408 Chapter 408: The Chronicles of Lute Dragoon II

Pegasus materialized and I hopped onto him. Stirring him into action, I had my brown winged horse take off into the air and charge right at Lute Dragoon and his wyvern. The dragoon, to his credit, didn't back down and met my attack head-on, his spear lancing straight for my heart.

My flying steed banked to the right, thanks to a gentle mental nudge from me, and I slashed at Lute when his wyvern swept past us. Sparks flew as he yanked his two-handed spear back to parry my blow, and then he was gone.

The both of us circled each other in the air, eyeing the other party warily. For my part, I felt greatly relieved. Earlier, I was at a complete disadvantaged, rooted the ground and outdone in mobility by Lute. Now that I had summoned my own flying Constellation spirit, I was finally able to fight on par with him.

However, taking to the skies was only the beginning. No matter my attempt to neutralize Lute's initial advantage, he was still a consummate spearman. All I achieved thus far was to level the playing field, nothing more.

\"Hmph.\" Lute glared at me coldly. \"Just because you have a flying Soul Beast of your own doesn't mean you'll be able to match me in aerial combat. If I'm not mistaken, you are a summoner, not a dragoon.\"

Was there a difference? Maybe there was, but I couldn't care less. I had more important things to worry about, such as pursuing the fleeing Lute. We exchanged another vicious blow in midair, my two swords against his gleaming spear.

\"Dragoons are specialized in cavalry combat,\" Lute explained, even though I never asked the question out loud. Did the bugger read my mind or something? \"We've trained to fight on horseback, or rather, we're trained to fight while mounted on our steeds – we are not limited to horses, after all. We are different from you summoners, who just summon Soul Beasts to fight on your behalf. We coordinate with our mounts and fight alongside them, rather than cower behind your Soul Beasts like the cowards most of you summoners are!\"

I gave him a droll look. \"Do I look like I'm cowering behind my Constellation spirit and leaving all of the combat to him alone?\"

\"That's…\" Lute trailed off, and then he thumped his spear against the air to launch several wind blades at me. Pegasus swerved to the side to avoid them, and instead of following up with a second volley, Lute chose to spew more of his verbal nonsense. \"I admit, you're different from most summoners. You're courageous enough to fight alongside your Soul Beast!\"

\"No, I think you're the one who misunderstand how summoners really fight. The only difference is that we don't always ride on top of our Soul Beasts and fight on top of them like traditional mounted troops. That's all.\"

Before the match, I had done my research on Lute and I knew what his self-proclaimed \"dragoon\" class entailed. He had provided detailed information on his role and what his class does. Hell, Saint Teresa Academy was unique in that it classified its students into different classes or categories of mages, unlike Jing Tian Academy, who adopted a much more free-flowing and flexible approach. No doubt Saint Teresa Academy would claim that this less stratified curriculum was the reason why we were ranked so much lower than them, and promote their class system as one of the catalysts for their success. Their students could choose to enter any one of these specialized classes, and they would be given dedicated training, appropriate resources and focused lessons to shape them into warriors solely of that class.

It was very different from Jing Tian Academy, where students took whatever magic classes they wanted or whichever lessons suited their schedule (hence my weird and random foray into wood magic). Unlike Saint Teresa Academy, there was no clear, specific focus, no rigid specialization. Perhaps they had a point, and the difference between our ranks was due to their more specialized system, but I preferred Jing Tian Academy's more flexible and freer curriculum. I mean, seriously, if I wanted to specialize in a specific class, I would have tried applying for Saint Teresa Academy or a school with a similar system instead.

Come to think of it, Saint Teresa Academy didn't have a dedicated summoner class – if you wanted to go summoner, you had to be a dragoon. No argument. That was one of the reasons why I decided against Saint Teresa Academy and chose a lower-ranked school like Jing Tian Academy. I want freedom to choose my own classes, not have them selected for me by adults who claim to know my capabilities better than myself, and weren't sympathetic to what I was interested in and what I actually wanted to learn.

It reminded me of my previous life when my parents practically forced me to choose the science stream over the art stream because \"science had a better future\" (in terms of career and making more money). I was more interested in art, history and literature, but those – according to the adults around me – had no future. Fortunately, my parents eventually allowed me to major in Asian literature when I got into university (even though they originally wanted me to major in economics and business), and I went on to pursue it even up to graduate school. So much for science stream being better for my future – in the end, I felt as if it was a missed opportunity, and I would have been better off sticking to the art stream back in my middle school and high school days instead.

My point was, before readers started screaming about fillers and me projecting into myself (dude, I am the protagonist, who else am I supposed to project onto?), we should be allowed to study what we want to study. We students should be allowed to choose what classes or majors we wanted to take, and not be subjected to pressure from the adults. The adults didn't necessarily knew best what we should major in. This applied to magic classes and elemental lessons, particularly. If I wanted to be a summoner, I sure as hell was going to be a summoner, and I couldn't care less about the adults around me (like the teachers) telling me how it's not viable, how it's impractical, and almost forcibly advising me to specialize in other types of magic.

I wanted to be a summoner, so I was going to learn summoning magic. End of.

I wasn't sure what Lute thought about this, but given how he chose to enroll in Saint Teresa Academy, and how he was so obviously flouting and bragging about the superiority of the dragoon class over the \"normal\" or \"vanilla\" summoner, there was no doubt he had bought into his school's ideology about the way the magic education system should work. That was fine with me, as long as he didn't rub it into my face like he was doing right now.

Thanks to that, I was determined to crush him, just so I could stomp on his ego and prove him wrong – that I could prove that the education system of freedom, choice and independence was not inferior to one where the adults selected and decided what was best for you.

\"MUAAAAH!\"

With a determined bellow, Lute Dragoon circled around before lunging at me atop his wyvern again. I was honestly getting sick of his antics, so instead of meeting him in the middle like what honorable knights would do in a proper joust, I sent Pegasus a command.

\"Pegasus, Enif!\"

The brown winged horse opened his mouth and a wave of freezing mana blasted out and froze both Lute and the Wyvern in midair. The two of them dropped like a rock, but before they could hit the ground, Lute unleashed his immense amount of mana and shattered the frozen tomb. He then had his wyvern pull up right at the last moment.

\"You will pay for that!\" he hollered as he thrust his spear at me, unleashing another gust of deadly, razor-sharp wind. \"Resorting to cheap tricks and sneak attacks!\"

\"Hang on a second,\" I remarked dryly. \"You've been casting all these long range wind spells and firing them at me from a distance all this while, and now you're complaining that I launched a sneak attack on you when I cast a long range ice spell? Even though for the most part you've been flying around in the air and avoiding whatever attacks I threw at you? Are you…serious?\"

\"Oh…well, I might have gotten overly heated and am not thinking clearly,\" Lute admitted, scratching his head. At least he was willing to acknowledge that he made a mistake, unlike a bunch of fictional arrogant young masters I read about in a million different cultivation novels.

\"Shut up!\"

\"Why are you apologizing, Lute?!\"

\"You're always in the right! It's that bastard who's definitely in the wrong!\"

Unlike the affable Lute, his harem was filled with crazy bitches ranting and raving. Clearly they were enraged at what they perceived to be my audacity at standing in the way of Lute's flawless victory. They were expecting him to steamroll me like every other overpowered wish fulfilment Mary Sue main character out there and were getting impatient when it was clear that they wouldn't be getting their way. Like the rabid readers who started complaining about how the godlike main character was \"weak\" just because he had trouble winning (never mind that he didn't lose, if he even had a bit of difficulty winning against a mob character like me, he was \"weak\" and \"pathetic\"), Lute's harem was raging. How could this be possible? How could Lute have trouble against a nameless mob character like me? Take note they were seeing this from the perspective of a story where Lute Dragoon was the main character, not me. Thus I was nothing more than a nameless mob.

The world of otome games/gal games/harem main characters is tough for mobs.

\"Girls,\" Lute chided them gently. He turned his wyvern around to face me in the air, wearing an apologetic smile. \"Sorry about that. I hope you forgive them – they don't mean anything by it. They're just very…uh, passionate.\"

\"Right.\" I ignored the howls and shrieks from the raging female harem and focused my attention on Lute. He drove his wyvern on and stabbed at me with his spear, but I kept my distance. Sheathing my swords, I conjured Orion and unleashed a hail of arrows at Lute, who had his wyvern jink and swerve away from the deadly volley. He countered with a swipe of his spear, blowing my azure energy arrows with a terrible gust of wind.

This time it was my turn to send Pegasus a mental command. My winged steed did a barrel roll and dodged the razor-sharp wind blades, and then his maw yawned as he unleashed a second Enif. The blue torrent of freezing energy constructed a river of ice in midair, but Lute was able to get his mount to dodge it by a hair's breadth.

Even so, the freezing stream of mana clipped the wyvern's wing and it went tumbling down slightly. I seized the chance to fire Betelgeuse. Countless arrows blasted the slowed wyvern and nearly knocked Lute off his mount, despite the spearman desperately twirling his long weapon about to parry, slash and cut down the rain of arrows. Blood dripped from mys arms, shoulders, torso and face as a few of my azure arrows grazed him. Grunting, he and his wyvern were slowly pushed back, but he finally managed to conjure a wind barrier that shielded them both from my relentless barrage.

\"It's my turn!\" he shouted. Spinning his spear above him, he manifested a terrifying tornado that swept through the arena to engulf me and Pegasus.

\"Whoa, scary.\" At my mental order, my winged horse broke off to flee the pursuing whirlwind, but it mercilessly pursued us throughout the stage. While we did our best to shake it off, Lute Dragoon and his wyvern unexpectedly cut in in front of us, hemming us between them and the approaching tornado.

\"You're going nowhere,\" Lute declared, pointing his spear at me. A ball of razor-sharp wind materialized and he fired it at me. Dismissing Orion, I drew Hei Yue and Bai Ri before slicing the ball in half.

Behind me and Pegasus, the tornado closed in. Grinning triumphantly, Lute charged at me, powerful gusts of wind whipping up around his spear. It was cear that he intended to ram me right into the tornado he had conjured.

\"Oh, well…it was about time anyway.\"

Taking a deep breath, I finished my second summoning spell and cast it as quickly as I could.

\"?!\"

A colossal conflagration erupted in midair, consuming the tornado and incinerating it. The inferno swept across the stage, catching both Lute and his wyvern and almost engulfing them. Cursing under his breath, Lute flailed with his spear to keep the voracious flames at bay, but the superheated shockwave scalded his skin and hurled him several dozen meters back. His wyvern slammed into the ground, its formerly reddish-brown scales burned into a blackened crisp.

\"How…how…?!\" Lute spluttered as he looked up at me in astonishment. Still riding atop Pegasus, I had my mount slowly set down. There was no longer any need for me to take to the skies.

After all, occupying the space overhead was a single immense fiery Celestial Guardian.

Vermillion Phoenix had finally chosen to grace us with his divine presence.