Necromancer Academy’s Genius Summoner - Chapter 417
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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 417
Whiiiiiiing—!
Simon and Rette were climbing the Snowy Mountain, braving the fierce cold.
‘God, this is absolutely killing me.’
The bitter wind cut through his collar, and the mucus from his nose froze solid before it could drip.
All he could see was an endless white slope stretching into nothing.
His feet sank deep into the snow with each step, making walking difficult enough—and then there were the Snowy Mountain monsters attacking. His stamina was depleting fast.
Even Simon, who was from the mountainous Rescale region, had never experienced such a treacherous climb.
“Rette! Are you holding up?”
“Yes, I’m fine.”
Her spirited reply came from some distance ahead. Around her lay the corpses of Snowy Mountain monsters.
At this rate, she wasn’t a saint of the stars—she was a saint of blood.
Everywhere she passed, the snow turned crimson with gore. Yet her white robes and hair remained pristine white, utterly untainted.
“They’re really persistent, aren’t they?”
With her cheeks flushed from cold, she cupped her hands and breathed warmth into them.
“Rette, the cold is too severe to climb today.”
Simon finally voiced the thought that had been circling in his mind repeatedly.
“Why don’t we retreat for now and try again later?”
“Later, when?”
Her response was cold.
“This bitter cold will continue for months. If we go back, we’ll just find more excuses. We have to go today—with the resolve that if we don’t find Escale Village today, we’ll freeze to death.”
“……You’re serious?”
“Yes, completely serious.”
Simon couldn’t help but admire her.
True, Simon had such extensive mountain experience that fatigue didn’t affect him as much, but Rette, who had spent her entire life on flat ground, must have been suffering several times over. Yet she never complained, silently cutting through monsters and pressing onward up the mountain.
Crack-crackle-crackle!
The sound of Rette’s Holy Arrows smashing monster skulls echoed through the air.
“At least the fighting keeps my body warm.”
She approached again, having turned the area around her into a sea of blood, breathing warmth into her cupped hands.
“Need another Warmth blessing to raise your body temperature?”
Simon shook his head.
“It’s fine. I can manage on my own now.”
“……What?”
Warmth.
It was white magic of the blessing type that blocked the cold and maintained body heat.
Simon had carefully studied the structure of the magical circle Rette had cast for him at the beginning of the climb, and he’d practiced it repeatedly during the arduous journey through the bitter cold. And finally—
Whoosh!
He succeeded in completing the blessing through his own power. Rette let out a hollow laugh.
“So that’s what you’ve been doing this whole time…….”
A necromancer was using white magic. Even though the impossible was happening right before her eyes, Rette couldn’t quite believe it.
Was this person really a necromancer?
—Then what if you thought of it this way? What if Simon wasn’t a necromancer at all, but simply a separate entity?
Now that she thought about it, Ellen—the Efnel impostor she’d briefly met on the Sacred Express Train—had said something like that back then.
A separate entity.
Come to think of it, that did make sense. This person was definitely too much to be called a necromancer.
“What are you thinking about so hard?”
When Simon suddenly asked, Rette jumped in surprise and stumbled backward.
“Oh! You startled me!”
“?”
Rette glared at Simon with a growl, then huffed and turned her head away.
“Your very existence is sacrilege, as I thought.”
“……That came out of nowhere.”
“Wait here a moment.”
She approached and opened his garment at the chest. Simon’s face flushed and he hesitated to resist, but she gripped his hand firmly and fixed him with a pointed stare as if commanding him to stay put.
“You said you cast Warmth earlier. Are you warm now?”
“……Now that you mention it.”
He was cold.
Time had passed, and his Warmth blessing had degraded to a double layer, so he’d cast another to maintain a triple layer, but he didn’t feel very warm at all.
“Take a look, if you have eyes.”
Rette pointed to the magical circle drawn on Simon’s body.
A double-layered state. Simon’s blessing had vanished, leaving only Rette’s blessing effect intact.
“Why is this happening? I was sure I cast it correctly.”
“What rune language did you use?”
“Not Kenterium?”
“The formula? Did you know about White Code and Flat Note when you made it?”
“What are those?”
She exhaled softly.
“To layer blessings, you need to cast a blessing that meshes precisely with the first. Your curses deliberately twist the formula to make them hard to break, but blessings work differently.”
She brought her palms together and pressed them against Simon’s chest.
Her hands were warm, probably because of the Warmth spell already in effect.
Soon she closed her eyes and chanted the incantation in a hushed voice.
‘Ah.’
The double-layered Warmth that had been in place dissolved, replaced by a new triple-layered Warmth.
“That’s the method I applied.”
Rette withdrew her hands and smiled sweetly.
“Feels better now, doesn’t it?”
…….
Simon was about to thank her when Rette suddenly turned away.
“Once we reach the village, I’ll teach you properly. La Escrim.”
At those words, Simon snapped to attention.
“……Really? You mean it?”
“You’ll receive compensation from Israphil once this mission is complete, but either way, you’re working hard for the Sacred Federation. I can afford a little mercy, can’t I?”
Even as she said this, her expression suddenly shifted to indignation.
“Honestly, let me be frank—that La Escrim you used at dawn was absolutely terrible! My face burned just watching it! If you’re going to use my original technique, do it properly!”
Simon laughed nervously, backing away at her sudden change of tone.
“I’ll do better next time.”
“Don’t go around telling people this is white magic that I created! I’m embarrassed!”
Rette turned her head sharply and walked off.
‘She helps me, then does me favors, then gets angry. She’s completely self-centered.’
And besides, Simon found it somewhat surprising that Rette was willing to teach him white magic at all.
Given her temperament, he’d thought she’d be even more guarded, using Kizen’s Special Case #1 as an excuse to keep him in check.
“Hurry up! I’m freezing to death!”
“Yeah, I’m coming!”
* * *
Whiiiiing!
Three hours passed after that, and the bitter cold showed no signs of relenting.
‘Will it ever let up? Ever?’
The cold seemed to be saying exactly that. Simon marveled at his own gift for communing with nature, and wondered what it might have been like to become a druid instead of a necromancer.
‘Wow, seriously, I’m going to freeze to death.’
He’d cast the warmth blessing repeatedly, but now both his stamina and mental reserves were reaching their limits.
Worse, the blizzard was so thick he couldn’t tell where anything was, couldn’t even be sure he was moving forward at all. It felt like he was going in circles in the same spot.
Crackle.
Simon unfolded the rough map Israphil had given him. But using it to navigate was next to impossible. The blizzard was too severe—he couldn’t make out a single landmark shown on the map.
“Rette. If we can’t find Escale Village, we just freeze to death, right? Still feel the same way?”
……Ugh!
Her face flushed, she bit her lip, then let out a sharp cry.
“Of c-course! I’ll find it no matter what!”
Then she huffed indignantly and began searching the area around her.
“Don’t push yourself too hard.”
After a gentle word, Simon began his own search.
‘Hm?’
But he sensed a presence nearby.
Simon quietly drew his sword and moved forward.
Something came into view.
As he drew closer, he saw someone sitting in place, rummaging through the snow.
“Huh? What’s this?”
The figure noticed Simon first. It was a man in his early thirties, wearing a fur coat.
“What?! You two! How did you get here?”
‘A person!!’
Simon’s face lit up.
“Oh, are you perhaps a resident of Escale Village? We…!”
“Are you out of your minds?”
The man shouted abruptly.
“In this bitter cold, climbing the mountain—what were you thinking? You nearly got yourself eaten by the Snow Woman!”
“……The Snow Woman?”
Now that he mentioned it, Simon had heard of her before, back in Kula.
The Legend of the Snow Woman.
“Snow Woman or saint, either way—we’re still alive, aren’t we?”
Rette approached with a cynical smile.
“You’ve heard about us, haven’t you? We came as teachers for Escale Village. Could you guide us down to town?”
“Yes, yes. Come along!”
The man strode ahead. Simon exhaled with quiet relief, thinking they’d finally made it to safety.
“Huh?”
But something was wrong with this man.
“Wait, hold on!”
Despite the snow, he moved with impossible speed, not bothering to wait for either of them as he swept forward.
He was pulling further and further away.
“Please, wait up!”
And the relentless bitter wind and snow kept obscuring his figure, revealing it, then obscuring it again.
As Simon’s anxiety rose and he tried to pick up his pace—
“Wait.”
Rette grabbed his shoulder.
“Why? We’ll lose him at this rate!”
“Something’s wrong.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“His body was translucent.”
“You’re mistaken—the blizzard’s playing tricks.”
The moment Simon spoke and took a step forward—
Crash!
The ground suddenly gave way beneath him.
!!
Whirrrrr!
He came to his senses staring into a sheer cliff face. The bottom vanished into shadow, and stones tumbled down into that darkness.
“Ugh!”
Rette had caught his hand, her face twisted with effort.
“I told you so!”
She gritted her teeth and pulled with everything she had.
“Something was wrong!!”
Whoosh!
Simon’s vision spun. His body cartwheeled through the air and crashed into the soft snow.
“Hah… hah…”
His eyes were still trembling with disbelief.
And then—
he saw her.
In the snowy field of the Snowy Mountain battered by bitter wind, a woman in a white dress stood barefoot, her eyes crimson as blood, staring at him.
As though disappointed.
Licking her lips.
‘……!’
Goosebumps erupted across his arms, and every hair on his body stood on end.
Simon pushed himself up to get a better look, but the woman’s form vanished with the wind.
“Are you alright?”
Rette came over.
“Rette! Did you see that?”
“See what?”
“A woman with red eyes in white clothes!”
…….
Rette’s expression hardened.
“I didn’t see anything. Aren’t you the one being fooled by the blizzard?”
“…….”
Simon pressed his palm to his forehead. Too many impossible things were happening at once—he couldn’t get his thoughts straight.
But there was no time to sit here paralyzed.
“Let’s go. This way.”
“You’re sure about that? If you’ve been enchanted by something else strange again, this is going to be a problem.”
“Then you’ll just have to save me again.”
“……goodness, you sure know how to live easy. Fine. Lead the way.”
Simon set off with Rette in tow, heading straight toward where the Snow Woman had appeared.
After trudging through the blizzard for about twenty minutes, they saw it.
“There!”
Two stone towers came into view.
“Found it! The entrance to the village shown on the map!”
Rette’s face brightened at last, and she opened her palm.
“Not bad at all!”
Smack!
They gave each other a light high-five and stood before the stone towers.
“So, how does this work?”
In the body of each tower was a small opening large enough to fit a hand, and inside sat two stones stacked on top of each other.
Below them was inscribed a line of text.
<Man melts into man>
Simon stood chin in hand, lost in thought, while Rette peered inside the tower with a frown.
“……I absolutely hate these kinds of riddles.”
Simon, by contrast, moved with purpose. He examined the tower’s size, studied the shape of the stones stacked within, and even reached up to touch them directly.
‘Smooth. Strange material.’
As Simon touched them, the upper stone slipped and tumbled down.
He tried to set it back in place, but it slid off again. No matter how many times he attempted it, the same thing happened.
‘How was it even placed up there in the first place? ……Wait!
Glancing at the inscription once more, a spark lit up in Simon’s mind.
“I’ve got it!”
“You solved it?”
“Yeah. It’s simple.”
Simon reached into the tower and retrieved both stones. Rette, catching on, did the same.
“Pack the snow around each stone as a center. Like when we throw snowballs—like this.”
Once they’d formed two snowballs, they pressed them together into a snowman shape and placed it in the empty space of the tower.
“And that does what, exactly?”
Rette mimicked his actions, still uncertain.
And shortly after.
“It’s melting!”
Whatever magical mechanism was built into the tower, the snowman began to dissolve with almost unbelievable speed.
Within a minute, all the snow had melted away, and the two stones—one from the head, one from the body—snapped together perfectly.
They had returned to their original form.
Whooooooom!
A massive Magic Circle unfurled in the space between the two towers, and the entrance to the Barrier revealed itself.
“See?”
Simon spoke with complete confidence.
“Hmph, well done. Even a snail has the art of rolling, I suppose.”
Rette walked forward with long strides and thrust her hand into the Barrier. Simon flinched.
“Aren’t you being reckless?”
“What is there to fear? I am a Saint of the Stars.”
She moved her hand about inside the Barrier, then withdrew it. Without hesitation, she thrust her face through and pulled it back out.
“It’s safe. Let’s go.”
Both of them threw themselves through the Barrier at once.
And then.
“……!”
Their mouths fell open at the paradise that unfolded before their eyes.
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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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