The Tattoo Summoner [System Apocalypse]

Tanya paced and paced, with her bent finger resting on her chin and her other arm wrapped around herself. She'd always done this whilst thinking. One year on her birthday, her dad had grabbed snippets from loads of different home movies and edited them together into a shaky 720p video of her pacing deep in thought. A couple of clips were of her practising spelling lists or timetables, others were of her trying to remember an answer in one of their family trivia nights. In some, she had paint splatters on her hands and clothes as she decided what to paint next. Most of them were of her in the garden, the camera pressed to one of the windows and tilted right down to see her clomping around on the patio, telling stories to herself, in a world of her own. The longer she marched, the louder she got, a left, right, left, right that quickened as her ideas came to fruition.

Mrs Eceer swung the door to the kitchen open. "What is this racket?"

Tanya startled, looking over her shoulder. She could see Fahad giggling through the open door as he followed Assistant around the room. It still randomly jerked up and down but floated forward without wiggling its fingers like swimming. She hadn't seen Fahad since making his lantern, and she smiled at seeing him. Replace the barricade with a regular window and the floating hand tattoo with a toy, and the scene looked normal. As she thought that, Fahad summoned his lantern tattoo and swung it around for Assistant to dodge. Well, almost normal.

"Hm?" Mrs Eceer pressed. "What's with all the stomping? With steps like that, you'll wake the dead." She threw her hands in the air in exasperation.

"Huh?" Tanya looked away from Fahad and towards Mrs Eceer.

Mrs Eceer huffed. "Did you listen to a word I said?"

Tanya waved her hands around. "Somethin', somethin', metaphor 'bout my behaviour being bad? I think I've got the drill."

"Just stop stomping," Mrs Eceer said, walking back into the main shop.

Tanya followed. "I just got these cool level-up options, and I need to pick between them before I design Ishita's tattoo."

Fahad's head whipped towards them. His arm stopped midair, and the lantern dropped like a very heavy fly, clunking against the wood. Assistant had to lurch out of the way. The moment of impact, it unsummoned, in a flash of sparkling light."Mum is getting a tattoo too!?"

Ishita grimaced.

"Oops," Tanya said. "Sorry 'bout that."

Fahad dashed over to Ishita, clambering onto her lap. "Mum, Mum, what's it gonna be? Is it a weapon like mine? Will it be alive like Assistant? If I could get another tattoo, I'd want mine to be alive. Is that what you want too? Mum, mum."

Tanya whispered the word sorry again over Fahad's head. Ishita flashed a tired smile. The bags under her eyes were darker than before.

Mrs Eceer coughed. "Fahad, what did we agree?"

"Oh!" Fahad exclaimed. He shuffled off Ishita's lap and stood tall, puffing his chest out and saluting. "We don't bother Lieutenant Ishita whilst she's in the medical bay resting, ma'am." He stomped his foot and marched back over to Assistant, swinging his arms more than he needed to.

"Huh?" Tanya said.

"I have shields, which makes me in charge, because the person in charge always protects people," Mrs Eceer recited with a bemused smile.

"Exactly!" Fahad chimed in like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Tanya sidled up to Mrs Eceer. "War games?"

There was a glint in Mrs Eceer's eye. "I don't know anything about the military, but it seems neither does he."

Tanya turned to Fahad. "Hey, little man. How's your lantern treatin' you?"

"Oh, it's great!" he said. He whipped his arm up and it appeared mid-swing. The weight caught him off guard, and he was yanked backwards as it fell again, landing with another loud clunk and chipping wood off a different plank.

"Fahad," Ishita warned.

"Oops, sorry." He dragged the chained lantern backwards and inspected the marks in the wood with furrowed brows.

"Nah, it's fine."

Tanya studied the lantern closer. It definitely wasn't that shape when she'd designed it. It was sharper now, with points on each corner, more of a traditional lantern shape, but unlike a normal lantern, spikes covered the top and bottom rims and a sharper point stuck out of the top and bottom. The chain was longer too. She'd only had the time to tattoo it, coiling it up his forearm slightly with the darkness encroaching, but now there was excess in a pile by his feet. There was still that cartoon quality to it. Instead of straight lines up the sides, or the rounded ones she'd given, the edges were curved the other way, allowing the spikey corners to integrate more seamlessly into the design. The light in the centre was the same. It shone off of the detailed pattern in the metal. She'd done a simple pattern back then, but now it was like fractals; the closer she looked, the more detail she saw.

"Fahad?" Tanya asked, but she was looking at Ishita. "Would it be okay if we made a pact so I could see how your lantern's grown? I think it could help me help your mum."

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

Ishita nodded subtly, and Tanya turned back to Fahad. He didn't seem to have noticed that the person she was really asking was Ishita.

"Yes!" he exclaimed, then his smile dropped, and he pursed his lips. "I definitely know how to do that."

Tanya laughed. "Right, so you wanna say that you make a pact with me, but rather than sayin' our names, you say numbers. Your number is in your interface, and mine is 10056—"

He giggled. "Why? That's silly."

"Aha!" Tanya wiggled her eyebrows, holding a finger out. "That's where you're wrong. Pacts are like makin' a law, so you have to be super careful with wordin'. If you say someone's name, then, oh no, could be someone else out there with the same name that gets the pact too."

Fahad gasped. Tanya was really hamming it up with her tone and facial expressions, but he was hanging onto her every word.

"Ten thousand and five—fifty-six…" Fahad tried. He tripped over it slightly. He tried again. "Ten thousand and fifty-six."

"Exactly. Wanna try yours?" Tanya said.

Fahad's eyes widened. "It's much bigger! "One thousand, seven hundred fifty-six thousand..." He furrowed his brows. "No…"

"Wanna tell me just the numbers in order, and I'll help?" Tanya said.

It took them a moment of back and forth for Tanya to teach him a million and for him to work out how to say it all in order. He recited the two numbers a few times.

Fahad stretched before starting like he was about to run a race. "I'm number 1,756,784, and I want to make a pact with 10056."

Tanya held a thumbs up.

He smiled and continued. "I want her to be able to see my lantern because it leveled up and is really cool now. Did I do it?"

Tanya checked her interface, and there it was.

* * *

Name: Chandeluma

Wielder: Fahad Sharma

Type: Tool, Weapon

Level: 2

Attributes

Impact: 11
Absorption: 15
Resilience: 13

Illumination: 10

Abilities

Illuminate!

Can be lit and dimmed at wielder's will

Absorber!

Absorbs light when available to reduce mana strain on wielder

Bonk!

Can be used like a kusari-fundo using the momentum to do damage

Zoom!

Can phase through enemies at high speeds. Damage isn't impacted but it allows for multiple enemies to be struck in a single blow.

* * *

Tanya nodded as she read it. The increasing Attributes made sense, but she was most interested in the new ability. That hadn't been there before.

"Did you try to hit multiple monsters at once in the fight, Fahad?" Tanya asked, still studying the Interface.

Fahad looked down. "No," he mumbled. His bottom lip started quivering.

Shit.

She remembered Ishita getting dismembered and winced.

Real fuckin' tactless Tan.

"I—uh—" She started, wracking her brain for something to say to make it better.

Ishita interjected. "I could do with some food, babu. Could you help me?"

Saved by the bell.

Fahad perked up, running over to her and holding her hand. They both walked to the little kitchen. Tanya mouthed sorry for the second time that day and Ishita shook her head with a smile. She wasn't holding a grudge, but it didn't make Tanya feel any less stupid. Assistant followed, bobbing up and down towards the kitchen door above Fahad's head.

Mrs Eceer sat on the sofa. One of them had thrown an old blanket from upstairs over it to hide the inky venom. As Mrs Eceer adjusted, stuffing fell down the side, making a little pile on the floor next to it in a couple of places. She had a finger up, tapping different things in the air.

"So we found the component that allowed you to go into the minuses," Mrs Eceer said. "If you ask for information about being human, it gives you a whole host of things. I haven't had time to puzzle much of it, but there's a boon."

Tanya hadn't thought of species boons.

What's the boon for being human?

* * *

Human

Species

You're a Human, the most adaptable, determined, and downright hard-to-kill species around. While other races rely on fancy magic, ancient bloodlines, or divine blessings, you rely on grit, luck, and the ability to make really bad decisions and somehow survive them.

When faced with death or absolute failure, a Human's body kicks into overdrive. You can push any stat as low as -5 instead of being incapacitated, shattering the normal limits of your body through sheer willpower. Once adrenaline fades, it ends, and the damage is real—stats pushed past their limit take permanent penalties unless properly treated.

* * *

"Huh, interestin'," Tanya said. She was still struggling to wrap her head around different species being such a prevalent thing that they categorised it like this. Attributes going negative was impossible on a normal scale, but if most species had a natural limit, it made sense to set that as zero. The idea of the scale not being set around humans made Tanya's head spin. It was an out-of-body experience where she felt incredibly small, and nothing felt real, like an extreme version of standing by an ocean or staring up at the stars.

Tanya realised she'd not seen the stars since the lights went out. It was too dangerous really, black monsters in a lightless night—or even worse, a light to draw them in—but she still had a craving to run out that door and stare up at the sky.

There was a clatter of tins moving in the kitchen that snapped Tanya out of it. She needed to choose her Ability and start on a design. It would be a tricky balance of choosing the best Ability to help Ishita and choosing something that would work long term.

She looked at Mrs Eceer, who was still sitting on the sofa staring into space with her finger raised before her. She sipped a water bottle occasionally, storing it on the top of the Tanya's design-filled cabinets to her right. Her expression reminded Tanya of her grandma working out how to use Zoom. They even both had the metal-rimmed glasses perched at the end of their noses with their heads tilted back to see in just the right section.

"You're staring," Mrs Eceer said, without looking up.

Tanya baulked, scratching the back of her neck. Mrs Sneer was in her shop in the exact same spot she'd sat in gossiping with Maria about Mrs Sneer. The huge windows were covered in the scuffed floorboards she'd been meaning to replace since she first rented the place, and she was trying to work out what magical alien ability to take to save a neighbour she'd not spoken to before the apocalypse started. All words left her.

"You want something from me, I can tell." Mrs Eceer pulled off her glasses, folding up the little arms and sliding the arms down her blouse. They hung out across her lapel just like her dad's used to.

"I—uh–" Tanya floundered.

Mrs Eceer tapped the spot on the sofa next to her, and Tanya sat down.

"You mentioned Abilities?" Mrs Eceer ventured.

"R—Right," Tanya stammered. She pulled herself together. "So, I have three options… obviously. Uh—the first is called…" Tanya drifted off. "This will take ages."

"True."

They both paused. Mrs Eceer's body was at an angle towards Tanya, and Tanya mirrored it when she sat down. Despite that angling towards each other, Tanya was stiff as a pole, staring straight ahead at the huge wall painting an old friend had done of a dragon with a tattoo gun. From her peripheral vision, it seemed like Mrs Eceer was the same.

Mrs Eceer cleared her throat. "You could… share it with me."