Chapter 1

Tang Lin saw a post when he was browsing an online community recently — if Cthulhu could be summoned by lowly humans, why can’t humans be summoned by ants?

A funny member replied: [That’s right. If a group of ants formed a circle round my house, I would definitely notice it and would try to figure out what was going on. If I was unhappy, I might even step on it.]

[That’s why you have to spell and say the name of the evil god correctly at the evil god summoning ceremony. Imagine if you saw a group of ants spelling your name, it would be hard not to notice them. Then the group of ants would think you have to help them—just because they spelled your name correctly.]

[Then you are intrigued and you think, fine, fine, I want to see what you want. Generally speaking, the wish is something along the lines of “help me kill another ant” or “give me a pile of candies”. Then, you think… Anyway, it’s very simple. It doesn’t matter. Besides, this matter is very interesting. You tell your friends— a group of ants is chanting my name and asking me for candies. Haha.]

[Then, sometimes, the ants will ask for things that you can’t easily do. For example, a female ant will say, “I love another male ant very much, but he doesn’t pay attention to me. Great Lord, please make me unique to him.”]

[F*ck, this is too difficult. You don’t understand the ridiculous hormones of the ants. You had no choice but to step on all the ants except the two of them. Aha, isn’t your wish fulfilled now? Then, the female ant that was full of anticipation would whisper in a trembling and terrified voice, “What have I done?”]

…

When he saw this reply, Tang Lin found it interesting and liked it. However, he did not expect that he would actually encounter such a situation one day.

Tang Lin performed exceptionally well for the first time at the college entrance examination, and was admitted to a key university. This was like getting a free pass, allowing him to do whatever he wanted at home after the examination.

It was two in the morning, he was lying in bed, preparing to game on his cell phone for a while before sleeping. If it were any other time, his parents would have badgered him as a “mixed doubles” team, to the extent that he would give up on life.

He was about to give up, after having lost five games in a row, when he heard bizarre voice.

“You have a summon request. Do you wish to respond?”

Tang Lin could not tell if the emotionless voice was male or female, young or old. He was so terrified that he nearly rolled off his bed.

“You have a summon request. Do you wish to respond?”

Within two seconds, the bizarre, phantom-like voice appeared again.

This time round, Tang Lin was very sure that it was not an illusion, but no matter how he searched the wardrobe and looked under the bed, he could not find the source of the voice.

Tang Lin had always been bold. He was the type that doesn’t get nightmares even after watching horror movies. When he heard this voice in the middle of the night, he didn’t bother his parents with it. Instead, he began to study this strange phenomenon.

First of all, this emotionless voice came on once every two seconds. Regardless of the content or the speed, it was exactly the same, as if it was playing a recording on loop.

Tang Lin listened a few times and did not find anything different. Then, he turned on the recording function on his cell phone and tried to record this sentence.

However, he realized that his cell phone could not record any sound. It was as if this sentence had been transmitted directly to Tang Lin’s brain.

Then, Tang Lin tried to cover his ears, close his eyes, and hold his breath. He even put on his earphones and played music loudly. These actions did not affect the voice he heard, which also confirmed at the same time that Tang Lin was not hallucinating.

If it was an illusion caused by his mental problem, it would not have appeared so precisely at every two second interval. It all the more couldn’t have continued to appear when he was holding his breath so hard that he was about to suffocate.

In the face of this bizarre voice, Tang Lin tried variety of different responses — greeting it in a friendly manner, cursing at it fiercely and rapping to it.

In the end, this unknown party remained emotionless and did not respond at all.

“This doesn’t make sense. Could it be that it prefers another rapper?”

After going on repeatedly for some time and confirming that there was no harm other than repetition, Tang Lin finally could not suppress his curiosity.

On the 78th time the voice came on, Tang Lin replied, “Responding to the summon.”

This time, there was a reaction. The emotionless voice finally changed the content when it came on again.

“You have responded to the summon and received 100 Wish Power points. Connecting in progress…”

Tang Lin immediately perked up. Why did this sound so much like a system in a web novel?

He felt like he is on the way up in his life journey, and can’t wait for what would be happening next.

“Connection established. First communication initiated.”

After a short pause, the voice in Tang Lin’s ears seemed to have changed into a different person. It was no longer the emotionless voice, instead it was a voice blabbering in English.

“Probably… English?”

Tang Lin could not hear most of the content clearly. After all, he had thrown away all the English knowledge and textbooks that he had in his head after the college entrance examination. In the past, he had memorized thousands of English words by heart, but he had forgotten most of them as soon as he relaxed.

Listening to this heavy accent, apart from common words like “we” and “help”, Tang Lin could not understand anything else.

“I don’t understand. Can you translate it?” Tang Lin said helplessly.

“Unobstructed translation requires Wish Power. Would you like to select the translation function?” the emotionless system asked.

“No need. I’ll use cloud translation.”

Even without the system’s reminder, he could guess that this Wish Power was an important value. It wasn’t worth it to use it for translation.

Now that technology was so advanced, Tang Lin felt that as a modern person, he must not become a useless person who only knew how to rely on the system.

The cell phone could not record the voice in his mind, but Tang Lin could recite it. If the pronunciation was similar, he could use voice translation directly.

It had to be said that technology was really f*cking advanced now. The system could recognize Tang Lin’s second rate pronunciation and even offer several explanations for similar pronunciations.

After translating in dribs and drabs, Tang Lin finally understood more than half of what was being said. “Dwarves of Erebor… Pray… Offer half of our wealth… Ancient giants… Please save us…”

That was more or less what was meant. The ancient giant was probably a misinterpretation, but Tang Lin was very concerned about the dwarves of Erebor. He felt that he had seen them somewhere before.

Tang Lin looked at the introduction on the translation machine — dwarves of Erebor, a character written by author John Ronald Reuel Tolkien.