1

It's like I'm flying. Yuliana Da Via Brannan briefly glanced at her feet, which were barely touching the naked, slippery rocks beneath.

Of course, there was no way she could really fly, but at the velocity she was going downhill now, the difference was barely there. Before she realized, Yuliana had lost the skill and patience necessary to properly control her descent. The young maiden's life had in one moment been reduced to an object of mad luck, which—as she well knew—was only ever afforded in finite, minute quantities. The time before she should slip and fall, bringing her short and tumultuous journey to a miserable conclusion, was counted in heartbeats.

And yet, Yuliana never even considered trying to stop.

Her options now numbered in two: keep going and by some chance of a miracle, live. Or else stop—either by her own intent or by the forces of nature—and perish.

The heavy burden this young woman carried in her arms made her descent that much trickier, but the thought of letting go of it was just as unthinkable to her as stopping. Her entire purpose was contained in that object, even as it did its best to pull her to her doom. Sooner than it, Yuliana was prepared to discard her own life.

Those two went hand-in-hand, after all.

“Please reconsider! You have done all that you could!” Yuliana heard an anxious voice argue in her ears. “You must abandon the Amygla and escape! Do so and they are sure to give up on chasing you!”

—Never! Yuliana responded in thought, gritting her teeth. She was too exhausted and out of breath to voice it.

Even as her body began to fail her, Yuliana stubbornly held onto the arrogant hope of somehow escaping without compromises. Directing all the remaining strength of will into moving her feet, she leaped dangerously down from boulder to boulder in a race to the bottom of the gorge.

Rain hindered the girl's vision. Dark clouds hung heavily above the mountains.

Even without confirming it with her eyes, Yuliana could tell the sun had already set far behind the steep cliffs surrounding her, and it would soon get too dark to run. But even in dark now she looked for hope; if only she could evade her pursuers until nightfall, they would be sure to lose track of her.

Even as she entertained those optimistic thoughts, Yuliana was deep down better than aware of how impossibly distant that hope was. On foot, without companions or supplies, her efforts had boiled down to this momentary contest of endurance, in which she held no discernible advantage over those on her trail.

And then, even more abruptly than she had feared it——her luck ran out.

Exhaustion building up by each successive step, the attention Yuliana could spare to securing her footing became lessened in proportion, to the point where her recklessness had finally grown too great for fortune alone to make up for.

Her boot slipped and, at once, her balance was lost.

Valiantly dashing forward in one moment, in the next the young woman already tumbled down the rocky slope with no way of regaining her natural orientation, like a frail toy in the playful hands of invisible faeries.

It hurt less than Yuliana had imagined it would.

Though that was mostly due to her ability to fathom quite a torture, rather than it not hurting at all.

The young woman's arms and legs, as well as her upper body, were fortunately protected by an ornate yet effective plate armor. Now grateful for this priceless gift she had always considered herself unworthy of, Yuliana shielded her unshielded head, as she rolled down. But it was then that she realized her survival instincts had betrayed her loftier intentions—to save herself, she had unwittingly let go of the object she had valued above her life.

With its loss, even if she survived the fall, her desperate journey was over.

Understanding that, Yuliana rather found the pain cathartic.

Each time her mistreated form collided with the rocks, each time a blunt, relentless pain flared somewhere through her limbs and sides, bleaching her consciousness pure white, Yuliana thought it was a warranted punishment for her weakness.

Finally, the girl reached a spot where gravity could no longer drag her any further down, at the bottom of the water-carved gorge. Her stamina utterly depleted, out of breath, her body aching all over, Yuliana lay flat on her face on the coarse, wet sand. The freezing spring rain prickled her exposed neck like needles.

I have to get up. I have to get up.

Even now, her soldier's spirit refused to surrender.

Though her right arm and left thigh hurt too much to rely on, the toes and fingers were at least responding. There were no broken bones, it seemed. She was conscious. Exhaustion, pain, and bruises alone were no excuse not to keep going. But simply being hard on yourself was never enough to achieve the impossible, and Yuliana's abused muscles outright refused the idea of getting up so soon. She could only submit to her fate, lie still, and let her burning lungs keep gasping for oxygen—at least until their breath would be stilled for good.

—“There! There she is! She's down! Over here!”

From a distance echoed the encouraged cries of her pursuers.

They sounded all too close to her liking. Despite the added swiftness brought at the cost of senselessness, Yuliana hadn't been able to pull much of a lead on the men on her trail. They would reach her in a moment and effortlessly reclaim what she had risked so much to take. She was powerless to stop them now.

“Forgive me...It's over,” she spoke in between ragged breaths, though she would have rather died on the spot than pronounced those words. “This is...as far as I go, it seems...”

“You must not give up!” the clear voice seemingly coming from within her very head answered her. “I will...I will call for aid. Be still!”

Who would come? Yuliana thought bitterly and snorted.

No people lived in the mountains. Even if some random hunter or a hermit happened to be nearby, what good would it do? No, she was already beyond all mortal aid. But what the voice said next made Yuliana forget about the pain and open her eyes in shock.

“I shall use my right to summon.”

“What?” the girl gasped. “You can't mean that! Why!? At a time like this…!”

“It must be now or never,” the voice answered.

“What about the prophecy? What will happen—”

“There is no time to reflect on it,” the voice cut her off, “they may kill you, or worse, and all will be lost. I will do it! Be still and calm. This will be taxing on you.”

The desperation in the voice of her unseen companion reminded Yuliana of just how miserable her situation was. And of her own inadequacy.

“That's right...I've failed to guard my word. I've no right to object. Not that I ever did. Fine...My body and spirit are yours to use as you will, my Lord. Burn it away and let...the champion take my place...”

“Speak no more! Everything will be fine! You will survive this, I guarantee it. It is not the end. Hold on…!”

Even through her closed eyelids, Yuliana could see a bright light amass close by, banishing darkness from the previously shady depths of the gorge.

To be precise, it wasn't coming from some place near her.

It was coming from her. Through her.

Though Yuliana was not a sorceress, that light was undoubtedly the brilliant glow of magic. And not just any magic but an ancient sorcery unknown to the witches and warlocks of today.

The light of the mythical Grand Summon.

A once-in-a-thousand years miracle.

As foretold in the timeless prophecy, like in the days described by the ancient banquet songs, a mighty warrior, a hero, would be called from another world, to save the misguided races of Ortho.

Only, it was too soon.

Would the departed gods forgive this transgression?

Or would the only thing to answer the spell be their merciless retribution?

Only time would tell.

A powerful wind blew, turning the rain momentarily upward. Even the approaching pursuers stopped, startled by the magnificent shine and the widening magic circle which produced it. After reaching up to the heavens in a sparkling, blinding pillar of pure white light, the spell's effect began to quickly shrink in size, ultimately solidifying in a vaguely humanoid shape.

Then, the light faded completely, returning the canyon to twilight.

Yuliana exerted herself to see the result.

Against her fears, it appeared the summoning had been a success.

Of course, the one who had carried it out was one of the fabled Divines.

Even if the prophecy was enacted prematurely, there was no way it could fail. From the moment of its evocation, the success of the result was already set in stone.

But...

The outcome was something not even the Divines could have predicted.

Maybe not even the distant Gods themselves, in their famous prophecy.

2

The common consensus in her class—in all her classes through sixth to twelfth grade—among both peers and elders alike, was that the girl called Itaka Izumi was something of an idiot.

It wasn't a matter of simple grades.

Although she was a little slow on the uptake and her answers to teachers' quizzes often ended up missing the point, so to say, young Miss Izumi did pass her exams without too much hassle. She was not the top of her class, but notably above average, at least. Maybe she was just that kind of a learner—you know, the “my pace”-type that didn't blossom in the constricted, archaic classroom environment?

Perhaps she was actually a hidden genius?

Well, whether she was or wasn't, nobody could tell.

As said, grades were not the cause for her poor reputation.

The primary reason was that even while she was still a child, Izumi took being a child that one awkward step too far.

This was probably best illustrated in her career plan form on the eighth grade.

In her form, this girl boldly wrote in her otherwise tidy handwriting, “a summoned hero in another world” on the first line, intended to signify her primary career of choice.

What did this mean? Unspecified.

On the second place, instead of a baker, or a cosmetologist, or a hairdresser, she wrote, “magician/rogue/healer in the party of the summoned hero”.

Above the black line following the numeral three was not a word about nurses, reporters, models, or even idols. It said, “a blacksmith (or a shop assistant) in a mid-level town frequented by summoned heroes”.

The plans grew adorably more modest as the list went on, although it was mostly indicating the writer's desperation—or an attempt to better appeal to some divine authority—rather than due to any sense of realism.

No, rather than a “career plan”, it would've been more appropriately labeled, “a wishlist”.

A wishlist to who, exactly? An excellent question. Not to Santa Claus, anyway. Most likely, the only entity capable of making any of those absurd plans real would have to be God himself—if only he cared.

Young Ms Izumi's teacher was definitely helpless in this regard. He had not even one solid suggestion to give towards actualizing those career plans. Instead, he wrote a very concerned email to Izumi's parents, who in turn prohibited their daughter from playing video games or purchasing manga or light novels for a month.

Indeed, Itaka Izumi was one of those progressive, modern girls who openly enjoyed video games and such like a great deal, though you would not have believed it simply by looking at her. She watched a lot of anime of a very specific niche, spent a large chunk of her allowance on manga and light novels of the same sort, even wrote her own fantasy novellas on the side.

Nothing wrong with that, really. There was a kid like that or two or more in every class. No great social stigma existed for such hobbies in this day and age, times changed and so on. But perhaps the way Ms Izumi enjoyed her hobbies was a bit different, after all.

Her parents, teachers, as well as the few friends she had, were all of the opinion that while her free time activities were harmless on a principle, she still could've found better ways to spend her money and enthusiasm.

As for Izumi herself…

“I don't think that's very fun.”——She would always halfheartedly dismiss any good-intending recommendations on better entertainment and pastime.

What really was the problem then?

To understand that, one should take a closer look at these hobbies.

Oddly enough, all the media this Itaka Izumi so enthusiastically consumed had one particular trait in common.

Isekai—they were all, without fail, about being spirited away into another world.

“I wasn't meant to be born in this world. This is too dull. One day, I will be transported into another dimension and live my new life there as an adventurer, enjoying each day to the fullest. That's the real life I was meant to live.” Izumi was convinced of this. She did everything she did with that future in mind and paid no heed to anything else.

Time passed and Izumi slowly matured from “that goofy child” into “that eccentric young lady”, nicely put. But even as she aged, her faith in her dream's plausibility never seemed to waver. Regardless of her conviction, days flew by and her wish of being miraculously abducted into a game-like parallel reality didn't appear to get one step closer to realization. Yet she never once questioned if it was even possible to begin with. No, she naturally assumed the fault was in herself.

Maybe I'm still too young and inexperienced?

Of course, no wizard possessing awe-inspiring magic powers would waste their mana on calling a helpless damsel with no talents to speak of. As she was, wasn't Izumi only going to be useless waste of space even if she had her way? She couldn't count on being given special treatment, or acquiring some kind of an extraordinary ability simply for the virtue of being a summoned hero either. Such things could only ever happen in cheap wish-fulfillment stories, clearly. Izumi had to have at least one solid skill, a specialty, that should warrant such an honor—or so she thought.

Therefore, on the doorstep of adulthood, free from the reins of compulsory education, Izumi dedicated her time and effort into acquiring the qualifications necessary to become a summoned hero.

What those qualifications were, exactly, she obviously had no idea.

Neither did anybody else.

The needs of a medieval fantasy world could be many and varying, so it was better to train a whole bunch of skills and professions, just in case. Whoever said the other world would be medieval fantasy-themed, anyway? Of course, no one. Not only was Izumi greedily demanding the world to provide her an unlikely escape route into another, she also expected the other world to perfectly conform to her ambiguous expectations for it. As if the odds of getting just half of the deal weren't bad enough already.

Knowing all this now, you are probably beginning to understand what manner of a person Itaka Izumi was.

Not merely an innocent, free-spirited child with a wild imagination.

Not a youthful, modern woman with an expansive sense of humor.

No, just odd.

Off.

Upset.

Mad as the famous hatter.

But one day——a miracle really did occur.

A double miracle. A triple miracle. A conjunction of lucky stars that made the idea of a spontaneous big bang itself seem mundane.

Just like Izumi had always known it would. As if she had been granted some sort of divine wisdom upon birth, otherworldly insight, which had allowed her to predict her own fate and take measures to prepare for it.

No, it probably really was only a mad, once-in-a-multiverse freak occurrence, the magnitude of which the words, “an unlikely coincidence”, were powerless to cover.

Nevertheless, regardless of the astronomic numbers involved, it happened.

But——maybe just a little too late?