263 Chapter 263: Unbearable (1/2)
”Really now?” I moaned when I glanced upward and saw the title chapter. ”You're still going to make pun jokes about bears?”
Before the author could reply, an eruption of flames incinerated a good chunk of the horde of Ursa Minor. I watched as the vermillion pillar of fire surge high into the heavens, breaking apart one of the clouds.
”Huff…huff…”
Lilith staggered out from underneath the huge heap of Ursa Minor, a good fraction of which were disappearing after having been hit by the superheated flames. Even so, they had done a lot of damage to their target. There were plenty of bruises and scrapes all around Lilith's body from where the cuddly teddy bears had clobbered her with their fearsome strength and claws.
”!!!”
However, she found herself staring down my blazing arrow. I had summoned Orion and had Rigel notched onto my bow, pointing the blindingly illuminated projectile at her. Lilith understood at once that she had been defeated. I could shoot her anytime I wanted, and there was no way she could avoid it. Furthermore, she could sense from the tremendous amount of mana emanating from the arrow that it was going to be a devastating spell that could potentially kill her.
”Hah~”
Sighing, Lilith sheathed her sword and raised both of her hands up. She lowered her head meekly and glumly.
”I surrender. This is my loss.”
”About time,” I grumbled as I dismissed Orion. Then I glanced up at the spectators in the trees. ”You heard her. You can stop watching now.”
Murmurs of disbelief rippled through the trees as student spectators frantically exchanged opinions and analyses. They couldn't believe their eyes.
”The Hellfire Bear Goddess…was defeated?!”
”Not even Lilith's summoning spell could stand up to that guy's summoned Beasts?!”
”Just who the hell is that guy?!”
”I know him! Isn't he the summoner who team-killed the entire Crowley's Grand Arcane Academy earlier this year?! The one who defeated the Invincible Goddess of War, Cecilia Stuart!?”
”Oh my God…it really is him!”
Even from down here, I could hear a lot of things I didn't want to hear. Stupid rumors and groundless speculation. There was some useful tidbits of information mixed in as well, but I would have to filter them out later. what? I wasn't some edge lord who condemned the whole world and wanted to be forever alone. Reality didn't work out that way. I had to rely on others to survive. It was only natural.
Plus my desire to keep a low profile took a hit. Come to think of it, I could have avoided the whole thing by refusing to battle against Lilith, but I was more interested in challenging myself, finding out her skills and techniques and in general, the thrill and exhilaration that combat brought. So even if my profile went up, I had no regrets. It was a good fight, and I had recorded the exchange in my glasses.
My teammates would benefit a lot from watching this duel and analyzing Lilith's skills and techniques. It sucked that other people could also see my techniques and the magic I used, but I would be naïve if I thought I could keep my skills hidden throughout the entire duration of the Spiritual Road training camp.
Furthermore, let's be serious, Lilith wasn't going to stop pursuing me just because I refused to fight. I would eventually be forced to fight her properly one day. I might as well get it done sooner than later.
And now that this matter was settled, I could move on and continue with my original objective. To continue collecting information and intelligence on the other students in the Spiritual Road. Glancing at the trees where the spectators hid, I briefly wondered who I should follow. The reason why I tolerated their presence was because I had been doing the exact same thing the entire time. Whenever a fight broke out in the vicinity, I would conceal myself inside the forest and watch the combatants duke it out, even recording the fights on my glasses. So I had no right to condemn other people for doing the same thing I did.
Of course, the difference was that I stayed quiet and didn't talk to other people like what the spectators were doing right now, speculating, gossiping and chatting. Especially since everyone besides my teammates were strangers, I couldn't carelessly trust them or talk to them. If it turned out to be an enemy…
”You okay?” I asked, expressing concern for Lilith. I didn't hurt her that badly, just enough to incapacitate her momentarily and to prove my point. It was a good thing she surrendered before I delivered the finishing blow, or I would be collecting her blood token from her near-corpse and forcibly teleporting her out of the Spiritual Realm for emergency medical treatment.
”Yes.” Lilith nodded, and as though she had just read my mind, her hand went to her pocket. ”I suppose I should hand over my blood token to you.”
”No need.” I raised my hand and stopped her before she could take out her blood token. ”I don't want your blood token.”
”…eh?”
Lilith stared at me dumbly. It was understandable. Most of the students here were fighting in order to steal each other's blood tokens and eliminate as much competition as possible. They saw this Spiritual Road as one gigantic competition where the strongest survived and the weak get culled.
However, that wasn't the way I viewed this Spiritual Road. Not only did I not buy all this ”strong eat the weak” and ”survival of the fittest” bullshit, my objective for the Spiritual Road differed. I was not aiming to reach the top but rather, to gather information and intelligence on the various opponents and rivals that Jing Tian Academy would be facing in the national tournament. In that way, Lilith was still useful to me. If she was still around, she was bound to challenge others, or others would inevitably challenge her, and I could watch their fight and collect even more information regarding more opponents. So rather than kick her out of the Spiritual Road for now, it would be more useful to keep her around to watch her fight other people.
Furthermore, if I took her blood token right in front of everybody, it would mark me out as a huge target. Lilith was sure to have multiple blood tokens, given how she defeated other mages in the Spiritual Road before our fight. In the Spiritual Road, your rank was determined by the number of blood tokens you collected. In other words, the more you have, the higher you would be ranked. Conversely, it also meant that the more blood tokens you had, the bigger a target you would be. After all, it would be more efficient to gather blood tokens by targeting the people who had the largest number of blood tokens on their persons and take all of them in one fell swoop. In contrast, it would be a waste of time to target the poor guy who only had one blood token, and after witnessing me take down Lilith Porter, I was sure the majority of the people here would think that it wasn't worth the trouble of fighting me just to take one blood token.
Of course, none of them knew about the ten extra blood tokens I had collected from the deceased students after the battle with the Inferno Kong.
”Are you serious?”
Lilith was not privy to my thoughts, and she couldn't believe what she was hearing. Nor did I intend to enlighten her about my motives.
”Yeah. My goal is not to collect as many blood tokens as possible. I couldn't care less about the rankings. Besides…” I gestured toward our hidden spectators. ”If I take them, all those guys there will start hunting me. I would rather not put such a huge bullseye on my back.”
”Fair enough.” Lilith nodded, convinced. She also saw the intelligence of making oneself as unappetizing a target as possible. ”But I don't feel right about this.”
”Oh, of course it's not without any conditions.” I smiled, and Lilith didn't know whether she should be relieved or alarmed. She was instinctively crossing her arms in front of her chest, as if to defend herself. I didn't know what she was imagining, and I didn't want to know either. ”I want you to promise that you won't attack me again, at least for the duration of the Spiritual Road.”