Why Did You Summon Me?

Baiyi’s abode in the new world, ‘Micro-dimensional Estate’, was made from the combination of Spatial Laws and advanced spatial magic. It was an independent space attached to the Main Dimension. It was disconnected from its host, and the only way to access it was through specialized transporter portals. Its coordinate was never fixed; it could be any point in the Main Dimension. Including the fact that the Micro-dimensional Estate was free from the influence of its host, it was the perfect isolated observatory into the views and marvels of the Main Dimension.

The residents of this state could go anywhere — the sky, the city, the plains, the bottom of the ocean, or even the interior of a live volcano — in the new world. They could enjoy the best of nature without at their convenience, without having to worry about natural disasters and bad climates. Owning a Mirco-dimensional Estate was akin to owning multiple estates in different places all at once.

Anyone that owned a Micro-dimensional Estate did not have to worry about security or privacy threats, such as marketers, paparazzi, and cookie-selling girl scouts. To access the estate, one would need to know its string of passwords, or a short incantation, or have its encrypted key. Access to this ‘home’ had never been this close.

If the owner of the estate was wealthy, they could set their estate built on an area they desired to go. This way, the estate could also be used as a teleportation device. Guests and relatives could visit easily at their convenience. In this estate, everyone and no one was your neighbor.

Despite the numerous benefits that came with owning a Micro-dimensional Estate, however, it was unwise to ignore the cost of acquiring one. A Micro-dimensional Estate was expensive to acquire, and maintaining it was so costly that one may need to sell their kidney. Producing a single drop of water or a volt of electricity, going on an excursion, or returning home all required specialized magic that only a specialist agency owned by Baiyi could provide. Thus, buying and maintaining a Micro-dimensional Estate was no different from paying tribute to the Fifth Walker.

Despite that, Micro-dimensional Estates remained one of the New Empire’s most sought-after housing. Only Baiyi could build Micro-dimensional Estates, so there was less than a hundred of them in use across the New Empire. Every time a new Micro-dimensional Estate was built, a crowd of the wealthy would crazily fight over it. Thus, it was no surprise that Bai Properties had become the royal family’s most important source of wealth, as it earned them a shocking amount of income.

Baiyi’s Micro-dimensional Estate was more of a palace complex than a mansion. It had cost him a lot of money and resources to build it, so it was quite grand. It was the size of a small city and contained Baiyi’s personal chambers, his lab and experimental ground, a private mansion for every one of his family members, beautiful streets, lush gardens, huge parks, and just about every other facility one could think of. The Bai Family could live here for centuries.

For now, the girls were still young and dependent on their parents, and the Bai Family was still too small to fully occupy the huge estate. Thus, the family lived in a mansion. Including maids and servants, the total number of people living in Baiyi’s Micro-dimensional Estate was only twenty. Most of the estate was unoccupied.

Having such a huge home made it difficult for Mia and her sisters to locate their mischievous little sister. The estate was so large, even Mia had never been to some places within it. Furthermore, she had no idea where Bai Yin could be, but she would rather have the little girl sulk in one of the empty areas than sneak into her father’s lab.

As Mia and the others were searching, a woman wearing glasses — who was the housekeeper in charge of the servants — rushed over and said, “Your Highness, Her Highness Noirciel is waiting outside.”

“Bring her in. I need her help to look around,” Mia replied without looking up.

A few moments later, Noiricel entered the mansion via the specialized transporter portal. She was dressed in her ceremonial long black dress, studded with magnificent embroidery and dazzling jewels. The dress went well with her fair skin and wings of light, cultivating an image of regality, grace, and immaculateness.

Noirciel had come in with a white dress, with a design that was similar to hers, and a pair of white heels. These were for Mia to wear; this was the reason why Mia did not bother choosing what to wear after waking up.

When Noirciel walked in, the first thing she saw was Mia’s little butt. She was kneeling before a long-footed closet, checking if Bai Yin was hiding below it. Mia’s nightgown was shot, so it rode up when she bent down that way. Noirciel blushed and covered her eyes, causing the white dress to fall.

“Mia?” She stammered. “What, uh, are you, um, doing?”

Mia had no idea that her best friend could see her butt. With a teary voice, she replied, “My little sister is gone! Oh, what should I do?!”

A level-headed Bai Yun filled Noirciel in on what had happened, and when she was done, Noirciel was just as worried as Mia was. When the angel looked at a clock on the wall, her worry escalated into a panic. “B-but what about today’s ritual? Y-you know it’s being held in the capital; you know how critical it is. Laeticia even reminded us to be there a lot earlier for preparation…”

Mia stood up and glanced at the clock with a grim expression. “I…”

“You should go, Big Sister Mia. Little Yuu and I can stay here and look for our sister,” Bai Vye said. “It’s only a day of absence at school; it’s won’t be that detrimental.”

Before Mia could agree, Noirciel suddenly exclaimed, “I’ve got it! I brought the Arbiter’s Right with me; it’s just outside, in the car! You guys wait while I fetch it. With the power of Spatial Laws, we’ll be able to find Little Yin in no time!”

“But, what about the blessing ritual?” Mia said, but Noirciel had already flown to the door.

The ritual in question was a mass under the Empire’s only approved religion: Voidism. The religion was heavily requested by the Voidwalkers once associated with religion — like the Cleric Walker and the Shadow Walker. Voidism was seen as a useful way to control and govern the population. Its tenets were quite lax and upstanding; there was nothing about being rewarded with seventy-two virgins in heaven, or freedom from the oppression of toilet papers in heaven. [1]

Nevertheless, it was a highly popular religion, and to make it even more effective as a ruling tool, the three faces of Voidism — Saintess Mia, High Priestess Noirciel, and Pope Laeticia — carried out a mass religious ritual every month. The goal was to fortify the public’s perception of Baiyi’s divinity, therefore securing his ruling position.

Although it was a religion formed for political gains, Baiyi at least gave substantial aid to the most devout of his believers through his Arbiter Rights. Some of them included sending them to places and worlds they wanted to go; allowing them a peek into a sealed history segment through the Temporal Laws; or delivering a very vague prophecy through Nehemiah’s Arbiter Right. The prophecy was admittedly unspecific, but at least it would be more accurate than getting a reading from newspaper horoscope.

Taking the power of the Arbiter Rights into account, Baiyi handed them to Noirciel for maximum security and safe-keeping. They were only given to Mia and Laeticia before the Mass commenced to bestow blessings for thirty-three lucky believers. Hence, each Arbiter Right could only be used eleven times.

If Mia used Spatial Arbiter Right to look for her sister, she would be exhausting one of the eleven allocated uses. But then again, to the worried young girl, her little sister mattered more than anything else.

‘I’ll just, well, look for a way out of it later,’ Mia decided. ‘Maybe I’ll use some simple sleight magic to fib for simpler requests…’

A few moments later, Noirciel came back running with what looked like transformation wands for magical girls, shouting, “I brought the Temporal Arbiter along with the Spatial one! These two combined, and we’ll definitely pinpoint Little Yin’s locatiooaaaaaaarghhh!”

Whether it was because Noirciel was running too fast, or her heels were too slim for adequate grip on the ground, or her Kawaii Genki Girl trait kicked in, the Angel suddenly tripped and tumbled on her way. The two wands bolted out of her arms and clashed with one another in midair —

A blinding white flash later, the Bai family’s estate vanished…visually.

The Micro-dimension was there, detectable by any sufficiently sensitive apparatus or magic. The readings would give one the impression that nothing strange had occurred, too. Yet, it was simultaneously unobservable and utterly disjointed from any external connection as though the whole space was placed in a black box. Mia and the girls had now become Schrodinger’s cats.

The only antidote to their strange situation was to have the Arbiter of Space himself forcefully “liberating” them from the black box using his powers. Otherwise, their states had become completely unknown.

Nothing like this had ever happened before. More importantly, the pulse the incident generated was so minute that Baiyi, who should have been the first to notice the change, had lost the signal while his head cracked under much more frustrating issues.

Right now, Baiyi was presiding over a monthly congressional meeting as the New Empire’s state-of-head. Here, two-hundred thirty-three members representing different interest groups were debating on various state affairs to pass new laws.

Baiyi’s main job was to listen to their verbiage and to veto certain controversial or divided issues. As the head-of-state, the New Empire’s constitution restricted much of his executive power, though the man would be lying if he said he did not want it. He was never too enamored with power, and many of these things could be such a drag.

Unfortunately, things quickly spiraled out of control quicker than the Fifth Walker had expected…