Summoner Sovereign

Normally he would be somewhat worried about me summoning Vermillion Phoenix, but I had just summoned Serpens, Taurus and used quite a flashy spell. It would delay my summoning spell for Vermillion Phoenix. After all, all of these summoning spells were dependent on a shared pool of magical energy – my reservoir of mana – so if I spent a good amount of energy summoning powerful Constellation spirits, that"s a significant chunk of mana not being directed toward casting the spell that would summon my Celestial Guardians.

That was why he could afford a few seconds of polite conversation. Now that I had made my decision, he wasted no time and returned to fighting again.

The spectators watched with bated breath, and I could hear murmurs as they commented on the match, but most of their remarks tended to be extremely irritating so I shut them out and paid no attention. I could guess somewhat the main topic of their discussions. Currently, I was blinded, and for most mages, that would be fatal.

If it had been any other mage, they would have surrendered upon losing their sight. That was how vital the sense of sight was to a combat mage. Without their vision, they couldn"t see their opponents, they couldn"t track their movements, they couldn"t see the attacks coming, and they couldn"t react in time or launch an offensive of their own.

…if it had been any other mage.

Seeing my confidence, Jie Bing had ascertained that I had some other means of fighting without my sight. Unlike Hal Gunther, he refused to underestimate me. He knew the dangers of looking down on an opponent and becoming complacent, of taking it for granted that you were guaranteed to win the fight. As long as I remained conscious and still willing to battle, I would remain a sizable threat.

That was why he wasn"t holding back.

With a swing of his ice sword, Jie Bing began to condense his soul power. Since I was blinded and had to wait for him to move before I could react, he had ample time to prepare his a.s.sault. He waved his sword and launched a volley of icicles at me.

Even though I couldn"t see, I could hear the slight wheezing as the frozen projectiles streaked toward me. Instinctively, I conjured Scutum Sobiescianum and the Constellation s.h.i.+eld materialized in midair to halt the attacks.

"?!"

Jie Bing narrowed his eyes, and thought to himself that it was only natural that I would have more Constellation spirits or weapons to call upon. After all, he was the one who told me that our magic were very similar. Remarkably he was able to tell that I actually heard his attack coming, and he changed tactics.

Crack!

All round us, ice came to life, freezing the entire arena once more. As pillars of ice rose, Jie Bing fired a volley of icicles at me. At the same time, he dashed toward me, following his bombardment closely to swing his sword down if I blocked them.

Jie Bing"s judgement was spot on. I frowned when I could no longer hear the icicles thanks to the thunderous cracking noise that his freezing ice was creating as it froze over the landscape. I gambled on using Scutum Sobiescianum to s.h.i.+eld my front, but Jie Bing"s sword slashed from my side. Only my instincts saved me when I felt a sudden s.h.i.+ft in the air and I stepped backward, but the front of my chest was slashed open.

"Gah!"

Falling backward, with the blood freezing across my wound, I gritted my teeth and fired off a black blast from Castor at my front. To the side that was not covered by Scutum Sobiescianum, I unleashed a white blast from Pollux, just in case Jie Bing had switched directions and was no longer in front of me. Even if I didn"t hit him, I could at least delay him to buy time for my next summon.

Then…it was done.

"Crow!"

A flock of Corvus materialized in the skies above, flapping their wings and soaring over the chilly air. Linked telepathically to them, I could use the dozens of pairs of eyes as my own, tracking down Jie Bing"s location and responding immediately.

"Tch!"

Jie Bing clicked his tongue when he realized that, staggering backward when my Castor slashed toward his face. He blocked it with his ice sword, but my Pollux came sweeping in from a blind spot that one of my Corvus had spotted for me. He quickly conjured another sword and blocked my white short sword, and then sent a riposte that would have stabbed me in the shoulder had I not ducked. Sweeping under his swords, I then cut into his midriff, only for him to freeze a dense layer of frost armor atop his torso.

Clang!

"!!!"

Wow…this Jie Bing was really too cunning and meticulous. My respect for him went up. Ice magic was really one of the most flexible and adaptable magic. Comprising of materialization techniques and embodying near infinite variations, Jie Bing could freeze into existence any tool, weapon, equipment or armament that suited his current circ.u.mstances at any time. Already he had blocked several lethal strikes from me using the adaptability of his ice spells to s.h.i.+eld himself from certain defeat.

However…he wasn"t the only one!

With a determined yell, I unleashed Castor and Pollux at pointblank range, overwhelming his frost armor with black and white blasts of destructive energy. My twin swords shattered from the exertion of magic, but I succeeded in blowing Jie Bing back. Fortunately for my opponent, his frost armor had absorbed most of the blasts, and while they crumbled into icy fragments that fell from his body, he didn"t look very hurt.

Raising his remaining ice sword (with the other one having broken during our earlier exchange when I struck him with energy blasts), Jie Bing cast another Absolute Zero, probably to freeze my flock of Corvus and deny me vision once again.

"Hmph."

In response, I threw up a hand and gave an order to my slowly freezing flock of black crows.

"Corvus, Gienah!"

All of my Corvus suddenly transformed into black streaks of light that blazed across the arena to strike Jie Bing with the force of a meteor. Even his Absolute Zero was unable to stop the meteoric explosions of kinetic energy produced by the speeding crow-bullets. Force equals ma.s.s times acceleration. As tiny as each individual Corvus was, they were accelerating at near the speed of light, and thus the amount of energy unleashed by their collision was almost equal to a nuclear explosion. Well, I probably was exaggerating and they were probably moving at less than half of c, the speed of light, but even so it was still a display of tremendous power.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

"Ugh…!"

A cry escaped Jie Bing"s lips as he struggled to hold up his icy s.h.i.+eld. This time, he no longer just created a simple ice s.h.i.+eld, but instead erected a colossal glacial wall that was several meters thick. They surrounded him like a fortress not unlike Chang Cheng"s Great Wall. It was an all-round, absolute defense that protected him from the ferocious meteoric bombardment of Corvus"s Gienah.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Despite its immense density, the thick ice wall trembled and cracked under the powerful bombardment. No matter how st.u.r.dy the enormous glacial barrier was, it couldn"t possibly hold up against an orbital bombardment from rapidly accelerating meteors. At least not forever.

And then…I ran out of power. The last of my Corvus faded away, exploding against Jie Bing"s icy screen with tremendous impact and causing several more tremors that continued to reverberate violently across the arena. Relieved, Jie Bing raised his head to stare at me.
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But while he was defending against what seemed to be my last-ditch attack, I had gone and summoned yet another Constellation weapon.

It didn"t matter that I couldn"t see Jie Bing. I had already pinpointed his location through the eyes of my Corvus. While they were bombarding him, I had adjusted my aim and continued to face the direction where he was standing in, unflinchingly withstanding the best I had to throw at him. The reason why I maintained my distance was because my Constellation weapon this time would be a ranged type, not a close combat kind.

Sagittarius sparked into existence into my hand, the dull black bow initially not eye-catching. But the arrow I had summoned was certainly a beacon of horror and awe, flames flowing into the slowly expanding projectile.

"Alnasl."

Before Jie Bing could react, I had already fired the blazing arrow.

At first, the ice mage didn"t move. The spectators also fell silent. The colossal ice wall he had erected had served as an impregnable fortress that had survived my meteoric bombardment of Gienah. There was no way a single arrow could break it.

Unfortunately, they had forgotten the element of Sagittarius. Fire – which was super-effective against ice magic and constructs.

Kboom!

The searing heat of Alnasl simply vaporized the gargantuan ice wall in an instant and detonated against a shocked Jie Bing. To be fair, he couldn"t dodge even if he wanted to – the arrow was traveling too quickly for him to react. A catastrophic conflagration enveloped the entire arena, mushrooming upward in a h.e.l.lish inferno that cast a grim, crimson glow upon the stunned spectators.

The scorched body of Jie Bing toppled out of the ravenous flames, smoldering and unconscious. Steam billowed about him, gallons of water vaporized and boiling furiously as the red, bloodthirsty inferno consumed what was remained of Jie Bing"s once formidable frost fortress.

"Winner…Richard Huang!"

Teacher Fielding wasted no time in declaring me the winner. As the boundary field activated to extinguish the ravenous flames and restore the devastated arena, several medics hurried into the scene to grab hold of the charred Jie Bing to ferry him to the infirmary.

"Phew…"

Slumping down onto the ground, pain beginning to throb across my body now that the battle was over and my adrenaline wore off, I stayed put because of my eyes. They were still frozen shut…but the ice had melted away from the intense heat of my Alnasl. Blinking, I slowly opened them and looked around, only to find that my vision was blurry.

Fortunately, my discarded gla.s.ses were lying a few meters away from me. I scrambled to retrieve them, putting them back on and sighing in relief. I felt vulnerable when I was blinded. Plus summoning took up a lot of magical energy. I couldn"t summon a soul beast or Constellation spirit and keep him in existence forever because he would continue to drain me of my energy if I did so. Moreover, the moment I fell asleep or lost consciousness, they would automatically disappear. It was too exhausting to maintain their existences for an extended period of time. Maybe an hour or two at the longest, before my magical energy ran out.

I would need a different spell that would create a specially conditioned environment if I wanted to maintain them for extended periods of time, and even then they would have to remain within that artificial spatial field…

While I was thinking to myself, I was suddenly jolted out of my thoughts by an earth-shaking roar from the crowd. Everyone was cheering for some reason. Most of the noise was generated by students from the lower ranks, particularly those over one thousand, as well as a significant number of the first year students. Even after several months since my victory over Crowley"s Academy, I continued to retain a following from the first years. Or so it seemed.

Alicia was also jumping up and down, to my surprise, her usual elegant dignity forgotten. She was exchanging high fives with an excitedly screaming Harvey and a grinning w.a.n.g Fei. Even the usually moody Stan was smiling in delight, recognizing the significance of this victory. Dong Fang Yue Chu was also beaming, looking proud, as if he was the one who had fought and defeated Jie Bing.

This would definitely make people sit up and notice Ultimate Outcast Society. And my ranking, though I was unaware of it at that time, had just soared up to 428.

At this rate, I might just make it into the top 100 by the end of next year, before the university exams…