Summoner Sovereign

"Huh? What hotdogs and cola?"

"Aren"t you supposed to bring them to some other dimension to share them with your friends from some empire, one of them being a prince?"

"…I have no idea what you"re talking about." actually, I did, but I couldn"t be bothered to give a straight man"s retort to Dong Fang Yue Chu"s nonsense. He stared at me suspiciously, then turned away and dug through his backpack.

"Here! This is for you, it"s a perfect disguise!"

…and he produced a clown costume that he presented to me. I stared at him dumbly, this time genuinely not understanding.

"…uh…"

"Put this on!"

"h.e.l.l, no!" I screamed and slapped the costume away. "Why the f.u.c.k would I dress up as a clown?! I mean, I enjoyed the movie adaptations of Stephen King"s It, but there"s no way in h.e.l.l I would wear a clown costume!"

"But you don"t have a choice. You need a disguise to hide your ident.i.ty before you go to the explorer"s base."

The guy was making less and less sense. I shook my head, struggle to comprehend what he was trying to do.

"Okay, slow down. What explorer base?"

"You know, the explorer base! So that you can exchange the treasures you got from the tomb in another dimension for money, and then help me out when I partic.i.p.ate in the auction that my a.s.sa.s.sin clan organized!"

I struck him in the head, causing him to sprawl on the ground and drop the clown costume. Stepping on the fabric, I knelt down to glare at him.

"You are not from the a.s.sa.s.sin clan…because if you"re a member of the a.s.sa.s.sins Guild, I will kill you right here and right now. Besides, why the f.u.c.k would a.s.sa.s.sins hold an auction?! They should leave that to the merchant cla.s.s."

Then I paused and frowned.

"And what the h.e.l.l are you talking about? What tomb? What other dimension? What treasures? I never got any treasures from anywhere, nor do I have some way of traveling to another dimension while having some stupid chibi clown ghost float around me. And what the h.e.l.l is this explorer base? I"ve never heard of such a thing in this universe."

"Aw…" Dong Fang Yue Chu looked disappointed as he got back to his feet. "And here I thought you were going to continue ripping off w.a.n.g Zhong and Battle Frenzy."

"I may have been making references to poke fun at the story many times, but I"m not going to copy it entirely." I sighed as I rubbed my forehead. Waving a hand, I cast a simple fire spell to burn the clown costume into ash. "Anyway, what brought this about? Why are you pulling this nonsensical stunt all of a sudden?"

"Because the exchange session is ending soon, and we"re about to return to Jing Tian Academy. It"s just that, according to the chronology of Battle Frenzy, you"re supposed to randomly go to the other dimension in the middle of the exchange session, get a bunch of treasures, go to the explorer"s base in a disguise, approach Lilith to get her to show up in the auction to support me, and…"

I decided to leave Dong Fang Yue Chu to ramble by himself, and he began panicking.

"Okay! I"ll get serious! But we really are returning to Jing Tian Academy tomorrow. So I was thinking we should say goodbye to the people who helped us out a lot during the past week or so. We had a lot of practice matches!"

"Yeah, it feels like an intense practice session right before the Global Starcraft League Code S," I agreed, rotating my arm to loosen my stiff muscles. We had just completed another practice match against Yves Academy earlier that day. Fortunately, I got to sit this one out because Harrison wanted to rotate the squad and give other members a chance. There were ten of us in the team, after all, and I couldn"t be in it all the time. That said, Yue Chu had a point, and I tilted my head thoughtfully. "Aren"t they holding a farewell party tonight?"

"Oh, you"re right! But that"s exactly why I"m here! We need to do something for the party!"

"…if you"re asking me to dress as a clown and entertain everyone tonight, I"ll have to refuse. h.e.l.l, I"m going to hit you for suggesting such a stupid thing."

"Ha ha…" Yue Chu looked a little sheepish. "I guess that idea is out."

"Should I hit you for coming up with it in the first place?" I was beginning to ball my fists. Yue Chu wisely retreated, holding both his hands up in a placating manner.

"All right, all right. I"ll talk to the others as well, see if they have any better ideas."

I watched him leave and shook my head. Yeah, this story began as a joke after reading Battle Frenzy, but it was never my intention to copy that story. I was merely having fun parodying its tropes and criticizing Skeleton Wizard, even though my writing was much more horrible than his, so truthfully I wasn"t in any position to make fun of him. But seriously, all those tropes he used were just begging to be made fun of.

"Hmm, so this exchange session is going to end soon, huh?"

About time, it was going on for too many chapters. Almost 15 chapters, huh? Hey, at least it wasn"t like Battle Frenzy, which took over 50 chapters and included tangential sidetracking chapters where w.a.n.g Zhong went off into the other dimension to meet his friends from the empire, became an adventurer and did a lot of other weird stuff. I completed an a.n.a.logous arc in less than a third of the number of chapters that Skeleton Wizard needed. So…dear readers, are you still going to accuse me of spamming fillers?

Anyway, that wasn"t the important thing. The end of the exchange session meant that I should partic.i.p.ate in Princ.i.p.al Porter"s expedition to the swamp. Even though I really should be preparing for the tournament, I actually viewed this as the perfect sort of preparation. If I wanted to grow exponentially stronger and hone my skills to an entirely new level, I wasn"t contented with merely fighting "safe" practice matches in arenas with a boundary field that prevented death. I wanted to test my skills against monsters, experience life-and-death battles, and learn how to survive against all odds. Only then could I surpa.s.s all the talented peers of my generation.

Unlike them, I didn"t have any talent. I was not some genius at magic, nor did I have any cheat skill or whatever like so many web novel protagonists or light novel protagonists. No ghostly master to teach and advise me, no secret Divine G.o.d skill that allowed me to stand head and shoulders above the rest, no ultimate weapon that could serve as a Deus ex Machina that allowed me to get out of sticky situations, and no secret treasures that could artificially boost my training (like Mo Fan"s loach in Versatile Mage). Just my hard work alone. Well, I did receive certain gifts here and there, like the Holy Spring or Hei Yue and Bai Ri that were forged by the famous swordsmith couple Gan Jiang and Mo Ye, but otherwise everything I had earned was through sheer hard work. Even with those swords, that didn"t mean I was invincible. The swords did nothing to increase my power, they were just more durable than the Constellation spirits I summoned.

Unlike most web novel protagonists, who literally get spirit elixirs, treasures, skills, or even masters handed to them on a silver platter, I had to work with what I had. That kind of sucked. It also meant that I would never become an invincible G.o.d Mode Mary Sue who could casually stroll through the world, curb-stomping any enemy stupid enough to cross my path. Hence this expedition, while important to earn me real combat experience, was extremely dangerous. Like a double-edged sword, if I wasn"t careful in utilizing this opportunity, it could backfire and I might end up dead instead of becoming stronger. Thankfully, I had plot armor…or so I hope. Not unless the readers were so sick of reading this story that they forced the author to drop it prematurely and it would no doubt end with him trolling them by killing his protagonist in the next chapter. It all depended on what the readers wanted.

"Ah…Richard. So you finally remembered that I"m the one running this academy."

Princ.i.p.al Porter looked up when I approached him in the library. He was talking to Lilith before I showed up, probably with regards to tonight"s farewell party, but he immediately perked up when he spotted me.

"Why would I forget?" I asked, confused.

"No, that was something the character I"m based off was supposed to say in Battle Frenzy." Princ.i.p.al Porter cleared his throat. "That"s right…today is the last day of the exchange session. So you"re here to say goodbye?"

"Sort of…except that it"s not really goodbye, right? I"m here to ask you about the expedition to the Black Underworld Swamp."

"Oh! That"s right!" Princ.i.p.al Porter"s eyes lit up. "We need to discuss that!"

"Um…" Lilith was looking from me to Princ.i.p.al Porter, and her grandfather immediately understood.

"Oh, sorry. Give me a few minutes, Richard…if you don"t mind waiting, I need to speak to my granddaughter regarding a few things."

"Sure. I don"t have anything at the moment anyway."

I bowed politely and took a step back to allow the grandfather-granddaughter pair to wrap up their conversation. What, you think Henry Porter was going to spout nonsense like my time being infinitely worth more than Lilith"s? Bulls.h.i.+t.

Fortunately, their dialogue didn"t take too long to finish. Lilith nodded, and then turned to leave. She smiled in greeting as she pa.s.sed by, and then she was gone.

"Sorry about that." Princ.i.p.al Porter rubbed his beard. "I hope you didn"t wait too long."

"Not at all." I scratched my head. "Um…so, about the expedition…I was hoping for more details. When are we moving out? I"m guessing sometime next week? I hope I can return hope and pack up before returning to Vermillion City."

"Oh, you don"t have to worry about that. I"m sure we"ll arrange sometime and pick you up at Jing Tian City before we head to the Black Underworld Swamp."

"Is Lilith coming along as well?" I asked, glancing in the direction where she had just left. Princ.i.p.al Porter shook his head.

"Unfortunately, no. unlike you, she has no interest in archaeology or history. She"s going to stay behind and prepare for the tournament." He took his gla.s.ses off and pinched the bridge of his nose. "She takes after her father too much."

"Right." I was a.s.suming this was going to be a The Great Ruler rip-off where she followed the anime adaptation and followed me in the expedition, even though she didn"t do so in Tian Can Tu Dou"s original novel. Can"t have the main heroine not show up at all throughout the first 12 episodes of the anime series, eh? "Anything we should look out for? Like…uh…any sign of the Nine Nether Sparrow?"

"The what now?" Henry Porter blanched, his brow furrowing in bewilderment. "What sparrow? Is that some new kind of monster?"

Evidently he had never heard of it before, so I frantically shook my head and waved my hands.

"No, I was joking. That"s just a fictional monster from some web novel I read. Actually, I didn"t even read the web novel, I only read the web comic and watched the anime version."

Princ.i.p.al Porter regarded me somewhat suspiciously, and then he shrugged, as if to say that wasn"t important.

"Anyway, I"ll give you more details through email. I think I sent you a timetable and a contract, so get that signed and submit it, and we"ll handle the rest. When the time comes…it should be sometime next week, we"ll come pick you up."

Fortunately, this counted as a mission, so I could seek permission from my school to miss cla.s.ses and attend the expedition. After the invasion of Jing Tian City by monsters, Princ.i.p.al Violet and the teachers began to value practical combat experience more than cla.s.ses and practice matches. Even though they had been reluctant to accept the changes in curriculum set by the ministry of education, finding comfort in stagnation and maintaining the usual status quo and rankings determined by individual tournaments, recent events such as those triggered by the a.s.sa.s.sins Guild and the Dark Church had them understanding the necessity of change. If the students were far too focused on winning tournaments and increasing their rankings, they neglect the real world where combat was not so necessarily so clear-cut and the unexpected could happen at any time.

The long trek from the academy to the shelter, particularly, convinced many of the formerly hardline teachers and board of directors that team combat and group cooperation were essential for the future generations of mages facing against enemies and monsters both internally and externally.

"I"ll be relying on you then," I said. Princ.i.p.al Porter chuckled and shook his head.

"No, son. I"ll be the one depending on you."