Necromancer Academy’s Genius Summoner - Chapter 355

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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 Summoning Genius of the Necromancer School — Episode 355
Simon wandered through various corners of Pentamonium, taking in the sights of the festival.
There was plenty to see — Mechanical Undead demonstrations, lectures from high-ranking summoners — and he’d spent an enjoyable afternoon.
As the sun set, he returned to the Lodging. Simon and Kassan would share one room, Serne another.
He was pulling out a book, planning to study Curses for a bit before bed, when—
“Wait. Let’s talk.”
Kassan called him outside.
Even though this wasn’t the Dormitory, the meeting place was the same as always. Simon climbed to the Lodging’s rooftop and found Kassan gazing up at the night sky.
‘Come to think of it, there’s a full moon again tonight.’
Simon approached him and asked,
“No wine?”
“We’re on a mission. I’ll skip it.”
As Simon flopped down beside him, Kassan opened his mouth.
“Let me get straight to the point. The reason I wanted to see you—”
His eyes flashed like steel.
“I have a report about the mission.”
Simon swallowed hard and nodded.

* * *
The next morning.
At last, the moment of reckoning had arrived.
“Ugh, my heart’s pounding!”
“My voice keeps cracking. What do I do?”
The morning’s schedule was the 1st Year Necromancer students’ thesis presentation.
Simon stood with his back against the wall, rapidly scanning through the script of his pre-written thesis. Serne had been running late, so Kassan went to fetch her.
“Oh, working hard, are we? Kizen.”
Just then, a male student in a green and checkered school uniform struck up a conversation.
Simon racked his memory.
An Alland 1st Year—Bentz, wasn’t it? The one who’d shaken his hand with all his might.
“Don’t be so guarded. Today I’ll compete purely on—”
Whoosh!
He unfurled a thick sheaf of thesis papers.
“Summoning Magic skill alone.”
That was more than welcome. Simon smiled and replied,
“I’m looking forward to it, Bentz.”
“!”
At those words, Bentz’s face flushed with embarrassment.
‘K-Kizen remembers my name…the honor of it…! Wait, no!’
He suddenly smacked both his cheeks with audible cracks.
‘Don’t be happy about that! You’ll hurt your pride!’
Then he turned to gaze at his reflection in a nearby window.
“Who am I?”
He muttered to himself, adjusting his school uniform’s necktie and flashing his reflection a grin.
“A proud student of Alland.”
……
Simon decided to pretend he hadn’t seen any of that.
“Anyway!”
Bentz, having recharged his confidence, pointed sharply at Simon’s chest.
“This year’s Pentamonium thesis presentation is the worst in history! Let’s both be careful!”
“Why is it the worst?”
“Heh. You don’t know a thing! Look over there!”
Bentz pointed toward three judges seated in the front.
“From right to left: Kalaban of the Abyss of Sources, Bintra the Thesis Shredder, and Ratoni the Truth-Bringer.”
“What…what?”
“The most notorious judges at Pentamonium. Normally you’d see maybe one of them, but this year—terribly—all three have gathered in one place.”
Bentz rubbed his shoulders as if overcome by goosebumps.
“Yesterday was brutal. All the 2nd Years had their minds shattered. I heard seniors back at the Lodging whimpering that they were worthless, that they’d have to reconsider their future.”
“…Really, that bad?”
“They’re demons that gnaw away at your confidence down to the bone.”
Having said that, Bentz let out a heavy sigh.
“But the thing is, we’re only just now following a proper Dark Magic curriculum this year, right? Asking a student to write a thesis—what kind of originality are we really going to get? It’s a structure designed to fail, no matter what.”
“Mm.”
“So I’ve prepared the most difficult terminology and logic I can think of, just so the examiners won’t understand…….”
“What are you two doing?”
A pleasant voice, light as a spring breeze, cut through the conversation. Bentz spun around and flinched, backing away in alarm.
“You, you’re……!”
With copper-gold hair streaming like pages from a magazine, Serne approached with her hands clasped behind her back. Her eyes curved into a knowing smile as she dipped her head slightly.
“Tormenting Simon again, were you?”
“No, no! I wasn’t—!”
Bentz’s lips trembled so violently he couldn’t form proper words.
This woman was a sun. The feeling of being struck head-on by light radiating from a noble sun with no shield to block it. Bentz felt as though he were being scorched from head to toe, shriveled like a squid.
Simply meeting her eyes felt humbling. Standing like this was unbearable. He ought to gaze up at her from a great height. He ought to crawl along the ground on his belly.
“Serne.”
Simon spoke then, his tone gentle and corrective.
“?”
As she turned her gaze toward Simon with a bright smile, Bentz felt the crushing tension finally drain from his chest.
“I, I’ll excuse myself!”
Bentz hurried down the stairs in a rush. Serne watched his retreating figure for a moment before asking.
“What were you discussing?”
“Just the thesis examination.”
“Serne Eindarque. This is your second warning.”
Kassan, who had followed behind, sighed as he spoke.
“If you waste power even once more on something trivial, I’ll report it to your superiors and have you sent back to Rocksum.”
“That’s so mean~ I wasn’t doing anything—I was just standing there!”
Serne’s lips pouted, but Kassan dismissively ignored her.
Oddly enough, Serne would snap and snarl at Lorain, daughter of Neftis, but she seemed to actually listen when Kassan spoke.
Simon speculated that Kassan must be on her recruitment list as well.
“Be seated.”
And so the 1st Year thesis presentation began.
It started with Sierra from the Necromancer School. A 1st year female student in a red school uniform stood fidgeting, gauging the attention of those around her.
“The presentation hasn’t even started and the examiner’s eyes have already gone blank.”
Bintra, the examiner seated in the middle—known as the Paper Shredder—spoke up.
“Yesterday’s 2nd years were a disaster. Except for one, there was nothing worth mentioning.”
Kalaban, the examiner on the right—known as the Source From Hell—added her comment.
“The standard was indeed appalling, but we should nonetheless maintain professional composure and judge fairly without letting emotion cloud our judgment.”
Ratoni, the examiner on the left—known as the Proof Parrot—spoke.
The examiners exchanged light banter before the presentations began, but to the students’ ears, it sounded like nothing less than conversation among demons.
Soon Bintra, seated in the middle, spoke with a grave expression.
“Begin.”
“Yes, understood!”
The female student outputted an image via Mana Crystal Sphere, then placed both hands over her heart and took one deep breath. She then opened her eyes wide and looked directly at the examiners.
“I am Elaria, a 1st year from Sierra specializing in Summoning Magic. The subject of my research concerns the habits, physiology, and practical application of the Undead known as the Dragon Bone Ghost, which inhabits the marshlands.”
The moment she finished speaking, all three examiners’ expressions turned slack, and they leaned back deeply in their chairs. The air of “not interested” was already radiating from their faces and gestures.
The Sierra female student was somewhat flustered, but she pressed on without faltering.
“The Dragon Bone Ghost is an Undead that inhabits marshes primarily, and is found chiefly in the territories of the Kalos Kingdom. Its body length is approximately two to three meters, tail length thirty centimeters, shoulder height…….”
“Next.”
“Ah, yes! My apologies! The Dragon Bone Ghost is known to undergo transformation into an Undead during the decomposition process of monster corpses that have sunk into marshes. Particularly in deeper swamps…….”
“Next.”
“Though the Dragon Bone Ghost is classified as a Skeleton, its individual characteristics make it impossible to use Restoration Technique. Instead—”
“Next!”
They gave the prepared student barely a moment to speak. The girl’s pupils wavered anxiously.
But true to her nature as a Necromancer student, she pushed forward boldly. She skipped eighty percent of her content, flipping rapidly through the thesis pages. She brought out the information the examiners would actually care about.
“Please look at the projected image. This is the Summoning Magic Circle Formula for the Dragon Bone Ghost that I created in advance.”
Only then did the examiners sit up straighter.
“As you can see, the core rune is ‘Funeral Rite.’ And supporting this formula are—”
“Wait.”
This time it was Kalaban, the Source From Hell, who spoke. Her eyes gleamed sharply behind her glasses.
“I’m aware there’s already an existing research thesis on creating a Dragon Bone Ghost using the Funeral Rite rune. Give me your source.”
“The, the source is……!”
While the female student hesitated, Kalaban opened a pocket dimension and manipulated the Magic Circle—and several documents tumbled out with a flutter.
He used Enlargement Magic to make it large enough for the audience to see.
“‘Assembly-Centered Modeling Methodology for Dragon Bone Ghost Design’ and ‘Summoning Magic Interpretation of Funeral Rite Rune Language.’ I found two just by searching. So, Elaria—what exactly is the difference between these two theses and yours?”
The audience began to murmur, and Elaria stammered in reply.
“W-well, of course there are precedent papers on Funeral Rites and Dragon Bone Ghosts! But I applied the Kandal Formula to the deformation rate and rotation values of the formula……!”
“Prove it.”
This time, the “proof obsessive” Ratoni interjected.
“Give me a rational proof of why you thought the Kandal Formula would suit Dragon Bone Ghost design.”
“Y-yes, of course!”
She hastily scribbled a few equations on the blackboard, but Ratoni let out a derisive snort.
“It’s clear you’re forcing your own ideas onto the foundation of the existing ‘Summoning Magic Interpretation of Funeral Rite Rune Language’ paper.”
“Y-yes?”
“I’ll prove why the author of that paper used simple calculation instead of the Kandal Formula.”
Ratoni rose from his seat and began writing equations on the blackboard. The student thesis presentation had suddenly transformed into a lecture.
The irony of an examiner teaching the presenter—yet no mere student could interrupt one of Pentamonium’s elders.
Even after she was thoroughly dismantled by Ratoni, the assault continued.
“Why didn’t you cite your sources for the formulas?”
“That’s not how you handle Dragon Bone Ghosts. Have you actually assembled a Dragon Bone Ghost corpse yourself?”
“What exactly are they teaching the kids in Sierra?”
The examiners were like hyenas—at the slightest opening, they clung and tore, delivering withering criticism.
One look at the female student’s panicked expression made it clear her composure was fracturing.
“I will announce the evaluation results.”
Finally, the thesis-shredder Bintra picked up the female student’s paper.
“Garbage. Zero points.”
Then he began tearing the thesis to shreds before her eyes, scattering the fragments at her feet as he spoke coldly.
“Did you think Pentamonium was so easy? You thought you could just piece things together like assembling a Chimera?”
“I don’t think you should be quite so harsh.”
Kalaban from the “citation-hell faction” spoke coldly.
“Without even the minimum preparation, sincerity, or thought—just filling in obvious content. You were the one who disrespected Pentamonium first.”
In the silence of the hall, the female student hung her head like a criminal and descended the stairs. When her friends rushed to comfort her, the tears she’d been holding back finally spilled over.
‘That seemed a bit harsh.’
Simon, watching from the audience seats, grimaced.
It was true that the student Elaria’s thesis had its shortcomings, but he couldn’t help thinking it was unnecessary to corner a student still learning Dark Magic so savagely.
Bang!
The thesis-shredder Bintra slammed the table with his palm and opened his mouth.
“Today started out extremely unpleasant! Next!”

* * *
As the presentations progressed, the atmosphere of the hall grew increasingly brutal.
“Garbage. Zero points. Next!”
Torn paper fragments lay thick across the stage floor.
“Calling this a thesis! Looks more like a school assignment!”
“This is what’s wrong with the Generation of Peace! When I was a student, from start to finish……!”
“Setting everything else aside, there’s no sincerity or respect. Shouldn’t you at least master the basic format for a Pentamonium thesis before coming here?”
Threshing, threshing, threshing.
Like a threshing machine spinning, the mental fortitude of the students mounting the stage was being ground away. Sierra, Alland, and Moiran couldn’t escape those blades either.
Still.
“At least that one was better.”
The male student from Moiran.
The one who had muttered about bringing down Kizen before Simon yesterday received quite a favorable evaluation.
“Still far from sufficient, but at least the best among these.”
“We’re not asking for much. If you do this much, we just let it pass.”
For the first time, a student had his thesis returned without being shredded by the thesis-shredder Bintra.
The male student descended amid scattered applause from the audience, and his gaze naturally turned toward Simon.
“Now, it’s their turn.”
The thesis-shredder Bintra folded his arms and spoke.
“Come up, Kizen!”

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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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