3 Chapter 3: Five years later (2/2)
”How would I know? Maybe something is wrong with his brain.”
”Or he's just stubborn.”
Vicious gossip floated around me. I gritted my teeth, but ignored them all.
Five years. I had spent five years looking up to Dad and adoring him. I respected him and wanted to be a powerful summoner like him. That was why I pored over all the summoning tomes, learned magic as best as I could, and even succeeded in mastering the most powerful and advanced summoned beasts that I could.
If only I was given a chance to summon them…then I could show everybody just how powerful I was!
Unfortunately, reality was harsh, as I had personally experienced for myself. In my inexperience and naivety of the way magic worked in this new world, I didn't expect there to be such a huge time gap between fighting and summoning. After all, Dad always summoned Angelica immediately without any delay. I had naturally assumed that I could do the same.
It was only after I had spent four years learning summoning magic and entering Jing Tian Magic Academy that I realized the truth. Power came with a price. Summoning wasn't something that could be cast instantaneously. And my opponents weren't going to wait for me to flashily summon my ultimate familiar to lose to it. They were smart enough to take me out.
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That was the harsh lesson I learned in my single year in Jing Tian Magic Academy. I wished Dad told me about the risks and weaknesses of learning summoning magic when he taught me. Then again, given his carefree nature, it probably didn't even occur to him. And when I came back complaining about it, he merely laughed it off, telling me it was tough love, and that I had to find a way to figure it out on my own.
How irresponsible.
The spots in magic academies were highly competitive. Most students didn't mess around, nor could they afford to lose. In magic academies, ranking determined everything. Fame, status, even money. If I didn't have Dad supporting me financially, I would have been kicked out of the academy long ago. Thanks to me being last placed, my scholarship funding was severely cut.
Our school funding was proportional to our rank, after all.
”Ugh…what do I have to do?”
I honestly couldn't afford to change my classes, as Teacher Fielding suggested. I had no background in any of the other magic. Dad only taught me summoning magic. Asking me to switch to elemental magic, or learn close combat now was ridiculous…
Wait, Dad did teach me military combat techniques, but they were useless against close combat mages like Tie Quan. I remembered how Tie Quan conjured magic to harden his defenses and boost his offense. There was no way I could challenge him in close combat, not when I had only skimmed the surface of it.
Plus I had dedicated too much time and effort into summoning to give it up. I wanted to make it work, no matter what.
”There has to be a way…how?”
Sighing heavily, I stepped into the infirmary. Teacher Mary Cure lifted her head and spotted me as I entered.
”Oh, it's you again.” she paused for a moment. ”Another loss?”
”…” my shoulders deflated, and I nodded with a sigh. There was no way I could trust myself to speak.
”Still using summoning magic?” Teacher Cure smirked. ”You're quite the stubborn one, aren't you? Most people would have given up by now.”
”I'm not most people,” I replied flatly, not caring that she was a teacher. Teacher Cure didn't care about such things, anyway. Having been a regular visitor of her infirmary over the past year, I had gotten to know her pretty well.
”I'm sure,” Teacher Cure agreed cheerfully, and then she turned serious. ”But there's the matter of your scholarship. If you remain at the bottom of the rankings, sooner or later you'll be kicked out of school.”
”That's fine by me.” I was too tired to care. Jing Tian Academy used to be prestigious – Dad often talked proudly of his alma mater, and the heights of glory that it used to achieve, but that was over ten years ago. Things had changed since then, and Jing Tian Magic Academy fell into a decline since Dad's generation graduated. The school had slipped in the national rankings, and was currently ranked eighty-second.
A pretty far cry from the powerhouse who used to bulldoze its way into the top ten.
In any case, I couldn't care less if I was expelled because of poor results. There was nowhere else to go. I might as well transfer into an ordinary school and live a normal life. I was sick of losing, sick of being humiliated, sick of people talking behind my back like those readers on Discord criticizing and making fun of how trashy my stories were, and how I should delete them.
Teacher Cure looked at me sympathetically, but knew from long experience that she wouldn't be able to convince me. She sighed, and then gestured for me to take one of the empty beds. Her skills were top notch. I knew it wouldn't take more than half an hour for her to fully heal my injuries.
”All right, let's start the treatment,” Teacher Cure said as she rolled up her sleeves and began casting the healing spell. ”Are you ready?”
”As long as it's not The Wrong Way to use Healing Magic,” I replied, and earned a smack on my head. Damn, wasn't she supposed to be the infirmary teacher? Why resort to violence? It wasn't as if she was Teacher Rose…
Oh…looks like my Dad's otaku influence was rubbing off on me…if only I had learned as much summoning from him as I did about manga and anime…