Summoner Sovereign

Unfortunately, the practical exam at the end of the semester was only a month away. There wasn"t a lot of time. Well, there should be at least a few improvements in the way both disciples executed their techniques and a lot of new skills they would have learned by then, so it was more than enough, given that their opponents would be students of the same level and grade. They were given the same amount of time (a month) to train for the exam, but of course, as with everything else, the pace at which an individual grew differed from person to person.

Of course it was my job to speed up that pace for my students and help them overtake their cla.s.smates and schoolmates. Melina, in particular, had to defeat Nirvana Mallory at all costs. I would accept nothing less. That b.i.t.c.h had been humiliating and bullying her ever since they were students in the same school, and it was high time someone knocked her arrogance down a few pegs. It would be sweeter if the person who did that was the very person she had been mocking all this time. Revenge was a dish best served cold, and all that.

Melina didn"t seem to be that invested in revenge, though. She had suffered so much mockery and teasing throughout her life that she merely regarded Nirvana as just the latest in a long line of detractors. She honestly couldn"t care less about the individual bullies. Her goal was much broader, and she aimed to prove all her critics wrong and establish her credentials as a swordswoman. Nothing more. She didn"t hold a grudge because, quite frankly, there were way too many people who had scorned her throughout her life.

I just remembered Nirvana because she was the first and most visible bully that I encountered shortly after I met Melina. So it was mentally easy for me to place her as the scapegoat, and the stand-in or representative of all the people who had bullied and derided Melina. Sometimes I wondered if I was being childish. Ironically enough, Melina was more mature than me in this aspect, despite being about three years younger than me.

"Again!"

Lowering my sword, I beckoned Melina to come at me. She didn"t hesitate, and charged with her wooden sword, which I parried effortlessly. I knocked her back with a forceful swing, but she managed to flip herself upward and land on both feet, skidding backward from the blow. She got ready to perform a second charge, but I held up a hand to stop her.

"Wait." I glanced at Adrian, who was lying on the ground, heaving from exhaustion and a slight amount of pain. He had been winded from an earlier blow of mine, and was still trying to recover. "You all right, Adrian? Can you still continue?"

"Y…yeah," Adrian gasped as he forced himself back to his feet. He held up his wooden sword with both hands, and I was struck by the resemblance between the fourteen-year-old and his cousin, Cecilia. They truly were related, or had at least learned similar types of sword techniques. I briefly wondered if the original Carolyn had a cousin, but I guess Skeleton Wizard couldn"t care less about developing her family background because he was more interested in just creating the main heroine for w.a.n.g Zhong"s harem. "I can still fight!"

"Good. The both of you, coordinate your attacks and come at me together." I beckoned them both before reaching for a second wooden sword. Yeah, I preferred dual wielding to using only a single sword. Yeah, it was more showy and flashy, and was less practical than wielding a single sword, but it looked a lot cooler.

Besides, the Servant in red who specialized in archery dual-wielded. That was more than enough reason for me to emulate him. No, it had nothing to do with the edgy black swordsman running around in a virtual reality death-game. Why do people always think about Kirito instead of Heroic Spirit Emiya when I mentioned dual-wielding? Wasn"t it clear that I was trying to rip off Archer, and not some edgy gamer who preferred to solo a death-game by himself just because he could? My using bows and arrows should have been a dead giveaway.

Anyway, both Adrian and Melina spread out, eyeing me cautiously. They flanked me from both sides, charging from opposite directions and forcing me to split my attention between them. If I focused on defending against Melina"s strike from my right, Adrian would hit me from the left. If I parried Adrian"s attack from my left, it would leave my right flank vulnerable to Melina"s a.s.sault. Not only that, the both of them were casting spells in the manner I taught them, imbuing their wooden swords with mana to reinforce the otherwise fragile weapons.

Adrian in particular was manipulating his wood mana to conjure a cloud of razor sharp leaves in the manner I taught him. The Stuart swordsmans.h.i.+p. Good, he had taken my lesson to heart and was wielding the leaves with deadly precision. He would go far, that was for sure.

Melina was no less impressive, for she had made use of holy magic to enhance the strength behind her blow. While she was usually delegated to casting buffs on her teammates in her former role as a support spell caster, the same principle could be applied while she moved onto the frontlines. In other words, she could buff herself. And that was exactly what she was doing right now, increasing her strength and speed several times.

Even so, she restrained herself in terms of speed, just so she could coordinate with Adrian. Too quickly and she would hit me before Adrian reach me, allowing me to defend against her, and if successful, I would throw her off before countering her teammate"s strike. The two of them understood the importance of teamwork – this wasn"t about personal glory or taking credit for the kill. It wasn"t a compet.i.tion. If they wanted to stand a chance of defeating me, they had to work together in flawless coordination.

Closing my eyes, I relied on my mind"s eye rather than watch the trajectories of their individual movements. Raising both of my swords, I deflected their weapons simultaneously, defending from both sides at the same time. As the razor-sharp leaves bombarded me from the left and a holy blast of magic struck from the right, I conjured twin walls of ice to absorb the blows.

"!!!"

Both Adrian and Melina jumped backward instinctively, and not a moment too soon. Icicles emerged from the ground, streaking forward with the force of a bullet, and would have impaled them if they hadn"t evaded in time.

Huffing, they spun around and smashed the ice with their wooden swords before countering with their own spells. This time, the leaves and holy wave of golden energy struck me and my figure shattered into several thousand pieces of ice.

"…eh?"

"What?!"

The both of them spun around, realizing that they had only hit my ice clone, and were expecting me to show up behind them.

"I"m not that despicable."

"?!"

Adrian was the first to bear the brunt of my strike. Contrary to his expectations, I had come straight at him from the front, my wooden sword flas.h.i.+ng outward. He succeeded in parrying my first strike with his wooden blade, amazingly enough, but was unable to defend against the follow-up attack from the other sword in my left hand. The blunt tip of the wooden sword cannoned into his midriff and he doubled over with a grunt before collapsing.

"Hah!"

With a determined yell, Melina swung her sword at my head, determined not to leet Adrian"s sacrifice go to waste. However, I merely held up the sword in my right hand to block her blow. Melina staggered from the momentum of her own attack bouncing back against her, and I ducked low from her desperate follow-up before sweeping her legs beneath her and causing her to tumble onto the ground. As she gasped, stunned, I pointed one of my swords at her throat.

"Ha…" she sighed heavily. "It"s our loss again, Sensei."

"Ugh…" Adrian groaned in frustration as he struggled back to his feet, clutching his midriff. "We just can"t beat you, Brother Richard."

"It"s only, what, three days, since we officially started this private tutoring thing, right?" I asked, trying not to roll my eyes. "Be patient. You"ll definitely get stronger. Besides…it"s my fault for not holding back."

Actually, I was holding back. A lot. I could see a hundred different ways in which I could have slain them, but obviously I didn"t. I wasn"t an edgy, bloodthirsty murderer who wanted to see kids slaughtered just because I didn"t like them. And I liked the two kids under my charge. A lot. I was determined to groom them into respectable mages or swordsman/swordswoman. I wanted to see them rise to the top.

Adrian knew me long enough to see through my BS, and he snorted.

"If you really didn"t hold back, both Melina and I would be dead within the first few seconds."

"Eh…" Melina looked a little disappointed at that revelation. "So there"s still such a vast gap between us."

"I have three years more of training and combat experience than you guys," I reminded them with a sigh. "So don"t worry about it. You"ll get there eventually."

"You"re right." Adrian brightened up. "The most effective way to get strong is practical combat. We need to experience life-and-death battles…"

"You"re still too early to go through those," I cut him off hastily. This kid was getting weird ideas, and I didn"t want him to risk his life for such nonsense. Yes, you could certainly get stronger through real battles, but the risk was too high…and it was completely meaningless if you got yourself killed in the battlefield. If your goal was to get stronger, wouldn"t it be self-defeating if you end up another casualty on the battlefield? What, you think you were some immortal, invincible protagonist in a power fantasy, wish fulfilment story and had plot armor? Don"t be ridiculous. If you die, everything was over. Especially your goal to become stronger. "Even professional soldiers go through months…sometimes a year of training beore the military sends them into actual battle. Basic military training is 2-3 months. Then you have advanced military training for another 3 months. Officer Cadet School is another nine months or so – by the time you are commissioned as one, it"s a year. Be patient. Don"t rush into getting actual combat experience and risking your life for something as silly as that. Remember, once you"re dead, you"re dead. No amount of magic is going to resurrect you. And you"ll never fulfil your goal of becoming stronger."

"Eh…"

"Don"t worry." I placed a hand on his shoulder. "Once you"re ready, I"ll bring you guys out for a mission. But not now. You"re far from ready. h.e.l.l, it"s only been three days!"

"That"s true," Melina conceded, sounding a little disappointed. "I guess we need to train more then."

"Exactly. So for now just concentrate on developing your skills and techniques…until they become second nature to you. Once that happens, then you should be able to survive most h.e.l.lish battlefields and missions."

"Yes~"

The both of them picked themselves up and the servants hurried over to clean up the courtyard. As we didn"t have a dojo in Melina"s manor, we were forced to make do in the ma.s.sive garden at the back of the house. I didn"t know why the staff bothered – we were basically rolling about in the gra.s.ss, and there wasn"t much damage. I had minimized whatever collateral damage I did with my spells, and could easily restore them with a basic earth or wood spell. Seemed like the butlers knew the same spells, for they were casting them to restore the garden, which didn"t seem that affected, to be frank.

"You guys should go rest for today," I told them, glancing upward. Evening was coming, and the skies were gradually darkening. "I"m sure you have homework." I had homework of my own, but before that there was something I needed to do.

Watching the two kids disappear back into the manor with the staff, I then retrieved my phone and made a call. A few rings, and finally someone on the other end picked up the call. The familiar voice of Christopher Redfield rose lazily from the other side.

"Redfield speaking. Oh? Richie? What"s up?"

"Just checking on Ana"s status. How is she? Did Ling Dan concoct the serum to suppress her Poison Woeful Body?"

"Not yet," Redfield replied with a sigh. "Some miracle doctor he is. He still hasn"t been able to develop the medicine we need. Then again…I can"t think of any precedent. Other than the a.s.sa.s.sin Guild, who obviously couldn"t be bothered to develop such a serum because that"s the kind of killers they wish to groom, no one has been able to cure such a condition before. He claims he"s doing his best, but he hasn"t been able to produce any fruitful results."

"After all the trouble we went through to bring him back, he had better," I grumbled. "Or we would have completely wasted our time."

"I feel you." Redfield chuckled. "But it was worth a shot, don"t you think?"

"Yeah, I agree."

"Well, anyway, if there are any updates, I"ll let you know." After that he hung up and I returned to the manor, hoping for the best. There was little I could do except pray and hope Ling Dan knew what he was doing.

Unfortunately, the next time I received news of Anastasia would be a few days from now (basically at the end of the first week of my being Melina and Adrian"s private tutor), and they would be bad.

Not only that, the bringer of bad news was none other than the great leader of the Silver Wolves mercenary guild, Feng Hai himself.