258 Chapter 258: Fated Meeting

I wasn't given much time to dwell upon it. The flames continued to erupt from Lilith's crimson sword before searing the air. With a resolved yell, she swung her blade down to engulf her opponent in hellish fire.

"Hmph."

The guy with the spear stepped forward and thrust his weapon. Water swirled around him, forming an immense whirlpool that swallowed up the vortex of flames. The whirlpool transformed into steam almost immediately, boiling as it filled the entire area in a thick, white cloud, but Lilith's fire spell was effectively extinguished.

"Hah!"

The guy with the mace slammed his weapon down and launched several boulders at her. Taking a deep breath, Lilith sliced through the boulders with her blazing blade, standing her ground firmly. Even as she endured the onslaught, the guy with the sword slashed her from behind, wind currents swirling around her. As she spun around to knock him back, the guy with the staff struck her, more petals cutting through her uniform and flaying her skin.

With a yell, Lilith's body seemed to explode, hellfire erupting from her surroundings and forcing her two assailants back, slightly scorched.

"She still has this much power?" the sword dude murmured in disbelief.

Lilith panted heavily as she retreated. The five dudes warily kept their distance from the flames, but they otherwise didn't move in. Lilith then smiled grimly as she surveyed them.

"You're too late."

"Oh no!" the guy with the spear widened his eyes in horror. "Damn it!"

It was that moment when the ninja dudes realized they had fucked up.

A massive silhouette ignited into life behind Lilith, almost six meters in height, and took the shape of a gigantic bear. Crimson fur, paws the size of a small desk tipped with wicked claws, and hellfire that blazed across its outline to form a monstrous mane of fire. Demonic red eyes stared down hungrily upon the trembling five dudes.

"The legendary Inferno Bear of Lilith Porter!"

…did they say Porter? That Porter clan? The one that Dad had some relationship with?

And wait a minute…why the hell did she have a very similar name to some character from some web novel I had read before? And seriously?! Inferno Bear?! She had the exact same Soul Beast!? I might as well go into fanfiction territory at this point.

"WHO THE HELL ARE YOU CALLING INFERNO BEAR?!"

All the five dudes stared at Lilith in astonishment. I didn't blame them. I was also gaping at the platinum silver-blond girl incredulously.

"This is my Hellfire Bear!"

…not much of a change there, if you ask me…why don't you change your name to Laura as well? Then I could sit back and wait for the lawsuits and copyright stuff to drop in. At least she didn't call her Soul Beast something as lame as Hell Bear. I could picture that. Get your cuddly Hell Bear and hug it today! Look at the fire symbol on its belly and tickle it for it to set itself on fire!

In any case, the five ninja dudes realized they were fucked. The Hellfire Bear bellowed as it lumbered toward them, swinging its claws and unleashing a ferocious inferno across the clearing. The would-be victims scattered, and so the Hellfire Bear settled its predatory gaze on the biggest target. It swiped a massive paw at the guy with the mace.

"Hi…!"

Shrieking in an almost girlish manner, the mace dude hastily erected a wall of earth, but the paw smashed through it and transformed it into molten rock. The flames slammed into the mace dude and sent him flying, leaving severe burns on his skin. It didn't kill him, though. I was impressed by how tough he was.

The spear dude lanced his weapon at the Hellfire Bear, nimbly dodging its massive attacks and making use of his agility. I was amazed – these guys, even though they were confronted by a superior foe, had no intention of backing down at all. As the sword guy and the staff dude joined in, they worked together to annoy the Hellfire bear.

First, the spear dude hurled a torrent of water at the Hellfire Bear, which merely boiled the entire stream with a burst of flames. Amidst the boiling white fog, multiple wind blades sliced through and struck the immense Soul Beast. Being huge and clumsy, there was no way for the Hellfire Bear to evade. Not that it needed to. Despite the crimson blood trailing down its fur before vaporizing across its flaming mane, the Inferno…I mean Hellfire Bear didn't seem the least affected by the vicious barrage. It growled and swatted away at the dancing storm of petals and immolated them before directing another blast of hellfire at the staff dude, who quickly wove a wall of wood together to block the flames. It lasted a second before being incinerated, but that second was all he needed to scamper to safety. Even so, he was buffeted by a blazing shockwave that set him ablaze.

A boulder almost caught the Hellfire Bear by the side of its head, but the enormous Soul Beast merely grunted and swatted the huge projectile away. Breathing heavily, the mace dude rejoined his comrades while lifting up several more boulders magically to fire off a barrage at the monster. The Hellfire Bear merely raised its head and roared thunderously, unleashing a torrent of superheated flames that actually melted the rock and caused the boulders to drip onto the ground in magma-like puddles. Water gushed toward it, courtesy of the spear dude, but the stream boiled into steam immediately the moment it came into contact with the bear's fiery mane.

"You've got to be kidding me," the spear dude muttered. A swipe from the Hellfire Bear sent him flying, partially immolated. He rolled on the ground, desperately putting out the flames with some help from a water spell, but he was in pretty bad shape.

"Is there no way to beat this monster?!" the mace dude cried out in despair before he and the others were caught in another massive fire spell cast by the Hellfire Bear.

"Wait," the sword dude snapped. "And quit your whining. As long as we continue to work together, we should be able to…"

"Hmph." Lilith folded her arms in a somewhat arrogant manner. "Give up. All of you will be burned to cinders…"

She never finished her sentence. The dagger dude stabbed her from behind, his blade reaching into her chest. He avoided puncturing her heart, though, and instead drove the sharp weapon into her left lung to fill it with blood.

Choking and almost drowning on her own blood, Lilith fell forward and flailed helplessly. She curled to a ball and cursed, clutching her chest. In order to preserve her own life, she began drawing all of her mana desperately to her body to stem and cauterize the bleeding, to accelerate her own innate healing. It wasn't healing magic, but more of an emergency stopgap measure to treat a fatal wound to prevent herself from dying.

Consequently, because she was busily expending all of her mana to contain the lethal injury, she could no longer sustain the existence of her Soul Beast. The Hellfire Bear disappeared while she coughed violently, trying to stop her body from convulsing.

"Your Hellfire Bear is indeed powerful," the sword dude told her as he approached with a sneer. At least I assumed he was sneering from his tone, given how his expression was concealed by a mask. "Perhaps if it was just the four of us, we would have been defeated. But we were merely buying time for our teammate to take you out. Assassinate the summoner, and her Soul Beast will disappear along with her life. That's the standard strategy against summoners."

"Your mistake was to go solo and fight on your own against a team." The dagger dude sounded triumphant. "No matter how talented you are, or how much of a genius you are, you can't win against a team of less gifted individuals working together."

"You lost because you underestimated us!" the mace dude crowed. "You thought we were cannon fodder? Hah!"

Even though they were gloating, they were still pretty injured. The mace dude, in particular, was suffering from third degree burns. The spear guy was also breathing heavily from having clashed with the Hellfire Bear earlier. The sword guy and staff guy were staggering from accumulated injuries sustained from both the Hellfire Bear and Lilith. Even the shadowy assassin was swaying after repeated blows and burns from his target.

Still, they won. And it was the results that mattered the most. With the recording done, I decided to start sneaking away. As much as I sympathized with Lilith, she wasn't the only person to have been eliminated from the Spiritual Road. As I mentioned, over the week, I had seen plenty of individuals kicked out of the artificial realm because they were reckless and arrogant enough to operate independently and attempt to solo the training camp. They were pretty close to defeating their targets, but often teamwork and sheer numbers overwhelmed them and their blood tokens were taken away. I was under no obligation to help any of them, including this girl.

The moment I tried to save each and every one of them, I was going to end up revealing myself and ruining my mission. Nope, my objective was what mattered, not trying to clean up the mess of arrogant young geniuses who were deluded enough to think they could take on the world on their own, or that strength was everything.

Only edge lords thought like that. Abandon the world, refuse to trust anyone, and try to solo everything, and you will find yourself falling short.

This might not be consistent with my desire to be a hero, but the situation was very different. For one thing, the students here were not exactly in trouble or in any need of being saved. They were all competing against each other. I could no more assist them than I would someone who was fighting in an arena. For another, no one was in any real danger unless it was against a monster. The students were still normal, civilized humans. Nobody had any real intention of killing other students. Nobody here was a psychopath, bent on murdering his fellow students. Reality was very different from those bloodthirsty fantasy xianxia worlds that claimed that strength was everything or power was all. That kind of logic was a joke, to be honest. Did you really go around killing students from other schools just because you could? Anyway, once someone was in danger, the moment their blood token was taken away, they would be teleported out of the artificial realm and back outside to receive medical treatment and healing spells. The teachers would take care of them and ensure their lives wouldn't be in danger, as long as they didn't perish inside the forest.

So no one's lives were truly in danger, not unless they were facing a monster opponent instead of a human opponent. Most humans were rational and civilized, and wouldn't simply take lives for the fun of it. From my past week of recording and reconnaissance, nobody had died in combat between humans. Not a single one.

Therefore there was no reason for me to intervene. Even though these guys were clearly hostile, they obviously had no intention of killing the poor girl. If they defeated her, they deserved the victory.

"Fucking bitch. You really did quite a number on us." the spear guy rubbed his burned arms gingerly and winced.

"She should compensate for our wounds!" the mace dude snarled vengefully.

"How do you suggest she do that?" the shadowy assassin asked somewhat softly.

"…fuck you…" Lilith spat as she writhed on the floor. Blood trickling from her lips and her breathing ragged, she forced herself to kneel, leaning on her crimson sword as she glared at her tormentors defiantly.

"Lilith," the sword dude said with a shake of his head. "I advise you to cease your futile struggling."

"Hey, everyone," the staff dude spoke up with a grin. "I say that we shouldn't waste the swan meat that has somehow found its way to our lips."

Swan meat was pretty much a Chinese idiom for something that was elegant, divine and high quality, and was usually used to refer to beautiful girls. You know, like that stupid idiom about frogs trying to eat swan meat often being used to refer to ugly guys wanting to marry beautiful girls (seriously, that was so shallow – what was with this obsession with physical appearances? Why can't an "ugly" guy marry a beautiful girl? There was more to a person than his looks!).

"What do you think?" the staff dude continued before chuckling ominously. The sword dude turned to him in amusement.

"Are you not afraid of Ji Xuan?"

"Hah~" the staff dude sighed. "Heaven knows, Earth knows, you know, I know. Who else will know?"

"You guys can enjoy her," the mace dude licked his lips. "But I want her weapon!"

He rushed forward eagerly. Lilith gritted her teeth and tried to defend herself, but he smacked the crimson sword out of her grip with his mace.

"Ha ha ha ha ha!"

The other four were howling with lecherous laughter and hurrying forward, unzipping their pants and leering at Lilith. She raised her head, fear now taking over defiance when she realized just what they were about to do.

None of them made it.

Lightning exploded throughout the clearing, electrocuting all of them. The five of them screamed and convulsed and the deadly currents coursed through their bodies, and they crashed to their knees, smoking.

White Tiger leaped into the clearing, and he swiped at the sword dude, knocking him over. Then he slashed the mace dude and the spear dude with his lightning claws before they could react. Finally, he turned toward the shivering staff dude – the bastard who proposed that they raped Lilith in the first place – and began to maul him.

While his comrades were howling and shrieking, the shadowy assassin tried to sink into the darkness. However, a flaming arrow slammed into him, piercing his body and detonating. He yelped in pain as he crashed and rolled about, immolated.

I lowered Sagittarius and stepped into the clearing. Before I knew it, I had intervened, even though I originally did not intend to.

The reason was simple. Those bastards were about to rape her.

If they had just taken her blood token and allowed her to be transported out of the forest, I would have left them alone. Even if they had taken her away and brought her to whoever this Ji Xuan was, I couldn't care less. It was their business, and if their boss wanted to talk to her, then that was his prerogative. As long as there was no crime such as murder committed, all was fair game. To the victor goes the spoils.

However, these bastards planned to rape her. That changed everything. If they wanted to kill her or rape her or commit a crime against her, then I was going to step in. there was no way I was going to stand by and do nothing but watch while a girl got raped in front of me. It was one thing for her to get hurt in a match, in a battle between mages. It was another for her to get physically and psychologically violated by a bunch of sick bastards.

"W…who the hell are you?!" the mace guy demanded, still lying on the ground and barely conscious. "H…how dare you interfere in our affairs?!"

The sword dude glowered at me, but if he thought he could intimidate me with a glare while lying helplessly on the ground, fried like dried bean curd, he was sadly mistaken.

"Who the hell are you, brat?!" he snarled. "Are you not afraid that Ji Xuan will look for you?"

"Who the fuck is Ji Xuan?" I rolled my eyes and shrugged nonchalantly. "And why should I care?"

"You're signing your death warrant, brat!" the staff dude hollered. I sighed and glanced at White Tiger.

"Looks like my warning hasn't gotten to you yet. You haven't been shocked enough."

More electricity filled the air, causing them to shriek. Despite that, they refused to lose consciousness. Damn, but they were tough. Now that I had intervened, I actually planned on taking their blood tokens, but…

"…reinforcements, huh?"

Corvus alerted me to a new group of students approaching from my left. Considering their black garb and masks, I wouldn't be surprised if they belonged to the same group.

"Sorry, Miss." I told Lilith as I spun around and snatched her up in my arms. "It's going to be a bit rough, but we've to get out of here now."

"You…what do you think you're doing?!" Lilith cried. I ignored her as I completed my next summoning spell.

"Pegasus!"

The winged horse materialized in front of me. Tossing Lilith on top of Pegasus's back, I then jumped up to ride him. With a mental command from me, the white Constellation spirit took off and sprinted deep into the forest and beyond the reach of any pursuers.