Necromancer Academy’s Genius Summoner - Chapter 226

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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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The Necromancer School’s Summoning Genius — Chapter 226
‘Blood Golem. Blood Golem~’
Simon couldn’t get Blood Golems out of his head all day—Aaron’s promise to teach him this new summoning magic had him far too excited.
The anticipation carried into the next morning. Waking up and realizing it wasn’t next week yet stung with disappointment, but he chose to embrace the wait with joy anyway.
“……Please, just stop.”
On the way to the dining hall, Dik spoke in a tone of utter exasperation.
“Blood Golems, Blood Golems! You’ve been humming that tune since last night, haven’t you?”
“I, I have?”
Embarrassment washed over Simon all at once, and he quickly looked away.
“Yes, you have! Pretty soon I’ll be able to play that melody on the piano too! Blood Golem~ Blood Golem~”
“You’re infected too.”
“Argh!”
When Dik let out a cry of despair, Simon laughed loudly.
Let him complain, let him criticize, let everyone say what they will. I’m still learning the Blood Golem, after all.
“Anyway! From now on, every time you say ‘Blood Golem,’ I’ll give you a good smack…….”
Meow~
The sudden sound of a cat made both of them stop in their tracks.
Near a stone wall, they spotted the back of a female student with bat wings.
‘It’s Kamibarez.’
The familiar silhouette made sense—she was crouching down, playing with a pair of kittens.
One was white; the other was black.
When Kamibarez grinned widely and extended her fingers, the kittens swatted at them with tiny paws, tap-tap-tapping away.
“So cute~”
Simon and Dik approached her quietly.
“Kamibarez?”
“Kyaaaa!”
Startled by the sudden greeting, her wings fluttered frantically.
Looking tense, she pressed her back against the stone wall, then recognized the two of them and let out a relieved sigh.
“Y-you scared me!”
“What are you doing here?”
“Oh, well…….”
Mew, mew.
A kitten climbed into Kamibarez’s lap and mewled for attention. As she stroked the black one’s head with an utterly smitten expression, it purred contentedly.
“Oh no, don’t go in there!”
Kamibarez caught the white kitten as it tried to crawl under her skirt and lifted it back onto her lap.
“……Hmm.”
Dik’s expression turned serious.
“Those might not be cats.”
Simon dismissed Dik’s joke with barely a glance and joined in playing with the kittens.
“They must have only just been born.”
The kittens grew wary when Simon drew closer.
But the moment he extended his fingers and wiggled them slowly side to side, they forgot all caution and pounced, pouncing and gnawing with harmless little teeth, causing a delightful commotion.
“Hey, that looks fun, doesn’t it?”
Dik joined in too. But the instant he brought his face close, a kitten’s claws raked across his cheek and sent him sprawling backward.
Simon burst out laughing, and Kamibarez gasped in alarm, pulling the kittens protectively into her arms.
“N-no, stop! Are you all right, Dik?”
“Ow, that hurts……!”
Dik touched his face tenderly and glared at the kitten nestled in Kamibarez’s embrace.
“I’m telling you, those really might not be cats.”
“That joke is unfunny.”
“I’m not joking! I mean it literally—they could be monster cubs! Look at that! See the tiny horns in the middle of its head!”
“……Horns?”
Simon’s expression grew serious. He carefully felt the kitten’s head.
His fingertips detected something jutting out—a very small horn hidden beneath the fur.
“Th-that can’t be right! Whitey and Blackie aren’t monsters!”
Kamibarez hugged both kittens to herself and let out a squeak of protest. She’d already named them, it seemed.
Dik shrugged.
“On what basis are they not monsters?”
“Because they’re so good and cute—they can’t possibly be monsters!”
“How cowardly, resorting to emotional appeals. Damn.”
“Hey, you slackers!”
A sharp cry rang out from behind, and a bucket flew at Dick.
The bucket struck him right on the scratched area as he turned, and he flipped backward with a yelp.
“I told you to wait at the Academic Hall cafeteria!”
Merin approached with long strides, her sky-blue hair streaming behind her.
“It’s been twenty minutes! Twenty! Do you know how embarrassing it is to sit alone at a crowded student cafeteria? Everyone whispers as they pass—’Oh, she’s eating by herself!'”
Dick rubbed the spot where the bucket had hit him.
“While we’re at it, maybe you should reflect on why you don’t have any friends to eat with besides us?”
“I have plenty of friends!”
Merin’s face flushed as she shouted.
“Shut it! If you lot were late over something pointless, I won’t let this slide—wait!”
Merin spotted the kittens nestled in Kamibarez’s arms.
Her angry expression melted like spring snow, and a smile bloomed across her face.
“They’re adorable!”
“Right? Right?”
The two girls were utterly captivated by the kittens’ charm, fussing over every tiny movement they made.
Simon rose from his seat, while Dick pulled out a notebook to check it.
“Hmm, I should contact the wardens—wild monsters have appeared on the Kizen Campus Grounds, so we need them eliminated.”
………
Merin shot Dick a sharp glare. Kamibarez gasped in alarm, hugging the kittens tighter.
“Please, please don’t! Dick! I’ll take good care of them!”
Dick hesitated as those large violet eyes glistened with tears.
“No, it’s not a problem with you—”
“Honestly, you’ve got no manners. How can you talk about slaying such cute little things? If you call adults over, just wait and see.”
“Listen, you two.”
Simon stepped in quickly to mediate.
“I’m against culling them too, but Dick has a point. If we keep them on campus and they turn out to be actual monsters, we could have a real incident on our hands. We need a proper solution.”
“Hmm.”
Merin, who had been thinking for a moment, spoke up.
“Then let’s go to the Female Dormitory. I’ll hand them over to some servants I know. I’ll also call someone to determine whether they’re actual monsters. Fair?”
Simon nodded readily, and though Dick agreed, he scratched his head with a bewildered expression.
“This is exhausting—do we really need to go that far? If we just leave them, their mother will find them on her own, won’t she?”
“……Did you forget this is a Necromancer academy? What if someone strange catches them and uses them for experiments?”
“Oh, I didn’t think of that.”
And so they reached an agreement. The four of them headed to the Female Dormitory with the kittens.
“Ha-ha! Good afternoon!”
As they entered the restricted area, Dick made his presence known with an even wider smile than anyone else. Though Merin shot him a warning look, he had already cornered one of the servants and was chatting away.
“Um, well……!”
Kamibarez approached the dormitory storage manager with the kittens in her arms, explaining the situation and asking if they could keep them in the female dormitory courtyard for a time.
“Students like you pull this stunt about once a year.”
The servant let out a weary sigh.
“Student, I sympathize with the kittens’ plight, but we have our own duties. We can’t keep animals indefinitely.”
Kamibarez insisted she would handle all feeding and other troublesome tasks herself, and pleaded that they could keep the kittens just until they found their parents—but it fell on deaf ears.
“Ahem.”
Then Merin, standing behind Kamibarez, cleared her throat softly.
“I heard the Magical Stone prices in Rocksum have risen quite a bit lately. Or are they set to rise?”
………
The servant’s expression hardened. Simon gave a bitter smile and tried to stop her.
“Merin. Don’t abuse your influence like that.”
“Who’s saying anything wrong?”
Merin smiled like a queen.
“I’m just pondering commodity prices.”
She couldn’t afford to make an enemy of the institution over something as trivial as pet care.
In the end, the servant relented on the condition that the kittens could be kept in the storage shed for exactly two months—whether they were identified as monsters or not, they would be removed after that.
“Thank you so much!”
Kamibarez bowed repeatedly in gratitude.
The newly freed kittens wandered about before recognizing who would feed them, and they soon sprawled in front of the storage manager, purring for attention.
The manager’s expression softened at the sight, though she cleared her throat self-consciously with the students watching.
“Well then, students, you’d best be going. You need to prepare for your next class.”
“Yes!”
“I’m counting on you.”
Things had wrapped up more smoothly than expected. As the three of them slipped out of the Female Dormitory, Dick came bounding toward them, breathless and grinning—the same messenger boy who’d been talking with them earlier.
“Haha! Big news, big news!”
Dick began spilling fresh intelligence without pause.
“Swords, spears, war hammers, arrows—you name it, Kizen’s been clearing out Rochester’s entire arsenal! And that’s not even the half of it. Word just came in that they’re sourcing weapons directly from Langoustin now!”
Simon’s eyes sharpened.
“It has to be connected to the next exam’s theme.”
“Exactly what I thought too.”
Kamibarez tilted her head uncertainly.
“That’s… strange, isn’t it? If we’re being tested on Dark Magic, weapons seem rather out of place.”
“Or maybe it’s something like this?”
Merin jumped in with an idea.
“They make us each pick a weapon, then have us all fight each other in the Colosseum Arena!”
“No way.”
Dick shook his head and continued.
“Most of what they’re buying from Kizen would be cheap garbage. If that’s all they’re giving us, we’d just use Combat Magic instead.”
Kizen was buying weapons.
This information alone wasn’t enough to lock down the exam’s theme, but it was clearly a crucial piece of the puzzle.
‘Weapons.’
Simon’s mind grew complicated as he turned the clue over.

* * *
After finishing afternoon classes, dusk settled across the campus.
Simon scaled the walls again tonight. He planned to visit Pier’s Ruins and discuss this new power called Cloud that he’d acquired, conversing with Pier about its nature.
He walked through the Forbidden Forest at a leisurely pace, then lifted his gaze to the sky above.
‘The moon’s awfully bright tonight.’
The air was colder than usual, so Simon drew his shoulders up against it and pressed forward. The path was one he’d taken so often by now that familiarity had settled into his bones.
‘…Hm?’
But that very familiarity twisted into strangeness. Simon dropped to a crouch, alert.
Footprints. Fresh ones.
‘I avoided the sentries’ patrol routes getting here. Could this be an irregular scout?’
Looking closer, the prints weren’t human. The shape kept shifting, the stride length inconsistent. Something monstrous, but nothing in the Forbidden Forest moved like this.
Simon stilled his presence and carefully traced the tracks.
“…!”
Cold dread raced up his spine. He ducked behind a tree, then risked a careful peek ahead.
Hiss. Hisssssss.
A grotesque black form moved across the ground with writhing tentacles. It resembled some walking squid, its body gelatinous and malleable as slime.
Its skin was dark as midnight. Where a head should have been, there were only two horns jutting from either side, no eyes, no nose, no discernible face.
Something like a mouth protruded from its mass, dragging across the earth as it moved—searching, searching intently for something.
‘What in the world is that?’
This abomination had never appeared once in the entire first semester, yet here it was tearing through the Forbidden Forest. Dark Element radiated from its form—it was undead, certainly—but it didn’t feel like anything Kizen would command.
Chirp-chirp-chirp.
Simon’s head snapped down in alarm.
‘…Startled me.’
Erzsebet’s Corpse Spider was gesticulating at him frantically, then scuttled away and began waving its hindquarters, clearly signaling for him to follow.
Simon committed the monster to memory once more, then bolted after the spider. A moment later, a tall Skeleton came into view, waiting at a distance.
“Pier!”
Pier stood fully armed—cloaked in a Shadowless Cloak, the Sword of Ruin drawn and ready.
“You saw it too? That thing back there—”
[Saw it.]
Pier’s psychic presence radiated thick fury.
[Damn it. I didn’t expect the bastard to move this fast.]
“So that means…”
[Yes. An Ancient Undead sent by Magnus.]
Simon bit his lip. It seemed Pier’s psychic presence had been detected, and Magnus had dispatched his servants in response.
[An Ancient Undead named Talaje. I’ve found seven of them in total—the creature itself and six clones.]
Pier hefted the Sword of Ruin onto his shoulder, his expression grim.
[Erzsebet’s already spinning a web-barrier to keep these abominations from escaping the Forbidden Forest. But it’s only a matter of time before they reach the Ruins.]
“…Mmm. What should we do?”
[Magnus has sensed my presence. I’m going to draw them out beyond Rocksum and lead them away.]
Simon shook his head at those words.
“I can’t allow that, Pier.”
Pier was the Legion’s most vital administrator. No matter how thoroughly Magnus had tracked him, Simon couldn’t afford to expose his heart.
“You said even the Legion Commander can’t enter Rocksum while Neftis guards it, didn’t you? Then Pier staying in Rocksum is the best course.”
[So what’s your plan? If Magnus uncovers the 7th Legion’s true nature, everything falls apart.]
Simon pressed his lips into a thin line, thinking hard. At last, he spoke with quiet resolve.
“If running is futile no matter where we go, then I’ll gladly accept the challenge. I’ll destroy Magnus’s Ancient Undead.”
[……Listen.]
“Magnus stole my father’s undead from me. I have no intention of remaining on friendly terms with him.”
Pier couldn’t help but think: like father, like son.
Yet it was Pier’s role to offer wise counsel to the young Legion Commander.
[Talaje’s abilities are exceptional. It’s not specialized in combat or destruction, but Magnus’s power has made it formidable. If you let it escape, then we’re looking at all-out war between Legions.]
“We can do it. We haven’t been idle all this time, have we?”
Simon reached into a pocket dimension and withdrew a small notebook. He scribbled something in cursive handwriting, then held the page out to the Corpse Spider.
“Send this note to Kassan in Boys’ Dormitory room 409. Kassan knows our situation and will help gladly.”
[Shrieeeeek!]
The Corpse Spider accepted the paper from Simon. It secured the note to its body with silk thread and scurried quickly out of the forest.
“There.”
Simon turned back to Pier.
“All we have to do is destroy Talaje here so it can’t report back to Magnus. Tell me Talaje’s abilities, Pier.”
There was no avoiding this now.
War between Legions was imminent.

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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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