"Any luck today?" One of my partners, a black-cloaked man, named Armond asked.

"Sadly, no," I responded. I galvanized my Magic with a wave of my hands and summoned a small lizard to check once more before adding, "It's the same as it was yesterday, the day before that, and all the way up to over a week ago since we've been stationed here."

"Orcs aren't exactly known for their stealth and secrecy," Armond responded, and for what had to be the tenth time this week, he reiterated, "Whatever they're hiding must be damn well important."

"Armond, I swear to god," the third member of our party trio, Ransel, aggressively said, "If you make me repeat myself one more time..." He scowled, "I'll make you regret it!"

"Repeat what?" Armond mischievously asked. He obviously loved riling up our life-long comrade.

"We are a B Ranked Party sent by the Seamstreak Guild!" Ransel nearly spat, he was so aggravated, "Obviously, whatever is hiding in this shithole of an Orc Nest must be unusually important for us to be called in!"

"Still, isn't this kind of ridiculous?" Armond asked, "Orcs usually don't reach Rank B levels of power, yet the three of us combined are taking this long to find them?"

He gestured at me with mock etiquette as he said, "His highness Heliotrope over there has sent an army of Wyverns to scour the land for thousands of square kilometers to the north and south, while we've surveyed the east and west, and still we can't find even a trace of the Orc's Hideout? It makes you wonder whether the cause of those villages disappearing was really Orcs or something, I don't know… More sophisticated?"

"At this rate, our fifteen days will be up before protocol dictates that we request for backup from the Guild to expedite the completion of the job," Ransel coldly said. "So, if you have enough time and energy to chat about our lack of progress, why don't you go back to searching for the shitty Orc Hideout instead of wasting all of our time?"

"Ransel," I calmly interjected. "We're in the middle of our lunch break..."

At that, Ransel fiercely snorted as he went back to eating his food savagely; he more wanted to get through the process than he did want to savor his meal, as always. Armond, on the other hand, just snickered as he lazily went back to drinking his fruit wine and eating his meal.

I sighed at their antics, returning to complete my own meal when one of my mid-sized summons rushed into our resting grounds.

"Master Tebolt..." The C Ranked Wyvern was short of breath as he hurried over to me and bowed down to report, "My squadron has found the mission objective. It's..." It winced as it said, "It's not what you think it is."

I casted a Tier 3 fatigue-curing Recovery Spell to completely restore the Wyvern's exhausted state before I asked, "Elaborate, would you?"

"Yes, master." The german-shepherd-sized reptile activated a Transmission Spell once more to say, "Far southeast at these coordinates—" it activated a Tier 2 Communication Spell of Relaying to transfer one of its memories which showed an image that held the precise coordinates it was talking about on a continental map, "—we found not an Orc Hideout, but fully enclosed Orc Fortress at the top of a mountain."

"Is this a joke?" Ransel frowned, "Are you really telling me, that it's taken us nearly nine full days to find a Fortress of all things? What, is it covered in B Ranked Illusions, hidden underground before the molten core of a volcano, or something?"

"Sort of..." The Wyvern carelessly said. At the sight of its master's strange look, it quickly said, "The fortress is covered in illusions and hidden in a rather remote location. Only, the illusions are at most Greater C Rank and the base is integrated seamlessly into the summit of a mountain whose peak is high enough to be obscured by clouds."

"That, and it's nearly at the edge of the continent," I added from what I learned of the Wyvern's relayed memory, if only to keep Ransel from fully losing what remained of his patience.

"Really, now?" Armond asked after nonchalantly swallowing a bit of his food, "We've already gone over the best hiding spots near our territories. You're saying our targets, Orcs, mind you, have been crossing hundreds of kilometers and going up and down mountains just to exterminate our villages instead of something more meaningful, like a city or hell, even the capital?"

"For once, the dunce has a point," Ransel begrudgingly admitted. "Even if they are idiots of the highest degree, Orcs aren't dumb enough to waste their time and effort this badly."

"Well, we'll find out soon enough, won't we?" I said as I used one of my stronger Tier 5 mass-scale End Summoning Spells to return my entire roster of Summons back to their previous places, now that their purpose had been fulfilled.

"Just, be sure to take your time eating and packing up our things," I added as an afterthought, "It could take a while before my reserves are back to full capacity."

…

Nearly half a day later, as the afternoon was slowly settling into evening, the three of us found ourselves nearly five kilometers away from our destination at the base of an otherwise unassuming mountain.

After dismounting from one of my best B Ranked Tamed Beasts, a Four Clawed Land Drake, I gave him a pat on the back and said, "Alright Skinny, we'll wait for good news from you over here. Be careful now." With that, he was off.

I smiled at his rapidly vanishing form as I thought of how much he had grown from the E Ranked garden snake he had been, before being trained to his current state. It had taken a good three years as well as all the knowledge I had gained up until that point as a Summoner. But now, he had become one of my aces.

"And we're back to more waiting," Armond mirthfully said as he kicked at some rocks as if he were a child and not a highly accomplished B Ranked Ninja in his forties.

"Oh can it, will you? You're welcome to run after Tebolt's bootleg dragon if you think you can handle the illusions," Ransel retorted.

"Yeah, I rather not underestimate a base on the level of a Fortress; especially not when it's come under question whether or not it's housing Orcs or some other unknown enemy."

An hour later, I felt a tug of Magic from Skinny requesting to be summoned back over to my side. So, after using a Tier 4 clandestine version of a Traceless Summon, I brought him over before me with such tact that only a Greater B Ranked Sensor could pick up the minute disturbances brought about by my actions.

Upon summoning him back, my party could tell at just a glance that Skinny's trip hadn't at all gone smoothly by the deeply troubled expression etched onto his face.

"It's no good," Skinny confirmed. "I went around the whole mountainside near the summit and there are no gaps nor viewpoints to gather information from. I found that the very top of the mountain had been excavated inward to hold the Fortress, but nearly a second after trying to look over it, I was almost discovered."

"I couldn't even risk using Wind Magic to sense what we could be dealing with as there are Detection Spells for all manner of Magics sealing off a dome at the top of the mountain. The only things I can tell from the short moment I was looking over and into the Fortress are that, one, the enemies are indeed Orcs, and two, they have pretty advanced Sensors and Mages," Skinny said, concluding his report.

"Damn it!" Ransel cursed, "That isn't nearly enough information for us to confidently launch an all-out frontal assault."

"Welp, if good ol' Skinny can't do the trick, I'm afraid none of Tebolt's summons will be able to either." Armond was very much resigned as he said, "I guess, we'll just have to call in for backup anyways to get some eyes in the skies for us to properly evaluate what kind of firepower this Orc Fortress is capable of."

"Eyes in the skies, huh?" I paused at that. It reminded me of my niece's most recent success in taming a common Eaglet.

Well…

Now that I really stop to think about that strange little bird, I can't really call it common now, can I? I'd been sending messages back and forth to my niece ever since we went our separate ways to complete our individual missions for the Guild, but from what she'd told me about her partner, it was quite obvious that there was something special about the little bird.

I'd seen it for myself the first time she summoned it; the moment it appeared to 'choose' to evolve right as we were discussing its evolution under the safety of Katherine's care. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't been there to witness it for myself because that bird was obviously only recently hatched. Its body showed the most blatant signs of forced maturation, almost certainly sourced from a battle-hardened spirit.

Then, during one of our chats, Katherine told me that the same baby bird which couldn't have been alive for more than a couple days, had evolved to gain almost human-like intelligence? That bordered on impossible; or rather, impossibly rare, now that I think about it.

'No… That had been the case all along!' My eyes widened as I suddenly understood the insane luck that had befallen my niece.

The extreme forced maturation, the instant compliance to be bound to a human, the sudden rise of its intelligence...

Katherine's eaglet companion was probably a self-aware reincarnate! A one-in-a-billion rarity with barely any records in existence!

The only thing I knew about them was the fact that centuries ago, a legendary S Ranked Mage who dealt with Life and Death Magic wrote in her memoir that reincarnates like her knew of their status from birth. They were supposedly all powerful souls that had eventually died in their past lives only for the cycle of rebirth to fail in fully erasing their memories before they started heir next life.

Now, if that were the case then maybe, just maybe… It might not be completely insane of me to suddenly call over my party's members and say, "I think I might have a way around asking for backup..."