"Focus, Richard, focus."

"Yes, sir," I grumbled and returned my gaze to the match. Seemed like Theodore wasn't able to gain an advantage and was eliminated, so we were trailing 2-3 right now. The team battle would decide everything. The only way for us to advance to the next round was to defeat all the members while ensuring at least one of us survived at the end.

Harrison had already made his choice. As usual, he would be leading the team, and we had already decided that Craig would be our trump card against the impenetrable barrier of Wilhelm's Castellan. Sheila would back him up, while I made up the fourth member. Either Dong Fang Yue Chu or Bu Fan would take the last slot, not unless Harrison chose Pearl to cast healing magic on us. Not that it would work, as one of our opponents found to their cost. Healing magic was better used off field than in the middle of a battle.

Reality didn't work like a game where you automatically "recover HP" just because your teammate cast a healing spell on you. Your injuries weren't going to disappear like that – you still needed time for healing magic to take effect. Before you could fully heal, your opponent was bound to take you out. And then the healer obviously couldn't win on her own.

There would be circ.u.mstances when having a healer on the team would be a G.o.dsend, just like the qualifier mathes where we were thrown into the middle of nowhere, forced to survive in the wilderness while fighting off both rivals and monsters. The matches, on the other hand, were another thing altogether. Unless Pearl was on the level of Usato and embraced the wrong way of using healing magic, she wasn't going to offer much in the arena.

Defeating Anuaiz Academy and advancing to the next round was going to be our job.

"May the teams of Jing Tian Academy and Anuaiz Academy come to the stage!" The commentator announced, signaling the start of the matches.

We obeyed and took up positions on our respective ends of the stage, watching each other without much stuff to do. I took note of Wilhelm and Teresa, recalling that they were the aces of the team. Their performance the other day particularly stood out to me, and I was aware that they were always the last two survivors of the team matches, even when all their other comrades had failed. The barrier of Wilhelm's Castellan, in particular, had practically never been broken.

Craig was going to change all that today…provided our opponents allowed us to pull our strategy off. I somehow doubted that it would go so smoothly. They must know of Craig's cured technique and that we would base our strategy around him and his ability to destroy Wilhelm's robot's barrier, and prepared the appropriate countermeasures.

The demonic spearman must have noticed it as well, for he set his eyes grimly on the five students arrayed before us.

"They know," he said simply.

"We'll do our best," Sheila told him, trying her best to sound confident and utterly failing. Instead, Craig too her hand in his and gave a tight squeeze.

"I know we will, darling." He gave her a rea.s.suring grin. "They will never know what hit them."

"Oh?" the leader of the Anuaiz team, Ernest, raised an eyebrow. "You guys seem pretty confident." He regarded Craig's crimson spear with narrowed eyes and exhaled slightly. "Well, you do have an ace up your sleeve."

"But you're not the only one with a trump card," Wilhelm declared with a flourish. "We'll prove the superiority of Anuaiz Academy's techno-magic and fusion of technology and arcane lore to everyone!"

"I hope you'll be able to entertain us a little, at least," Teresa remarked somewhat casually. "Otherwise it'll be boring if you fall too easily."

"These guys," Dong Fang Yue Chu growled, but Harrison shook his head and held up a hand to hold him back. "Saying whatever they want!"

"We'll prove our strength with action, not words," our team captain reminded him – and all of us – quietly.

No one could refute that. Not even Craig, who usually had a caustic comment or two. He recognized just as much as the rest of us the importance of this match, and was getting ready to fulfill his role. His eyes danced across their roster as he a.s.sessed their individual threat levels.

We had watched several video replays and a.n.a.lyses, and had somehow built up a rough picture of how they might try to stop us.

"Match, begin!" the commentator shouted, and all h.e.l.l broke loose.

Unlike Wilhelm, Teresa didn't need to wait for a long time before she could fight. She needed some time to activate her battle armor, which was still dormant (because she obviously wasn't allowed to start infusing it with mana before the match), but its initial mode was already more than enough to function in a combat capacity.

With thrusters flaring, she boosted right at us, scattering us. I realized that she was aiming straight for Craig. Take him out, and our deadliest threat against Wilhelm's Castellan would be neutralized.

"Oh no, you don't!"

Stepping forward, Sheila parried Tereas's beam saber with her s.h.i.+eld. She swung her spear in an effort to eviscerate her, but Teresa flipped backward before retaliating with a barrage of pulses from her beam rifle. Sheila raised her s.h.i.+eld to block the bombardment, and she fired off a beam lance from her spear that forced the armored girl into evasive maneuvers.

"Huff…"

I wasn't given much time to watch them. I had stuff of my own to do, forced to move back when one of the members attacked. Harrison was fighting Ernest, Craig and Sheila were engaged with Teresa, and Dong Fang Yue Chu was defending against a huge guy in large body armor, who occasionally provided Teresa with fire support while shrugging off Yue Chu's fire spells. My friend was going to need some time if he was going to eventually cast his Pure Yang Divine Flames. An advanced spell like that was obviously going to require a longer casting time than his basic fire spells.

"Your opponent is me!" Emily declared as she fired off a burst of pulse rounds from her beam rifle. I dodged and dove to the side, rolling away from the line of explosive laser projectiles while summoning a weapon of my own.

"Gemini."

Rolling to my feet, I sliced and deflected the laser rounds with my twin swords. I could probably do a better job with my real swords, but I didn't want to reveal them just yet. I wanted to mislead my opponents into thinking I had no intention of using them.

"Hah!"

Shouting, Emily descended upon me, her beam saber slicing through the air and leaving a molten line in the reinforced concrete. Panting, I rolled away and parried her beam saber, but it easily sliced through my black Castor. Resummoning a second Castor, I then blasted her off with black and white energy waves.

"Ugh!"

Emily's battle armor protected her, but only just. Twisting around, she shattered my Pollux with a precise shot from her beam rifle. While I staggered back, the shards of my broken Constellation weapon raining down from my hand, she activated her boosters and surged forward to slash at me with her beam saber. I parried it with my remaining Castor, but she sliced it apart with her energy blade. While she did so, I flipped up and kicked her in the midriff, sending her cras.h.i.+ng several meters away.

"Huff…"

Despite her battle armor absorbing most of the impact, Emily still winced from the blow. Spinning around, she had the wing-like contraptions detach from her battle armor and fly about the battlefield. Over a dozen of them hovered and locked onto me before firing green bursts of laser from different directions, making it almost impossible to evade or defend.

"!!"

I barely had enough time to conjure whatever defensive spell I had in my repteroire to block the laser pulses. An ice fortress froze around me, its gleaming surfaces somehow managing to reflect most of the lasers before melting. Even as the ice melted, I instantly refroze it and restored my protective ice fortress.

"What?! How is this possible!? Aren't you supposed to be a summoner?! Why do you know ice magic?!" Emily demanded, stunned before launching another barrage of green laser pulses upon my position. Again, my ice fortress withstood the heated onslaught, with me continually repairing whatever parts of it that melted.

Normally, she would be right, but I did manage to learn some ice magic during my encounter in the Den of Dragons. If I hadn't managed to learn advanced ice spells, I would have been eliminated by now. Of course, I had no intention of telling Emily that, at least not in the middle of battle. Only an idiot would give away information about his capabilities and strength.

So instead I just smiled while focusing on my next spell. My ice fortress, almost on par with my Snow Aegis in terms of defensive capabilities, would buy me the precious time I needed to summon my big guns.

"Just break already!" Emily shouted, growing increasingly frustrated at her lack of success in penetrating the thick ice. More lasers bombarded my position, causing frost fragments to rain down, but I would pause occasionally in my current summoning spell to repair the cracks, holes and crevices with more ice. "What is with that ice spell?! I mean, it's not the first time I've seen it before, but I've never heard of a summoner…"

Then she paused, her Dragoon lasers also temporarily stopping to float around her, a frown crossing her face. She sighed and shook her head.

"Of course…but that summoner used advanced fire spells. They have to learn the basic spells of their Soul Beasts' elements in order to summon them in the first place. And many of them ended up advancing the studies of their chosen element, and upgrade to high-level elemental spells of that specific type. We just a.s.sumed Richard Huang would remain on basic elemental spells forever because he couldn't choose a specific element."

That intelligence wasn't entirely accurate, and it showed that they had no idea that I also knew a few advanced wood spells. Not as much as a dedicated wood mage, of course, but still more than those who never dabbled past basic or even intermediate level spells for wood magic. Again, I saw no reason to correct their misconception of me.

Instead, I completed my summoning spell instead. Cerberus materialized and pounced on a screaming Emily, his three jaws tearing into her mercilessly. Her battle armor protected her for now, and her lasers tore through his black body, but freezing breaths of frost poured out of Cerberus's mouths and created a layer of expanding ice over her suit.

"d.a.m.n it!"

Writhing from the sheer cold, Emily struggled and tried to shoot at Cerberus pointblank, but his ma.s.sive paw swiped the beam rifle out of her hand, and then crushed the poor weapon into sc.r.a.p. Cursing, Emily drew her beam saber and stabbed at Cerberus, but he pinned her arm to the ground, breaking the bone and eliciting an agonized scream.

Above, the Dragoon pods continued to pour a blistering hail of fire upon Cerberus, and despite the damage he took, he ignored it and bit into Emily with his set of beam fangs…I mean ice fangs. Sharp, curved azure fangs almost a meter long and made entirely out of arcane ice stabbed downward and basically ripped Emily apart.

The boundary field kept her alive, but she was definitely out of commission. Straightening up, I turned to the cowering Wilhelm. If I could finish him off before he summoned his Castellan – and it appeared that he had yet to complete the spell that transformed his figurine into the gigantic robot from before – then at least half of this battle would be considered won.

"Watch out!"

"?!"

I glanced up and caught sight of Harrison barreling toward me, looking all battered. With a roar, Ernest descended upon me, but Cerberus swatted him away. Or tried to, but Ernest spun about and stabbed the bellowing three-headed hound with his beam sword. Harrison then charged at him, his hands glowing with holy magic.

"I'll hold him off! Take out Wilhelm before he finishes his spell!"

I nodded and summoned Sagittarius before fitting an arrow to the black bow and taking aim at Wllhelm. The ground around me s.h.i.+mmered from the sheer heat as I poured as much thermal energy into my arrow as possible, and then I unleashed Alnasl.

"!!!"

The arrow never hit Wilhelm. Instead, Dong Fang Yue Chu's opponent charged in with his bulky battle armor and intercepted the hit. The explosion engulfed him and destroyed his armor, incinerating the wearter inside and knocking him out of the match, but he did more than enough to ensure the survival of his teammate.

Glancing in the other direction, I saw that Yue Chu himself had been taken out, his broken body lying at the edge of the coliseum. Sheila was also incapacitated, and Craig was struggling against Teresa, whose skills with her armor, beam rifle and beam ssaber were superlative.

"Another…"

I was about to conjure another arrow, but a second explosion rocked the coliseum and sent me sprawling onto my feet. Heaving, I slowly got up and saw that Ernest had resorted to drastic measures. He had self-destructed his battle armor, blowing not just himself up but also eliminating both my Cerberus and Harrison. My Constellation spirit had dissipated into nothingness from the sheer force of the detonation, while Harrison lay unconscious several meters away, blood leaking from his head and mouth.

Scrambling to my feet, I let loose another arrow at the awaiting Wilhelm, but it was too late. He smiled and tossed his glowing figurine at the projectile. There was a bright glow, and then his Castellan appeared in his gigantic mechanical form. The robot then activated his barrier and absorbed the powerful arrow, halting its explosion and disspating the destructive mana.

"d.a.m.n it."

We were too late. Wilhelm had summoned his Castellan, and with each team reduced to two members, this was going to be a tough fight.