"We have received an opportunity to partic.i.p.ate in the Spiritual Road training camp this year," he explained to all the students who had gathered in the hall. "Of course, getting a slot for the Spiritual Road is a very compet.i.tive procedure, and not all those who want to go can go. As a result, we'll be holding what we call qualifiers. Then we'll pick the top five students or so to partic.i.p.ate in the Spiritual Road training camp. Take note, the camp itself will run for several months."

"What's the Spiritual Road?" one of the students whispered to her cla.s.smate. She wasn't the only one. Quite a few students hadn't heard of the Spiritual Road before. h.e.l.l, I hadn't…okay, maybe I had when I first read the Great Ruler web comic, but it was only after I watched the Great Ruler animation that the Spiritual Road suddenly decided to manifest itself in my story.

Seriously? So I went from being the Garrulous King to becoming Archer, had a shot at being an Isekai Cheat Magician, played around with becoming the Versatile Mage, and now I was expected to become the next Great Ruler?

Someone must be running out of ideas.

"The Spiritual Road is an annual event held regularly by the top academies of the Federation," Vincent explained. "No, don't worry. You will not have your magic sealed, that's utter bulls.h.i.+t and open to all sorts of abuse. Besides, there are monsters inhabiting the Spiritual Road…well, it's more of a Spiritual Forest actually, and Road might be a misleading term because it really actually translate better to Spiritual Way from Chinese. Anyway, to seal your magic – which is impossible to begin with – in a place inhabited by monsters is to sentence you to death, so we don't have such shenanigans. Furthermore, you are not expected to kill each other like some barbaric civilization. That said, there will be quite some compet.i.tion, and each of the partic.i.p.ants will be issued a single…uh, blood token each. At least I think it's a blood token, but whatever. You'll be strongly encouraged to fight each other and steal each other's blood token. The blood token is what you need to stay within the Spiritual Road. If you lose it, you'll be teleported out."

Even the teachers were looking a little bewildered.

"Why were we suddenly allowed to partic.i.p.ate this year?" one of them asked in a hushed tone.

Vincent must have heard her, for he cleared his voice and deviated a little to explain.

"In recent years, our performance was not good enough to warrant inclusion, but this year, because of a couple of certain individuals…" he stared pointedly in my direction and I was forced to hide behind the towering figure of one of my cla.s.smates. "Our academy has caught the attention of quite a few higher-ups in the Federation, and they decided to give us a few slots this year."

"What's the benefits of partic.i.p.ating in this Spiritual Road thing?" Craig Carlson asked boldly. Vincent scratched his head.

"Quite a few, to be honest. Students who can boast of partic.i.p.ating in the Spiritual Road on their CVs will have a higher chance of getting into magic universities, particularly the prestigious combat ones. It will also improve your own techniques and magic, not to mention allow you to gain insight and knowledge of techniques and magic used by other schools. Often, this serves as an exchange right before the International Tournament itself, with the students from various academies…uh, spying on each other and a.s.sessing each other's abilities."

"Sounds like a good idea." Craig grinned in antic.i.p.ation, evidently already planning to grab a slot for himself. "How do we qualify?"

"We'll hold a pseudo tournament of sorts…where those who want to partic.i.p.ate will have to fight against other prospective partic.i.p.ants. There would be a few rounds…and you earn points from defeating an opponent. By the end of this week, the one with the most points will qualify. Since we have five slots, so that makes the five students with the most points."

Vincent paused for a moment, sweeping his gaze across the room.

"Oh, and Vermillion Academy has also agreed to host an exchange session at the end of the Spiritual Road training camp. So once the session there ends, most likely the teams representing us in the tournament will travel to Vermillion Academy. So if you plan to represent our academy in the tournament, it's best if you at least try to partic.i.p.ate in this Spiritual Road."

The academy director was probably saying that because he knew this exchange would benefit the tournament representatives the most. After all, if the whole point was to experience the magic and techniques of the students from other schools and gather knowledge on their fighting styles and strategies, then obviously the tournament representatives would stand to gain the most from this experience.

In other words, it had nothing to do with me.

The moment I thought that, I groaned inwardly. Yeah, as clichés would have it, I would somehow find myself forced to partic.i.p.ate in it somehow. Author d.a.m.n it. Well, might as well resign myself to partic.i.p.ating in it eventually.

However, I wanted to focus on other things at the moment, and I didn't have time to spend a few months in some stupid training camp, no matter how beneficial it might be. Unlike w.a.n.g Zhong, I had no intention of becoming Jing Tian Academy's team captain and leading them to victory in the international tournament (Good Lord, I almost typed CHF by mistake). In fact, I wagered that I would be missing the tournament completely.

Not because I didn't want to partic.i.p.ate in it, but because I planned on doing a few missions that would take me some distance away from the academy. After listening to Dad's story the other night, and working with Anastasia to eliminate the a.s.sa.s.sins and Dark Church in Azpire City, I wanted to pursue the a.s.sa.s.sins Guild.

Right now, I had half a mind to join Dad, if not the Silver Wolves in their mission to hunt down the a.s.sa.s.sins Guild. I recalled that night when Dad rushed off to eliminate the organization that was manufacturing the device that could artificially trigger an Emergence event, that night when I fought against three rank B Crastrates. He was pretty determined in destroying them before they could come to fruition, and given his past with the Dark Church and their uses of similar devices, I didn't blame him. I wondered if he would allow me to join him.

If he didn't, then I would just contact Feng Hai and a.s.sist the Silver Wolves in hunting down and rooting out the a.s.sa.s.sins Guild and Dark Church. Anastasia was working for them, so I could probably contact them through her.

With such goals, there was no way I could afford to waste a few months wandering somewhere on the Spiritual Road and fighting other students. My real enemy was the a.s.sa.s.sins Guild, not fellow students.

After the announcement, and other mercifully short speeches, Vincent Violet dismissed us and the student dispersed.

"What do you think?" Dong Fang Yue Chu asked as he jumped me. Man, I almost forgot his name. It had been over seventy-five chapters since I last saw him, after all. Even though, in-universe, it had only been a week or two, it probably had been almost two months for the writer. It was a miracle I still remembered that he existed. "When should we start fighting in the qualifiers?"

"Up to you, but I might give this a miss."

"What?!" Dong Fang Yue Chu grabbed my shoulders. "Why?! We need you in the team that represents Jing Tian Academy!"

"We need Troy too, but I don't think we'll be getting him," I pointed out, crossed. The guy was busy chasing after his brother, Tyrant King. Similarly, I had more important matters to take care of. "I'm going after the a.s.sa.s.sins Guild."

"Seriously?!"

"Hmph." Tie Quan strode forward, an unhappy expression on his face. I waved at him.

"Oh, it's you. I haven't seen you in almost 220 chapters. I thought you would have been consigned to oblivion. Good thing you didn't get killed when the academy was attacked by wolf monsters back during the Jing Tian City siege arc."

"What the f.u.c.k are you babbling about?!" Tie Quan snarled as he folded his arms. "And of course I wouldn't get killed by those weaklings. Even a Thunder Wolf would have trouble piercing through my Iron Spirit." he turned somber. "However, the Iron Fist Society lost a lot of members during the attack. Before the military came to evacuate us…"

I bowed my head out of respect for the deceased. I wasn't the only one who had lost someone close to me during that incident. Alicia's face flashed through my mind, bringing a stab of pain to my chest. "I'm sorry to hear that."

"Anyway, you don't deserve to represent Jing Tian Academy!" Tie Quan told me with a sneer. "You lost 99 matches before that whole duel with the Crowley's Arcane Academy representatives. It took you over a year to figure out something as easy as summoning weaker, cheaper spirits to defend yourself – how can we trust an idiot like you to represent the team?"

"And yet you lost to Richard." Dong Fang Yue Chu flared up. "I hope you're not seriously suggesting that you'll be more suitable to represent the team than he is."

"No, of course not." Tie Quan raised both his hands in denial. "There are many more candidates more suitable for representing our school than I am…and than him, for that matter." He jeered smugly. "You still haven't countered the fact that he lost 99 matches and took a year to figure such an easy solution."

"You're right." I merely smiled calmly, not caring about his insults. I had better things to do than to entertain the idiot. There was no point wasting my time arguing with him. "That's what the qualifiers are for anyway. And besides, this is just to decide who gets to go to the Spiritual Road, not who gets to represent the academy, so I'm not sure why you're bringing this up?"

"Because…for some reason, recently you have an influx of readers jumping in and pointing this out in the first few chapters! Not that you need to explain anything because 100% of those readers would have dropped your story long before they reached this chapter, but you're going to do it to fill up the word and chapter count!"

"Is this guy on drugs?" I asked Dong Fang Yue Chu, who was just as baffled as I looked. I only understood what he was talking about because I had the ability to break the fourth wall, but even so that should be an ability exclusive to me and Dad.

"…eh?" Tie Quan blinked in confusion. "What did I just say?"

"You tell us!" Dong Fang Yue Chu snapped irritably.

"N…never mind." Tie Quan tried to hide his embarra.s.sment, but it was too late. He put on a proud look. "A…anyway, I'll see you in the qualifiers! I'll prove that you don't deserve to go to the Spiritual Road or represent the academy!"

"Yeah, yeah."

I watched him leave and shook my head. As I said, it was a waste of time arguing with him. I would rather prove my point in the arena. Actions speak louder than words. I could quarrel with him all I wanted, but in the end, it was the results on the battlefield that decided my qualifications or status, not winning a stupid squabble.

This wasn't being a p.u.s.s.y, as much as some readers claimed. It was being mature. They were still pretty young, but once they got old enough, they would realize that staying quiet and keeping calm was more of a victory than getting dragged into the argument and quarreling with the other party.

"You're not the same person as you were a year ago!" Dong Fang Yue Chu a.s.sured me, thinking I was feeling down from the insults. I couldn't care less, to be honest, given that I was looking at some other destination, but I didn't tell him. "Who cares about your 99 losses in the first year?"

Some readers did, but they appeared to have misunderstood some fundamental thing. Probably because they misread something. Most of them seemed to a.s.sume that I already had mastered the Celestial Guardians before the start of the 99 defeats and just did the same thing over and over again during the whole year before I finally came up with my Constellation magic.

That was incorrect. I actually spent the entire year trying to learn and master the spell to summon the Celestial Guardians. Throughout the majority of those 99 losses, I was defeated not because I was trying to buy time to summon my Vermillion Phoenix or whatever, but because I was simply weaker. That was all. At that time, I still hadn't learned how to summon anything, and I was just using the martial arts my dad taught me, combined with a few spells I learned from the cla.s.ses I took during my first year, which unfortunately didn't include combat magic under Teacher Fielding. I had focused on summoning cla.s.ses and elemental cla.s.ses.

So the first eighty or so matches, I lost because I was weaker, and not because I was trying to buy time to summon my Celestial Guardians – during those eighty matches, I still hadn't learned how to summon my Celestial Guardians then. Obviously I wasn't allowed to just decline so many matches using the excuse, "I haven't mastered my summoning yet, can you wait until I learned how to summon my Celestial Guardians?"

Most readers seemed to have believed I had already mastered summoning by the time I started the first of the 99-losing streak, but that was not true. I spent a year learning how to summon the Celestial Guardians (what, you think I can learn how to summon them immediately upon going to school?). After the protection period of a couple of months, I was no longer allowed to avoid matches, and that was how I ended up losing. And since I was already in the middle of learning summoning magic, I just decided to endure the loss because it wouldn't be productive if I gave up on summoning magic halfway and ran off to learn a brand new magic. It was like trying to change disciplines or specializations in the middle of your university career. Some people did it, and it wasn't impossible, but it was very inefficient and would have completely wasted the six months or so of learning summoning magic. Furthermore, I couldn't just change the cla.s.ses I had already enrolled in, and a big part of my curriculum had been invested in summoning. With that in mind, I decided to stick with it until I finally mastered it.

There was a reason why people didn't want to learn summoning magic or enroll in summoning cla.s.ses. They didn't have the patience. As for me, I endured the losses because I knew that would be a great payoff at the end.

And by the time I learned how to summon the four Celestial Guardians, I had already lost over eighty matches. When I started losing the next three or four matches after that, I realized that despite the tremendous payoff if I summoned my Celestial Guardians, no one was going to wait for me to summon them, and hence…I continued my losing streak.

It took me another month to learn and create cheaper spells, and by that time I lost about another ten or so matches to bring it to ninety-nine. Yeah, the solution might be "obvious" but I couldn't simply create a cheap spell on the fly. Creating and conceiving a Soul Beast and bringing it into existence was a complex process. I couldn't just go, "Hey, I lost because summoning Vermillion Phoenix takes too long! Let me summon a weaker version in the next match!" No, I needed time to create that weaker, cheaper version that required a shorter casting time. It wasn't something that I could do after snapping my fingers.

That was the in-universe, story answer. The real answer was because I just wanted to copy and make fun of Battle Frenzy. Or, if you really hate the fourth-wall breaking and couldn't understand why creating cheaper summoning spells required another month or so, then just a.s.sume I was smurfing and saving my true power for when I could shock everyone in a cliché way. Okay?

With that explanation done, I turned away.

"Don't worry, Yue Chu," I a.s.sured my friend. "Whatever happens will happen. If I'm meant to end up in the Spiritual Road, then I will."