The both of us panted after we sprang apart from a violent clash of fire and water. Even though I was supposed to have the elemental advantage, my main weakness was that my elemental spells were all too…elementary. Even though Lilith's fire magic had the elemental disadvantage, she was capable of casting advanced spells that were several magnitudes more powerful than my…well, elementary element spells.

That was the weakness of diversifying and refusing to specialize in a single element. That was also the reason why most people didn't try and learn all the different elements. I might be a lot more flexible, but even that versatility wasn't going to save me from someone who had honed her element to its utmost pinnacle.

However, there was no rule that stated that elementary spells will always be weaker than advance spells. As long as I pumped sufficient mana into it, I could artificially amplify its power and effects. It was obviously a lot more inefficient and unwieldy than just learning how to cast an advanced version of the elemental spell, but in the end, brute force was all that mattered.

The only question was whether I had the larger amount of mana necessary to overcome the difference in our strengths.

As we traded blows again, fire and water colliding violently in a crimson and azure maelstrom, the h.e.l.lfire Bear continued to wrestle with Ursa Major. Just like their summoners, neither Soul Beast was giving an inch. Both refused to yield.

If I didn't change things up, it would remain a stalemate for a very long time.

Fortunately, Ursa Major wasn't the only Constellation spirit I could summon.

"Black Tortoise!" I called out. The gigantic Celestial Guardian manifested in reality, and immediately the entire arena was flooded with water. Even though it was but a basic spell, the amount of mana thrown into it simply overpowered whatever advanced spells Lilith could cast.

Or so I thought.

"!!!"

Water boiled into steam as flames raged around Lilith as she conjured a new spell. Fire spun rapidly around her wrists as she cried out, bubbles escaping from her mouth. Ignoring the water that was flowing into her mouth, Lilith's voice came out strong and steady.

"Kagutsuchi!"

The entire flood vanished in a flash, vaporizing into scalding steam in an instant. I was blinded momentarily, the lenses on my gla.s.ses darkening automatically to protect my eyes. Staggering back, I glanced up as the fog cleared and gaped at the immense white dragon-like monster that now hovered above us. It resembled a whale, with fiery wings spread out from its back. A golden sword had been stabbed through its terrifying jaws, and crimson and golden arcane symbols were etched across its white surface.

The divine Soul Beast bellowed before unleas.h.i.+ng a torrent of flames that engulfed the entire interior of the gymnasium.

"Whoa!"

Fortunately, Black Tortoise was on hand to erect his water barrier. Ursa Major and the h.e.l.lfire Bear both vanished, the former incinerated by the new summoned beast's appearance and the latter already damaged and wounded by the flood that my Celestial Guardian had conjured. Ferocious flames battered the watery sphere, and the fluids immediately flash-boiled into steam and steadily receded. Black Tortoise gritted his jaws (not that he had teeth, but you know what I mean) and did his best to maintain the water barrier, and just about allowed us to barely withstand the overwhelming firepower.

"Kagutsuchi, huh? The kami of fire indeed."

The G.o.d of fire in j.a.panese mythology who was known for accidentally burning his mother, Izanami, to death after she gave birth to him, and getting cut apart by his vengeful father, Izanagi. That must be what the golden sword represented – Izanagi's sword.

"I've been perfecting this new Soul Beast to counter yours!" Lilith declared proudly, her hands on her hips as she kept a safe distance away from me.

"Oh, congratulations." I applauded sarcastically. "Should I give you an award too?"

"Shut up," she snapped, her cheeks burning. "Just surrender."

I actually laughed at that. "Why would I surrender when I still have a chance of winning?"

Lilith actually blanched at that. Was she really that stupid, or was she underestimating me? She couldn't possibly think that she had won just because she had me and my Black Tortoise trapped under her Kagutsuchi's fiery spell? She was getting too carried away because of a little success.

She forgot who she was facing.

While Black Tortoise was maintaining the defensive barrier spell to protect the both of us, I was secretly weaving another spell and preparing for a ma.s.sive summon. Lilith didn't seem to be aware of that, mistakenly believing that my Celestial Guardians were the most powerful Soul Beasts I could summon.

She was so wrong.

It probably took me five minutes, Black Tortoise admirably holding the fort and enduring the relentless torrent of h.e.l.lfire from Kagutsuchi. Lilith didn't even notice that something was amiss, and in any case there was nothing she could do about it. Even with her innate affinity with fire and a high resistane toward it, she would still get burned badly if she ventured too close to her Soul Beast's intense spell.

That was good for me.

"Draco."

The black dragon materialized amidst the h.e.l.lish inferno and roared. With a flap of his ma.s.sive wings, he extinguished a good portion of the flames. Black mana coalesced in his jaws before he unleashed them at Kagutsuchi. The white dragon responded by unleas.h.i.+ng a devastating stream of fire that collided with the colossal mana beam.

The resulting explosion shook the building violently and caused debris to begin falling. The reinforced material of the walls and ceiling cracked, and tremors continued to rack the increasingly splitting ground.

Draco and Kagutsuchi then charged at each other, and the tremendous impact from their collision sent ripples of destructive shockwaves that battered the dangerously creaking gymnasium, threatening to demolish it.

"Okay, stop! That's enough!"

Both Lilith and I turned around and caught sight of a teacher hurrying forward frantically, shouting in panic.

"Ah…Teacher Huang Zhang." Lilith lowered her head and obediently withdrew Kagutsuchi. When the ma.s.sive Soul Beast vanished from sight, I also dismissed Draco and Black Tortoise while looking very sheepish.

"Having a fierce compet.i.tive spirit is fine and all, but try not to wreck the training rooms!" Huang Zhang complained.

"Sorry," I apologized.

"We went a little too far," Lilith admitted, embarra.s.sed. She turned to me. "That was a good fight, though!"

"…yeah. I'm sure it was." inwardly, I was already formulating several plans and countermeasures against his Kagutsuchi. That was quite the formidable beast. I knew there would be a high chance of me losing if Huang Zhang didn't step in to stop the fight. It wasn't as if my defeat was 100% certain, but I knew how dangerously close I was to being defeated.

I briefly wondered if Draco could really stand up to a Soul Beast meant to be the embodiment of a fire G.o.d.

After a reprimand from Huang Zhang, I was finally allowed to leave the gymnasium. Lilith hit the showers, after working out quite a sweat from the sparring. I didn't bring a change of clothes – they were in my dormitory room – so I didn't bother with that. besides, thanks to Black Tortoise and his water spells, I was able to keep cool most of the time, and thus I didn't perspire that much.

Phew.

Walking out of the gymnasium, I caught sight of Brutus and Riley approaching the slightly shuddering building. Their eyes widened when they caught sight of me.

"What the h.e.l.l happened?!" Brutus demanded. "Where's the captain?"

"She's showering," I replied with a shrug. The two of them visibly sighed in relief.

"That must be quite the intense battle," Riley remarked with an amused smile as he glanced at the training building. "We could sense your mana spikes several blocks away, and could even feel the tremors when you cast ma.s.sive spells." He chuckled. "We should be relieved that you didn't cast any of your strategic-scale spells."

"I don't think I'll be able to get away with nuking your school," I muttered.

"Ha ha ha!" Riley burst out laughing at that. "You probably won't! But I would like to see the authorities try to arrest you when you possess the power to obliterate them!"

I could only use that spell once a day, but I wasn't stupid enough to tell that to someone I literally just met today.

"Well, we should check on the captain to see if she's all right." Brutus excused them, and I nodded understandingly, waving at them.

"See you around, Richard!"

"Yeah…oh, before you go…can you point me in the direction of the library?"

"Library?" Riley sounded surprised. "Why do you want to go to the library?"

I raised my eyebrow and suppressed my annoyance. "To borrow some books and read, obviously."

*

Even though I really should be reading nonsensical books such as Art of War, or rune systems or team battle tactics, I was not w.a.n.g Zhong. I wasn't some pretentious p.r.i.c.k who was both invincible in combat and read every academic or reference book of knowledge known to man.

So instead, I wandered into the fiction section and began borrowing quite a few sci-fi books about the 41st Millennium, featuring a galaxy-wide empire that was embattled and beset on all sides by traitors, heretics and aliens. My tastes in literature were diverse, so I also picked up a book on folklore, concerning fox spirits, and another story on mythology. Man, Vermillion High's library had everything!

While I was carrying the bunch of books to a table, I happened to stop by a holographic bulletin board.

"Hmm? Conflicting myths? The separation of religions?"

Apparently, somebody was trying to reconcile the different religions in a specific region. Of all the places, it happened to be ancient j.a.pan, the area I specialized in during my previous life. Pus.h.i.+ng my gla.s.ses up, I leaned in and noted how the guy was trying to separate the Bodhisattva from the kami, and he was unable to distinguish the two despite trying to delve deeply into their origins. He was also struggling to understand the conflicts in specific texts and folklore, which had both s.h.i.+nto and Buddhist elements for some reason.

"Huh…is that really the case?"

Putting the books down to the side, I decided to type in some text, challenging the need to separate the two religions in the first place. I argued that religion was a Western and "modern" concept (so far as the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries could be considered modern in the thirty-first century), and pointed out that there was a great deal of syncretism and integration, and that they were not necessarily two separate systems of beliefs. In fact, the people of that time did not distinguish s.h.i.+ntoism from Buddhism, and just believed in everything as "natural." The divine, to them, was just divine, and they didn't place a label on that.

That thus led to the folkloric texts having both s.h.i.+nto and Buddhist elements together. These elements weren't in conflict with each other, nor were they mutually exclusive. People didn't think of them as separate in the first place.

However, this belief of separation was something that was invented during the "modern" period, when the j.a.panese government attempted to rapidly modernize and learn from the West. They then tried to create a new state religion, and bought into the nativist logic and rhetoric that tended to idealize and imagine a "pure" and "authentic" j.a.pan free of any foreign influences. However, that was far from reality. Even so, the formation of a nation-state and the resulting discourse on national ident.i.ty and culture was powerful in making a huge impact on reality. Folklores were rewritten and reinterpreted to adhere to this new nationalistic discourse.

"…whoops. I think I wrote too much."

Shaking my head, I swiped away the holographic screen and walked off. Before I left, I made sure to leave my name as anonymous. I didn't want people bothering me and flaming me for making such erroneous a.s.sumptions or accuse me of spouting bulls.h.i.+t. If they believe me, great. If not, then too bad. I couldn't care less.

With that done, I picked up the books and went in the direction of the counter to get them loaned out so that I could read them in my dormitory room.

*

The very next day, Henry Porter was gaping at the holographic bulletin board, his eyes wide in disbelief.

"Who wrote this?" he demanded.

All the students in the library froze and stared at him, uncomprehending. Gritting his teeth, the old guy waved a hand at the holographic board, magnifying the image so that they could see the post I had written yesterday.

"Did anyone see who wrote this? Please tell me!"

For a moment, n.o.body said anything. Then one of the students nervously spoke up.

"P…Princ.i.p.al Porter, aren't you the one who wrote everything on that bulletin board? I don't think anyone here is audacious enough to write on it…"

"…anyone here…so perhaps someone not from our school?" Henry Porter murmured, his eyes narrowed. The poor guy clamped up.

"Ah, right!" he struck his fist into his palm when he remembered something. "There's that elite exchange session between the different schools of the Eastern part of the Federation! Maybe a student from another school wrote it!"

"…I see." Henry Porter nodded as he glanced through my wall of text another time. He turned toward the librarian currently on duty. The poor guy blanched and turned extremely pale. "Du Shu Guan, I want a list of everyone who entered the library yesterday. Not just those who took out loans. Check the security cameras at the door. I want an ident.i.ty check on every single person who entered and left the library yesterday. As soon as possible."

"…yes, s…sir."

Henry Porter clasped his hands behind his back as he turned back toward the holographic bulletin board.

"If whoever wrote this is right…then the field of history will see a huge transformation in the way they approach historical and religious texts…"