269 Chapter 269: Overkill

The expression on Ji Xuan's face when he saw over a hundred students descend upon him and his hired Assassins was priceless.

"What in the world…?!"

The ninja dude and his Assassin subordinates fought as best as they could, but no matter how powerful they were, they were still facing elite students about seven times their number, and they were overwhelmed in short order.

"Ji Xuan!" Charles Lacroix bellowed as he descended upon him, his blue and silver sword crackling with white lightning. "I am here today, to deliver justice upon you!"

The perpetuator's eyes bulged when he saw the Knight of Thunder plummet toward him, devastating energies crackling around him. Credit to him, he was able to pull out his spear and deflect Charles's weapon.

For only a moment, then he was hit by thunder and lightning, blown off his feet by the powerful sonic boom and deadly energies.

"Ugh!"

Even as the Assassins fell, they were not going out without a fight. As I suspected, the Assassins had been prepared for the event where Lilith and I would bring our Soul Beasts or Constellation spirits into the fight. Formation arrays activated, and the place was filled with devastating mana as extremely powerful spells were unleashed. I saw two of the students get struck by lightning and electrocuted, and another three get incinerated by fire. They didn't actually die – these were elite students with high innate magical resistance and absurd defenses – but the spells were powerful enough to incapacitate them. Several more found themselves frozen by another spirit formation, and only half of them were able to break out of the ice.

The Assassins had really ensured that they were loaded for bear when they chose to make their last stand here. Unfortunately, it wasn't Lilith's Hellfire Bear or my Ursa Major and pack of Ursa Minor that showed up but over a hundred students who were tired of being their victims.

Even they in their wildest dreams never imagined that the surviving students would all gather together and launch an attack on them in a unified coalition.

"H…how?!" Ji Xuan spat as he deflected Charles's sword with his spear. "Why now? All this time, you refused to band together to resist my group…you ran away and dispersed yourselves among the forest without turning to the others for help…why do you only decide to unite together now to fight against me?!"

"Simple…your challenge was your undoing." Charles smiled grimly. "Initially, we didn't know who to trust. After all, so many of our comrades…so many of the students from the various schools who participated in the Spiritual Road turned out to be sleeper agents…Assassin trainees who have infiltrated the many academies and suddenly betrayed their schoolmates and classmates when you sent out the order. We didn't know who to trust, especially since we hardly had any interaction with anyone from the other schools. How do we know we weren't walking into a trap, and that we wouldn't be stabbed in the back by Assassins pretending to be our allies?"

The two of them sprang apart again, their mana colliding violently before they traded blows. Charles closed in on Ji Xuan, putting his weight behind his sword and driving the tyrant back.

"Then you stupidly issued that challenge, declaring that you want to finish this once and for all. You exposed yourself, even though there wasn't any real need to, and put yourself at unnecessary risk. The only reason for you to do so is because you were cornered. Not to mention, we weren't just running and hiding. We were also keeping watch on your forces, and we were aware that quite a few groups have been launching guerilla strikes and taking out your Assassin squads and patrols one at a time, which caused your numbers to diminish drastically. So I decided to take a gamble. If you were desperate enough to expose yourself to lure your target – Lilith Porter – into accepting your challenge for a final battle to settle this once and for all, then it means you could no longer afford any more losses on your part. That you were cornered with nothing more than the forces you have in this battlefield."

He then hesitated and looked around, looking satisfied as he watched the last of the Assassins get eliminated, and their blood tokens snatched away.

"Of course, I was prepared for the scenario that you were bluffing and hiding more of your forces in the forest, that you still have several reserves concealed and waiting to unleash them once Miss Lilith takes the bait and attacked you. But it seems that you don't even have any reinforcements for your final scheme. Your gambit didn't pay off. Your spirit formations and arrays, and the Assassin trainees you've hired, are certainly impressive, but even they cannot withstand an assault from over a hundred students combing forces."

"Fuck!" Ji Xuan howled before he charged at Charles, purplish mana coalescing at the tip of his spear. Charles parried the strike before deflecting the spear away.

"And so…your reign of terror is over. Your own arrogance proved to be your undoing."

Lightning struck Charles's sword, imbuing him with destructive energies that left a scorched crater around him. Behind the blue and silver knight, the intangible figure of a White Tiger materialized and roared ferociously.

Ji Xuan backed away cautiously, his eyes narrowed. Charles pursued him, and he grinned triumphantly. A spirit formation activated underneath both their feet, and a tremendous amount of mana began to flow toward them in a violent maelstrom.

"You've activated my trap card!" he crowed.

"Oh, really?" Charles looked completely unimpressed as he glanced around at the purple lightning that danced violently around the edges of the spirit formation, like wailing specters desperately clawing their way into the living world. His White Tiger seemed unfazed by the hair-raising energies that crackled around it, and with a casual swipe of its paw, it dissipated a significant chunk of them.

"What?!" Ji Xuan's jaw dropped. Charles merely smiled at him before stabbing his sword into the ground, right where the spirit formation was drawn on. Silver lightning traveled from his blade and into the ground before shattering the arcane array and returning the ground to normal. Almost immediately, the purplish energies weakened tremendously, and Charles dispersed them with a swing of his electric sword. "Impossible!"

"Not really," Charles replied casually. "You merely activated my counter trap card."

"There's no such…wait, there is." Ji Xuan paled visibly. "…fuck."

Then he was blasted away by white lightning.

While he was lying on the ground, convulsing helplessly from deadly electricity, Charles strolled toward him and nonchalantly relieved him of his blood token. Spitting and swearing, even as he continued to jerk and writhe from electrocution, Ji Xuan howled in rage.

"You won't get away with this!"

"Funny." Charles snorted. "And you think you'll get away with exploiting the system and hiring Assassin trainees to help you with dominating the Spiritual Road? Fine then. We'll settle this in court, if necessary."

"FUCK!!!!" Ji Xuan screamed before he completely disappeared and was forcibly teleported out of the Spiritual Road.

"Good riddance." Shaking his head, Charles turned to check on the progress of the battle behind him.

Like I said, it was overkill. With over a hundred students attacking all at once, even with the spirit formations and arrays, the Assassins were pretty much overwhelmed and defeated. The victors were taking their blood tokens and kicking them out of the Spiritual Road. I didn't even get to lift a finger, having watched all this take place from the back.

What? Did you think this was going to turn out to be some climactic boss battle where I got to square off one-against-one with Ji Xuan? Nope. Sorry to disappoint you, but this wasn't some xianxia story where I hogged all the battles to myself. Furthermore, I was better served recording the fights of everyone else. I had just obtained some vital footage of Charles and the techniques he used. That guy was going to be a formidable opponent during the tournament.

Besides, the best victories were the ones you obtained without even having to fight. Let others do the fighting for you, heh.

"Great job, everyone!" Charles didn't care about that, though. He was confident that even if we saw his techniques and knew what kind of magic he used, it would still make no difference. He would still win by sheer strength and skill alone. Or perhaps it didn't even cross his mind. Either way, he was raising his sword into the air. "We've won!"

"YEAH!"

Everyone cheered and rejoiced at the one-sided battle. I wasn't sure how to feel about this. after about a month of hiding and cowering from a much stronger enemy, carrying out guerilla hit-and-run tactics and chipping away at the foe's strength, I was half-expecting some final confrontation with the boss. Not some one-sided victory where I did nothing but watch my allies wipe the floor with our foes.

Sorry for subverting the standard xianxia or light novel formula and not following tropes. But reality wasn't a novel or story where every event or encounter with someone would conveniently lead to the same old generic formula of protagonist meets antagonist, faces challenges, trains, and then defeats antagonist in final battle. Besides, if I could get someone like Charles to defeat the big bad for me, then why wouldn't I?

It saved me a lot of trouble, and I also obtained data on Charles's skills, which could be useful if we face him and his team in the tournament.

"It's finally over."

Lilith breathed a sigh of relief as she, Cecilia and Kureha, along with Chang Cheng and Doug, strode into the clearing. They had also participated in the attack, but with so many other people joining in, they took out maybe one Assassin between the five of them. I could tell that Lilith was also disappointed at the anticlimactic conclusion. Way to hype up the big bad so much, only for him to lose in a single chapter to some newly appeared character we had never heard of until now.

Well, at least we have a new hyped up character whose team we would inevitably face in the national tournament…

"As a celebration of our alliance…tonight, we party!"

Charles's enthusiasm was infectious. All of the people who agreed to ally with him were yelling their approval and cheering when they heard that. It was understandable. After almost a month of surviving through hardships and stuff in the forest, including Ji Xuan's tyrannical oppression and relentless attacks, a little cheer was what we needed to liven things up.

I was also a little impressed by Charles's integrity. It was so easy for him to turn on us and attack to rob us of our blood tokens now that the reason for establishing our alliance was gone. With no common enemy, he could easily renege on his word and attack the people present, but he chose to honor our coalition and even suggest a celebration.

Personally, I wasn't sure if I wanted to take part in it, especially since I didn't contribute at all to the last mission.

"Neither did we," Harrison added when I voiced that out. He shrugged noncommittedly. "There are so many of us, and too little of the enemy."

"There is that," Theodore agreed. "But that doesn't change the fact that we didn't do anything but watch the fight."

"Not at all."

The three of us jumped when Charles suddenly showed up. He smiled sincerely and tilted his head in a humble manner. He fixed his clear sky-blue eyes on me.

"I know of your efforts, Mr. Richard Huang. You were the one who led the guerilla efforts against Ji Xuan's forces. It was your tactics that wore down the Assassin trainees in his employ and diminished their numbers by so much…which led to our overwhelming victory today. If anything, this joint mission and its success was only possible because of what you did earlier."

I scratched my head in embarrassment. "You give me too much credit."

"No. it is you who are being too humble." Charles then turned to my friends. "And you guys too. You did very well in surviving the persecution and attacks from Ji Xuan's Assassins. Your battles against them have contributed in weakening them. You may claim that they don't seem much, but every battle counts. Just as every drop of water is essentially in eroding away stone, I can assure you that your efforts were vital in accumulating the amount of damage that Ji Xuan's group sustained. Every injury you dealt would pile up with the others, and make a difference."

"Uh…"

"…well…"

Neither Theodore nor Harrison knew how to respond to that. Not that Charles was expecting us to reply. He smiled and placed a hand on each of our shoulders, his gesture firm and reassuring.

"I would be honored if you guys could join us tonight. For now, at least allow us to forget the rigors of the Spiritual Road and enjoy ourselves after such a grueling month."

Then he was off, speaking to other students and expressing his gratitude for their participation and contribution, no matter how small.

"Charles Lacroix will make a great politician," I muttered under my breath as I watched him interact with the others. The girls were swooning over his words while the guys were taken aback by his praise in a positive manner. Even I couldn't help but feel a little proud at being thanked directly by such an august personality.

"He should be," Harrison noted. "The Lacroix clan has a heavy influence on the Federation government. Many of their members serve in the ruling party."

"Never trust a politician," Theodore growled darkly, casting a suspicious glare in Charles's direction. Then he softened. "But this Charles guy doesn't seem so bad."

"Yeah, he feels pretty genuine," I agreed.

"The Lacroix family emphasizes their chivalric code and is well known for serving and protecting the people." Harrison began coughing sarcastically. "Unlike…arrogant xianxia cultivators who love the stupid principle of 'strong eat the weak' and 'survival of the fittest', using that as an excuse to oppress the common people with their strength and indulge in their greed and corruption."

Which, ironically, went against the "Way" that Lao Zi conceived and endorsed, but most xianxia writers just used cultivation to go on power trips and write about overpowered Mary Sue protagonists without actually understanding its true principles. Honestly, Lao Zi's Dao De Jing was supposed to show people the Way of virtues, teach them humility and rid them of worldly desires so that they could return to a harmonious coexistence with nature. The point of cultivation was to shed these worldly desires, and to maintain humility and preserve virtues, yet xianxia writers had corrupted the concept to give characters some sort of godlike divine power, turned them arrogant and gave them so many worldly desires that Lao Zi would be turning in his grave if he ever learned how his teachings had been turned into nothing more than wizardry and a method to immortality (arrogant and selfish immortals, at that), while completely omitting his emphasis on humility, harmony and virtues.

It wasn't that Western values and chivalric codes were inherently superior, but just that modern writers corrupted Asian teachings for their own egoistic power trips, and then readers and other writers seeking to emulate them ended up replicating this nonsense ad infinitum. Ugh.

For now, I decided to just trust Charles, and join the party. No, seriously. This wasn't some stupid light novel or Chinese web comic or web novel where every handsome male character turned out to be an evil villain in disguise, because the author couldn't stand the thought of having a genuine love rival threatening their self-insert protagonist, and were afraid that such good-natured, handsome male characters would seem more attractive to the heroines, and therefore they contrived some sort of way to repel the heroines from the "despicable" handsome characters and also to justify the protagonist beating him up. Did the authors have some sort of inferiority complex against handsome guys in real life or something? Actually, just look at Zombie Girlfriend. It seemed that every single male character in the story, handsome or not, was just an atrocious villain who exists solely to antagonize the male protagonist and give him an excuse to kill him, while almost every female character served as a heroine that he could add to his ever-growing harem of undead girlfriends. And that wasn't the only story that worked on such a contrived principle.

People aren't naturally evil just because they were guys in a story centering on a male protagonist. So, despite several readers who would inevitably curse me for being "stupid" for trusting Charles, I decided to believe him. If I turned out to be right, I would be laughing at the readers for being so edgy and paranoid over stupid things that they probably learned from reading all these other trashy stories.

Not that my story wasn't trashy, but…at least not every male character around me exists just to be an antagonist. Real life didn't conveniently work that way, after all…