Divine Luck: SSS-Rank Battle Maid Harem

Zach wasn't sure where the Empress Dowager was bringing him and the princess, but she led him on a tour through her annex and into a basement. It was brightly lit with fresh air and clean walls and floors. It was nothing like the dungeons Zach had expected to find in the Palace.

But as he looked at the chamber taking up a majority of the space under the Empress Dowager's palace, Zach understood that the dungeons were just elsewhere. This was the Empress Dowager's personal training space.

The basement's main space was big enough to store a ship in almost whatever position they fit it. There were scorch marks, cracks, and indentations in a few places here and there along the walls, floor, and ceiling.

But they weren't here for the training room. That would be some other time.

This time, they were here for the significantly smaller room located next to the training hall.

The room was simple, but it wasn't lit up by any torches. It was a room of sleek, dark grey slabs of stone with a doorless opening in the wall. It was very different from the otherwise light grey, almost white basement.

However, even without the different stones, Zach could feel that there was something special about the room. He glanced at the Empress Dowager. She nodded. This was what he had come for, after all.

Zach excitedly skipped into the room. He stood in the middle of but nothing happened, so he looked back at Princess Rienne and the Empress Dowager in confusion.

Princess Rienne didn't have much of an expression other than curiosity. The Empress Dowager, on the other hand, grinned and waved as she mouthed, 'Bye.' Zach's brow furrowed in confusion, but before he could say anything, he, Yanael, Alzara, Soara, and Nora were enclosed in absolute darkness as two panels of stone slid out of the square entrance, turning it into a solid wall instead of an opening.

"Uh…" Zach's mouth stayed open as he stared at what was apparently a very secure door and not just an opening in the wall.

This was not the turn of events he had expected. He was confused about why the Empress Dowager, whom he had just shared an excited conversation about summoning with, would trap him in a solid stone prison.

But before he could voice any of his thoughts to his familiars, the room thumped. It was soft and slow like the heartbeat of a sleeping bear. Slowly, threads appeared in the center of the room's floor.

With each thump, the threads pulsed with a soft golden light and extended along the floor. They crawled up the walls like vines and into the ceiling like tree roots.

The threads that looked like pulsating veins of a living being had nowhere to go after gathering in the center of the ceiling, but with each pulse, more and more of each vein gathered in the center. After a while, they were pulled out of the floor and dragged along the walls until all the veins had gathered in a glowing mass of pulsating threads in the ceiling. Read latest chapters at empire

Slowly, the mass expanded like a growth and started drooping from the ceiling until it assumed the shape of a water drop. The drop continued growing and swelling, the threads and veins seamlessly connected like a membrane of organic light.

Before long, the drop turned into a ballooning cocoon that took up a significant portion of the air space in the room. Zach and the others still had more than enough space to stand, but they couldn't not worry when it continued expanding, especially when the pulsating and beating increased in frequency and strength.

That wasn't the only change. The light grew brighter and brighter with each beat and pulse. Soon, the light was so overwhelming that Zach and Nora couldn't keep their eyes open. Shortly after that, even Soara and Alzara had to close their eyes and avert their gazes. Soara was the only one who could sneak a peek at the secrets of the light, but she was far from her peak, and a peek was all she could take before the light became too much even for her.

The light was familiar.

The process leading up to it, but Zach would have been a fool not to realize what was going on by now. The Empress Dowager hadn't trapped him and his retinue in a chamber of weird death.

It was a summoning chamber. It was what they had come to the Imperial Palace to look for clues. Zach had hoped he would be able to find something about where he could go to summon a familiar or where he might find a clue. After all, the Empress Dowager was a renowned summoner, and there were other summoners in the Palace and the capital.

There was no way all of them could go to the Academy, or either of the Labyrinths Zach had been to and use the same methods he used. It wasn't feasible. There wasn't an overwhelming amount of summoners in the capital, but there were too many for that to be possible.

There had to be a convenient solution whenever a summoner in the capital leveled up enough to summon a new familiar, regardless of how seldom that happened after graduation.

Zach didn't know if everyone else used the room in the Empress Dowager's basement, but it was only natural that the Empress Dowager had a room for herself given her status and influence.

But it was a little mean that she hadn't warned him about the nature of it or how it went about the summoning process. He had been a little worried for a few seconds there.

Zach glanced at Nora.

He wondered if it was alright for her to be present. The light was strong but not harmful. That wasn't what he was worried about.

How did the room specify which human's familiar to summon? What if Nora awakened as a summoner? Would her presence interfere with or affect the summoning in any way? Would the summoning affect her in any way?

Zach could only find out when the light faded.