Necromancer Academy’s Genius Summoner - Chapter 283

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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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Necromancer Academy’s Summoning Genius Chapter 283
“Mmmph! Mmmph-mmmph!”
A dim, empty house.
A man in his twenties, his entire body covered in scars and tattoos, sat bound to a chair with his mouth gagged and both hands tied.
Though the cloth prevented him from speaking, his eyes bulged wide as his legs thrashed against the floor in a frenzy of resistance.
Merin stood before him with her arms crossed, eyes closed in an exercise of patience—until at last she could bear it no longer and bellowed.
“Ugh, be quiet! Just sit still!”
Her sharp command only intensified his struggling.
“Over here!”
As the tension escalated, Kamibarez arrived with Simon in tow. Merin turned to face them.
“You’re here?”
“What’s going on? Who is this man?”
Simon asked the question, and Merin began her explanation.
She had spent the afternoon moving through the town, asking residents about the Saint candidate named Sasha—only to have most of them brush her off with claims of ignorance or simply walk away, treating her with deliberate coldness.
But then there was one.
“What? Why are you looking for that girl? Who are you?”
A man who turned serious in an instant.
When Merin didn’t answer, he drew a dagger from his pocket and lunged at her.
He’d apparently misjudged her by appearance alone, thinking her an easy mark—only to find himself overwhelmed in mere seconds and now bound to a chair.
‘Could he be connected to the people who took Sasha?’
It seemed Merin had done something right. Simon approached the man with an air of satisfaction.
“B-be careful, Simon!”
“It’s fine.”
He then loosened the cloth gagging the man’s mouth.
“You %$@&#@!!!”
Curses spilled out immediately.
“You damn brats! Do you know who I am? I’ll rip your eyes out and——”
“Who are you, sir?”
Simon asked.
His tone was so casual and natural that the man nearly answered before his expression hardened.
“Will you tell me?”
Simon stared at the man for a moment, then turned away.
Townspeople had stopped in their tracks, curious about the commotion.
“Pardon me!”
Simon abandoned the man and approached the residents with quick strides.
They startled and hurried away like they were fleeing, but Simon followed just as swiftly.
“Do you know who that man is?”
Simon fell into step beside them, asking—but received no response.
He immediately changed his approach.
“We’re looking for a child named Sasha. If you know anything, even something minor……”
“Sasha?”
One resident’s expression froze.
“That monster can disappear for all I care.”
Monster.
A brutally candid word.
Simon fixed the town’s perception of Sasha firmly in his mind and pressed further.
“Do you know why Sasha disappeared?”
“Why do you keep bothering us? Who are you?”
So now they were turning it around, demanding to know his identity.
It would be problematic if rumors spread that Kizen was here. Besides, this place was Neutral Territory—beyond Kizen’s reach—so he couldn’t exercise any direct investigative authority.
[Khehehe! You’ve stumbled into a nuisance, boy.]
‘This is when I use the adult methods Dick taught me.’
[Adult methods?]
Simon reached into his pocket.
“Oh, look what I found in here.”
He opened his palm to reveal a single gold coin.
The adults reacted immediately. Watching their eyes twist with greed, Simon smiled to himself.
As it happened, the Dark Alliance’s currency—silver and gold coins—circulated freely even in Neutral Territory.
“Just tell me about that man.”
Simon produced another gold coin, and an older man glanced around nervously before leaning in to speak in hushed tones.
“Don’t say I told you. Gang. A gang. A pretty substantial one operating in these parts.”
“I see. What gang?”
“They call themselves the Sentinel Gang. They’re big enough to have a combat unit of Necromancers with open Cores. Our village is under their jurisdiction too.”
Simon drew out another gold coin, placing it atop the first two.
“So those gangs calling themselves the Sentinel—they took Sasha. Can I think of it that way? I won’t ask for anything else, so if you agree, just nod your head.”
The man nodded solemnly.
Simon gladly handed over three gold coins to both men and returned to where the gang member still was.
“Well?”
Merin asked. In the meantime, whether the gang member had said something else strange or not, Merin was hoisting him by the collar.
“No luck. He wouldn’t say anything else.”
The gang member chuckled darkly.
“Of course! This territory belongs to us, so the residents are on our side too! If you understand—”
“Wait, you just said this territory was under your jurisdiction?”
Simon replied with feigned innocence.
“You’ve admitted it so readily. There are many gangs, but everyone knows the Sentinel faction has a stranglehold on this entire region.”
The gang member’s expression hardened.
“So then—why did the Sentinel Gang take Sasha, and where did they take her?”
“I don’t know!”
“You bastard! This is infuriating! Tell us right now!”
Unable to contain herself, Merin jumped in, and the two of them started brawling again.
Simon quietly stepped back and turned to glance around.
He caught sight of Dick coming toward them. Simon held up his palm in a gesture telling him to stay back, then signaled with eyes and hands.
These two had stuck together throughout their time in Kizen. Dick caught Simon’s meaning immediately and, with a thumbs-up that said trust me, vanished somewhere.
And a moment later—
“Hehehehe, my apologies for the delay.”
Dick appeared dressed in an odd burlap robe, disguised as an elderly man.
‘…This doesn’t look like a disguise at all. He looks genuinely ancient.’
Dick had applied a lifelike mask covered in wrinkles over his own face, which made him look decades older while still allowing his features to show through.
The burlap robe he wore and the skulls dangling from his body were far removed from the image of a modern, stylish, elite Necromancer.
He looked like a traditional Necromancer of old.
“What in blazes is this old geezer—!”
Dick suddenly stepped forward and pried open the gang member’s eyes, stretching them up and down.
“Mmm.”
The man was so overwhelmed in an instant that he faltered, confused.
“What were you going to do?”
At Dick’s question, Simon played along adeptly.
“He wouldn’t give us information.”
The man began to convulse desperately.
“You’ve brought in a torture specialist! But it’s pointless! No matter what torture you inflict on me—!”
“Yaaah!”
Dick let out a guttural shriek.
“Don’t insult me. Torture is a very crude method.”
Dick, mimicking an old man’s voice convincingly, produced a pair of scissors.
Snick-snick!
Without hesitation, the man’s bangs were severed. At the eerie sound of metal, his expression grew increasingly rigid.
Next, Dick retrieved a Blood Potion from his Subspace and began dabbing blood on his fingertip, spreading it across the man’s forehead.
“Do you like it?”
Dick pointed toward the window.
The gang member looked at his reflection in the window glass and discovered a dotted line drawn in blood across his forehead.
It was a target.
For some inexplicable reason, the gang member’s entire body erupted in goosebumps, and he began to shudder.
“Information extracted through torture cannot be said to be accurate, drawn from the human mouth. The most reliable method is—”
Dick withdrew a surgical knife from a case and gripped it in his hand.
“—to split open the skull and examine the brain.”
“!!”
Dick was performing the role of a Necromancer with stunning conviction. So much so that not only the gang member, but even Merin and Kamibarez, watching from the side, were taken aback.
Dick produced a large needle and began pushing it into the man’s forehead. As the enormous needle sank more than halfway into his skull, going in and in with a sickening sound, the man, genuinely seized by terror, began to cry out and scream in desperation.
“Y-you lunatics! If you do this in Neutral Territory, you think you’ll get away with it?”
“Don’t worry. After I extract your brain, I’ll feed your corpse to the stray dogs.”
Dick brought the surgical knife to the man’s forehead. Blood trickled down, casting his vision in crimson.
In the end, the man, overcome by primal terror, cried out.
“I’ll talk! I’ll tell you everything!”
But Dick didn’t stop and drew the surgical knife in a long, deliberate line.
“Please! I’ll tell you anything I know! Just— just stop that!”
Finally, Simon grabbed Dick’s hand and spoke.
“Let’s hear him out first, then decide.”
The gang member promptly spilled everything.
He said the Sentinel Gang he belonged to had received a lucrative contract to kidnap Sasha and bring her in.
As a low-ranking member, he didn’t know who’d hired them, but the contractor knew that Sasha lived in this village, knew her address, and knew that this town fell under the Sentinel Gang’s sphere of influence.
The destination was the Haldun Mountain Range.
“We won’t need to split his skull open after all.”
Simon straightened up and spoke.
“It’d be wise to keep quiet about us. Of course, if your gang learns you’ve leaked organizational secrets, they’ll try to kill you for that alone.”
The gang member nodded vigorously, tears and snot streaming down his face.
With that, the four of them slipped out of the building. Dick tore off his bio-sculpted mask with a “Huff!”
“Ahh! Wasn’t my acting incredible?”
Simon patted Dick’s head approvingly.
Meanwhile, Merin and Kamibarez kept some distance between themselves and Dick as they walked.
“Hey, commoner. Don’t talk to me for the rest of today. You’re giving me chills.”
“…Dick, that scared me.”
“Ah, it was just acting!”
Dick protested, stuffing the bio-mask into his Subspace as he spoke.
Just then, Seiwir descended from the sky before them as if falling.
“Wh—what happened?!”
His voice was saturated with anxiety and urgency.
“The Priests—what about them?”
Simon asked in return.
“When I threatened them, they all scattered and fled. It seems they weren’t holding Sasha with them.”
“That’s exactly right, Agent Seiwir!”
Dick suddenly interjected.
“At first I was confused when you told us to investigate the residents instead of chasing the Priests, but you were right—it was the gang that kidnapped her, not the Priests! You’d already figured that out, hadn’t you?”
Seiwir, who had been momentarily dazed, suddenly broke into a confident smile and swept his bangs back.
“Of course! I suspected as much from the very beginning.”
“I knew it!”
The two of them were perfectly in sync, while Simon let out a hollow laugh.
‘Well, those Priests were certainly fakes.’
Indeed, the traces of the Holy Explosion that had erupted in the alley earlier—the shattered ground and all—had vanished without a trace.
“So then, all we need to do now is pursue the gang that took Sasha. How should we proceed?”
At Seiwir’s words, Merin’s expression turned questioningly.
“Shouldn’t you be giving us those instructions, Agent?”
“Ha, ha! If I simply give you the answer, that wouldn’t be proper education, would it? Come now, put your heads together and think it through! How should we best move forward?”
He was smiling, but the corners of his mouth twitched like they were convulsing. It felt like he was pressing them: ‘Think of something quick!’
Simon let out a small sigh and opened his mouth.
“I obtained a map from the gang member’s possessions.”
He unfolded the map and pointed to a section with his finger.
“The gang wouldn’t have the capital or technical skill to prepare a Teleport Magic Circle. To climb a mountain, they’d have used a carriage. The destination is the Haldun Mountain Range—there’s nothing out there but the mountain itself. The gang and the contractor will exchange Sasha there. And those contractors are likely—”
“From Efnel, right?”
Simon nodded at Merin’s words.
With their level of intelligence, they’d likely already know that Kizen is mobilizing. So they moved mercenaries to secure Sasha first, planning to exchange her for money in the Haldun Mountain Range.
“The best option would be for us to receive support for a Teleport Magic Circle, go to the Haldun Mountain Range, crush the gang, and rescue Sasha.”
Simon said that much, then fixed Seiwir with an unwavering gaze.
Seiwir hastily waved his hand.
“As I mentioned before, teleportation is difficult. If the coordinates’ location becomes known to Efnel’s side, and also…”
Seiwir offered his excuses earnestly, but he likely lacked the authority. Even if he had it, Benzion would find a Teleport Magic Circle considerably burdensome.
Only Kizen, the money-rotting vanilla regions, and the Ivory Tower had that capability.
……
Now that they’d caught on, doubt flickered in the eyes of both Merin and Kamibarez as they looked at Seiwir.
“Then another way.”
Simon pointed to the river on the map without appearing to notice.
“We’ll go upriver and cut them off in the middle. The gangs shouldn’t have reached the mountain yet.”
“Down the river? A boat—where on earth are we supposed to find a boat…….”
Simon fixed his gaze on Dick. Dick’s mouth twisted into a grin as he chuckled.
“I should check the mana engine on the boat!”

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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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