4 Chapter 4: Library

After having my injuries healed by Teacher Cure, I headed straight to the library. In the past, I had spent a lot of time here – especially over the past year I was enrolled in Jing Tian Magic Academy – studying and reading up on summoning. That was how I managed to progress so far with summoning magic. Dad could only teach me so much, but it was in the dark recesses of the library where I truly shaped the first concrete figures of what were now my summoned beasts.

Unfortunately, thanks to the current meta, I had no way of unleashing them on my opponents. I needed to find a way to summon them faster, or if failing that, find a way to survive until I was able to summon them. Aware of the limitations imposed upon summoning magic, I knew the latter was a lot more realistic.

"Man, I really want to become the strongest Anti-Meta," I moaned under my breath as I flipped through the pages of a summoning tome. As I expected, there were no shortcuts to summoning magic, not unless I established a contract with an extremely powerful dimensional existence on the same level of Angelica.

I wondered how Dad met Angelica, and how he convinced her to make a contract with him. It was completely different from the summoning magic I was learning.

Oh, right. I should probably explain. There were two types of summoning magic. First, the extremely rare and almost impossible one was the one Dad practiced – establishing a contract with an interdimensional magical existence that was so far beyond both humans and the monsters that emerged from another dimension. These existences were often referred to as spirits, and they were completely different from the monsters and demons that plagued us during an Emergence Event. Most people wouldn't be able to encounter a spirit. Dad was one of the lucky ones, but otherwise the probability of meeting a spirit was on the order of 0.0099%.

And that didn't even factor in the chances of making a contract with the spirit…

The second type of summoning magic, which I had learned, was shaping creatures with my own magical energy and a good amount of imagination. Of course there were rules and restrictions, and you couldn't just summon anything you wanted, but you had to mold the shape, characteristics and abilities of your summoned beast through your imagination and build it with your magical energy. It was possible to summon an extremely powerful summoned beast, but if you didn't have the magical energy to supply or sustain it, obviously you would fail before you even began.

That was why I focused so much on ensuring I had a solid foundation of magical energy. Unfortunately, that amount of magical energy was useless when the only spells I could cast were summoning spells, and these spells took far too much time to complete casting.

Additionally, that was the reason why I learned more about summoning from the academy library than from my Dad…because the types of summoning magic we practiced were completely different. Unless I was as lucky as Dad to encounter a spirit, I was stuck with the second type. Not that I was complaining. I was completely satisfied with the summoned beasts that I had molded and designed personally.

The only thing I wasn't satisfied with was the amount of time I needed to summon them. If only I could summon them instantly!

"Ugh…"

Therein lies the problem. If I couldn't speed up the summoning, then I needed to do other things. One, fight and defend myself while summoning. While that should have been obvious from the start before I lost ninety-nine matches in a row, I had already been doing that. The problem wasn't that I simply stood there and let them beat me up before I finished summoning – like I said, I had learned a few military combat techniques from Dad. The problem was simply that I was too weak to defend myself from the magically enhanced attacks from my opponents.

Normal close combat techniques weren't effective against a punch that hit with the force of a truck, or speed that allowed its user to disappear like the wind. Nor was it sufficient to render my body sturdy and durable enough to withstand sledgehammer blows from an Iron Fist spell or magic-infused weapons that everyone liked to use.

Ah…exactly. That was the problem. You see, in order to learn these close combat magic spells or defensive spells and to earn the privilege to wield a magic weapon – also known as Divine Armament or Divine Device – you had to enroll in specific courses. The classes I enrolled in specialized in summoning (and often I was the only student in the class). I hadn't registered for any of the close combat or defensive or elemental or miscellaneous magic classes during my first year, just the ones that trained me in increasing my magical energy foundation, and overly focused on summoning, monster biology, and weirdly enough, history.

I needed to learn the history of this new world I was in – or rather, the history of the future, to know what exactly I had gotten into.

That choice of classes had backfired on me, and now I was an overly specialized summoner rooted to the bottom of the rankings.

"I guess I have no choice but to pick a different class in my second year."

Fortunately, the second year had just begun, and we hadn't confirmed our classes yet. Theoretically I could start afresh and choose new classes. That would present a new kind of headache – what class should I switch to? Elemental magic? Close combat magic? Control magic? Defense magic? Mind magic (which included illusions)? Long-ranged destruction magic? What weapon should I start training in? Dad taught me a bit of swordsmanship, so that shouldn't be a problem. I should have enough of a foundation to learn magic swordsmanship, which probably meant I could go to close combat magic. However, one could also combine swordsmanship with elemental magic.

Ugh, so many choices!

But that wasn't the real problem. The main issue I had with that direction was that I would have essentially wasted a year of education. I would have to take the first-year classes for elemental magic or close combat magic or swordsmanship, and start anew. Essentially I would be holding myself back a year and taking classes with the new batch of first year students who would be joining us within the week or so.

That was so aggrieving. And I would prefer to avoid that option if I could help it. Besides, I wanted to move on to the advanced, second-year summoning classes. There was no way I was going to give up on summoning magic.

"Damn it…if I can't shorten the summoning spells for my magical beasts, and if I don't want to learn a new class of magic, then what should I do?"

Grumbling under my breath, I flipped through the summoning tome, hoping to find answers. However, there was nothing I already didn't know. Shutting the tome in frustration, I reached for another book, only to catch sight of a single history book.

"A History of War," I murmured. Something was forming in my head, especially when I saw the magicians fighting against the bug-like monsters on the cover. An image from my previous life, before I was hurtled across into the far future.

Ah, that was right. One of my favorite games. A real-time strategy game in the far future, which pitted humans against an insect-type alien race capable of hyper-evolution, and the technologically advanced psychic aliens with a golden armada.

…when I played that game, my favorite strategy was to tech up to the most powerful units. I wasn't a fan of infantry, or what they called biological units, often going straight to mechanical units – especially the most powerful Tier 3 gigantic robots with awesome firepower and high health. Or building a massive fleet of battlecruisers that were basically floating fortresses raining death from above. Obviously the main flaw in this strategy was that my opponent normally killed me up while I was hiding in my base, teching up and trying to reach that critical mass of high-tier, extremely powerful units. They always killed me swiftly before I could build my invincible army.

Wasn't that the same exact problem I was facing here?

In the end, the best strategy was to build up enough low-tier units for defense – even if it was just a few biological infantry units – to hold the line until I was able to tech up and build that critical mass of extremely powerful units. Every single tier was important to the game – skipping them would prove to be my undoing, especially if the opponent was aggressive and went for an early attack.

"If I were to put it in summoning terms…" I muttered excitedly to myself as I reached for the summoning tome again.

Yeah…that was right. I should learn to create a few weaker magical beasts that I could summon almost instantaneously to defend myself. Even if they couldn't win a fight, they should be capable of buying me enough time to defend myself until I could properly summon my ultimate magical beasts. They would distract my opponent until I complete my casting.

Feeling renewed vigor, I began looking for the basic summoning spells. The lowest-level summoned beasts that required the shortest amount of time to summon. To my delight, I learned that even though I did things the other way around (increasing my magical energy pool first and skipping straight to the most advanced and powerful summoned beasts instead of beginning from the most basic and weakest), my current tremendous amount of magical energy allowed me to summon a large army of weak magical beasts.

Now the main obstacle was imagining them and shaping them. It was a process that required time. Sure, it was dependent on my imagination, but it wasn't as simple as just imagining a shape and then summoning it immediately. I had to slowly and meticulously crafted it and instill my own rules and logic over them, as well as give them a theme.

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"All right! It's decided!"

I shut the book eagerly, ready to start actual practice instead of merely indulging in theory. As I lowered the book, I was shocked to see someone sitting opposite me.

"Student Richard Huang, right?"

The beautiful girl who had taken the seat opposite me while I was engrossed in reading raised a hand in a friendly manner.

"Sorry for startling you. But you were so occupied in reading that I felt bad to interrupt you." she smiled brightly, and my heart skipped a beat. "You really are diligent and dedicated."

"Nah," I waved her praise away, embarrassed. "I just focus all my attentions in the wrong thing."

The girl glanced at the summoning tome, obviously already aware of the topic of the book I was reading. "I don't think so. I actually admire your tenacity and dedication to stick to a magic that everyone else derides and thinks is impractical. If anyone can make it work, I'm sure it'll be you."

"T…thank you." I stuttered, completely caught off guard. The girl beamed brightly.

"I'm Alicia Violet," she introduced herself. "I'm the president of Black Rose Society."

I nodded, already knowing who she was. The beautiful girl with long, light purple hair and grateful temperament was a legendary figure throughout Jing Tian Magic Academy. Her charisma and beauty captivated everyone regardless of genders, but the guys in particular worshipped her as a goddess. I remembered her nickname – Artemis, the Divine Huntress.

If I wasn't mistaken, Alicia was also the daughter of the academy director, or so the rumors went. She was the prodigy of the long-ranged magic department, and was the ultimate archer in our academy. Not only that, she was a member of Black Rose Society, which was one of the four most powerful societies in Jing Tian Magic Academy.

Alicia had already been bestowed the position of vice-president of Black Rose Society during her first year, and now that the previous president had graduated, she had taken over as the current president. Her leadership only improved its reputation and ranking.

Furthermore, Black Rose Society was the most popular societies among students, with most people clamoring to join it. However, the competition for places within Black Rose Society was extremely fierce, so a lot of the prospective members were left disappointed. There were only so many students a society could accept, after all.

But that didn't matter to me. I was more intrigued by the fact that the goddess of Jing Tian Magic Academy had approached me for an idle conversation. She was looking at me with a curious smile as she played with her fingers on the table.

"Student Richard…you're currently not in any society, are you?" she asked, her eyes gleaming. "Do you have any interest in joining Black Rose?"