260 Chapter 260: Red String of Fate (1/2)
”I'm his adopted son,” I confirmed as I watched Lilith Porter, feeling a chill run down my spine. Taking a deep breath, I narrowed my eyes as I recalled the entire flashback arc Dad subjected me to about 15 chapters and 60 chapters ago. ”Is your father Glen Porter?”
”You know my father?”
”No, my dad knows your father.”
”…I see.” Lilith frowned and picked up her smartphone. She broadcasted a holographic screen into the air and studied the details with a frown. I blanched when I saw my photograph hovering in the air, with several details listed under it.
”What the fuck?! How did you get my profile?!”
”Father provided it to me. He said that I'll end up meeting you one day.”
Now that I thought about it, Uncle Glen did constantly tell me that I should meet his daughter one day. I had refused, not taking him seriously because he often snuck out of Vermillion City alone to play games with my dad without bringing his daughter along, and really had no interest in meeting her because I had other more important concerns.
”This is a great chance.” Lilith was drawing her crimson sword as she stared intently at me, fiery mana blazing along the length of her blade and igniting ferociously. ”I always wanted to have a duel against you.”
”Why?!” I threw up my hands in despair. ”I'm a nobody!”
”You're kidding, right? My father often talks about you! You're the same guy who nuked an army of three thousand monsters! Who destroyed rank A and rank B monsters with strategic-scale spells! The one who defeated the Grim Reaper, one of the deadliest Assassins to have terrorized the Global Federation! You even defeated the Invincible Goddess of War, Cecilia Stuart!”
”You give me way too much credit. And in all those cases, I had a lot of help. I would never have been able to pull it off if I didn't have my friends or teammates with me.”
”You team-killed the representatives of Crowley's Academy by yourself! Without any help! You're not fooling anyone!”
Oh, right. I forgot about that. Sighing, I ruffled my hair irritably. It wasn't that I didn't want to fight her, especially since I was pretty sure it would be an excellent learning experience. I actually looked forward to fighting her.
The problem right now was that…
”…no. You still have not fully recovered from your injury. We'll fight some point again in future, when you're back to full strength. Otherwise it's meaningless.”
”Are you underestimating me?” Lilith flared up. ”Even in this condition, I can still…”
”Are you underestimating me?” I retorted, cutting her off. ”Do you really think that little of me that you are confident of defeating me even when you're injured?”
Lilith trailed off, realizing that she had just committed a huge act of disrespect toward an opponent. Not that I cared because I was used to be looking down upon and insulted, but like I said, it would be meaningless to win against her when she wasn't at her full strength. I desired to test my skills against her, to see the ultimate techniques and legendary spells of the Porter clan. Dad had told me a lot about them, and most of his fire spells were modeled after the Porter clan's magic. I wanted to see how I measured up against them.
Fighting against the weakened heiress of the Porter clan wouldn't do much for collecting information or accurately measuring how far I could go against the likes of them. And I wanted to gather as much information on the Porter clan's techniques as possible, not just for the tournament and my team but also for myself.
There was some sort of connection between my dad and the Porter clan, and it would undoubtedly be passed down to me, so I might as well find out more about them as I can.
”We can have an official match after the Spiritual Road training camp. Or perhaps once you've recovered, you might be able to locate me somewhere in this forest.” I was skeptical of such a thing happening, but I obviously didn't voice that out. ”But fighting now is meaningless. I don't want you to use your injury as an excuse to justify your defeat. And if you can win against me even when you're injured, then it just means you're wasting your time challenging a weakling like me and you might as well spend hat time and energy recuperating instead.”
”Hmph.”
Lilith chewed on her lip for a moment, and then looked away unhappily. She then sat down at the base of the tree.
”Well, seems like you'll be able to take care of yourself now, so I'll take my leave. If we meet again in the forest, let's have a match. Otherwise, we can arrange to have one sometime after the training camp.”
With that, I turned to leave.
”Before you go, can you at least explain to me what that was about?” Lilith suddenly asked before I could take another step. I turned to glance at her quizzically.
”What do you mean?”
”Your Soul Beasts. I heard that you patterned your Soul Beasts after the theme of constellations, but seeing them, it's just so hard to imagine how you did that.” Lilith frowned as she leaned against the tree trunk. ”Summoning spells and Soul Beasts are dependent entirely on the summoner's elemental attributes and specialization. Fire mages can only summon fire-type Soul Beasts, lightning mages like my father can only summon lightning-type Soul Beasts. You can't just summon whatever Soul Beasts you want. They are a shadow of your soul, the mana that makes up your magic. It originates from some spiritual dimension present within our own bodies, and the summoner establishes a connection with it, almost like some sort of soul contract. Thanks to this connection or soul contract, they can summon their Soul Beast for a short moment to assist them in combat. However, they are always inevitably modeled and created based upon the summoner's innate elemental attribute.”
”Yeah.” I took summoning classes, I was a summoner, so I knew all that.
”But your Soul Beasts don't belong to a single element. They have so many different elements. How is that possible?! I haven't seen anyone summon so many different types of Soul Beasts, which belong to so many different elements before. Your Soul Beasts should normally belong only to one elemental attribute! Two, or three at most!”
I didn't reply. I wasn't stupid enough to give away my secrets to an enemy. As I mentioned before, the only reason why I could pull it off was because I went and studied the basics of all five elements (the Chinese ones, so I didn't learn how to summon air element). In exchange for giving up on the intermediate and advanced elemental spells most elemental specialists moved on to, I was able to expand my repertoire of Soul Beasts and summon a variety of Constellation spirits that covered different types of elements.
Of course, Lilith didn't need to know that. She didn't give up, however, and continued to reason.
”Well, you know that Soul Beasts are a projection of the human consciousness.” When I nodded at her statement, she continued. ”I've loved teddy bears ever since I was a young girl. That's why my consciousness imagined a bear as my Soul Beast, which I eventually conceived and developed into my Hellfire Bear. If I'm not mistaken, you like constellations, which is why your consciousness projected your Soul Beasts based upon their legends.”
She glanced at the spot where Pegasus was standing on before he disappeared, and then raised her head to glance at Corvus, who was keeping an eye out.
”But there are limits to summoning. They are based completely on your elemental attribute. What exactly is your elemental attribute?”
”Did you think I'm just going to simply tell you, a rival from another school that I'll be facing off in the tournament, my secrets?” I smiled cryptically.
”No. fair enough.” Lilith shook her head sheepishly. ”And I owe you for saving my life too. Forgive my lack of manners. It was rude of me to pry. Perhaps I'll ask you again after the tournament.”