Necromancer Academy’s Genius Summoner - Chapter 268

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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, Episode 268
At that same moment.
“Phew!”
Merin, who had descended to the sea floor and just now surfaced, clambered onto the platform with labored gasps.
The moment she emerged, she filled an Air Magic Circle with air and checked her Thung Pad.
‘That makes six now. I’m picking up two coins each time I dive.’
The fierce Infinite Competition that had dominated the exam’s opening stages had subsided, and now everyone was focused on hunting coins.
By this point, some students had likely already collected all ten coins and moved out to the Outer Sea to hunt for points.
‘I need to push forward before the monsters in the Outer Sea start running thin.’
Merin filled the Air Magic Circle and dove back into the sea.
Splash!
Schools of brilliantly colored fish swam past, their scales catching the sunlight that filtered down from above, scattering it into a beautiful luminous shimmer.
If this weren’t an exam, she would have lingered to savor such a sight, but unfortunately there was no time for that.
Merin used the fins that Simon had developed to descend rapidly through the water.
While it was called the sea floor, the depth was mercifully shallow, so she could reach it quickly. The real danger came from other competitors and attacks from sea monsters.
‘Anyone around?’
After scanning her surroundings carefully, Merin began swimming slowly forward while scrutinizing the bottom.
Kizen had apparently done some kind of treatment on the area, so visibility was fine with the naked eye. Still, coins buried in sand were maddening to find. She’d cursed Kizen more than once while sifting through the sand.
‘Ah.’
Merin paused mid-examination. A patch of sand on one side was trembling at irregular intervals.
‘That’s a monster.’
She placed her right hand over the Magic Circle drawn on her thigh, then moved her hand away and activated it like drawing a pistol.
‘Ice Bolt!’
A shard of ice shot from the Magic Circle and struck dead center on the trembling sand.
The response was immediate. A ray-shaped monster that had been hiding burst from the sand and thrashed in agony.
‘Good.’
One of the patterns on the expanded Magic Circle faded. That single pattern represented her remaining shots. Nine left.
‘Ice Bolt! Ice Bolt! Ice Bolt!’
With each impact, the monster was pierced by ice shards and went limp.
Taking four shots to kill one creature meant her efficiency was somewhat low, but in the sea there was no way around it. Everyone faced the same conditions.
Confirming her points had risen on the Thung Pad, Merin searched thoroughly around where the monster had been.
‘Just as I thought!’
She exclaimed in satisfaction. There was one coin where the creature had been hiding.
She carefully picked it up and brought it to her wrist where the Thung Pad hung; the bracelet’s tongue flicked out and licked it down eagerly.
Storing coins in a Pocket Dimension would result in disqualification. They had to be stored with the Thung Pad or kept on their person.
‘Points went up from defeating that monster too. Let’s find the next one!’
Merin was among the top-ranked students in terms of pacing.
When the exam first began and students were fighting each other in a frenzy, she had waited on the platform and conserved her strength.
Then, once the students’ competitive edge had dulled and their energy faded, she set out—quickly alternating between the platform and the sea floor, recovering coins methodically.
Thinking back to the harsh criticism Jane had leveled at her during the last BMAT exam feedback, her face still burned.
Pacing. Pacing was crucial. She would never repeat that mistake again.
‘Found another one!’
A coin was caught in what looked like a thicket of seaweed.
Merin moved quickly toward it, but again a monster was lying in ambush. A mollusk-type creature suddenly lunged out and sprayed poisonous gas in her direction.
‘Ugh! Another one?’
A Danger Rank 3 monster—the pulpa.
It boasted the highest population numbers in this sea, a horrifying creature that spewed toxic gas from what looked like an anus to poison and consume fish and people alike.
But even with poison splashed across her face, Merin raised her right arm without hesitation.
‘Ice Bolt!’
Thwack!
The pulpa took a direct hit from the ice shard and lost its strength. Merin surged up and grabbed Ice Bolts in both hands, jamming them directly into the creature’s body.
Green blood sprayed as the monster went limp. She exhaled a quiet sigh of relief at the sea floor.
‘Not even poisoned. I have Byeol-Ya to thank for that, don’t I?’
The poison-eating class had sometimes seemed hard to grasp, but now not just Merin but many students were feeling its benefits firsthand.
In fact, students who had taken Byeol-Ya’s Poison Magic class remained unharmed when hit by the pulpa’s toxic attack, while students from other professors’ Poison Magic classes struggled terribly against the poison. Some of them couldn’t take it and climbed up to the platform to start brewing antidotes.
Merin suddenly felt sorry for having resented Byeol-Ya.
‘If I make it into the top rankings, I should go pay her a visit.’
The search continued.
After some time, she found one more coin, bringing her total to nine.
Just one more coin and she could advance to the Outer Sea, but checking the remaining Air Magic Circle drawn on her wetsuit, she knew it was time to head back to the surface.
‘Hmm, it seems a shame to head up just yet. Anything worthwhile nearby?’
She was methodically combing the seafloor, making the most of her time.
Whoosh.
A flash of colorful fish scattered past her in sudden panic. Merin turned to see what had startled them.
“!”
Behind the fleeing school of fish, a creature emerged—something far larger than any human.
A Danger Rank 4 shark monster, Gamban. And caught between its jaws, thrashing weakly, was what appeared to be a Kizen student’s leg.
“……!”
Merin froze in shock. Then, as her Barrier Gauge finally depleted, the student’s body inside the shark’s mouth vanished in a teleport.
Robbed of its prey, the monster rolled its eyes in rage, then spotted Merin suspended motionless in the water and charged.
‘Oh!’
She fled, thrashing through the current, but there was no way a human could outswim Gamban in its own domain.
‘I have to fight.’
She made her choice and checked her Ice Bolt reserves.
Two shots left. She spun, extending her right arm, as Gamban lunged with gaping jaws.
‘Ice Bolt!’
Both bolts streaked forward, striking the monster’s torso with satisfying thuds—but they only drew blood. If anything, they only enraged it further.
‘Ugh!’
Gamban’s razor teeth clamped down on her right arm.
Her Barrier Gauge plummeted with terrifying speed, shifting from green to yellow.
‘No, I can’t—!’
She drove her fists down on the monster’s face, again and again, but it didn’t flinch.
Her Barrier Gauge—her lifeline—had dropped below half. She couldn’t afford to lose all her Coins and Points like this.
‘Someone—please—!’
Slither.
Whip.
At the moment of desperation, a sickly green whip descended from above, coiling around Gamban’s body like a serpent.
Merin’s head snapped up. A girl floated above, both hands spread wide, weaving Dark Magic.
It was none other than—
‘Claudia!’
Gamban thrashed in agony as the toxin sank in, and its grip on Merin weakened.
Claudia flashed a signal with her eyes.
‘I don’t know what’s happening, but—’
Merin found her courage.
She could have wrenched her arm free, but instead drove it deeper into the creature’s mouth while unleashing her own Dark Magic.
Freezing.
The shark’s insides began to crystallize.
A creature that dwelled in such warm waters grew hypersensitive to sudden temperature shifts.
‘And if its interior freezes solid—’
The toxin ravaging it from within, the violent cold crystallizing its core.
Gamban’s strength finally gave way, its body going limp.
‘Got it!’
At once, the Thung Pad chimed. One thousand Points split between them—five hundred each.
They’d brought down Gamban safely enough, but this was no time to drop their guard.
Merin’s head rose, her gaze wary as she fixed on Claudia.
‘What’s she planning? If she’s after my Coins—’
But Claudia made no aggressive move. Instead, she smiled faintly and pointed upward with one finger.
Gurgle.
The air was running out. With no other choice, Merin kicked toward the surface, and Claudia followed.
Then—
“Haaa!”
Merin burst through the surface, gasping desperately. She’d nearly drowned down there.
Claudia surfaced beside her, drawing breath as well.
“…….”
An awkward silence settled between the two girls.
Merin kept her mouth shut, averting her gaze in embarrassment, before finally speaking.
“Hey, thanks for sav—”
“I owed you an apology. Merin.”
Merin’s eyes widened at Claudia’s words.
“……About what I said before. I don’t know if you’ll accept it, but I’m sorry. I apologize.”
Claudia’s expression grew somewhat lighter as she said this.
Merin noticed that her recently tense demeanor had shifted, and she smiled quietly.
“There we go! Why are you being so sappy? People said doing things you don’t normally do is dangerous.”
“I apologize and this is what I get!”
Claudia’s face reddened at the remark, and she shook her head with a serious expression.
“I’ve decided to end the boycott.”
“You were running around so hard about student rights and all that.”
“Ugh—I don’t know. I think I went a little crazy for a while. I’m mortified. And.”
Claudia opened her palm. The Toxic Whip Magic Circle she had just used was still shimmering.
“I think I’ve been misunderstanding Professor Byeol-Ya.”
“Hmm.”
Merin’s lips were curling upward when a male student behind them quietly approached, preparing a Curse.
Just as he was about to release it, the two girls spun around simultaneously as if they’d been waiting, extending their right arms.

A barrage of poison and ice Dark Magic pelted the male student’s Barrier.
In an instant, his Barrier Gauge hit zero, and before he could cast a single Curse, he was teleported away.
“Cheeky bastard.”
Merin laughed aloud.
Claudia joined in, then hesitated a moment before gathering her courage and making the first proposal.
“Merin, want to form an alliance just for this exam?”
After a brief hesitation, Merin nodded slightly while brushing back her hair.
She’d heard the apology and they’d made peace—there was no reason to refuse.
The two clasped hands.

* * *
‘Over there! Over there!’
‘There’s one more Coin!’
Kizen students in wetsuits clustered together, searching the Sea Floor. They moved in teams of three.
‘Finally, I’m getting one Coin……!’
Whoooosh!
Something burst through with a sudden rush of water and foam, and the Coin on the bottom vanished. The students’ gazes snapped toward it.
‘What…what is that?’
‘Is that a Skeleton? Riding in the Sea?’
While other students repeatedly dove to the bottom to hunt for Coins and swam back up to the Platform, Simon alone moved through the Sea at a frenzied pace, plucking Coins as he went.
‘Is he taking the same exam as us?’
‘He’s playing a completely different game.’
Simon paused briefly while rummaging through the Sea Floor, then collected his tenth Coin.
This satisfied the minimum requirement.
‘Deimos. Let’s head back to the surface.’
Deimos’s head turned upward and shot skyward like an arrow. Students who were swimming laboriously with their legs watched in envy.
Splash!
In seconds, they broke the surface. When Simon pointed to a nearby Platform location, Deimos carried him directly there.
“Good boy.”
Simon patted Deimos’s head after landing on the Platform. The creature nuzzled his palm happily.
When Simon turned to look behind him, he spotted two male students frozen stiff. He asked them with a smile.
“Want to fight?”
The students, glancing back and forth between Deimos and Simon, shook their heads frantically and dove back into the water as if fleeing.
“Huh? I wasn’t planning to chase you off. I feel a bit bad now.”
Simon charged an Air Magic Circle and sat down to check his Points.
1st Place – Elisa: 2,500 Points
(10 Coins)
2nd Place – Aun: 1,540 Points
(0 Coins)
3rd Place – Hector: 1,100 Points
(10 Coins)
4th Place – Shatel: 980 Points
(10 Coins)
The point gaps had already widened considerably while he took his time. They were all students who had headed to the Outer Sea.
The 2nd place student, Aun, seemed to have employed a strategy of abandoning Coins and going straight to the Outer Sea to accumulate Points first.
[Kekeke! You think you can catch up? The first place already has 2,500 Points.]
‘I’ll manage.’
Simon folded a few fingers as if calculating, then spoke.
‘Ten minutes ought to do it.’
[What?]
Pier’s voice crackled with disbelief.
[Kekeke! You madman. What insane stunt are you cooking up 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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