367 Chapter 367: What’s the point?

After the…well, nuclear winter, the stage was effectively over. Other than Ding Ke Po and me, there were about eight others remaining – the pretty skilled and powerful dudes who could survive Antares Zero.

There wasn't much else to say, seriously.

Striding through the frozen docks, I glanced around at the poor participants, almost all of whom were locked in ice. Cocking my head to the side, I sighed.

\"I won't lie to you about your chances,\" I told them, and then smiled coldly. \"But you have my sympathies.\"

With that, the stage ended after the eleventh remaining guy was taken out by one of the other eight guys, and we were all forcibly warped back to the Aurora City Hall right after that. Yay! I think.

\"Richard! You did it!\"

Thanks to being teleported right in front of my team, I found myself swarmed by them, buried under hugs and embraces.

\"You maniac! You suicidal maniac! You actually did it!\"

\"That was awesome!\"

\"A few hundred points! A few hundred! This will propel us up to the top twelve, for sure!\"

\"All we need is for Harrison to gain a decent amount of points and we're in! We'll make it to the knock-out stages!\"

I tried to free myself because it felt so suffocating, and truth be told, I was pretty exhausted from the earlier battles. Summoning so many high-level Constellation spirits (well, they might not be \"many\" but they were pretty high-level, so even a handful of them counted as quite a lot when we looked at it in terms of mana expenditure) and casting so many advanced spells had drained me of so much mana that I was on the verge of collapse.

Particularly that last Antares Zero spell from Scorpio – that was no mean spell. Being an advanced spell that took about three minutes or more, it took out a chunk of my rapidly dwindling mana. Fortunately, it was not as much as the normal Antares, which would probably nuke half the city (and the entire docks) – but the reason why I didn't just cast Antares was because of the rules. No killing, remember? If I unleashed a Strategic-scale spell, not only would it destroy the boundary fields that protected us from death, I would end up murdering the other participants. Never mind disqualification, I would be arrested and sentenced to jail for that.

\"Thanks.\"

Everyone stopped mobbing me and turned to stare at an unexpected visitor, stunned by his gratitude. Then they recognized Ding Ke Po as the only one willing to ally with me during the match (well, probably there would be certain participants who would ally with me if given the opportunity, but since I spent the majority of the stage hiding underwater, they didn't get the chance to speak to me before the shooting started).

\"You…!\"

\"Yeah, me.\" Ding Ke Po gave a short bow, and grinned. \"Thanks to you, our Divine Divination Academy was able to salvage some of our pride.\"

Those last few words caught my attention and I raised my eyebrow. \"What's your chances of making it to the next round?\"

\"Who says we will make it to the knock-out stages?\" Ding Ke Po laughed. He waved his hand dismissively when I frowned. \"Don't worry. We already knew the chances of us making past the second stage of qualifiers were slim at best. Don't forget, fortune-telling and predicting the future is our speciality.\"

\"That doesn't mean you should give up,\" I argued. \"The future isn't set in stone. You of all people should know that. Fate can be changed. The whole point of divination magic is to trace out the many temporal threads of possibilities, estimate which of those threads are likeliest to occur or adjust the current path to follow the most favorable threads. Then you predict the problems beforehand and set out to counter them.\"

\"Yeah, but don't forget, we're not allowed to use our magic before the match. Especially to directly influence the outcome of the match. So our ability to predict the future, divine which of the threads are most likely to occur, speculate on the problems that might occur and deploy countermeasures is greatly limited. It's also difficult for us to guide the present toward a favorable thread of the many possible futures if we are not allow to view the threads pertaining to them before the match. Even then…\" Ding Ke Po grinned. \"Thanks to you, we have some people seeing us divination mages in a new light. Have you seen the forums? And a couple of the other teams have approached our academy, asking our captain if he would like to team up with them for the last stage.\"

\"That's good.\"

I honestly wasn't sure what else to say, so I just nodded. The fate of Divine Divination Academy was up to them to determine. I wasn't going to change their fate for them, and I wouldn't be able to do anything for the next match in any event. Harrison was up next, and I guess we should prepare for his match in the day after tomorrow.

\"Still, I'm surprised you know quite a bit about divination magic.\" Ding Ke Po studied me curiously. \"Most people don't really know what it entails. They think it's all about predicting the future, but they don't really know that it can be changed. Fewer even realize that there are many possible threads of the future, and that our job is not so much predicting those threads but instead guiding the present toward several of the favorable threads.\"

\"Ah, well…I took a divination class during my first year.\" I scratched my head sheepishly. Long story short, because I had very few classes I could take other than my summoning class, divination class was the third class I took after wood magic class. There was a good reason for that, though. Ever since ancient times, divination was strongly linked to astrology and stargazing – astrologers had been watching the stars and plotting the movements of celestial bodies to tell the future. Given how my summoning magic was literally summoning Constelaltion spirits and Celestial Guardians, I had believed that there would be plenty of overlap and relevance.

I was dead wrong. I understood almost nothing from my divination classes, and apparently stargazing and astrology had somewhat fallen out of favor, especially since the ancient Greek myths and other legends regarding constellations were no longer in vogue. They were largely dismissed as superstition and fictional myths. That led to me having to rely on my prior knowledge that I picked up in my previous life rather than learning new stuff in my new present.

\"Again, I really appreciate what you've done for us. Good luck for the final stage!\"

Ding Ke Po repeated his thanks, and then he turned to leave. I watched him go, and then returned to discussing with my teammates about the next match.

\"So what will you do, Harrison?\"

\"Who knows?\" Harrison Reed shrugged, and then sighed. 'We'll have to find out the venue for my match. Just like before, they won't give it to us until the last minute.\"

\"Meaning we can't do much until then, huh?\" Dong Fang Yue Chu muttered softly.

\"Well, for now, we should celebrate Richard's victory.\" Lily Liam raised her hand to offer her suggestion. She smiled. \"I say we head over to the Aurora Bar tonight for a meal, and some drinks!\"

Of course, since we were underage, we weren't allowed to drink alcohol. By drinks, Lily was referring to alternatives such as fruit juice, soda and other soft drinks. Aurora Bar was also known for its delicious meals too, being a Japanese-styled restaurant that sold sashimi alongside skewered meat. I smiled and nodded eagerly, my mouth beginning to water at the mere thought of the taste of those juice chicken skewers.

However, I was still a little hesitant about this.

\"Isn't celebrating right now a little too premature? Shouldn't we wait until after Harrison's match, until after we actually qualify for the knock-out stage before celebrating?\"

\"Idiot!\" Craig Carlson threw a hand around my shoulders and chuckled. \"We'll celebrate again if Harrison wins and we get to the knock-out stages. The more celebrations, the better! Don't be such a wet blanket!\"

\"Let's live it up tonight, and leave the strategies and discussion for tomorrow!\" Sheila Scarlet added, getting caught up in the jubilant mood.

\"Yeah, no point stressing over it right now,\" Theodore Hammond agreed. \"It would be a good change of pace, and there really is no use worrying over something we don't have control of, especially when we will only know the venue tomorrow.\"

\"It's decided, then! Let's go!\"

At Pearl Pang's command, we all set off. Not immediately, of course. Shortly after the match, we still had the debriefing, we had to go through certain formal ceremonies – which were mercifully short – and speak to a few teachers before returning to the hotel for a couple of hours of rest. Then only could we finally leave for Aurora Bar once evening dawned upon us.

And then we were done for the day.

*

\"Hey, where did you learn your ice magic from? I don't remember you having learned such advanced ice magic before.\"

Craig was staring at me as he placed his mug of soda down on the table, the liquid foaming as it slushed at the edges of the cup.

\"That's because I don't remember telling you about it,\" I replied snidely. Craig glowered at me before playfully strangling me.

\"You rascal!\"

\"Did you learn ice magic from the Silver Wolves?\" Dong Fang Yue Chu asked, a little more diplomatically. I shook my head.

\"No, not really. But…well, you could say that I was indeed guided by a mercenary.\"

The merc with a mouth, to be exact, but I doubted that any of my friends would get the reference. Hell, the majority of my readers had never heard of Deadpool when I tried to explain why I spent most of my story breaking the fourth wall. They really ought to watch more Ryan Reynolds movies. Speaking of which, I needed to watch that Detective Pikachu movie soon, but seriously, who thought it was a good idea to only have the To Buy option, and no To Rent? Damn it. At least it was cheaper on Amazon than it was on Youtube…

Actually, that was a wasted opportunity. I should have been guided on ice magic by a yellow electric mouse wearing a cap instead of a guy in a red and black Spandex costume. I wondered which one would be more fun…

\"Who?\"

\"Secret.\" I decided not to answer Cody Crosby's question. They would never believe me, and up till today I wasn't sure if Ryan was actually real, or a just a figment of my imagination. Given how insane I was, I wouldn't be surprised if he turned out to be a hallucination, but I had a feeling that he was real. No, I was certain that he was real.

\"Another card we can use for the knock-out stages,\" Theodore remarked with a bearish grin. \"I like it.\"

\"I'll have to get past the final stage first, though,\" Harrison muttered glumly, both of his hands on his mug. The poor guy…I could see the tremendous amount of pressure mounting upon his shoulders. Not only did he have to score as many points as possible, apparently it turned out that my performance was a hard act to follow. The guy would be hard-pressed to perform just as impressively, or he would lose his dignity as our captain.

\"You'll do fine,\" Pearl assured him. \"Don't stress yourself out unnecessarily.\"

\"That's right,\" Lily agreed whole-heartedly. \"Save your strength. Keep some of your techniques and spells in reserve…they will come in useful later, where they will take our opponents in the knock-out stages by surprise.\"

Harrison looked up sullenly. \"You guys are speaking as if we are already going to make it to the knock-out stages.\"

Whoops. That wasn't good. We were placing too much stress on the poor guy.

\"Well, the most important thing is for us to do our best, that's all. Even if we don't make it to the knock-out stages, we did well. Nobody will look down on us again!\"

I tried to lighten up the mood, but Harrison stared at me. Oh…yeah, coming from me, the guy who gave our chances of making it to the next round a significant boost, that wasn't going to be convincing. However, as the leader, Harrison was aware that he couldn't mope around, so he smiled and nodded instead.

\"Yeah. I will do my best. We'll definitely get to the next round. I promise.\"

He raised his mug high into the air, and we all followed his example, chinking our glasses together.

\"For our victory!\"

\"For our victory!\"

With that triumphant cry, we downed our drinks in a single gulp. Or several.