5 Chapter 5: Black Rose (1/2)
The library was usually silent, which made it easy for people to overhear hushed conversations even from one corner of the library.
That was why the moment Alicia Violet made the offer, all the students in the library were in an uproar. Several of them even jumped to their feet and stared in our direction, outraged.
Everyone knew that the Black Rose Society treated their members extremely well. Not only that, it was filled with many beautiful female students. It also was one of the strictest societies in terms of entry requirements, and not just anybody could join the society. Every single member of the Black Roses was an influential figure in their classes.
Yet Alicia actually invited a loser like me, who had lost ninety-nine matches in a row, and hadn't even won a single match in the past year?
”President, I object to this!”
To my surprise, the vice-president of Black Rose Society, Miranda Miriam, had suddenly appeared as well. She was a tall girl, even taller than me because she was slightly over 170cm, and similar to me, she wore a pair of black-framed glasses. But the rim of her glasses was circular compared to my rectangular ones, and her lenses were much thinner because my eyesight was a lot worse. We would have looked like siblings, except that her hair was a pale brown in contrast to the unruly mop of black hair atop my head.
She also emitted the aura of someone who was inflexible and overly serious, and because of her earnest and diligent (not to mention fussy) attitude, everyone jokingly referred to her as the Mother of Black Roses, or Mother Rosario.
”This guy is the shame of our academy! Have you seen his match records? Ninety-nine losses! Not a single win! It won't be long before he's expelled from school! We definitely can't accept him!”
Ouch. Miranda was certainly brutal. Was there a bloody need to announce my atrocious record in front of everybody? Seriously?
Despite this being a library, the students within began whispering and gossiping to each other, much to the chagrin of the librarian. When several of them learned of my situation, they looked at me in pity. Everyone knew the difficulties a summoner faced, and they had a slight trace of admiration for stubbornly sticking to such an impossible path in the face of such a ruthless meta where speed and attack were everything.
If this was Magic: The Gathering, the meta would be 4-turn kills using either super-aggressive aggro decks, which often combine hordes with burn spells, control decks that slowly milled your opponent to death or through other win conditions while denying your opponents' casting and locking down their creatures, spells or abilities, or combo decks that sought to quickly destroy the opponent with a combination of cheap, basic spells that produced a lethal effect that was more than the sum of their parts within the first few turns (or first few minutes in the case of our academy). My ”deck”, if you wanted to call it that, relied heavily on summoning massive creatures to beat down the enemy to death with Trample or Flying or just overwhelming damage with their immense power and toughness. Unfortunately, they were expensive to cast, which meant I would only have enough mana to cast them by turn 5 or 6, even if I relied on mana ramp spells and abilities, and by that time my opponent would either have burned me to death or had lots of control spells in place to deny my casting.
I was going to have to explore the horde option as a summoner, but creature destruction spells, board wipe, burn cards that damage all creatures in play were so common that nobody bothered with summoning these days. Fortunately, my massive creatures were Indestructible, so they could resist lethal damage and destroy effects, but they were just too expensive to cast.
Of course, the current circumstances were a lot more complex than equating it with Magic: The Gathering, and there were a few other problems involved, such as creature summoning being a lot more energy-draining and inefficient than other spells. Not to mention, the production of mana worked differently from laying out a single land per turn, and it wasn't an I-go-you-go turn-based match either. The combat situation was a lot more fluid, and spells distinct from the card game, but I guess it was sufficient as an analogy.
Even so, there were a few people who admired my tenacity for trying to make it work, just like how Gumiho was popular for developing strategies for making Terran mech work in Starcraft 2, even against Protoss. So I did have more than a fair share of supporters who were cheering for me in online forums.
”Miranda, please.” Alicia raised a hand. ”Allow me to speak to him.” She turned back to me with that goddess smile that could melt the heart of every man present. ”I know what you are trying to achieve, and it is quite the insurmountable task. But if you succeed, you will definitely bring glory to the academy. Black Rose Society has all the resources you need to help you develop a working strategy. We can even allow you to take special accelerated programs to turn you into a hybrid class, so that you will be able to both fight and defend yourself long enough to summon your magical beasts. How about it? Please consider.”
Contrary to expectations, I simply responded with a polite smile and shook my head.
”Thank you very much, President Alicia. I honestly appreciate the offer, but I think it will be wasted on me. Right now, I do not believe I am worthy enough to join any societies. I would like to focus on developing my magic to work in reality and actual combat first. As promising as summoning might seem, results are after all the most important thing in this academy…or even this world. I do not think it is right for me to take advantage of your offer without proving myself first.”
Miranda snorted coldly. ”Good thing he responded tactfully. If he had been bold enough to accept the offer, or rude in rejecting it, then he would be as good as dead.”
Alicia nodded regretfully. Despite her position as the president of the Black Roses, she couldn't do much to oppose Miranda. Furthermore, she recognized that she couldn't just force the issue on me when I had politely rejected her offer.
”If you change your mind, you can come talk to me anytime.”
Smiling, she rose to her feet and offered me her hand, I shook it politely, trying not to flinch at one of the rare instances where I established physical contact with someone of the opposite sex. I was fine speaking to them from a distance, but physical contact was another thing altogether even though I was mentally over thirty.
”I really appreciate the offer,” I repeated. ”But I wish to prove myself first.”