Necromancer Academy’s Genius Summoner - Chapter 488
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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 488
Atop the Washburn Mountain Range. The Demon Lord’s High Castle.
Originally, this place served as both the private sanctuary of Magnus, the Legion Commander, and the headquarters of the 5th Legion.
Yet now, not a trace of that remained.
Only an empty, hollow fortress stood.
“Well, this is something.”
A middle-aged man surveyed the abandoned castle.
With a feathered cloak draped across his shoulders and his brow furrowed, he scratched at his forehead—a necromancer belonging to Kizen’s Raven division.
“He fled long ago, then.”
An unexpected turn.
Those necromancers who knew Magnus’s nature could only be shocked that he had abandoned his fortress and run.
The man swept his feathered cloak about him as he examined his surroundings.
The place was silent and pristine. Everything of value had been stripped away and carried elsewhere. What remained was only an unmanned throne and the faint reek of sulphur from the hot spring.
The man opened his mouth.
“Search every level below. Leave nothing untouched.”
“Yes, sir!”
The agents waiting behind bowed their heads.
“Find any leads. Use whatever means necessary.”
“Understood!”
The agents descended in a blur of motion.
Alone now, the Raven necromancer approached the sulphurous hot spring.
Pale steam rose in wisps, and the reek of rotting egg shells filled the air. He knelt on one knee and dipped the tip of his finger into the spring before withdrawing it.
“Peculiar taste.”
He muttered to himself.
“Yeah, yeah. Right? Really foul, isn’t it~”
The sound of footsteps climbing the stairs echoed from behind.
“After all the effort we poured into cornering him here, how did he know to slip away? Unbelievable.”
A younger necromancer, likewise wearing the Raven cloak, slouched toward him with both hands thrust into his pockets, his gait a delinquent’s swagger.
His hair jutted out in grotesque, leaf-like spikes, and he chewed on a strange twig he’d picked up from the ground.
“You’re here.”
“Well, duh. Obviously, senior~”
He halted and grinned, his mouth curling upward.
“There’s a leak within the Raven.”
……
“You know, that Needle or Garlic necromancer? Evangelous, wasn’t it—he was one of the traitors working with Magnus, yeah? Which means there could be more spies inside the Raven!”
Still grinning, he spread his arms wide.
“That traitor senior, he teamed up with Magnus to try to crush Pentamonium during the Academic Conference, right? But when they caught him, his brains went pop—gwahahaha!”
……
“Oh, right! Sorry! You two were classmates back in Kizen, weren’t you? Special Exception slots two and three, if I remember?”
“Stop wasting breath. Focus on the mission.”
The senior necromancer said this and turned to leave.
“You’re a rigid one, aren’t you! It’s not like there’s anything left to search here anyway~”
The junior bit down hard on the twig he’d been chewing.
Crunch!
Crack!
Crunch!
Teeth marks suddenly appeared all over the castle. On the solid brick, on the pillars—tooth indentations bloomed like patterns, as if something had gnawed at everything in sight.
“My teeth are grinding. Really grinding. That odd-trick Legion Commander bastard—I’ll catch him for sure, senior.”
Crackcrackcrack!
Long bite marks scored the wall.
“But what if, what if there really is a spy inside the Raven, quietly feeding Magnus information right now like this?”
Snap.
The twig between his teeth snapped clean. He spat it onto the floor and his voice turned cold and vicious.
“I’ll rip that bastard apart and chew him down to nothing—not a shred left.”
“Enough.”
The senior’s eyes flashed as he spoke, and the junior shrugged.
“Yeah, yeah. You outrank me, so I’ll behave.”
He turned away and slouched off again in that same delinquent gait.
“Agh, if only my old classmate Bahil was here—interrogations like this would be child’s play! When’s he coming back anyway? You’re gonna spend your whole life teaching and wiping kids’ noses? Come out and play with us in the field!”
He cackled wildly.
Watching the junior member descend the stairs with that strange, cackling laugh, the senior Necromancer sighed.
‘Why does every single one of these cohorts have a screw loose?’
“Reporting, sir!”
A Necromancer agent came running up and bowed his head.
“I’ve swept through the basement levels, but there’s no substantial evidence to speak of. However, there’s this.”
The agent held out the evidence with a gloved hand. The Necromancer donned gloves of his own to examine it.
“Hair.”
White hair.
And it bore the unmistakable marks of being cut unevenly.
“Magnus was described as having a lean frame, white hair, and long locks that reached the waist. Did he cut it short to prepare for a life on the run?”
“That’s what I suspected as well.”
Yet for seizing what had been Magnus’s main stronghold, there was precious little to show for it.
“Has there been any word from ‘them’?”
“Nothing.”
“Very well. Send that hair to headquarters. Once reinforcements arrive, have the remaining personnel conduct a thorough search for secret passages and the like.”
“Yes, sir!”
The agents dispersed in different directions.
The Raven Necromancer walked slowly to the wall and traced the bite marks gouged into it with his fingertip.
* * *
The Dresdhen Royal Library.
This library, which occupied an entire building within the Royal Palace itself, was a renowned landmark across the continent.
The successive kings of Dresdhen were famous as avid readers, and throughout their reigns, they had amassed collections of invaluable books.
The kingdom took such pride in this library that it often boasted its historical records were second to none compared to even Pentamonium’s.
Of course, because it held so many rare and important documents, access was now strictly controlled.
And it was here that—
“Good morning, Sera.”
“Morning.”
A woman in dark sunglasses and formal attire was checking in for her shift at the Royal Library.
Moving past the guards with practiced ease and through the magical detection gate, she entered the library.
‘Heh heh, detection magic at this level is child’s play for me.’
She slid her sunglasses down slightly, and her blue eyes flickered briefly to a deep crimson before returning to their normal shade.
Her true identity was Erzsebet, commander of the 7th Legion.
Infiltrating on Simon’s orders, she had procured the personnel files and schedules of the palace librarians and was now posing as a staff member on leave.
‘Since I’ve got a date riding on this with the Legion Commander, I’d better search thoroughly.’
Her mission was singular in purpose.
To uncover information about the mysterious group that had captured and studied Kar, the Plague’s Claw—once an Ancient Undead under Richard.
All she had to work with were materials recovered from that place, written in an unidentified language.
The key was the language itself.
She planned to rifle through the Royal Library’s rare manuscripts to decipher these unknown characters.
The continent’s history stretched back far. Before it unified under the common Continental tongue, numerous languages had been spoken and mixed across different nations, territories, and villages—this script could be one of them.
Erzsebet gathered books on lost languages, settled into a quiet corner, and spread them out. Then she compared the characters written in Kar’s dungeon book against them.
‘Not this one, not that one either.’
She was buried in her work when—
“Sera!”
A man who appeared to be the supervisor of the disguised Erzsebet suddenly poked his head out.
“You’re on leave—what are you doing here?”
Erzsebet was startled internally, but she responded smoothly and naturally.
“Oh, you know. Once I’m home, there’s nothing to do. You know how it is? Everyone else is working, so you get to play hooky legally and do whatever you want! There’s nothing quite as relaxing, really!”
“Hmm, is that so?”
The supervisor scratched his receding hairline.
“You’ve got quite the quirky side to you. I can’t stand even looking at work during vacation.”
“I can’t stand looking at work either, but I love books. I thought I’d take this chance to read plenty.”
“Sure, do as you please.”
He waved his hand dismissively and walked away.
Erzsebet let out an inward sigh of relief when the supervisor suddenly poked his head back out again.
“Oh! I’m really sorry to bother you while you’re on leave, but could you take a quick look at something? Just five minutes. Just five!”
So that was the real reason he’d come back.
Erzsebet rose from her seat with a smile. There was no point in refusing and causing unnecessary complications.
‘Humans really do exhaust themselves with all their petty struggles.’
Anticipating this, I’d made sure to understand Erzsebet’s duties before the transformation.
Erzsebet gathered only the books she’d brought from Khal’s dungeon and followed her superior.
“?”
That was when Erzsebet’s eyes narrowed.
The Royal Library and the Palace were connected. But among the people entering the Palace, there was one who seemed distinctly out of place.
A woman whose face was obscured by shadow, invisible.
As a spy for the Legion, Erzsebet had made extensive use of various concealment techniques and could recognize them.
This was a highly sophisticated concealment technique. No one else seemed to notice anything amiss.
‘Who is that? What’s someone so suspicious doing in the Palace?’
“What are you doing there?”
Her superior turned and spoke to her. Erzsebet quickly collected herself and forced a smile.
“Yes, yes, I’m coming!”
* * *
Deep within Dresdhen Royal Palace, in a secluded reception room.
The woman with shadow clinging to her face sat and sipped her tea. The elderly man across from her opened his mouth.
“How is the research progressing?”
“Adequately enough.”
She shrugged her shoulders. The shadow obscuring her face seemed to narrow or widen with the shifting sunlight.
“The problem is, lately the small-minded fools in the domain have been trying to bring in outsiders, which is troublesome. Since the Grand Lord won’t listen to reason, they seem intent on taking the matter directly to the Kingdom or the Dark Alliance.”
“I’ll handle that myself.”
The elderly man interlaced his fingers.
“But you could have sent a letter. Why come all the way to the Palace in person? I thought you were busy with experiments.”
“It’s one of the things you arranged for me.”
She spread her hand.
“It’s here in the Palace, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“You instructed me to prepare it slowly. I wanted to see its condition for myself as well.”
The elderly man nodded with a solemn expression.
“Follow me.”
* * *
Simon was spending his days at Kizen in a whirlwind of activity.
In particular, the general subject “Imperial Studies” required him to attend classes with the third-year students, where he learned not only the leadership to govern territorial subjects, but also management, military science, law, geography, diplomacy, administration, etiquette, and official writing.
There was a mountain of things to learn.
“Student Simon Polentia, this is now the etiquette of Dresdhen Kingdom, not Baldwin. Your fork placement is misaligned.”
“Ah, my apologies, Professor.”
Even Simon, who prided himself on learning etiquette carefully from his father Richard, found there was much more to master in Imperial Studies class.
For a general education course, it was quite demanding.
After such mental exertion, his spirits lifted a little when he attended Jane’s Dark Reversal Magic class in the afternoon.
“Simon~”
“You made it?”
The Student Council members greeted him warmly—by now, they could recognize him by his eyes alone.
Many A-Class students he knew well attended this class too. Having so many familiar faces around made everything feel better.
Of course, this was Jane’s class. The course content was invaluable, needless to say.
And then came Bahil’s Curse Magic.
“Student Simon Polentia! Please come to the platform!”
Bahil called Simon up to the dais and had him do various things in succession. Simon found himself breaking into a cold sweat, writing out curse equations in front of students from other departments.
It was rather burdensome attention.
“You can interpret the Drain Formula this way too!”
Bahil even praised Simon’s mistakes as original, pouring out interpretations that Simon himself had never considered.
Simon felt his face burn with embarrassment.
“Welcome back, Bahil’s boy, Simon.”
The moment Simon returned to his seat, Dick snickered and teased him. Simon shot him a glare, while Kamibarez and Merin struggled to stifle their laughter.
And then came the last class.
Hong Peng’s Magical Combat.
After clinging to the hippo for so long, they’d finally reached the mountain peak.
“Well then, students! I see that your stamina has deteriorated severely from all the eating, sleeping, and playing over the vacation, which is most unfortunate!”
She clapped her hands together and grinned.
“First, let’s restore your physical condition to its original standard!!”
This was when I should have run.
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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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