi lost his leverages? Had they already found a way to handle the very real possibility of the mass losing their faith in their religion, should they wage a war against the Voidwalkers? Or had they found a way to fight against the powers of the Book of Servitude? Or was it because they received some sort of divine instruction from their god above? Had they secured the support of a powerful entity who could trample over Baiyi himself?

He had only just entered the hall when he heard a passionate, angry voice crying, “Da Xue, and those bastards from the Void behind it who claimed innocence, are always so delighted to blow their trumpet and hoot about their ‘powers’ and ‘peerless expertise’. However, when a catastrophe hit, what did any of you do? Nothing! You’ve done nothing, other than locking down the entrance to Da Xue to protect your little elitist sanctuary!”

‘My, my. This guy is not very good at roasting, is he? He would lose to even a kid back on Earth, ‘ Baiyi thought, snickering.

He stepped into the hall and answered in a loud voice, “Yes, and what did the oh-so-compassionate Church do?”

With that, he attracted every pair of eyes on the crowd to himself, including the man who had been loudly leveling accusations against Da Xue earlier.

It was a man who looked like a pastor. As he turned his attention to Baiyi, his eyes were filled with unmasked malice and adversity. He snickered and retorted, “Why, why. If it isn’t Grand Principal Hope himself! Can you believe how difficult it was to get you to show yourself? Wherever have you been during the massacre earlier, when the people and the land cried out for the help of someone who titled himself as a powerful savior, hmm? Fooling around with little girls at home, no doubt!”

Baiyi’s response was to extend his right hand and made a grappling gesture. A sudden surge of black Void Flames suddenly appeared around the man’s body and engulfed him, incinerating him into a pile of black ashes before the man could even let out another scream.

The crowd’s faces turned white. A few men, who looked like paladins, bolted up from their seats and pulled out their swords instantly, leveling the tip at Baiyi. One of them shouted, “You fiend! You dare commit manslaughter in public?!”

Despite their bluster, none of them dared take a step forward. In fact, as Baiyi came closer to them, they steadily backed away a little.

“Nah, I wouldn’t call that a ‘manslaughter’. It’s merely a punishment for those who don’t understand the importance of filtering their words before they open their mouth. Now, return to your Chief Judge and tell him to send someone smart to talk to us next time. We can grow so impatient from listening to a fool’s tirades,” Baiyi replied coldly.

He turned to the middle of the council where Tisdale — who was already grinning ear to ear — sat and nodded, “C’mon, Dale. Let’s get out of here.”

With that, both Tisdale and Baiyi turned to the exit and left the dumbfounded crowd in the hall. No one dared to stop him neither.

Just like that, a council held specially to slander Da Xue was thus cut short by Baiyi using the most direct and uncouth way.

“You know, you didn’t have to attend stupid events like these,” Baiyi said.

“With that attitude, Sir, I’m sure there won’t be stupid events like these for me to attend anymore,” Tisdale replied. “But I gotta’ ask… Don’t you think we may be a little overboard this time?”

Baiyi shook his head. “Nope,” he replied, remembering what the Archmage spoke earlier. “I think it’s high time we raise our voice.”