SSS-Ranked Summoner: Only I Summon All Heroes And Heroines Of Legend-Chapter 9: Road to Gran-lusia

The house breathed quietly around him.

Altair moved through his room gathering what he needed, he pulled a travel bag from beneath his bed. His father’s words were still fresh but they’d stopped hurting somewhere at this point.

Now they just riled a sense of urgency within him.

He worked quickly. Gathering spare and practical clothes, not the embroidered Elfender formal wear. Into his pack went his personal journal and a heavy, weatherproof cloak. Finally, he knelt by his writing desk, prying up the loose floorboard to retrieve what he had long kept hidden.

The hidden compartment underneath had been his secret since childhood. A habit he developed from the moment he acknowledged he wasn’t a part of the Elfender wealth, he always had emergency fund.

Three years of quietly pocketing excess allowances, selling personal trinkets, squirreling away anything with value. Gold coins, forty-two of them. Two signet rings that weren’t registered to the house inventory. A sapphire pendant that had belonged to a great-aunt who’d gifted it to him privately before her passing.

He took everything.

The Codex went last, wrapped in cloth and nestled at the center of the bag where it was most protected.

He paused at his desk. Picked up the quill.

Wrote a single line on a piece of paper.

Don’t worry about me.

He left it on the pillow, certain his mother would check in after dinner.

Altair shouldered his pack and eased the door open, pausing to read the house. From below, the dinner party continued noisily, the clink of crystal and the rehearsed laughter of a family already moving on. The servants’ wing was silent, they were all present a the dinner.

He melted into the hallway like a shadow passing through a tomb.

The side path led him through the stillness of the gardens. The bite of the midnight air greeted him as he slipped through the gate, his boots meeting the cobblestones of the world outside the Elfender Manor.

He didn’t spare the estate a single glance.

---

Valthoria’s capital still actively buzzing even past the dinner hour, Altair pulled his hood up and moved through the crowds.

He needed a private travel cart heading north, specifically toward the Hanging Cities of Arlindel, where Gran-lusia Academy sat suspended between the mountain peaks on its famous sky bridges.

Altair moved through the throng, his eyes scanning for a driver whose horse looked capable and whose eyes weren’t glazed with gin.

He approached a man leaning against a mud-flecked hansom, the man’s top hat tilted low. "To the Southern Pass," Altair said, his voice low but firm.

The man spat a stream of tobacco juice into the straw. "Southern Pass? At this hour? That’ll be a sovereign, lad. The roads are black and the footpads are hungry."

"A sovereign?" Altair didn’t flinch. "I’m looking for a carriage, not to buy the horse. Half that, and not a penny more." The driver laughed and turned away to a group of merchants, leaving Altair to move on.

The next was a nervous-looking man. He offered a "fair" price of fifteen shillings, but his hands shook as he checked the harness. Altair noticed his fidgeting, he needed a steady hand, not a man who would bolt at the first shadow. He declined before the man could finish his pitch.

Finally, near the edge of the yard, he found a driver sitting atop a sturdy black brougham. The man wasn’t haggling; he was calmly cleaning a brass lamp.

"Southern Pass," Altair repeated.

The driver looked him over noting the practical clothes, the heavy cloak, and the lack of a family crest. "Ten shillings," the man said, his voice like grinding gravel. "Upfront. I don’t care who you’re running from, so long as you don’t bring ’em to my door."

Altair observed the man closely, then reached into his pouch, pulled out a silver crown and a handful of shillings, and pressed them into the driver’s calloused palm.

"Done," Altair said. He climbed into the dark interior of the carriage, and with a sharp whistle and the crack of a whip, the estate of his birth finally vanished behind him.

The road to Arlindel wound through forested highlands, the city’s glow fading as trees closed in on either side. Altair watched the darkness pass through the cart’s small window.

Ding.

[Personal Quest: Forge Your Path — COMPLETED]

[+800 XP]

[Current XP: 800/1000]

Altair’s brow arched in surprise. He drew himself up, his eyes locking onto the ethereal notification suspended in the air before him. A Personal Quest. He hadn’t realized a trial had already been set in motion.

With a focused flick of his mind, he summoned the System Interface, watching as the translucent panel unfurled and expanded before him.

"What are personal quests?" he asked the system.

[Personal Quests are milestones generated by your narrative choices and growth. Unlike standard quests, they cannot be assigned or tracked in advance, they trigger when a significant life decision is made and completed. Forge Your Path was generated when you chose to pursue Gran-lusia Academy against direct opposition from your primary household authority. Completion was confirmed upon departure from Elfender Estate.]

Altair noted that. The System had been watching him. Tracking decisions and rewarding genuine choices, not just combat performance or skill usage.

"And the XP? What does it do?"

[XP — Experience Points — determine Tier Progression. Your current Tier is F. Tier progression follows this structure:]

F , F+ , F++ , F+++ , E , E+ , E++ , E+++ , D...

[This pattern continues through tiers D, C, B, A, S, SS, SSS, and EX.]

[Each tier and sub-level requires increasing XP thresholds and unlocks tangible progression advantages.]

"What does F+ require? And what do I get?". he asked progressively.

[F+ Threshold: 1,000 XP]

[Current: 800/1,000 XP]

[Advantages of Tier Progression:]

- Stronger Spell Output: Contracted legend abilities scale with summoner tier

- Expanded Mana Reserve: Base mana capacity increases at each sub-level

- Legend Access: Higher tiers unlock interaction and summoning of progressively powerful legends

- Contract Slots: Additional simultaneous contracts become available at key thresholds

[Note: At current tier F, your mana capacity and contract limits are significantly restricted. Progression is advised as a priority objective.]

Two hundred XP away from his first rank up. And he was only just starting.

Altair leaned back against the cart wall, turning over the new information like a stone in his mind.

Top two priorities: rank up consistently, and solidify his existing contracts. Heracles still needed convincing. Delilah was secured. Everything else built from there.

His thoughts shifted as another memory surfaced, a notification he’d registered but not fully processed when the System first initialized.

"The uploaded history files. What are those exactly?"

[Upon integration, your System interface synchronized with the Codex Aeterna Heroica’s internal archive . All legend histories, biographies, and recorded tales contained within the Codex have been uploaded as downloadable memory files.]

[These files can be passively downloaded into your memory during rest or low-activity states, eliminating the need to manually read each volume in the Codex’s internal library.]

Altair stared at the notification.

Then his mouth parted into a genuine smile.

"Yosh."

He almost laughed out loud.

No more spending hours in that white library poring over books one by one. The System could download the knowledge directly into his memory while he rested. Minerva’s library was still valuable for initial contact, but this changed everything in terms of speed.

He pulled up the Legend Archive interface.

An infinite scroll of names and files materialized before him, arranged alphabetically in clean columns. Thousands of entries. Maybe more. Heroes, warriors, sorcerers, conquerors, scholars. Legends from every timeline the Codex had absorbed across centuries.

He began scrolling through the A tab.

Achilles. Ambiorix. Anansi. Arjuna. Artemisia...

A name stopped him.

[ARTHUR PENDRAGON — The Once and Future King]

Altair’s finger hovered over the entry. King Arthur Pendragon. The name had carried weight. And the title of Kingship seemed to appeal more to Satoshi’s instinct

He tapped the entry.

[Downloading Legend File: Arthur Pendragon]

[10%...]

He watched the loading bar tick forward, then closed the interface. The System would handle it passively. And It would be done by morning, he assumed.

Outside the window, the highland forest gave way to open road, stretching into the far distance, barely visible against the night sky.

A two-days travel.

By the time he arrived, he’d know everything there was to know about King Arthur.

Altair pulled his cloak tighter, settling against the cart wall.

His eyes grew heavy.

One contract gotten, and two in progress.

Not bad for a disgrace.

He was asleep before the next mile marker passed.