Surprised, Tsukuru and Layla looked back.
As they did, they saw Erin approaching them, her Intermediate-Tier Knight Sword already back in its sheath.
"That list you just mentioned," she replied. "It's missing an Elemental User."
Tsukuru narrowed his eyes, as he took in Erin's words.
"An Elemental User, huh?" he muttered, as he placed his index finger under his lip, deep in thought.
Erin did have a point, Tsukuru had yet to create a Summon with Elemental Abilities.
But the problem was, which Element to use?
The Fire Ability, Lightning Ability, and even the Earth Ability were in the hands of members of the Big Four Original Families and the Military, respectively.
So if he made a Summon using any of those three elements and word got out, the originators of that Ability would likely make a huge stink about it.
That left only the Elemental Abilities that were freely available on the marketplace, meaning the Wind, Water, Ice, and Poison Abilities.
As Tsukuru was thinking, trying to decide which of these four Elements to use, his eyes began to wander aimlessly around the room, as if he was trying to find something for inspiration.
Eventually, his eyes landed on Erin.
Staring at her, a look of dawning realization slowly appeared on Tsukuru's face.
Seeing that he was staring at her, Erin raised an eyebrow in confusion.
Tsukuru smirked.
"Well," he replied. "Seeing as how you're the one who suggested it, you shouldn't have any problems with me using your Ability as a base."
Erin crossed her arms.
"Of course not," she replied coldly.
Hearing her words, Tsukuru's smirk widened.
He turned back to the table, and spread his arms out, brushing the figurines in two random directions, and making a large empty space directly in front of him.
Tsukuru hovered his hand over the table, and pixels began to appear.
The pixels clustered together into the shape of a, somewhat oversized, hardcover book.
Slowly, the glowing light of the pixels died down, revealing the "book".
The "book" had the strangest cover that Layla had ever seen.
Instead of being hard wood, it almost looked like soft plastic.
She could also see a black zipper along the border of the book, where the pages would normally be.
And on the cover, she saw five colored circles arranged in a sort of five-pointed star with lines connecting them.
Each circle had a different symbol in it.
The top circle, which was white, showed what looked like a stylized, ornate sun.
The circle directly next to it in the star going clockwise was blue, with a droplet design.
The third circle on the star was purple with a stylized skull.
The fourth circle on the star was red, with an image that looked like a fireball curving around a corner.
And the fifth symbol was green with a stylized tree design with three branches.
Layla and Erin both looked down at the book in confusion.
"What…is that thing?" Layla asked, tilting her head.
"It's a card binder," Tsukuru replied, as he reached for the zipper. "It's a product of a by-gone era. It was designed to be used to store various different kinds of cards."
As Tsukuru undid the zipper, the book plopped open.
Layla's eyes widened as she saw the interior.
It wasn't a "book" at all.
Instead of having paper pages, its "pages" were made out of a clear plastic split into nine segments with a sleeve at the top.
In each segment, she saw a card.
Erin narrowed her eyes, as if the thing in front of her was completely pointless as far as she was concerned.
"And what purpose could this thing possibly serve?" she asked.
"Well, like I said, it's a product of a by-gone era," Tsukuru replied. "Technically, it doesn't serve any purpose anymore. Especially not in the current world's system."
Tsukuru narrowed his eyes.
"However, I use the images on the cards inside as templates to base my Beasts off of," he explained.
He then paused.
"However, the final product is almost always a far departure from the original image," he replied, as he began flipping through pages.
At one point, Tsukuru took out a card, and handed it to Layla.
"Here," he replied.
Layla looked at the card in confusion, with Erin looking at if from over her shoulder.
In the card image, Layla saw a knight in purple-and-red armor with a black cape behind it. There were bluish flash coming out of all of the openings on the armor, and it had a large axe above its head, as if in mid-swing.
Layla raised an eyebrow.
"What the heck is this thing?" she asked.
Tsukuru was silent for a moment.
"That," he replied. "Is the original template I used to create Artoria."
He pointed back at the Haunted Knight Summon, as he had never actually gotten around to having his Summons introduce themselves to the group.
The two girls looked back at where Tsukuru was pointing.
Once they saw that he was pointing at Artoria, their eyes widened.
They both snapped their heads back at the image on the card in Layla's hand.
Their heads began snapping back and forth between Artoria and the picture.
"But…" Layla replied in disbelief. "It doesn't look anything like her!"
Tsukuru nodded his head.
"Uh-huh," he replied, as he took the card back. "That's why I said that the final product always looks different from the original template.
He placed the card back into the sleeve, and wrapped his fingers around the bottom corner of the page.
"Luckily for me, I already know exactly which card I want to use for the template," he replied. "And since its in the back of the book, the easiest way to find is to just…"
Layla and Erin watched as Tsukuru flipped the entirety of the binder over, until the back side of the very last page was on top.
"...go to the very last page, and go backwards."
As Layla and Erin looked at the nine cards on the back the last page of the binder, they all noticed that, despite the images of the cards varying wildly, they all shared a similar frame, which was dark-blue with a hexagonal, almost honeycomb design.
Fortunately for Tsukuru the card that he wanted to use was on the last page.
Specifically, it was the third card from the last.
"This one," he replied.
He reached his hand around the "page" to its front side, and inserted his finger into the back.
Due to the pages only having the sleeves on the front sides, Tsukuru had reach through the front to remove one of the cards from the back.
Tsukuru pulled the card in question out, and looked at it.
Layla and Erin looked at it.
It showed a teenage girl with pale white skin, long, pale white hair that reached halfway down her back with bangs that reached down to her chest, and light-blue eyes. She wore a white kimono that reached slightly past her hips with a a purple sash tied around her waist. Underneath the kimono, she wore a navy-blue, sleeveless dress that ended halfway down her thighs.
The girl had her right arm slightly outstretched towards the viewer, with ice shards of varying sizes surrounding her arm, as if she was in the process of launching them like projectiles.
Layla and Erin stared intently at the image.
"What is that?" Erin asked.
"'Yuki-Onna'," Layla replied, reading the card's name. "I think I've heard of those before."
Tsukuru glanced back at her.
"Probably," he replied. "Despite being a Japanese Yokai, they have found their way mashed in with the more stereotypical monsters, like Vampires and Werewolves, in stories over the years."
As Tsukuru turned his attention back to the card image, a System message popped up in front of him.
[Would you like to use this card image as a template for your fifth Video Summon Race?
[Yes] [No] ]
As Tsukuru thought "yes", the familiar cone of light-blue light shot out of his eyes.
Layla and Erin jumped back slightly in surprise.
"What the?!" Layla asked. "What's…what's going on?!"
Although the two girls had seen Tsukuru use his strange Ability before, it was their first time seeing this.
"Quiet," Tsukuru replied, not taking his eyes of the card image, as the cone of light began traveling up and down the image in a repeating cycle. "I'm trying to concentrate."
In his vision, Tsukuru saw a 3-D, wireframe model of the image in the card art slowly beginning to form from the bottom up.
Once the very top of the image had fully formed, the image rotated a few times.
Reiju's voice, which now seemed to have replaced the feminine, computerized voice of the System ever since the AI had activated, rang in his head.
[Scan complete. The System will now use this image in conjunction with your relative memories and subconscious to create your fifth Video Summon Race.
Please give this Summon Race a name.]
Accompanying Reiju's voice was a small, rectangular System screen with a series of twelve dashes on it.
Tsukuru smirked, as he already knew exactly what to name his new Summon Race.
'Yuki-Onna' he thought.