"Huff…huff…"Lilith panted as she hung limply, suspended in the air by countless vines. Around her, flowers bloomed as they drank her mana, blossoming in a myriad of colors that turned the coliseum into a temporary garden.
"That technique…doesn"t that belong to the Stuart clan? I"m pretty sure Uncle Shun Yin never learned anything like that!"
"Perhaps." I shrugged nonchalantly. "I learned this from neither Dad nor the Stuart clan. I learned it on my own."
"How?!" Lilith glared at the chibi Green Dragon that had curled up on my shoulder, trying not to splutter. She probably could have summoned Kagutsuchi by now, except that I had drained her of all of her mana, and she didn"t have the energy to pull off such a powerful summoning spell.
Around the both of us, the others were also finis.h.i.+ng the last of their battles. Sheila was down, having been taken down by Ka.s.sim, but Victor had turned out to be not the victor because Craig had impaled him in the chest. After that, he had charged the worn down Ka.s.sim, and the two of them were locked in a b.l.o.o.d.y stalemate.
Theodore was on his knees, looking as if he had pa.s.sed out, but Brutus had been battered and badly bruised despite his narrow victory. Nothing Harrison couldn"t take care of, for Riley had already been taken out. At the cost of severe injuries, but Harrison still had enough left in his tank to deliver the knockout blow to an exhausted and unsuspecting Brutus.
That left me and Lilith, but I had already clearly defeated her. Loosening my vines, I then sent a storm of flower petals at Ka.s.sim, catching him by surprise and almost cutting him apart. He crashed onto the ground, a pool of blood spreading under his body.
"Hey!" Craig growled, even as blood streamed down his face. "I almost had him!"
"Yeah, I know," I replied wearily. "Sorry."
Craig shook his head, but he flopped down in exhaustion, and thankfully didn"t pursue the matter. While he did so, I turned toward Harrison, but he was done earlier than I was. With Ka.s.sim down, all of h.e.l.l Beasts team"s members were down, while Jing Tian Academy"s team was down to three. Two, if we counted the slack Craig as out as well.
"Jing Tian won?!"
"Holy f…! How?!"
"The h.e.l.lfire Bear G.o.ddess has fallen!?"
"Isn"t this the second time she lost to that constellation summoner guy?"
Oh. So now I was known as the "constellation summoner guy." What the h.e.l.l was with that weird nickname? At least it was better than Stargazer Summoner or Rising Star Richard or some bulls.h.i.+t nickname like that.
After absorbing so much of Lilith"s mana, I was bursting with energy and thus I ended up feeling restless and overly energetic. Striking a contrast to my clearly drained and unconscious teammates, I did the best I could to help them get off the stage the moment the medics arrived. Fortunately, Pearl was a healer and she began casting her recovery spells right away.
"You…" Harrison was shaking his head as he stepped right up beside me. He ended up just patting me on the shoulder. "Good job back there."
"You too. Great work!"
While we got off the stage so that other teams and students could have their practice matches, I spotted Lilith approaching me. She waved a little frantically, but her movements had clearly been dulled by me sucking all her mana earlier.
"Richard." She stopped beside me, trying to suppress her frustration. "The way you evaded my attacks during the match was really impressive."
"…but I didn"t evade your attacks?" I glared at her, wondering if she was trying to rip off Laura Potter (or was it Lola Porter?) from Battle Frenzy. "I took them head-on and overwhelmed them with strikes of my own."
"Ha ha, you certainly did. I never expected you to have such good swordsmans.h.i.+p. I a.s.sume you"d have neglected them in favor for summoning magic."
"I actually did, for a very long time. But don"t forget who my dad is." I had resisted using swordsmans.h.i.+p for a long time, which ended up in my ninety-nine match losing streak. In the end, in trying to reverse that losing streak, I returned to my dad"s dojo, stopped being stubborn and focusing too much on summoning alone, and ended up combining summoning magic with swordsmans.h.i.+p. That was what led to my current hybridized skillset today.
Okay, yeah, I was stupid. Or you could just treat the whole premise of this story as ripping off w.a.n.g Zhong from Battle Frenzy, all right? Don"t need to think too much about logic or intelligence or whatever, and just enjoy the ride. A little too late to be complaining about the beginning of the story almost three hundred chapters later, don"t you think? I was just trying to do a Battle Frenzy reference, but most readers didn"t get it and instead focused on complaining about how stupid, r.e.t.a.r.ded or illogical I was. Maybe I should have turned this into a Battle Frenzy fanfiction or something.
"That"s right." Lilith nodded, and then she scowled. "But what you used to defeat me wasn"t a Miyamoto sword technique. It was a Stuart clan sword technique."
"I told you, I learned that on my own. It"s not as if the Stuart clan is the only one who learned how to use wood magic." I sighed heavily. "Or are you going to accuse Dong Fang Yue Chu and every fire mage in the Federation of copying and learning from the Porter family?"
"No…you"re right. Sorry." Lilith"s head drooped for a moment and she sighed. After a moment of contemplation, she glanced back at the scorched stage, particularly at the blackened craters that our exchange had left in the ground. She then turned back to me seriously. "But the way you beat my ultimate move…it was so disheartening. I understand that even ultimate moves have weaknesses, and they can be easily countered once your opponent is familiar with them."
"What ultimate move?! Your h.e.l.lfire Bear isn"t your ultimate move! That"s your Kagutsuchi! The only reason why I won was I stopped you from summoning Kagustuchi. The moment you pull out your ultimate Soul Beast, there is very little I can do to defeat you. Even my most powerful Constellation spirit will be hard-pressed to fight against something of Kagutsuchi"s caliber."
I doubted any of my Celestial Guardians could stand up to the sheer firepower of Kagutsuchi. Even Draco, my strongest Constellation spirit, probably would have trouble rivaling that monster. There was a reason why it was named after the j.a.panese kami of fire.
"Even so, I still want to find a way to improve it."
"Why?!" I threw my hands up in despair. "You do realize that there is no such thing as an invincible combat technique or spell, right? Your Kagutsuchi is already extremely powerful. I don"t know of any other Soul Beast that can rival its raw destructive power, except maybe Dad"s Angelica. But he has years of experience and training over you, so that"s a given. And besides, you"ll figure something out. I haven"t seen enough of your Kagutsuchi to figure out how it works, and what its main strengths and weaknesses are."
"That"s true. Our last match where I used it was interrupted."
Lilith sighed and then stared sadly at the coliseum, which was now being restored by magic so that the next teams could begin their practice match. She clenched her fists and crimson mana began swirling around them.
"However, I"m less worried about Kagutsuchi and more concerned about my h.e.l.lfire Bear. I know this sounds dumb, but I don"t want to let go of my h.e.l.lfire Bear. It"s my first Soul Beast and I am loathe to give it up and allow it to become obsolete. I don"t want to just replace my h.e.l.lfire Bear with Kagutsuchi, you know?"
I knew exactly what she meant. My Celestial Guardians, the four (or five in future) of them being the very first Soul Beasts that I succeeded in creating and summoning, were like family to me. There was no way I could just discard them aside in favor of more powerful or newer Soul Beasts and Constellation spirits. Which was why I continued to look for ways to use them, even to the point where I reduced their casting time by summoning chibi versions of them to enchant my sword techniques rather than unleash a powerful monster upon my foes.
So I nodded understandingly, sympathizing with her flight while inwardly worrying about my own Celestial Guardians being relegated to obscurity in favor of more popular Constellation spirits from Greek mythology.
"That"s why I will definitely find a way to strengthen my h.e.l.lfire Bear." Lilith glanced at her hand and conjured vermillion flames. "I wonder if the problem is its range. The h.e.l.lfire Bear"s area of effect spell is too small. Perhaps I can alter the repertoire of its spells by infusing it with more fire mana or something."
"Wouldn"t that require you to re-conceptualize your h.e.l.lfire Bear and rebuild it from the ground up?" I inquired, scratching my head.
"Yeah…but for its sake, I"m willing to go through the trouble."
"Aha!" I snapped my fingers excitedly. "Upgrading!"
"What…?" Lilith stared at me, puzzled. "Upgrading?"
"Yeah." I nodded fervently. "What, you didn"t know? All summoners should know that if they grow stronger, their Soul Beasts naturally grow stronger along with them. They will always have the corresponding strength, and their power is based off their summoner"s. It"s not the Soul Beast you summon that matters, but your own ability that determines how far they can go."
However, even though Soul Beasts were entirely dependent on their summoners" strength, it was undeniable that different Soul Beasts would have different roles and attributes. Kagutsuchi was conceived of as the ultimate weapon possessing the divine power of a kami, and thus it would always be more powerful than the h.e.l.lfire Bear. However, such power always came with a price. Correspondingly, Kagutsuchi would require a far longer time to summon than the h.e.l.lfire Bear. It was only natural – they both fulfilled somewhat different roles. One was the main frontline brawler, while the other was the ultimate weapon.
In the same way I couldn"t expect Corvus to be better than say, Aquila, at fighting because they were more suited for reconnaissance duty. Leo Minor by their very nature would be inferior to their leader, Leo Major (same went for Ursa Minor and Ursa Major, and Canis Minor and Canis Major). Hercules, because of the legend a.s.sociated with him as the strongest of mythical heroes, would always be more powerful than the other Constellation weapons I wielded. Each Soul Beast had its own inherent properties and its own role, strengths and weaknesses, as well as the corresponding prices. It was an intricate balancing act we had to maintain while designing and redesigning them.
That said, it was not impossible to redesign or upgrade them.
"I know that, but I"m not looking to scale my h.e.l.lfire Bear"s strength according to mine. I"m happy with its growth rate. I"m thinking about its role in the field. I can"t allow it to be overshadowed by Kagutsuchi. I don"t want h.e.l.lfire Bear to be a stand-in, who just exists solely to delay for time before I finally summon Kagutsuchi. I want it to be able to stand on its own two feet as an incredible Soul Beast to be feared in its own right, not a prelude to something more terrifying."
"Yeah. That"s why I"m proposing that you upgrade them." I paused for a moment, trying to think of how to better explain the process. "You know, when you withdraw in your mind and manifest yourself in your imagination to conceptualize and create what Soul Beasts you want to summon? The place inside your personal spiritual plane or sea where you forge the blueprints or biographies for your Soul Beasts? Go back there and search for the blueprint for your h.e.l.lfire Bear."
"Ah…!" Lilith"s eyes brightened up when she understood what I was referring to. "You"re right! Perhaps I should be able to find my notes and write-ups regarding my h.e.l.lfire Bear in that place!"
"Yeah, that"s right." I was relieved that she knew what I was talking about. This would be so much easier then. "Once you get there and find your notes, you can began to rewrite them."
"How…?" Lilith looked puzzled. "But I"ve already written them…how do I rewrite them? Do I tear them up and produce a new biography? But it feels as if I"m destroying the original h.e.l.lfire Bear and replacing it with a new one…"
I tapped my head. "Use your imagination. Why is your biography perceived as "written"? Could it not have been typed? Just like…" I conjured a holographic screen for demonstration and began deleting some text to rewrite segments of it. "…this?"
"Oh! You"re right!" Lilith seemed to be kicking herself for not realizing such a simple solution. Then again, very few people dabbled in summoning. There was a reason why it was not in the meta. It was usually too inefficient, took too much time and cost too much mana. Most summoners were knocked out before they could summon their trump card, like how I defeated Lilith before she could summon Kagutsuchi. Admittedly, we had both agreed beforehand that we wouldn"t unleash our most powerful Soul Beasts on each other for fear of accidentally destroying the boundary field and killing our teammates. The collateral damage would be awful.
I didn"t want to be arrested for manslaughter – and that was a.s.suming I even survived the carnage I myself had wrought in the first place.
"Speaking of which, there has to be a way to control Kagutsuchi to minimize its firepower and not inadvertently destroy the boundary field and drag my teammates into it." Lilith must have seen the expression on my face, for she guessed correctly what I was thinking. "Even though I did declare beforehand that I will not summon Kagutsuchi, I can"t continue to limit myself forever. What"s the point of developing such a powerful Soul Beast if I don"t allow myself to use it?"
"Yeah…easier said than done, though."
If it was so simple, I would be unleas.h.i.+ng miniaturized versions of my nuke spells, restraining the power enough to just barely not break the boundary field while possessing enough firepower to defeat everyone in the arena. However, I had no need for that because I could simply summon my Celestial Guardians. If my opponents were humans, the vast majority of them shouldn"t be a match for any of my Celestial Guardians. Not unless they were prodigies such as Cecilia Stuart.
So I wasn"t worried about that. And I wasn"t stupid enough to nuke myself just to win a dumb tournament match.
"Well, this is as far as I can help you." I shrugged callously. Even though I might sound rude, I honestly couldn"t stick around talking to Lilith forever. I had to check on my injured teammates and ensure they were all right, and then resume my daily regimen later. Today"s match reminded me that I was still far off from where I wanted to be. Literally heaven and earth apart from my dad…the h.e.l.lfire Bear was one thing, but I wanted to be able to defeat Lilith"s Kagutsuchi decisively in future. Given her talent, she was sure to figure out how to conjure Kagutsuchi in the arena, and even if she didn"t, I suspected that we might meet in combat outside the tournament someday. Call it a premonition, or a gut feeling, but I just felt that a conflict between us was inevitable, despite the history between Dad and the Porter clan. "Sorry, but you"ll have to come up with the solution on your own from here on out."