Necromancer Academy’s Genius Summoner - Chapter 102

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Summoning Genius of the Necromancer School — Chapter 102
Betrayal.
The weight of that single word hung crushing and absolute. The silence deepened until even the fall of a needle would have thundered.
“……Betrayal, is it.”
Pinch shook his head slowly, not in anger but with something close to regret. Then he drew a long, measured breath.
“I have served the Oldwon Family faithfully for twenty years now. That’s longer than you’ve drawn breath in this world.”
He looked down at Simon with eyes gone cold.
“You, who’ve stood in my employ for barely four days—do you truly dare question the sincerity of my loyalty?”
“The matter of betrayal,”
Simon met him without flinching.
“isn’t something to brush past with appeals to time and age and feeling. Only clear fact matters.”
“Then what clear fact drives you to brand me a traitor?”
“The pirates you conspired with have confessed.”
Murmur. Murmur. Murmur.
The household began to stir, faces locked in shock.
“The naval soldiers from Blue Harbor heard them confess it themselves.”
“Confess. A necromancer of any standing could coax the answer they want from a prisoner’s tongue in his sleep. It’s that simple.”
“Then let’s go to the beach together.”
Simon spoke with deliberate sharpness.
“The pirates we’ve captured aren’t one or two. There’s no way I could have worked my will on every last one in so brief a span, is there? We can uncover the truth there.”
“We’re in wartime. The territories are overrun with pirates. There’s no leisure for this.”
It was finished.
That was Simon’s thought as he slowly dropped his stance.
“Then put the Count down first, and we can talk. You are a suspect in this betrayal.”
“I said there could be no compromise regarding the Count’s protection.”
“Uncle Pinch.”
Shun, still clasped in Pinch’s liquefied arm, spoke with a rigid jaw.
“Let me down.”
……
A direct command from the Count himself.
Whether temporary hire or anyone else, Pinch—now under suspicion of betrayal—had no grounds to refuse. The mood of those around them had already crystallized.
Pinch exhaled once more, long and slow.
“Very well.”
His knees bent in resignation, then suddenly thrust upward, launching him skyward.
In that same instant, Green Spheres tumbled from the pocket dimension, shrieking as they scattered poison mist and paralysis gas in all directions.
“Hack!”
“Watch out! Cover your nose!”
Everyone clamped cloth over mouth and nose. Through the roiling haze, Pinch’s lower body transformed to vapor, sweeping across the manor roof and disappearing beyond it.
“He really did……”
The Butler’s pupils trembled—his mind struggling to accept what he was witnessing.
Simon, his nose wrapped, cried out in a loud voice.
“I will pursue Pinch! The rest of you—spread word of his betrayal to the naval forces and all relevant parties!”
……
The Butler lowered his head, his face stricken.
“Please. I beg you—protect the Count……”
“You have my word.”
Simon immediately stepped onto Darkness and bolted in the direction Pinch had vanished.

* * *
Pinch flew a great distance, carrying Shun.
Past the manor, past the burning city, across desolate dunes, and finally out over the sea.
The sea was still thick with fog. As he cut through it, a pirate vessel came into view, bobbing alone on the dark water.
Slash.
Pinch descended onto the deck. The ship lay silent—no sign of life, only the weight of an oppressive quiet.
He bound Shun’s wrists roughly with rope, then hurled him onto the wooden planks.
“Ugh!”
“Stay still.”
Shun gasped in pain, pushing himself upright. Now he could see them—corpses of pirates scattered across the empty deck.
Beneath each body, a magic circle had been drawn. Pinch began to murmur an incantation, channeling Dark Magic.
Click. Click.
Shoon recoiled in panic, scooting backward on his seat until his back slammed hard against a pillar.
Flesh separated from corpses, leaving only bone as the undead began to stagger upright with a grotesque squelch.
‘Sk-skeletons…!’
“Get to work. Trash.”
Pinch barked the command. The skeletons scattered with a clatter of bones, moving with chaotic purpose.
They split the labor—raising anchors, gripping the ship’s wheel—preparing the vessel for departure. Such efficiency was possible only because the skeletons retained the vivid memories and habits of their former lives.
“Phew.”
Pinch flopped into a chair on the deck with the exhausted air of a man who’d run himself ragged. Watching the skeletons labor, Shoon turned his head to speak.
“Uncle Pinch.”
Pinch let out a short laugh.
“You’ve still got the presence of mind to call me that?”
“What did I ever do to deserve this? If there’s something I’ve upset you about—”
“It’s not you.”
Pinch pulled a cigar from his trouser pocket and stuck it between his teeth.
“The root of all this evil is your father.”
“…What?”
“The death of my sister. Your mother.”
Pinch’s mouth twisted into a grotesque smile.
“Do you know the truth of it?”
Pinch Nikiman.
Born into an obscure, fallen house, yet his talent was nothing short of genius. From childhood, he’d achieved overwhelming success, and whispers of his brilliance spread across the entire federation—so much so that he was already being touted as the most likely Special Admission Candidate #1 for Kizen’s next enrollment.
While the various noble houses jostled eagerly to recruit him, the most aggressive pursuit came from the Oldwon Family, a wealthy house based in Blue Harbor.
Pinch’s sister married the Oldwon Family’s eldest son, and Pinch himself signed an early exclusive contract as a Necromancer for the Oldwon house.
It should have been the beginning of a brilliant path. Yet somewhere, somehow, everything went wrong.
A year later, when entrance season at Kizen came around, Pinch received no special admission offer. Worse—despite swallowing his pride to sit the regular entrance examination, he failed with almost comic thoroughness.
The Oldwon Family became the laughingstock of high society. They’d poured vast wealth into acquiring Pinch, even arranging a marriage between him and their eldest son to secure the alliance, only to have him wash out before Kizen’s gates. A single failure.
In the end, Pinch enrolled at Alland, one of the Three Great Necromancer Schools—prestigious, but a clear step below Kizen.
There, he maintained grades in the top five percent and became an elite student, yet the ridicule surrounding his expulsion from Kizen and the Oldwon Family’s embarrassment never quite faded.
Still, Pinch worked with desperate intensity. He clung to belief in the “transfer” system by which top students from the Three Schools could ascend to Kizen. Surely, he told himself, Kizen would come calling for him.
While studying furiously for that day, a letter arrived from his sister, who had married into the Blue Harbor branch of the Oldwon house.
[I’m suffering so much, Pinch. Please take me home. I want to leave this place.]
He could guess how his sister was being treated by the Oldwon Family. He knew, too, that her suffering was his fault. Yet the more he understood this, the harder he drove himself.
[Just hold on a little longer, sister. Kizen will call for me soon, I’m sure of it. Once I’m admitted, our house will be restored. The world will see us differently.]
But no matter how perfectly he maintained his standing at Alland, Kizen never came calling.
Days passed in hollow futility, and at last, as graduation from Alland drew near—
Pinch learned that his sister was dead.
The official cause was illness. But at the funeral in Blue Harbor, once the household had fallen asleep, Pinch opened the coffin lid and examined his sister’s body with painstaking care.
Bruising across her entire frame—inflicted, almost certainly, by her husband. But worst of all, beneath the concealment of thick clothing, the stark imprints of rope around her neck.
There it was.
She had taken her own life.
Pinch wailed silently, soundlessly convulsing with sobs before the coffin, begging his dead sister’s forgiveness over and over. But the dead do not return.
A Necromancer’s art amounted to nothing more than desecrating corpses, twisting them into skeletons or shambling corpses. Three years of desperate study proved worthless. In that moment, Pinch despaired anew.
Exhausted from weeping, Pinch returned to the mansion in the small hours of dawn. From the lord’s chamber came the unmistakable sounds of a man and woman coupling without restraint.
It was obscene.
His sister’s corpse had not yet grown cold. Yet her murderer—the man who had driven her to death—was playing with another noble’s daughter, someone who’d attended the funeral.
Blood ran down Pinch’s chin.
With eyes blazing crimson, standing before the moaning door, Pinch made a vow.
He would bring the Oldwon Family to ruin.
He would strip them of everything they possessed.
Time passed. The lord of the house languished with a mysterious illness and died, leaving his young son—Shoon—to inherit the earldom while barely past childhood.
“Hehehehe! Ahahahaha!”
Pinch laughed like a madman.
With each revelation, Shoon’s expression had shifted kaleidoscopically, and Pinch found the boy’s vacant, shock-glazed stare infinitely amusing. He laughed and laughed.
“Now do you understand, nephew?”
Pinch shrieked.
“I poisoned your father! I am your father’s avenger—and the killer of the one who murdered your mother!”
“….”
“And I’ve been waiting for a moment like this, when all the Oldwon Family’s people are gathered in one place! There’s no escape. Everyone on this island will be slaughtered by the pirates, and the Oldwon Family will vanish from history! And the governance of Blue Harbor, the Oldwon Family’s wealth—all of it passes to the only surviving member of the house.
Pinch’s features twisted into something demonic.
To Pinch Nikiman alone.”
“……”
“What do you think of my plan, nephew?”
Shun closed his eyes tightly, then drew a deep breath and glared at Pinch.
“Your plan won’t work, Uncle.”
“Hmm? Why not?”
“Because Simon will come to stop you.”
Guffaw!
Pinch burst out laughing loudly.
“Right, you summoning that Special Admission Candidate from Kizen was the only variable in my plan. But after seeing him with my own eyes…… Ha! Unbelievable. A mediocrity with nothing remarkable about him is Special Admission Candidate Number One?”
Anger flashed across his eyes.
“I failed the entrance exam! And some mediocrity gets Special Admission Number One? Neftis must have gone blind in her old age! Damn it! Kizen! Kizen! Kizen! What’s so special about that place! What’s so special about that bastard!”
Pinch ran his fingers roughly through his hair and stuck a cigar back in his mouth. Smoke billowed out, and his expression gradually calmed.
“Fine. It’s all in the past anyway. I’ll take you to the Oldwon Ruins, strip their fortune, and then I’ll kill that Special Admission Number One and all those pirates with my own hands.”
“Simon won’t die!”
Just then the ship lurched violently. Pinch glared irritably at the skeleton manning the wheel.
“Steer properly, you……! Huh?”
A massive pirate ship suddenly burst through the thick fog, cutting through the water.
Crash!
“Whoa!”
The two ships collided head-on. The deck tilted sharply as the hull shook violently.
Shun rolled across the deck while Pinch anchored both feet with shadow aura and pushed himself up.
After lighting the cigar one more time, he flicked it with his finger and tossed the butt into the sea.
Step. Step.
Once the trembling from impact subsided, someone was walking across the opposite pirate ship’s deck. Pinch raised his shadow aura and opened his mouth.
“Who are you?”
Shun stared forward with hope and anxiety mixed in equal measure.
Whatever it was, the situation couldn’t get worse than this. Could it be Simon coming to rescue him?
‘It’s not Simon.’
Pinch’s thoughts ran differently.
They’d parted ways at the mansion just moments ago. By any reasonable measure, stealing a pirate ship and ramming it into another vessel in such a short time was impossible.
Pinch’s logic proved sound. The figure that appeared wore a wide-brimmed captain’s hat and had a black beard—the man was a pirate captain through and through.
“There you are, Count.”
It was none other than pirate captain Gail. His gaze fixed on Shun, whose wrists were bound.
“What are you doing here?”
Pinch furrowed his brow and asked.
“An obvious reason, wouldn’t you say?”
Gail grinned and stretched out his arm.
“Bring me the Count unharmed! You’re free to kill anyone who gets in the way!”
“Ohhhhh!”
Pirates poured across the deck from the opposite ship. Pinch let out a low chuckle as he drew up his shadow aura.
‘So he was the first to betray.’
Pinch and Gail had used each other according to their interests, but in the end, mutual betrayal was inevitable.
Gail despised necromancers, and Pinch wanted the Oldwon fortune all to himself.
‘They’re just small fry anyway. Settling things here and now isn’t such a bad idea.’
As the pirates rushed toward him, Pinch’s lips curled upward.
Meanwhile, Gail swallowed nervously, his eyes darting about with anxiety.
‘Thank God that didn’t get exposed. But what do I do now?’

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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