All My Summons Become Divine Girls

Chapter 226: Hands, Not Fists

Hajin ran his thumb over the edge of the slate board, feeling the chalk dust stick to his skin. He sat across the table from Marrick, watching the exhausted scribe drag his pen across another page of regional tax records.

The tally listed roughly ninety surviving men who knew how to swing a pickaxe. Not a single one of them knew how to build a forge capable of melting anomaly-grade iron.

"The southern village has three carpenters," Marrick said, not looking up from his ledger, "but two of them are missing fingers from the mine collapses, and the third is past his seventieth winter. We have raw lumber arriving from the caravans tomorrow, but no one to cut it into defensive stakes."

"What about the masons?" Hajin asked, staring at the bleak numbers written across the slate.

"We have men who can stack rocks," he replied, dipping his pen into the inkwell, "but stacking rocks is not building a wall. A single catapult will shatter an unmortared wall in ten minutes."

The region was choking on its own raw wealth, but solid gold could not swing a hammer or mix mortar.

A flash of light broke the shadows of the room, illuminating the dark corners before condensing onto the table. Aria manifested in her solid, child-sized form, sitting cross-legged right on top of Marrick’s tax records.

Marrick did not even flinch, keeping his head down and moving his pen to a different page. The scribe already treated the girl as another occupational hazard of working for a lord who defied the natural laws of the world.

"I hope you are ready to buy another mouth to feed," Aria said, crossing her arms over the tax records, "because your Soul Selection cooldown just cleared."

Hajin stopped tapping the slate, looking up at the system interface that had materialized behind her head.

[ System Notification ]

[ Soul Selection Cooldown: COMPLETE ]

[ Current Summons: 2/5 ]

[ Ring 3 Access: Deep Veil Parameters Unlocked ]

"I did not authorize any Deep Veil parameters," he said, leaning back in his chair to stare at the screen.

"Your third Ring authorized it for you," she countered, smoothing the hem of her dress, "you are no longer restricted to souls who died during recent history. We are dragging the net across the older eras now, so expect some dust."

He stared at the prompt, remembering the endless dark space of the inner void and the voice of the Goddess breaking the silence.

She had nudged him about his summons during the core reconstruction, warning him that he was carrying too much of the burden alone.

He had only pulled two souls from the Veil so far, Juna for predatory speed and Loccy for siege-breaking impact. Vella was tied to the Spirit Ring, and Ash was a localized natural disaster sleeping in the next room.

His two contracted summons functioned as beautiful, dangerous, and fiercely loyal weapons, but neither of them could build a watchtower or temper steel.

Hajin pulled the Fang of the Moon-Eater from his inventory, resting the Epic-tier drop on his knee. The unworked material was a massive, jagged piece of dark wolf bone that radiated a cold pressure, making the fire in the hearth waver.

He thought about the master smith who walked away from the Apex core, fully aware that striking the anomaly loot would blow his arm off. A fourth fighter would not build a perimeter wall, temper raw iron, or mint the regional gold into usable currency.

"I need hands," he said, sending the Fang back into the inventory space, "not fists."

"You do realize this system was designed to build an army, right?" Aria asked, tilting her head slightly as the interface expanded, "because filtering for non-combat parameters usually gets you killed."

"I am filtering for someone who knows how to build," he corrected, standing up from the table, "open the Veil."

[ chairman_of_naps: ] YES FINALLY

[ LoreSeeker99: ] the gacha pulls are back!

[ TaxpayerOnEarth: ] pull an SSR builder bro

[ CringeSlayer91: ] stream chat is ready for the new unit

The system interface expanded in front of him, generating the familiar Soul Selection panel. It organized the available souls into a clean column of silhouettes, pairing each with a fragmented impression and a compatibility percentage.

[ Applying Filter: Craft / Creation / Forge ]

[ Scanning Deep Veil Strata... ]

[ 4 Matches Found ]

Four distinct silhouettes materialized on the screen, waiting for him to make a choice. He tapped the top entry, bringing up the soul’s fragmented historical record.

[ Soul Fragment: Master Architect ]

[ Era: 400 Years Pre-System ]

[ Compatibility: 82% ]

[ Note: Specializes in fortress design and siege defense. ]

"Eighty-two percent," he muttered, reading the green text, "she can build a wall, but she cannot forge an Apex core or temper weapons for the militia."

He dismissed the architect and shifted his attention down the list to the second and third silhouettes. Both of those master armorers from the early Shard era represented safe choices, fully capable of turning raw iron into standard military gear for Cassie’s party.

But standard gear would not hold the line against the Flint family’s heavy infantry or the increasingly violent monsters threatening the region.

He scrolled to the bottom of the panel, stopping on the fourth silhouette. Unlike the clean borders of the previous entries, this one pulsed with a deep copper glow, radiating an impression that felt like staring directly into an open furnace.

He pressed his thumb against the screen, expanding the final profile into view.

[ Soul Fragment: The Forgemistress ]

[ Era: Pre-Shard (Anomalous Marker) ]

[ Compatibility: 68% ]

[ Note: Dragon-blood artisan soul. Memory integrity compromised. ]

"Sixty-eight percent," he said, frowning at the unusually low compatibility number burning on the screen.

Juna had been a near-perfect match, while Loccy had been an impossible one-hundred percent, making sixty-eight percent look like an impenetrable wall. The low score meant the bond would actively resist him, ensuring the physical toll of dragging her across the boundary would be immense.

"Sixty-eight percent is going to fight you the entire way across the boundary," Aria warned, dropping her casual tone for something much sharper, "the anchor process will rip through your mana reserves and probably your muscle tissue."

She paused for a long moment, staring directly at him from her spot on the table, "so grab the ninety-percent armorer if you actually want to walk tomorrow."

He kept his finger hovering over the selection prompt, feeling the latent heat bleeding out of the interface.

[ GoldRushGamer: ] don’t do it, 68% is trash tier synergy

[ dungeon_astronomer: ] wait, look at the era tag! Pre-Shard!

[ RationalSkeptic7: ] memory compromised means she forgot her own skills, skip her

[ CringeSlayer91: ] dragon blood artisan? grab her right now

"The armorer knows how to make gear for the current era," he said, staring at the copper text, "she knows how to work with normal cores and normal iron but the anomaly loot we pulled from the unranked Gate is not normal."

He thought about the Divine-adjacent materials sitting in his inventory, the cores that bled ambient mana just by existing.

"If I summon a modern smith, they will look at those cores and walk away, just like Seliza’s man did," he said, closing his hand into a fist, "so I need to pull a master from the old world capable of forging anomaly-grade bone."

"Fine," Aria sighed, shaking her head as she initialized the anchor sequence, "but do not complain to me when your bones start vibrating."

He pressed the confirmation prompt, ignoring the phantom heat that immediately burned into his finger.

"Initiate the summon," he commanded, locking the choice into the system.

[ Soul Selected: The Forgemistress ]

[ Commencing Anchor Protocol... ]

[ Warning: High Mana Drain Detected ]

He slammed his hands onto the table, gasping for air as the anchor process hit him. The sensation lacked the crushing drain of Loccy’s conversion or the wild rush of Juna’s bond, instead feeling exactly like swallowing liquid iron.

His core burned, forcing the three golden Rings to tear themselves out of his right arm and manifest. They spun so fast the air hummed, generating a concussive pressure wave that rattled the windows in their frames.

Marrick dropped his pen, scrambling backward as the heat in the registry spiked, curling the edges of the parchment on the desk.

"Lord Hajin!" Marrick threw his arms up, trying to shield his face from the blinding golden light.

"Stay back," he gritted out, feeling the dragon-blood conversion tearing through his mana pathways, pulling directly from his bone marrow.

The drain was immense, far worse than Loccy’s summon, threatening to pull his consciousness under the surface. He locked his knees, refusing to collapse, forcing the corrupted heat through the Rings to stabilize the anchor.

The air in the middle of the room warped, folding inward before exploding outward in a silent wave of pressure. Through the haze of heat and gold mana, the copper-lit silhouette of the forgemistress began to take shape.