"What?" Dong Fang Yue Chu asked impatiently, hating the prospect of being held in suspense. I grinned at him, and with an imaginary drum roll, made my declaration.
"Ultimate Outcast."
"…"
Dong Fang Yue Chu stared at me silently. I began to regret the moment I let slip the name from my mouth. Whoops…I should have known. What kind of stupid name was Ultimate Outcast? Was I suffering from second middle school syndrome or something? Ah, damn…this was so embarrassing. I couldn't believe that I allowed my inner child to take over for a moment. I was so ashamed of myself.
"Sorry. Forget it. Let's think of a better name…"
"That's amazing!" Dong Fang Yue Chu yelled, cutting me off before I could finish my sentence. I gaped at him, not believing what I was hearing. Before I could react, Dong Fang Yue Chu was grabbing my shoulders and shaking me excitedly. "That's a great idea!"
"Uh…really? I thought it was cheesy…"
"Are you kidding? No, that's an awesome name! That's so much better than Great Eastern Society!" Dong Fang Yue Chu was practically drooling. "Ultimate Outcast Society. Oh, wow…the name is giving me shivers! It has so much more impact! It makes us sound so cool and strong! Just the name itself will get us a lot of new members tomorrow!"
"I don't know about that," I muttered under my breath. It dawned on me that Dong Fang Yue Chu was buying into this name precisely because he was a teenager. Of course they would love cool and strong-sounding names. It was the perfect wish-fulfilment title that allowed him to enjoy the illusion of power and coolness.
"We'll go with that!" Dong Fang Yue Chu was no longer listening to me. "I'll make sure we get the name officially changed by today! From now onward, we're the Ultimate Outcast!"
Because I wore glasses, and used to be bullied? Now I needed to look for a master to teach me martial arts and hang out with his beautiful niece. Except that Dad already taught me martial arts, so there was no need for me to learn them from another person. Especially a dude who wanted eighty percent of my earnings.
I watched Dong Fang Yue Chu run off toward the staff's office, presumably to render the name change official. Then I began picking apart the broken pieces and setting up whatever I could. Hmm, the booth looked a little plain.
Pushing my glasses up, I studied the sorry-looking booth for a moment, and an idea came to my head.
After sending Dong Fang Yue Chu a message by smartphone, I headed straight home, grabbed a pencil, an eraser and a sketchbook, and began scribbling something…
*
The next day, I posted my drawings all over the booth. They sucked, and were entirely in pencil – no color, no inking, nothing – but nonetheless I still put them up. It was better than nothing, otherwise our booth would look too plain.
There was no time to bring them to a store, get a professional artist to color them, and print them out on canvas. So I just tore out the sketchbook pages and pasted them all over the booth.
"You can draw manga stuff?" Dong Fang Yue Chu asked as he gaped at my hastily hand-drawn pictures. "Since when?"
"Have you seen the cover illustration for this story?" I asked, rolling my eyes. "I know my drawing skills are bad, but we've always been relying on manga art."
"Hmm…" Dong Fang Yue Chu observed the sketches, and then shrugged. "I guess this will do. People will go crazy over these if they realize you are the one who drew them."
"Huh? Why would they?" I snorted. "Wouldn't they be disappointed that my drawing skills suck?"
"Never underestimate the passion of fans," Dong Fang Yue Chu told me sagely. "In fact, I bet someone would take them and color them for you."
"Oh, really?" I wasn't sure about that. After all, nobody bothered to color my cover illustrations on whatever writing websites I posted on, and everyone hated my art. Then again, I didn't have fans, unlike the super-popular Bai Si Wa, who had a fanbase of thousands willing to support him on Patreon.
I would be lucky if people don't demand that I pay them to read my stories, never mind getting people to donate, Spirit Stones or otherwise. My writing was that bad. I lacked the talent to write a decent story, my grammar was atrocious, I was utterly incapable of character development, I resorted to cliché storylines and my plot was non-existent, my vocabulary was laughably limited, and I brought shame to the websites. That was what readers told me over and over again, either through reviews, comments, private messages or Discord.
It got so bad that I was forced to delete my Discord account because readers would flood my channel with insults, abuse and threats, telling me to get rid of all my stories and leave the sites, or else. They probably had nothing better to do.
"Yeah! Not only did you pull off two team-kills in a row, your ranking has jumped a bit!"
"Oh, you're right."
I was checking my smartphone, and it appeared that Dong Fang Yue Chu was correct. After defeating five Iron Fist Society members yesterday, my ranking had rose by a couple of hundred places, and now I was in the nine hundreds. Obviously the friendly match against the Crowley's Grand Arcane Academy representatives didn't count, which was why my ranking didn't change even after I won against them, but the Iron Fist Society was most definitely part of our academy. Thus defeating them would earn me points for my matchmaking rating and propel me up the rankings.
"At this rate, you'll be the rising star of our Ultimate Outcast Society! All the first year students who adore you will definitely join us!"
"Well, not all of them." I was under no illusions that the vast majority of them would consider their futures seriously and join one of the better societies. After all, the Ultimate Outcast Society was a newly formed club, and as such we didn't have the prestige, standing and resources that the other societies had. It was only natural to join a society where you could develop your talent and skills, regardless of which society your idol was in.
Besides, I knew I was just a fad. Once the initial excitement had died down, people would forget about me. Hell, most of them had already forgotten about me over the past week when I was inactive. It was only when I team-killed the Iron Fist Society that interest in me reignited again. And I doubted I would be doing that again.
Let's be honest. The Iron Fist Society was a mid-ranked club at best. If my opponent had been one of the four Great Societies, or perhaps even the vast majority of the mid-ranked societies, I would never have been so bold to challenge their entire team. Plus I just wanted to emulate Ip Man, which was the only reason why I asked for ten opponents.
"In any case, the society will be relying on you to draw in members!" Dong Fang Yue Chu patted me in the back.
"Sure." Even though I knew that the vast majority of the first year students wouldn't allow my temporary ascension to blind them to the realities of training and combat, I was confident that several of my self-proclaimed fans would be delusional enough to join me. As mean as that sounded, I couldn't afford to have qualms exploiting them, or our society would disband.
Besides, it wasn't as if they would suffer. Now that I was committed the Ultimate Outcasts Society, I was going to make sure we rise to the top and displace the four Great Societies.
"Hello? Richard?" Dong Fang Yue Chu waved a hand in front of me. "Are you all right?"
"Sorry. Getting distracted for a minute." I shook my head and forced myself to focus on the present. "What were you saying?"
"It's about to begin. The first year students are coming. Stay sharp!"
Oh, right. For the next two days, lessons were cancelled so that the various societies in Jing Tian Magic Academy could recruit first year students, and so that the first year students could explore and find out about the myriad of societies in their new school.
Choosing a society was an important decision, for it determined your prestige and the resources you would receive. The greater the society, the more resources it would receive, which it would split between its members. Obviously societies such as Black Roses Society and the Holy Saints Society would receive the bulk of monetary funding and other facilities from the academy.
New societies like our Ultimate Outcasts Society would only receive a meager helping of the leftovers, but given how small our society was, and how little members we would potentially get, that was fine.
Obviously, school funding wasn't the only resources we received. Many societies relied on sponsors. Hence my statement earlier about why the status, prestige and standing of the society mattered a lot. If we wanted a good, generous sponsor, we needed to prove that they weren't wasting their money on a bunch of braggarts. We needed to show results and rack up achievements. Interschool society tournaments, the individual rankings of the members, the missions we undertook and accomplished – all these contributed to the prestige of our ranking. If we impressed people enough, they would be able to fund us as a sponsor, so we wouldn't be overly reliant on the academy to provide us with the money we needed for training.
"We need a clubroom," Dong Fang Yue Chu was murmuring to himself while he sat behind the booth, already drawing out a plan for the future. "A place where our society can meet up and train. Assuming we get about twenty recruits…we'll need a big room."
Wow, twenty was on the optimistic side. Realistically speaking, I predicted that we would only get three to four recruits at most. Just barely enough to stop our society from getting disbanded. That was a good number of first-year students who asked me which society I was in, but I doubted they would stupidly join the Ultimate Outcasts just because I was in there. Most likely they were assuming I was already in a prestigious society like the Black Roses. Probably because of the rumors regarding me and its president, Alicia Violet.
Too bad they were going to be disappointed…
"Don't worry about the club room. I already have one we can use."
Good thing Alicia provided me a personal training room, but I didn't mind sharing it with the members of my society. It was getting a bit lonely training by myself, and I figured I would benefit a lot more by having someone to spar with daily, or to discuss magic spells and combat tactics. There was only so much a person could do on his own. I wasn't the typical Lone Wolf protagonist, after all. I needed some help.
"Really?"
"Yeah, I'll bring you to it after today's recruitment stuff ends."
"Okay!"
Dong Fang Yue Chu looked delighted and excited. His flurry of activities behind the counter increased even as the first wave of first year students began approaching the booths that were spread out all over the academy courtyard.
"Here they come!" Dong Fang Yue Chu exclaimed, rubbing his hands in delight. I nodded and watched as the first year students dispersed, looking around and approaching the booths of the societies they were interested in. More and more, an increasing number of first year students flooded into the courtyard, chattering excitedly to themselves.
Dong Fang Yue Chu watched them enthusiastically, only for his energy to slowly die down. An hour passed. Two hours passed. Then three.
"…is it my imagination, or is no one visiting our booth?" Dong Fang Yue Chu asked, despair creeping into his voice.
"Maybe they're just looking at other societies for now?" I guessed with a shrug, though I felt the same gloomy pessimism descend over me as the clock began to slowly wind down.