"Hmm, that should do it."

I glanced at Orion, wondering if I should unleash Betelgeuse instead of sending my Corvus to clean up the mess. That technique took up quite a lot of magical energy, so I wasn't fond of spamming it too many times, but it was also pretty devastating. Plus it made me feel like Is.h.i.+da Uryuu.

It had been a couple of weeks since that incident with Selina and Hades. After Cecilia's reinforcements arrived, half of them sent me and Alicia home to Jing Tian City, while the other half escorted Cecilia safely back to wherever she lived. That was the last I heard of her, though Alicia told me that she was fine.

Apparently the Stuart Clan was trying to track down the a.s.sa.s.sin and find out who hired her, but they hadn't gotten any success thus far. Fortunately for Cecilia, Selina didn't try to attack her again, or at least I hadn't heard of any new attacks. Funnily enough, the first a.s.sa.s.sination attempt ended up on the online news, but Alicia and I only got tangential mentions. Which was fine by me, because I preferred to keep it that way.

"Hmm…"

I studied Orion, wondering if I could use Rigel. I hadn't had a chance to replicate that feat, and obviously it was stupid to waste my magical energy nuking part of the forest when the low-ranked monsters didn't call for such drastic measures. So I hadn't tried it again in reality, though I did try it inside my training room, and accidentally nuked myself. After a scolding from Dong Fang Yue Chu, I ended up going outside on a mission to beat something up.

Plus we needed the prestige points for my faltering society. It had only been a few months, and my juniors still weren't able to fight on par with their seniors yet, so we were balanced precariously above the profit line. Our prestige points were getting dangerously low, and if we lost anymore, we would have to surrender most of our rooms in the Rear Building.

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That was why I was out here on a mission, to replenish them. But…yeah, I seemed to have accomplished it pretty easily.

Looking at my Orion bow again, I shook my head and dismissed it. Another time, perhaps. Furthermore, there were other skills I needed to practice. Just because I had powerful arrows didn't mean I should neglect my swordsmans.h.i.+p.

*

"Okay, your monetary rewards have been deposited into your account." Allison raised her head from her screen to inform me coolly, and then made another note. "Your society also has their prestige points, so regarding the rooms you own, you'll be safe for another month. Unless you suddenly lose a bunch of matches."

"Thank you." my ranking also went up, according to Allison, but I didn't pay much attention to that. I was just relieved we didn't have to give up our rooms. "I'll come again for another mission soon."

"Don't overwork yourself," Allison reminded me, and I waved casually before leaving the administrative building and making my way toward the training room.

"Thanks for the hard work!" Dong Fang Yue Chu said when I strode into the room. He was doing admin stuff for our club – that was his job as the president, after all. "Thanks to you, we managed to replenish our prestige points again!"

"Sorry for losing them, though." Harvey looked a little glum. The first year students were really struggling against their older opponents.

"It's not your fault," I a.s.sured him. "It's those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds' fault for thinking you guys are easy prey and picking on you. I do hope you've learned something from those matches."

"Yeah!" Harvey brightened up. "I think we're getting a lot closer than before…still not quite there yet, but…"

"Show me the replay," I instructed. "We'll go through it later. On second thought, show it to my Dad later when we hit the dojo. I think he'll have better advice than me."

"Sure!"

"Don't forget about me!" Stan raised his hand wearily. He was slumped inside a ring, evidently working hard at honing his spells. A couple of training dummies lay opposite him, pockmarked by a barrage of shots.

I was suddenly reminded of Alicia and her dual pistols that night a couple of weeks ago. She would have been a fine mentor to Stan, but evidently he wasn't qualified to join Black Roses. Oh, well. I could ask her, but that would spark an outrage among members of her club – obviously she would have to prioritize mentoring her juniors in her own society first, and I didn't want to add to her burdens. As the president of the Black Roses Society, Alicia was extremely busy.

This was why I didn't want to be president. Heh. Good thing I palmed the job off to Dong Fang Yue Chu, otherwise I wouldn't be able to do anything I like.

"Still, that was fast. You finished the mission in a matter of hours."

Dong Fang Yue Chu looked up at me in amazement.

"Hah!" Harvey snorted. "Those are only rank F monsters. They pose no threat to Vice-President Richard at all!"

I was amazed at the amount of faith he placed on me. I really didn't have the heart to tell him that I was a fallible, weak human who lost more than I had won. Right now, my win-loss ratio stood at about twenty-six to a hundred and eight. Even though I clawed my way up the rankings with a sizeable amount of wins, I still lost nine matches.

That was reality. In a wish-fulfilment, power fantasy story, I would never lose again and have a perfect, flawless record, but…yeah. Reality was cruel. There was no way I could win every single one of my matches. On the bright side, if I discounted the ninety-nine losses from last year, I actually won twenty-six to nine. Well, twenty-one to nine, if we didn't count that fluke team-kill against the representatives of Crowley's Academy, which didn't contribute to my rankings in any case.

"Well, get ready to finish up your training." I glanced at the time. I had just barely made it back before six. "Let's start heading toward the dojo."

"Yes, Vice-President!"

Since there wasn't enough time for me to begin my own training, I decided to hold it off for today. Besides, I was going to be subject to a pretty strict and tough training regimen once I got to the dojo, and the mission had been exhausting and a good experience, so it wasn't any major loss. Having genuine combat experience was better than any amount of training, but obviously I required sufficient training to survive that dangerous battle in the first place.

I wasn't given much choice anyway. Before I could say anything, Dong Fang Yue Chu frowned and glanced at the door when someone knocked on it.

"Please enter," he said.

A towering figure of someone over six feet lumbered in, and waved at me.

"Hey, Richard. It's been a while. You have really prospered since the last time I saw you."

My jaw dropped when I saw the huge guy. He wasn't that big, to be honest, but he was definitely larger than average, packed with muscle. His dark chocolate skin seemed to give off a sheen under the fluorescent lighting of our society room, and like me he wore a pair of gla.s.ses. He held up a beefy hand and waved at me.

"Troy!" I was delighted to see my friend. Even though we were on opposite ends of the school ranking spectrum, we had developed a good friends.h.i.+p. Well, I say that, but Troy's current ranking was not as impressive as I made it out to be. Currently, he was around rank 400 or 300 something, just a couple of hundred positions above my 500 something.

Interestingly enough, he had achieved his rank through fulfilling missions like I did. That was why I hadn't seen him in a while. He had gone overseas for a mission, and no doubt that was what helped him achieve his ranking. He did have his fair share of wins in ranked matches too, and his combat ability was what caught the eye of Alicia, who invited him into the Black Roses.

"Eh? Is he a friend of yours, Vice-President Richard?" Harvey sounded surprised as he stared at the dark-skinned giant (sort of) who had just entered the room. Troy chuckled as he swiveled his head to stare at me.

"Vice-president now, is it? You've really risen up the ranks, Richie."

"Uh, well, there were quite a few circ.u.mstances." I scratched my head, feeling a little embarra.s.sed at my undeserved rank. I then turned to my awestruck juniors. "This is Troy King. He's actually from Black Roses Society, but he's a good friend of mine. We both go way back."

"Amazing…"

Harvey, in particular, was as usual in his hero-wors.h.i.+p mode, no doubt thinking Troy must be some sort of G.o.dlike figure if he was friends with me. Well, he wasn't far from the truth, but as powerful as Troy was, he wasn't a G.o.d. At least not yet.

"I didn't know you were friends with Troy King." Dong Fang Yue Chu was also looking pretty astounded. Troy had a reputation for being a loner, especially during the first year, so it was to everyone's surprise when he accepted Alicia's invitation to the Black Roses. But he mostly kept to himself, and his notoriety was further exacerbated by his direct and brutal fighting style.

"Yeah, as I said, we go way back," I repeated with a laugh.

To be honest, I had no idea how we ended up being friends. If I wasn't mistaken, it was because of that incident a few years ago, when Troy first showed up in my father's dojo. He had a keen interest and great pa.s.sion for martial arts, and he had been going from dojo to dojo to spar with all the dojo masters and their disciples, to learn and experience the pinnacle of martial arts.

He had coincidentally subscribed to Dad's position to learn martial arts first and separately from combat magic. That was why he was visiting dojos – to learn "proper" martial arts instead of the hybridized combat techniques that mage academies taught. He was interested in the "pure" essence of martial arts, techniques pa.s.sed down from an ancient age where magic didn't exist.

The next time we met was last year, when we both first enrolled in Jing Tian Magic Academy. Troy had spotted me in the cafeteria and he immediately recognized me as the son of the dojo master who defeated him a year or two ago. He then came over and we ended up discussing martial arts. Troy didn't care that I was a summoner or that I was at the bottom of the rankings. He was more interested in non-magic martial arts than he was about student rankings and compet.i.tion.

And that was basically how we ended up being friends. More often than not Troy would approach me to talk about martial arts, most likely because none of the students here subscribed to such an ancient style of combat that many thought obsolete in the age of magic.

"We're actually going to the dojo right now," I informed my friend with a grin. "You're welcome to join us if you want."

"How's Uncle doing?" Troy asked me. He had occasionally dropped by for a visit to my Dad's dojo over the past year, often to spar with him and exchange pointers. True to their similar philosophies, neither of them used magic in their duels, and Troy held a healthy amount of respect for my old man. That was probably why he befriended me too.

"All right. I got him to agree to train my society members." I grinned again. "I think he actually enjoys it."

"A bit too much, if you ask me," Dong Fang Yue Chu muttered under his breath. Dad was harder on him than the others because he apparently saw the potential in Dong Fang Yue Chu…well, potential in fire magic. And Dad tended to focus a lot on fire magic, so he was happy to have a student who specialized in fire magic.

"Hah! Sounds like Uncle all right!" Troy laughed. "I'm in!"

"Great! Let's go then!" I turned to my society members. "Are you guys ready?"

"Yes~" they chorused. Harvey was the only one who sounded enthusiastic while Dong Fang Yue Chu paled. I ignored our poor, trembling president, and pumped my fist to the air.

"All right! Let's go!"