Necromancer Academy’s Genius Summoner - Chapter 620

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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 School’s Summoning Genius — Episode 620
The incident began with an idea from Simon.
What if I paired Lorain and Serne as a team? I’d like to see things improve between them at this Dark Festival.
Simon had spoken purely out of a desire to see the two get along, but Fitzgerald, hearing his words, sank into serious thought.
It wouldn’t be a bad strategy, either. I’ll mention it to the Department Representative later.
For this Dark Festival, Fitzgerald had taken a deep hand in arranging the events and schedule for the second-year students of the Summoning Department.
Of course, the final authority rested with Hector, the Department Representative, but he too trusted Fitzgerald’s data and analytical ability.
Fitzgerald brought up the matter at the evening meeting without delay.
Serne’s been missing from every event, and it’s become a real headache.
Hector, who had already been racking his brains over that very problem, suddenly knitted his brow.
What are you driving at?
I’m proposing we pair Lorain and Serne for tomorrow’s three-legged race.
The three-legged race was a simple, classic competition. Two people stood side by side with their inner legs bound together and ran, but since the Necromancer School ran it, using Dark Magic was permitted.
However, owing to its nature as a race, flying magic and riding summons were forbidden. Direct attacks or curses against opponents were also prohibited.
Hector, you know as well as I do that Lorain is the only one who can control Serne. If she runs hard at this Dark Festival, she’ll drag Serne to the arena one way or another.
…….
And so, today.
Lorain had actually succeeded in dragging Serne, who had been holed up in her dormitory room sleeping in, to the arena.
But the atmosphere could hardly have been worse.
“Why aren’t those two running?”
“……Is there discord between them?”
The spectators watching murmured among themselves.
The race had already begun, and students from other departments were running hard, but Lorain and Serne were glowing only with cold distance, staring away from each other.
A low, terrifying rumble filled the air.
A murderous aura so fierce that none dared approach whirled around the two of them at its center.
The referee holding the starting flag approached hesitantly.
“U-um, students. You’ll need to begin now…….”
At those words, Serne’s eyes flared with savage intensity. The referee immediately shrank back and fell silent.
“The referee is right.”
Lorain, her long hair fallen loose and retied with a cord, opened her mouth.
“Let’s start.”
“Why should I?”
Serne shot back with a barbed voice.
“Because you’re a student.”
Lorain held firm as she glared at Serne.
“Since when do students question why they run in a sports festival?”
“A childish event like this? You think I’d actually run in it?”
“Why do you have to be like this every time?”
Lorain was beginning to feel something built up inside her threaten to explode.
“What’s got you so dissatisfied? What’s bothering you so much? You won’t follow the school’s legitimate orders, you cause nothing but trouble, and you hurt people with your actions!”
“What bothers me?”
Serne let out a hollow laugh, and then looked directly at Lorain.
“By an old treaty, the moment I turned seventeen, I was forcibly dragged to Kizen. The reason is obvious. Take the Heir as a hostage, make sure the Ivory Tower doesn’t dare defy Kizen. You expect someone who was dragged here to cooperate willingly?”
…….
Lorain’s hands clenched into fists in her clothes.
“A hostage? That’s ridiculous! You’re just overinterpreting everything!”
“Do you really think so? Look at history.”
She raised a finger and pointed it between Lorain’s eyes.
“No kingdom voluntarily sends its heir to a rival nation’s palace. They do it because they’re forced to. The reasons are hostage, prisoner, slave. After Kizen won the dispute with the Ivory Tower, they drew up a treaty forcing the Heir to study in Kizen. School is such a convenient pretext, isn’t it?”
Lorain jerked her arm away.
“Is that really so? Bermud is dead! You’re no longer just an heir — you’re a power wielder practically equal to the Master of the Ivory Tower. Yet you chose not to ascend as Master and chose of your own will to remain in Kizen! If you really thought yourself a hostage, why stay at school? Why keep acting like this while you’re still here? Your words are nothing but contradictions!”
Serne lifted her head.
“I stayed in Kizen for a reason. That purpose isn’t study or grades. Must every student aim only for grades? I’ll do only what I want within the bounds of this school.”
“You really……!”
“Um, students…….”
The referee approached with a pale face.
Since they were heirs to Kizen and the Ivory Tower respectively, every word they spoke needed careful handling.
“If you d-don’t begin, by regulation I’ll have to d-d-disqualify you…….”
Lorain’s expression hardened. As she turned her head, she saw her classmates and seniors from the Summoning Department sitting far off in the stands.
They all wore the atmosphere of a funeral.
“Ah, no! I’m going!”
She couldn’t afford disqualification. Lorain moved her legs.
“Serne, we have to go now!”
“What? I said I wasn’t going……!”
Their bound legs lifted into the air, but their hearts were in discord. Immediately, listing and unbalanced, they tumbled onto the arena floor.
“…….”
“…….”
Both of them, having buried their faces equally in the dirt, snapped their heads up at the same time with a sharp *crack*.
“What are you doing!”
Serne shrieked, her eyes flashing with fury.
“What are *you* trying to pull!”
Lorain cried out with equal exasperation.
Soon the two of them were shrieking and brawling.
“What are those two doing?”
“Hahahaha!”
Laughter erupted from spectators scattered throughout the crowd. The Summoning Department students in the stands, however, couldn’t laugh even if they wanted to.
‘They’re actually laughing at this.’
‘Easy for them to laugh when it’s not their problem.’
The backlash that would follow and the cold silence to come—all of that would fall squarely on those around them.
While the two successor girls who would carry the future of the Dark Alliance wrestled with each other, the other ordinary students had already completed two laps.
As they ran hard, treading through Darkness, they would slightly slow their pace when passing through the section where Lorain and Serne lay sprawled, desperately turning their heads away, then accelerate again once they passed the two.
“……Glasses, you bastard!”
In the stands, Hector seized Fitzgerald by the collar and hoisted him up. He was so strong that Fitzgerald’s body lifted effortlessly into the air.
“That’s not what you said would happen!”
“My prediction was accurate.”
Even so, Fitzgerald calmly adjusted his glasses.
“The core of the plan was to drag Serne, who wouldn’t be participating and had zero combat strength, to the competition in the first place. What happens after that was left to fate.”
“You and that big mouth of yours……!”
“Hector! Hold on!”
His faction’s students pulled him back. Hector inhaled sharply through his teeth and carelessly tossed Fitzgerald to the side.
‘The women’s division placing last is a heavy blow. I need to make up for it somehow in the men’s division…….’
“Oh, the president!”
Just then, Simon, who had finished his own event, came bounding into the arena. He dashed over in a single stride, gripped the fence, and gazed at the arena with bright eyes.
Lorain and Serne, their legs bound together, lay sprawled in the middle of the arena.
‘Oh no! They fell!’
In truth, they hadn’t taken a single step from the starting line, but to Simon, who had just arrived, it looked as though they had been running hard and stumbled.
He called out loudly.
“Keep going! Lorain! Serne!”
Simon’s voice echoed across the arena, and the heads of the two girls, who were moments away from grabbing each other by the hair, turned simultaneously toward him.
‘Simon?’
Far off, Simon was smiling brightly and waving his hand.
“Don’t give up! You can do it!”
Watching Simon’s innocent encouragement, oblivious to the situation, both girls lowered their hands at the same time.
“Hmm~”
Serne let out a small snort and finally brushed the dust from her athletic uniform, pushing herself to her feet.
“All right. Now I feel like doing it.”
“……Suddenly?”
“Didn’t I tell you?”
She brushed sand from her hair, and from within her cream-colored locks, she drew out a single feather.
“I only do what I want to do.”
*Whoooosh!*
Her feather decomposed into the form of a Magic Circle in the blink of an eye. It was an extraordinarily complex circle, its pattern so intricate it made the eyes widen. The form of the Magic Circle, densely packed with equations, rapidly transformed.
*Shaaak—*
The recalculation finished in an instant, the size compressed, and it returned to the shape of a feather. Serne set the feather at her feet.
“What are you doing?”
Lorain asked suspiciously. Serne silently tapped the rope binding their legs. The rope’s texture softened.
“You, whose Anomaly is sealed, are nothing but worthless garbage.”
Serne turned her body. Then, as if embracing her, she pressed her own body against Lorain’s.
“But that body of yours is still useful, isn’t it?”
Lorain’s expression contorted with displeasure.
“Don’t call people bodies. So what’s the plan?”
“My mind isn’t working right. Stomp on that feather. Put all your strength into it.”
Lorain’s expression turned sour, but she had to cooperate if she wanted to avoid disqualification.
With no choice, she wrapped one arm around Serne’s waist to brace her.
“Hold on tight.”
Her vast shadow aura poured forth, concentrating in her legs. Lorain bounded forward on a single leg and brought her foot down hard on the feather lying on the ground.
Boom-crack-crack-crack!
Like the sound of a cannon firing, both their bodies shot forward at tremendous speed.
“Whoa!”
“What was that?”
Serne plucked the next feather from inside her hair and hurled it to the spot where Lorain’s foot was about to land, laying it down. Lorain immediately stamped on it and leaped again.
Boom-crack-crack!
To the spectators’ eyes, the two girls’ bodies vanished as if they’d simply teleported, and only afterward did a violent gale sweep through, shaking the arena’s trees fiercely.
“Whoa!”
“Ugh!”
Students caught in the enormous gust they were generating flew backward and tumbled out. The Summoning Department students, who had been despondently watching in defeat, suddenly lifted their heads at the sudden turn of events.
“Could it be—”
Boom-crack-crack-crack!
In almost a single bound, they were crossing half the arena back and forth.
“Wait, isn’t flying or teleportation against the rules?”
“No way! That’s legitimate high-speed jumping! Look—the referee isn’t even waving a flag!”
Serne’s advanced jumping magic, and Lorain stepping on the feather—she possessed vast shadow aura and athletic prowess.
With each Blackstep, the ground around her cracked audibly—crack, crack—in great fissures.
“They’ve lapped another team!”
“Unbelievable! How many laps did they just make up?”
The finish line came into view.
The referees stood holding the finish ribbon on either side, and the first to come sprinting toward it were the Dark Reversal Magic Department students.
Whoosh-whoosh-whoosh!
They, who had prepared a booster spell using Dark Flame Arts, currently held the lead.
The two were launching themselves forward in steady bounds, flames erupting from their palm backs. Their rhythm was perfect.
“We’ve got this!”
The student on the right cried out.
“We’re first!”
The student on the left laughed. Just as the two made their final leap, pushing their chests forward with all their might—
Boom-crack-crack-crack!
A gale erupted, and a mountain of dust swirled upward. The two students’ bodies were knocked tumbling through the air, landing on their sides.
And.
Before the finish line descended two girls—one with black hair, one with platinum hair.
Standing side by side, they crossed the finish line simultaneously, at an unhurried pace.
“The winners!”
The referee raised his arm and declared loudly.
“First place goes to Lorain and Serne of the Summoning Department!”
At this astounding upset victory, enthusiastic cheers poured in from all around.
As the two waved gracefully toward the crowd, their eyes turned together in one direction.
The stands. Simon was there, celebrating with his classmates, jumping with joy.
“You were amazing!”
Simon grinned widely and waved his hand. Serne, who had been watching that sight intently, bent down and untied the rope bound around her legs.
“I hope today was the last time I was entangled with you.”
Lorain laughed softly, as though sighing.
“Agreed.”

* * *
At that same moment.
A seaside stall within Rocksum.
Crunch. Crunch.
Someone walked toward the stall, footsteps crunching in the sand. The vendor, who had been busily preparing for business, suddenly looked up.
“Welcome! What can I get for you—”
The vendor’s voice stopped.
“U-Uh?”
His pupils were trembling violently.
Something was wrong.
Or as if they had seen something they shouldn’t have.
Silence.
Even the footsteps of someone passing by the stall came to a halt.
“You.”
Tap. Tap.
The figure walked back toward the stall.
“Can you see my face?”
“That… that… that’s…! Gasp!”
The vendor, sensing killing intent, cried out desperately.
“Help! Someone look over here! A monster! There’s a monster of a person…!”
But.
No one heard.
Not the shopkeeper at the neighboring stall, nor the spectators walking past mere steps away.
As if the two of them had been severed from this world entirely.
The vendor, belatedly realizing his life hung by a thread, trembled violently as he cried out.
“I saw nothing! Please, please, spare me!”
…….
Beneath the robe, a face smiled.
“That’s right. You saw nothing at all.”
Thud!
Blood spray scattered high into the air.
Within the fervor of the festival, a fissure was slowly beginning to open.

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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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