260 Chapter 260: Red String of Fate

"I'm his adopted son," I confirmed as I watched Lilith Porter, feeling a chill run down my spine. Taking a deep breath, I narrowed my eyes as I recalled the entire flashback arc Dad subjected me to about 15 chapters and 60 chapters ago. "Is your father Glen Porter?"

"You know my father?"

"No, my dad knows your father."

"…I see." Lilith frowned and picked up her smartphone. She broadcasted a holographic screen into the air and studied the details with a frown. I blanched when I saw my photograph hovering in the air, with several details listed under it.

"What the fuck?! How did you get my profile?!"

"Father provided it to me. He said that I'll end up meeting you one day."

Now that I thought about it, Uncle Glen did constantly tell me that I should meet his daughter one day. I had refused, not taking him seriously because he often snuck out of Vermillion City alone to play games with my dad without bringing his daughter along, and really had no interest in meeting her because I had other more important concerns.

"This is a great chance." Lilith was drawing her crimson sword as she stared intently at me, fiery mana blazing along the length of her blade and igniting ferociously. "I always wanted to have a duel against you."

"Why?!" I threw up my hands in despair. "I'm a nobody!"

"You're kidding, right? My father often talks about you! You're the same guy who nuked an army of three thousand monsters! Who destroyed rank A and rank B monsters with strategic-scale spells! The one who defeated the Grim Reaper, one of the deadliest Assassins to have terrorized the Global Federation! You even defeated the Invincible Goddess of War, Cecilia Stuart!"

"You give me way too much credit. And in all those cases, I had a lot of help. I would never have been able to pull it off if I didn't have my friends or teammates with me."

"You team-killed the representatives of Crowley's Academy by yourself! Without any help! You're not fooling anyone!"

Oh, right. I forgot about that. Sighing, I ruffled my hair irritably. It wasn't that I didn't want to fight her, especially since I was pretty sure it would be an excellent learning experience. I actually looked forward to fighting her.

The problem right now was that…

"…no. You still have not fully recovered from your injury. We'll fight some point again in future, when you're back to full strength. Otherwise it's meaningless."

"Are you underestimating me?" Lilith flared up. "Even in this condition, I can still…"

"Are you underestimating me?" I retorted, cutting her off. "Do you really think that little of me that you are confident of defeating me even when you're injured?"

Lilith trailed off, realizing that she had just committed a huge act of disrespect toward an opponent. Not that I cared because I was used to be looking down upon and insulted, but like I said, it would be meaningless to win against her when she wasn't at her full strength. I desired to test my skills against her, to see the ultimate techniques and legendary spells of the Porter clan. Dad had told me a lot about them, and most of his fire spells were modeled after the Porter clan's magic. I wanted to see how I measured up against them.

Fighting against the weakened heiress of the Porter clan wouldn't do much for collecting information or accurately measuring how far I could go against the likes of them. And I wanted to gather as much information on the Porter clan's techniques as possible, not just for the tournament and my team but also for myself.

There was some sort of connection between my dad and the Porter clan, and it would undoubtedly be passed down to me, so I might as well find out more about them as I can.

"We can have an official match after the Spiritual Road training camp. Or perhaps once you've recovered, you might be able to locate me somewhere in this forest." I was skeptical of such a thing happening, but I obviously didn't voice that out. "But fighting now is meaningless. I don't want you to use your injury as an excuse to justify your defeat. And if you can win against me even when you're injured, then it just means you're wasting your time challenging a weakling like me and you might as well spend hat time and energy recuperating instead."

"Hmph."

Lilith chewed on her lip for a moment, and then looked away unhappily. She then sat down at the base of the tree.

"Well, seems like you'll be able to take care of yourself now, so I'll take my leave. If we meet again in the forest, let's have a match. Otherwise, we can arrange to have one sometime after the training camp."

With that, I turned to leave.

"Before you go, can you at least explain to me what that was about?" Lilith suddenly asked before I could take another step. I turned to glance at her quizzically.

"What do you mean?"

"Your Soul Beasts. I heard that you patterned your Soul Beasts after the theme of constellations, but seeing them, it's just so hard to imagine how you did that." Lilith frowned as she leaned against the tree trunk. "Summoning spells and Soul Beasts are dependent entirely on the summoner's elemental attributes and specialization. Fire mages can only summon fire-type Soul Beasts, lightning mages like my father can only summon lightning-type Soul Beasts. You can't just summon whatever Soul Beasts you want. They are a shadow of your soul, the mana that makes up your magic. It originates from some spiritual dimension present within our own bodies, and the summoner establishes a connection with it, almost like some sort of soul contract. Thanks to this connection or soul contract, they can summon their Soul Beast for a short moment to assist them in combat. However, they are always inevitably modeled and created based upon the summoner's innate elemental attribute."

"Yeah." I took summoning classes, I was a summoner, so I knew all that.

"But your Soul Beasts don't belong to a single element. They have so many different elements. How is that possible?! I haven't seen anyone summon so many different types of Soul Beasts, which belong to so many different elements before. Your Soul Beasts should normally belong only to one elemental attribute! Two, or three at most!"

I didn't reply. I wasn't stupid enough to give away my secrets to an enemy. As I mentioned before, the only reason why I could pull it off was because I went and studied the basics of all five elements (the Chinese ones, so I didn't learn how to summon air element). In exchange for giving up on the intermediate and advanced elemental spells most elemental specialists moved on to, I was able to expand my repertoire of Soul Beasts and summon a variety of Constellation spirits that covered different types of elements.

Of course, Lilith didn't need to know that. She didn't give up, however, and continued to reason.

"Well, you know that Soul Beasts are a projection of the human consciousness." When I nodded at her statement, she continued. "I've loved teddy bears ever since I was a young girl. That's why my consciousness imagined a bear as my Soul Beast, which I eventually conceived and developed into my Hellfire Bear. If I'm not mistaken, you like constellations, which is why your consciousness projected your Soul Beasts based upon their legends."

She glanced at the spot where Pegasus was standing on before he disappeared, and then raised her head to glance at Corvus, who was keeping an eye out.

"But there are limits to summoning. They are based completely on your elemental attribute. What exactly is your elemental attribute?"

"Did you think I'm just going to simply tell you, a rival from another school that I'll be facing off in the tournament, my secrets?" I smiled cryptically.

"No. fair enough." Lilith shook her head sheepishly. "And I owe you for saving my life too. Forgive my lack of manners. It was rude of me to pry. Perhaps I'll ask you again after the tournament."

She was assuming we would still somehow meet after the tournament, which I doubted. Then again, our dads were friends, so I wouldn't be surprised if she showed up one day, tagging along in one of Uncle Glen's visits.

For now, we were enemies, and the less time I spent lingering around her, the better. I had already ensured that she wouldn't be raped or killed for the time being. My obligations had been fulfilled and my conscience was clear.

"All right, I'll get going then." I studied Lilith to ensure she was fine. "Take care of yourself, and don't recklessly challenge groups for blood tokens. It's difficult to fight when you're outnumbered. I hope you learn your lesson from that. And it may be none of my business, but watch out for that Ji Xuan or whoever."

"It really is none of your business, but I appreciate the advice nonetheless. I'll be seeing you shortly."

I scoffed at that. The chances of us running into each other again in such a large forest was negligible. I most likely have a higher chance of finding my friends then encountering a random stranger I met for the first time today. Okay, she wasn't a complete stranger, she was Uncle Glen's daughter, but even so, it wasn't as if we had any red string of fate connecting us. I honestly doubted I would see her again. "We'll see about that."

"I will definitely track you down and find you," Lilith promised as she leaned against the tree, probably to continue tending to her injury and restore herself to full health as quickly as possible. "You won't get away."

I waved a hand casually, not taking her words all that seriously. My friends should have been able to find me by that logic, but they had yet to reunite with me. I was trying my own methods of searching for them, with a distinct lack of success so far. I really sucked at moving around the forest. Sighing, I disappeared deeper into the forest and searched for new groups of students to spy on and collect intelligence on.

*

Three days later, I was kneeling by the river to gather some water. My supply had run low, and we had to use our magic to purify the water to prevent ourselves from suffering cholera or other forms of bacterial diseases obtained when drinking tainted water.

"Finally," I grumbled to myself as I filled my bottle with the water from the clear spring. I took a few sips, and then topped it up once again, to ensure that it was full. It wasn't often that I would find a good water source like this, so I was going to make full use of it.

While I was strapping my water bottle back in my storage device, I caught a glimpse of someone descending upon me, thanks to the reflection in the water. Even without the reflection, the motion tracker on my glasses picked out the movement as a white blip.

"Hah!"

My assailant swung her crimson sword at me. Spinning around, I summoned Gemini and fended off the attack, but the blazing blade cut through my hastily conjured twin swords like a hot knife through butter.

"Oh boy…"

I watched as my broken Gemini twin swords dissipated to nothingness, but they had bought me enough time to retreat safely.

"Tch." I clicked my tongue when I recognized my assailant. "You again."

Lilith Porter didn't reply, and instead charged at me, flames trailing her sword as she launched a series of slashes at me.

"You've been chasing me for three days now. Is this really how you repay someone for saving you?"

I rolled my eyes as I drew Gan Jiang and Mo Ye, crossing them to parry another ferocious flaming trike from Lilith. Her sword erupted into an inferno that washed over me, but I managed to cleave through the flames before flipping backward across the clear spring, exchanging blows and defending myself against her relentless attacks.

Damn, but she was one hell of a stalker. I didn't take her seriously when she said she would track me down, but she had stayed true to her word and ambushed me at every turn. She was serious when she said she wanted a duel.

We traded a few blows across the spring, her flames boiling the water and shrouding the entire space in steam. Despite vision being obscured, the lenses on my glasses glowed and provided me alternative visions to see through the fog. Infrared vision was out because the entire place was glowing with heat signatures, but I could adjust the spectrum to pick out mana signatures instead of temperature and easily locate Lilith.

Locking my blades with her, I managed to stop Lilith from landing a fatal blow.

"Are you seriously trying to kill me?!" I snapped at her.

"That's right," she replied coldly. "I don't want to hold any affections for you because you saved my life. I only wish to train and develop my magic, to become stronger. Having feelings for you will distract me from that goal."

"…say what?"

That had to be the stupidest bullshit I had ever heard in my life.

Upon seeing my astonishment, Lilith retreated to the river bank and began howling in laughter. She actually dropped onto the ground and rolled on the floor, laughing and striking the damp soil with her fist. I stared at her, even more stunned than before.

"You should have seen your face!" she gasped, trying to breathe. "Did you actually believe a word of what I just said?!"

I shrugged. "Was I not supposed to believe it?"

"I heard from my father that you and your dad are big fans of anime. I'm pretty sure you got the reference." Lilith struggled back to her feet, trying to restrain more laughter.

"Oh." I slapped my forehead. "The Great Ruler. Of course. You would make for a great Luo Li if you'd just get rid of that ridiculous yellow ribbon and let your hair down."

Lilith giggled again. "Did you really believe such nonsense? That I'll kill you just because I don't want to get distracted from cultivation, and thus I must eliminate you so that I won't have any affections for you? And you think too highly of yourself. Why the hell would I fall for you just because you saved me? You're not the only one who had saved my life before."

"That part I didn't believe at all," I assured her wearily. "I was more astonished by the BS you pulled. Anyway, why have you been chasing me for the last three days?"

"Because I want to duel you, of course!" Lilith snapped, pointing her crimson sword at me. "Have you forgotten? I won't let you make any excuses this time. I've fully recovered! Let's test our skills against each other and see if your Constellation spirits can overcome my Hellfire Bear!"

I watched her for a second, and then sheathed Gan Jiang and Mo Ye. A smile crept over my face as I anticipated the battle to come. Pushing my glasses up my nose, I nodded my acquiescence.

"All right. Let's do this then."