"Hey, Richie, you're back!"
Dad was sitting on the couch, as usual, when I got home. Usually, when he was not out on a mission, he had nothing better to do except to watch anime and read light novels. He was a stay-at-home Dad in that sense, who left on a mission for days at a time. Some of the longer missions took him months, especially if they happened to be overseas.
Otherwise he would stick around at home.
"Hey, Dad."
"Oh? You didn't get those injuries treated?" Dad sat up and stared at me, taken aback by my battered condition. He knew that students in the academy were required to participate in duels, so injuries were inevitable. But he was also aware of the top medical facilities and healers available to us, so he usually wasn't that worried.
"They're pretty light. My injuries will heal on their own by tonight."
I wasn't exaggerating or trying to assure Dad for the sake of it. Thanks to modern magic and technology, the arcane energies that flowed through our bodies sped up our regeneration, so most minor wounds wound heal within hours. This was so unlike my original period, where it would take days for the same injuries to heal.
Modern magic and technology were really amazing.
Dad frowned in disapproval. "You should take care of yourself more."
"Yeah, I will." I headed straight to my room. "I'll go rest now."
"Good idea." Dad nodded, probably because there was nothing he could do. He wasn't a healer, after all. Angelica was an offensive summoned spirit, so she couldn't cast healing spells either, so there was little point in summoning her. As I moved to open the door, he grinned. "Great job, by the way. You showed everyone!"
That took me by surprise. I gaped at him for a moment, not comprehending.
"Huh? What are you talking about?"
"Your matches today, of course! You showed everyone the true power of summoning!" Dad laughed in delight. "Weren't your schoolmates always mocking you for choosing to be a summoner like your old man? Hah! You proved them wrong today! That was a great performance! Not only that, the opponents you beat were ranked among the top in the Federation! You've practically become a celebrity overnight!"
"I was just lucky. My first opponent underestimated me."
For some reason, it felt embarrassing talking to my Dad about my school life or achievements. I had felt the same back in my past life, whenever my original Dad asked me about my daily activities or what I did in school. There was some joy at how my parents took pride in my non-academic achievements, especially since Dad personally trained me in combat, but there was still some awkwardness.
Dad chuckled. "That he did. And you exploited it, so give yourself more credit than that. If you didn't have the strength and ability to make use of the opportunity, your opponent would just walk over you."
"That's true," I admitted, still feeling a bit embarrassed. Trying to hide it, I stepped into my room. "I'll be going to rest for today. Do you mind if I skip the usual training session today?"
"Hah! You've fought more than enough for today. Five matches in a row! Even I rarely do something like that." Dad waved me away. "Go get some rest. We'll resume training tomorrow."
"Gotcha."
Feeling relieved, I then shut the door. However, I didn't flop down on my bed. Instead, I took my seat at my personal desk and switched on my personal computer.
Unlike computers of the past, modern computers didn't have a monitor. They were a tiny terminal, which projected a gigantic holographic screen to display my browsers, documents and whatever, and a small holographic screen that served as a touchpad. I wasn't sure how it worked, but basically we could just touch the corresponding buttons in the holographic light and they would respond appropriately, whether it's typing or whatever.
The moment I opened my Internet browsers to check my email, I was immediately bombarded by a few hundred messages.
"What the?!"
I gaped at the massive influx of private messages. It wasn't just my email, my social media inbox was also flooded with them, especially from people throwing friend requests at me. Good thing I only had a single social media account. Some people used Twitter and Instagram and stuff, but I wasn't on those. No doubt, if I had accounts there too, they would be flooded with messages as well.
"You've got to be kidding me," I muttered. There was no way I was going through all those messages.
I noticed that several of the private messages were from my friends, a few of them congratulating me and all that. Good thing the system was able to differentiate between friend requests plus random messages from total strangers and private messages from those who were already "friends" with me on social media. Of course, the meaning behind the word "friend" was a lot more ambiguous here, but at least they were people I already knew.
Otherwise, I wouldn't even bother with the messages and just delete my account. Unsurprisingly, a lot of the random messages included insults, threats and challenges. There were a significant number of people who wanted a match with me after that performance, no doubt divining the weakness of my summoning spell and wanting to defeat me to earn undeserved fame.
I was under no obligation to accept them.
Still, the insults and abuses were unexpected. Though I could just move them to my spam folder and blocked the idiots, I didn't bother. I only saw the threats when skimming through the multi-window function of private messages, mixed together with congratulations and challenges, and decided to delete all of them at one shot without looking at the rest. Even so, I wondered why random people would attack me when they had no reason to hold a grudge against me. Even if I won against the people they idolized, I wasn't the only one who defeated them.
Cecilia Stuart was the only one who had never lost before, but even so, wasn't it overly exaggerated to threaten or abuse me just because I was the first guy to defeat her?
Sighing, I shook my head, and was about to check an anime-streaming website to watch anime, only to catch sight of a post in my newsfeed. Apparently someone had taken the time to write up an analysis on his Facebook account.
"The hell is this?"
I read it grimly, and sighed. The guy was right. I had gotten lucky with my first match, and won an entire series of matches by exploiting the rules to my advantage. He was spot-on with my weaknesses, and he appeared to be a schoolmate from Jing Tian Magic Academy. No wonder he was familiar with how I fought.
In conclusion, the best way to defeat me was to take me out before I could summon my beasts, something that Hal Gunther failed to do because he was stupid enough to toy around with me, and that was the only reason the Crowley's Grand Arcane Academy's representatives got team-killed by me. In other words, I wasn't a big deal or a prodigy who was previously unheard of. I won, not because of my own strengths, but because of my opponent's initial folly.
One of the comments below, however, pointed out that if I didn't have the ability, even if my opponents were stupid enough to toy around with me, I still wouldn't have won. Just like my Dad, he argued that I deserve a bit more credit than that.
There was a long thread of comments, the posters verbally sparring. I was too tired to scroll through all of them, so I just closed the window.
It had only been a few hours since the matches, and I was already sick of all this.
Sighing, I flopped down on my bed, staring at the ceiling. Well, I probably didn't have to worry about this. The news would lose value over time, and people would forget about me when I returned to my losing ways. Already even random posters on the Internet were highly aware of my weaknesses, and I doubted any of my future opponents would make the same mistake. Cecilia too – in future, she wasn't going to give me the chance to summon a second monster…except that she would be too busily distracted by the first to stop me. So there was that.
Of course, I wasn't delusional to think that I would get the chance to summon my first monster against her – she would end the battle in an instant. The next time she challenged me, it would most likely be a one-on-one match, and not a representative team mock battle.
"Damn it."
I sighed. That was the real issue here. Before this whole farce with Crowley's Grand Arcane Academy, I had been researching for ways to shore up my weakness, either by summoning weaker beasts that required less time and energy to summon, or by becoming a hybrid summoner-combat mage. That was why I was learning combat magic this semester, in an attempt to find a way to survive until I could complete my summoning spell.
However, no matter how many times I replayed the match in my head, I realized that none of those strategies would work against Cecilia Stuart. Hell, never mind Cecilia Stuart, I wouldn't be able to defeat Doug Daniels or even the assassin, Albert Alain. Their hand-to-hand fighting and close combat skills were top notch.
No wonder they were ranked among the top in the Federation, and made it to the top eight last year.
How do I fight against monsters like them, if it was a one-on-one battle?
Weaker summoned beasts would die instantly against them. Perhaps learning combat magic would allow me to stand a better chance against them. Closing my eyes, I recalled the Divine Devices my opponents had wielded. High-grade, hi-tech magic weapons that channeled the wielders' energy into them with devastating effect.
If only I had a Divine Device of my own…
No. That isn't the problem…
As I fantasized, I suddenly realized there was no way I could catch up to them in terms of combat magic. They had specialized in combat magic since years ago and honed their skills to perfection while I spent the last five years focusing only on summoning. Their level of weapon mastery or swordsmanship wasn't something I could match by training tirelessly over the next year. Yeah, I had some basic foundation thanks to Dad's grueling lessons, but even so I wasn't confident of winning against them based on combat magic alone.
But I didn't have to. I only needed to survive long enough until I summoned my magical beasts.
That's it!
I suddenly sat up in my bed as an idea formed in my mind. Maybe this might just work…