The library was usually silent, which made it easy for people to overhear hushed conversations even from one corner of the library.
That was why the moment Alicia Violet made the offer, all the students in the library were in an uproar. Several of them even jumped to their feet and stared in our direction, outraged.
Everyone knew that the Black Rose Society treated their members extremely well. Not only that, it was filled with many beautiful female students. It also was one of the strictest societies in terms of entry requirements, and not just anybody could join the society. Every single member of the Black Roses was an influential figure in their classes.
Yet Alicia actually invited a loser like me, who had lost ninety-nine matches in a row, and hadn't even won a single match in the past year?
"President, I object to this!"
To my surprise, the vice-president of Black Rose Society, Miranda Miriam, had suddenly appeared as well. She was a tall girl, even taller than me because she was slightly over 170cm, and similar to me, she wore a pair of black-framed glasses. But the rim of her glasses was circular compared to my rectangular ones, and her lenses were much thinner because my eyesight was a lot worse. We would have looked like siblings, except that her hair was a pale brown in contrast to the unruly mop of black hair atop my head.
She also emitted the aura of someone who was inflexible and overly serious, and because of her earnest and diligent (not to mention fussy) attitude, everyone jokingly referred to her as the Mother of Black Roses, or Mother Rosario.
"This guy is the shame of our academy! Have you seen his match records? Ninety-nine losses! Not a single win! It won't be long before he's expelled from school! We definitely can't accept him!"
Ouch. Miranda was certainly brutal. Was there a bloody need to announce my atrocious record in front of everybody? Seriously?
Despite this being a library, the students within began whispering and gossiping to each other, much to the chagrin of the librarian. When several of them learned of my situation, they looked at me in pity. Everyone knew the difficulties a summoner faced, and they had a slight trace of admiration for stubbornly sticking to such an impossible path in the face of such a ruthless meta where speed and attack were everything.
If this was Magic: The Gathering, the meta would be 4-turn kills using either super-aggressive aggro decks, which often combine hordes with burn spells, control decks that slowly milled your opponent to death or through other win conditions while denying your opponents' casting and locking down their creatures, spells or abilities, or combo decks that sought to quickly destroy the opponent with a combination of cheap, basic spells that produced a lethal effect that was more than the sum of their parts within the first few turns (or first few minutes in the case of our academy). My "deck", if you wanted to call it that, relied heavily on summoning massive creatures to beat down the enemy to death with Trample or Flying or just overwhelming damage with their immense power and toughness. Unfortunately, they were expensive to cast, which meant I would only have enough mana to cast them by turn 5 or 6, even if I relied on mana ramp spells and abilities, and by that time my opponent would either have burned me to death or had lots of control spells in place to deny my casting.
I was going to have to explore the horde option as a summoner, but creature destruction spells, board wipe, burn cards that damage all creatures in play were so common that nobody bothered with summoning these days. Fortunately, my massive creatures were Indestructible, so they could resist lethal damage and destroy effects, but they were just too expensive to cast.
Of course, the current circumstances were a lot more complex than equating it with Magic: The Gathering, and there were a few other problems involved, such as creature summoning being a lot more energy-draining and inefficient than other spells. Not to mention, the production of mana worked differently from laying out a single land per turn, and it wasn't an I-go-you-go turn-based match either. The combat situation was a lot more fluid, and spells distinct from the card game, but I guess it was sufficient as an analogy.
Even so, there were a few people who admired my tenacity for trying to make it work, just like how Gumiho was popular for developing strategies for making Terran mech work in Starcraft 2, even against Protoss. So I did have more than a fair share of supporters who were cheering for me in online forums.
"Miranda, please." Alicia raised a hand. "Allow me to speak to him." She turned back to me with that goddess smile that could melt the heart of every man present. "I know what you are trying to achieve, and it is quite the insurmountable task. But if you succeed, you will definitely bring glory to the academy. Black Rose Society has all the resources you need to help you develop a working strategy. We can even allow you to take special accelerated programs to turn you into a hybrid class, so that you will be able to both fight and defend yourself long enough to summon your magical beasts. How about it? Please consider."
Contrary to expectations, I simply responded with a polite smile and shook my head.
"Thank you very much, President Alicia. I honestly appreciate the offer, but I think it will be wasted on me. Right now, I do not believe I am worthy enough to join any societies. I would like to focus on developing my magic to work in reality and actual combat first. As promising as summoning might seem, results are after all the most important thing in this academy…or even this world. I do not think it is right for me to take advantage of your offer without proving myself first."
Miranda snorted coldly. "Good thing he responded tactfully. If he had been bold enough to accept the offer, or rude in rejecting it, then he would be as good as dead."
Alicia nodded regretfully. Despite her position as the president of the Black Roses, she couldn't do much to oppose Miranda. Furthermore, she recognized that she couldn't just force the issue on me when I had politely rejected her offer.
"If you change your mind, you can come talk to me anytime."
Smiling, she rose to her feet and offered me her hand, I shook it politely, trying not to flinch at one of the rare instances where I established physical contact with someone of the opposite sex. I was fine speaking to them from a distance, but physical contact was another thing altogether even though I was mentally over thirty.
"I really appreciate the offer," I repeated. "But I wish to prove myself first."
"I understand." Alicia nodded. She realized in retrospect that people would spread rumors and resent me if I so easily joined the Black Roses. Many people had to work so hard to pass the requirements and produce the appropriate results to prove themselves, yet someone like me who had nothing but losses on my record could just step inside its core with a single word from the president. What would that be, if not corruption?
Not only that, it would also affect Alicia's reputation. People would whisper that she was involved in me somehow, or that I somehow had a hold of her weaknesses and blackmailed her into allowing me to join. All sort of nonsense that I had no time to bother with.
I watched the goddesses leave, and feeling the students' gaze on me in the aftermath of what had just happened, I couldn't help but feel overly anxious and self-conscious. It was pretty uncomfortable being in the center of attention of all that.
So I quickly returned the books to the shelf after borrowing a few relevant ones, and hurried out of the library to escape their gaze.
*
Hurrying home, I found Dad lying on the couch and watching television. The television was actually just a single holographic screen that shimmered in vivid detail and actual color in front of a blank wall. Technology had progressed to the point where we no longer needed monitors to project such a clear, sharp holographic image for viewing entertainment.
Like I said, technology was basically magic to someone like me from the twenty-first century.
"Hey, Dad."
"Oh, Richard! You're finally home!" Dad jumped to his feet and clicked the television off. "Good timing. I was getting bored. What do you say about sparring?"
I scratched my head. I wanted to read up on summoning, but at the same time I felt that it would useful to learn fighting techniques from Dad. He was an experienced summoner-mage, after all, and might have a few tips.
Except that his lessons hadn't helped me much during my past year in the academy. Even so, I continued to look up to him.
"Do you know any combat techniques that would allow me to fight on par with magicians? Or at least last 3 minutes against them?" I asked. Dad guffawed at that.
"If you want to learn those techniques, you've to master the basics first."
"You've been drilling the basics into me for the last five years," I pointed out grumpily. "And I've been getting my ass kicked despite trying to use them. They're still not good enough to fight on par with combat mages."
"Well, of course. They are not magic combat techniques. They are just normal military combat techniques that don't require the use of magic. If you want to learn those, you might as well become a proper combat mage." Dad gave me a strange stare. "Don't you have classes in your school for that? I remember during my time, they used to be the most popular classes for students of my generation. The most powerful mages were produced from the combat mage classes, both in long-range and short-range."
He then grinned.
"Don't worry. You've already developed a solid foundation in the basics. All you need to do is apply them to whatever magic you learn later on."
My shoulders slumped. "I should have taken a class on combat magic…"
"Oh, I never said anything about combat magic." Dad's grin grew. "I said whatever magic you learn. Don't restrict yourself to combat magic. Let your imagination grow. I'm the one who raised you, I know you're more capable than that."
"Thank you, Dad." First, Alicia and now Dad. It seemed that there were still quite a few people who had belief in my abilities despite my lack of results. I needed to prove to everyone that their faith in me was justified. Clutching the library books I had borrowed, I smiled. "I'll start working on mastering that magic as soon as possible."
"Sure…but first, sparring." Dad cracked his knuckles, and I groaned inwardly when I recalled how grueling these sparring sessions were. "I won't allow you to make an excuse to worm out of it!"