Summoner Sovereign

One of my objectives was to evaluate Lilith"s strength and see how I could measure up against someone of her stature. There was no doubt she would be a fierce opponent and a huge threat to our t.i.tle challenge, so I preferred to fight her at full strength and see what kind of techniques and spells she could pull out.

"You"re finally going to fight me?" Lilith was staring at me, astonished. The entire time, she had been too impatient, trying to take me out and grab my blood token before she had fully recovered, but I refused to fight her properly the entire time, for the reasons I mentioned above. So she was taken aback by my sudden 180 degree reversal.

"Yup. That"s what you want, right?"

"…"

Lilith regarded me suspiciously, a frown furrowing her brow. I shrugged.

"Hey, you"re the one who said that you"ve fully recovered."

"…right. I did. So that"s what you were waiting for this entire time. I did find it strange you didn"t just defeat me and take away my blood token even though you had so many opportunities to do so." Lilith folded her arms, despite still holding on to her crimson sword. "I guess I should thank you for granting me the honor of a proper duel."

"Yeah. Let"s begin."

We chose a clearing as our site of battle. We were aware that there were quite a few spectators who were hidden, and when I glanced at them, Lilith waved dismissively.

"They won"t attack us even if we do end up hurting each other. I have friends in there."

"Your schoolmates…your team from Vermillion Academy."

"That"s right." She scowled. "They even have the audacity to record this battle. Well, not that I care." She punched both of her fists together before drawing her sword. "As long as I get to fight with you, I"m satisfied. Daddy has always been telling me about you, Uncle Shun Yin"s adopted son, and I have always looked forward to fighting you."

In contrast, Dad and Uncle Glen never mentioned anything about Lilith. Well, actually Uncle Glen did mention his daughter a couple of times in an attempt to hook me up with her, but Dad and I never took him seriously and ignored him. Besides, Lilith seemed more interested in fighting than in developing any sort of relations.h.i.+p.

That was fine with me.

"Hmm…" Lilith observed me for a moment as she adopted a combative stance. "Not going to draw your swords?"

"Not yet," I replied. My beautiful opponent nodded.

"It"s rare for me to fight someone who is proficient in martial arts. I heard from Daddy that your father trained you in martial arts. Wing Chun, was it?"

"Yeah." I glanced at her left arm. Unlike her right hand, which was gripping her sword, it was bare. "It"s nothing impressive, though. I was never a good student and had no talent in martial arts."

"We"ll see about that." Lilith followed my line of sight and glanced at her arm before scoffing. "What, were you expecting me to use a small one-handed s.h.i.+eld? Are you mistaking me for somebody? I"m a swordswoman first and foremost."

"So Uncle Glen didn"t teach you martial arts?"

"Daddy doesn"t know any martial arts! He"s a summoner, just like you and me!" Lilith smiled as she held her crimson sword in both hands in antic.i.p.ation. "Well, let"s fight without any regrets!"

"All right, Miss Lilith. I hope you"ll give me some pointers."

The both of us charged at each other, kicking off the ground and producing double sonic booms that thundered in opposite directions. We clashed in the middle of the clearing, with me summoning Aquarius in the middle of the charge and swinging the blue broadsword at her. Fire collided with water, which immediately vaporized into steam.

"…"

Huffing, I found myself shoved back by Lilith"s greater strength. Embers rained down on me, boiling the protective cloud of water that now permeated my figure, but I swung Aquarius down to unleash a tidal wave at pointblank range.

Lilith determinedly swung her own crimson sword down and unleashed a torrent of h.e.l.lfire that boiled the mini tsunami into steam. Both of us stumbled backward, our vision obscured by the white fog that expanded across the clearing.

Fortunately, my gla.s.ses adjusted, my lenses displaying Lilith"s mana signature and allowing me to pinpoint her location within the boiling steam. I dove to the side, avoiding another stream of flames that burned a hole through the steam, and then flanked her, swinging Aquarius toward her supposedly vulnerable back.

Flames erupted and blazed along the length of Lilith"s blade and she spun around to instinctively parry Aquarius. Digging her heels into the ground, Lilith intensified the h.e.l.lfire that wreathed her sword and cleaved through the blue broadsword. My huge Constellation weapon dissipated into wisps of mana as both broken pieces ceased to exist in this dimension.

"Hah!"

Almost triumphantly, Lilith closed in and tried to cut me in half with her flaming sword. I withdrew nimbly, using my martial arts training to evade as best as I could. Ducking under her sword, I kicked out below (also to ensure I didn"t lose my leg, so I didn"t recklessly try a high kick) to force her back. Lilith grunted as she staggered from my blow, but she managed to bring down her flaming sword, which I avoided by stepping to the side.

I could still feel the scalding heat from her blazing blade, but I seized the opportunity while her sword was down to punch her from the side of her head. Lilith kept her grasp on the hilt of her sword with one hand while letting go of it with the other and parried my fist. She tried to bring her sword back up, but I stepped onto it, my shoe insulating my foot from the flames and then rammed a knee into her chest. She coughed and staggered backward, but before she could bring up her sword, I spun around and threw a kick into the side of her face.

"!!!"

Lilith just barely blocked it with her arm, but she was knocked over. With a curse, she completed the casting of her spell and a fireball erupted from her sword and hurtled toward me. I adjusted my trajectory in midair, twisting around to avoid it, and dropped to the ground. The fireball swerved past me and slammed into a tree behind, immolating it.

One of the students who was watching the match yelped and jumped out of the burning tree, desperately beating out the flames. A spectator, huh? Well, I couldn"t care less about him. Instead, I focused on the opponent before me. Pus.h.i.+ng my gla.s.ses up my nose, I studied Lilith while taking note of the spikes in her mana signatures as displayed by the energy readings etched into the lenses of my gla.s.ses.

That was an indication of some big spell.

An inferno erupted from Lilith"s sword and she got ready to blast me with the flames. I kept my distance, but didn"t move from my position. Instead, my right hand fell into the hilt of my still sheathed Gan Jiang.

"?!"

Lilith instinctively sensed the danger, but it was almost too late. A sharp arc of energy lanced toward her like a deadly crescent moon, and she was forced to parry it with her sword. Blood dripped from her arms as she skidded several meters backward, trembling from the ferocious blow.

"That"s…"

Her eyes widened when she noticed that Gan Jiang was back in its sheath. She shook her head, impressed, and sighed.

"That iai, isn"t that Miyamoto sword style? You learn that from your dad too, I presume?"

"That"s correct," I confirmed. So Uncle Glen did tell his daughter about the techniques Dad learned when he was younger.

"That was dangerous. But I won"t give you another chance to use it!"

Flames exploded around Lilith"s feet as she lunged at me, swinging her sword and unleas.h.i.+ng yet another devastating torrent of fire. I was forced to draw both Gan Jiang and Mo Ye this time, parrying her blast. Around us, gra.s.s and trees wilted from the heat or combusted spontaneously from the flames. Even I found myself gradually worn down by the sheer power of the flames despite the protective mana aura cast around me.

"Hu…"

I traded several more blows with Lilith, finding myself gradually driven back and overwhelmed by the superheated flames. Gathering mana within myself, I completed my next summoning spell. A chibi Black Tortoise materialized over my right shoulder, and a chibi Green Dragon appeared over my left. A whirlpool of water snaked along the length of the black blade of Gan Jiang while flower petals danced around the pristine white blade of Mo Ye.

A pseudo waterfall surged out of Gan Jiang as I struggled to knock Lilith back with my sword, the tremendous pressure of my water spell canceling out the effects of her flames and actually forcing her to withdraw a step. Without pausing, I slashed Mo Ye at her, forcing her to duck because she was still preoccupied with parrying Gan Jiang with her crimson sword. The petals scored a few cuts across her skin, and the edge of Mo Ye actually cut through the yellow ribbon adorning her long hair, freeing those silky, silvery strands and allowing them to fall free over her back.

"You look better with your hair down," I told her automatically. Lilith scowled in reply and responded with a vengeful swing of her flaming sword. I crossed both blades, but despite the curtain of water nullifying the terrifying eruption of fire, I found myself thrown back several paces. Stumbling to regain my balance, I defended myself against Lilith"s next flaming slash with a watery defense from Gan Jiang, and then countered with several razor-sharp petals and a thrust of Mo Ye toward her midriff. Lilith twisted away, but the keen edge of the blade still scored a cut across her waist and opened up a slit in her blouse.

"I thought you said you had no talent in martial arts?!" Lilith snapped as she slashed at me, but I easily deflected her sword. We exchanged several more blows, and I was forced back into the defensive, parrying and blocking Lilith"s flaming sword.

"Yeah, I don"t. You"re completely overwhelming me."

That much was true. Even Lilith couldn"t deny that. It was obvious that her sword techniques were superior to mine, and she was easily pus.h.i.+ng me back. Even so, she recognized that she couldn"t defeat me so easily.

"The gap between us is not that big," she said. "And you seem to be better at magic than I am."

"Thank you for the praise." As if to prove her point for her, I completed casting my next spell after knocking aside a potentially fatal thrust that would have found its way into my chest had my reflexes not been up to par.

Swinging both of my swords, I blasted her with a vortex of water, which she easily vaporized with a tremendous maelstrom of flames, but she was taken by surprise by the storm of razor-sharp petals that arrived as a follow-up.

"ARGH!"

With a shout, Lilith incinerated the cloud of razor-sharp petals. Even as the flames expanded outwardly from her body, a surge of water crashed down upon her and boiled into steam…

…for only a moment.

"?!"

Lilith"s eyes widened when the inferno she conjured to defend herself from my wood spell was immediately frozen. As her hands glowed crimson with fiery mana, she smashed and melted the ice, only for the black blade of Gan Jiang to smash aside the partially melting fragments of frost and sliced toward her throat.

"…ah…"

Lilith froze for a moment, not just because of my ice spell. Perspiration ran down her face as she stared at the tip of the black blade pointing toward her throat. However, I halted my blade before it could nick her skin, and then slowly pulled it back.

"You…"

My opponent glared at me, a little ruffled by the "mercy" I had shown her.

"What"s the meaning of this?"

"I don"t want to win like this. We are both summoners, but you have yet to actually summon anything. Didn"t we agree to fight without any regrets?"

"You"re right. Forgive my disrespect." Lilith retreated for a moment, perspiration still rolling down her face. "Next, I"ll summon my Soul Beast. I"ve to say, though, you must be really confident if you think you have the luxury of allowing me to summon my h.e.l.lfire Bear. But I will thank you for not finis.h.i.+ng me off when you had the chance."

I smiled and shook my head.

"I also have a stake in this. I personally want to challenge your h.e.l.lfire Bear with my own Constellation spirits."

"It"s coming! The h.e.l.lfire Bear!"

"Woo! The h.e.l.lfire Bear!"

From deep within the forest, I could hear spectators shouting and cheering. These must be the students of Vermillion Academy. Or perhaps Lilith Porter was so famous that almost every student in the Federation knew of her h.e.l.lfire Bear. Even I had vaguely heard about it, despite having paid almost no attention to the students of other academies and tournament battles.

I was a little…narrow-minded and self-centered, only focusing on my own matters and not caring about the world at large.

Pus.h.i.+ng up my gla.s.ses, I grinned when the lenses detected an astronomical spike of mana, reflected in the energy readings. A sudden surge in thermal energy was forcibly ripping its way into this dimension.

"Will you find yourself cornered by this, I wonder?" Lilith murmured, almost to herself. Then she raised her hand, her sword having been abandoned. "Come here, h.e.l.lfire Bear!"

"!!"

I glanced upward and caught sight of an enormous fireball plummeting toward me, a meteorite that was at least three meters in radius. With a thunderous roar, it crashed onto the ground where I was standing, razing the entire s.p.a.ce and engraving a scorched crater into the earth.

"Amazing! It"s the h.e.l.lfire Bear!"

"Looks like that dual sword guy is going to lose!"

The spectators just refused to shut up. In any case, they were dead wrong. I had managed to leap backward and avoid getting pulverized by Lilith"s summoning spell. Raising my head, I found myself staring up at the h.e.l.lfire Bear, the creature towering over six meters. Once again, that majestic, flaming mane of crimson fire, thick fur that served as armor, and ma.s.sive claws the size of a desk.

Despite the intimidating sight, my grin widened.

"Let"s see how much I can bear," I remarked excitedly before charging forward with both of my swords.