Necromancer Academy’s Genius Summoner

The next morning, Simon’s new day at Kizen had begun.

They had three classes scheduled for today.

Professor Eric Aura, who was in charge of the first class, Mechanics of Jet-Black, was a middle-aged man.

A neat beard, ideally positioned wrinkles, a dignified look that went well with a suit, and a laid-back attitude that came with age. Everyone liked him.

“Jet-black is fundamental for Necromancers. Its importance cannot be overemphasized.

Eric skillfully led the students.

Easy to understand explanations and catchy interpretations. Although he had no flashy technique like Bahil of Curses, the class itself was neat and simple.

Everyone in Class A was engrossed in Eric’s lecture in no time.

How jet-black created the miracle known as dark magic.

The flow of jet-black.

Understanding of the runes.

And the working principle of the magic circle.

“The origin of the rune can be found in the ‘Eternally Burning Torch’ in the Temple of Dell.”

Eric did more than just explain the theory.

“People never questioned why the torch never extinguished. They considered the act of doubting God’s miracles blasphemous.”

At times, he even used history to explain the runes.

“Eventually, they noticed that the ashes that had fallen from the torch took the form of some kind of letter. And they were shocked at the truth that nothing but letters were performing a miracle like the burning torch. This is the origin of the rune.”

Eric drew the ancient runes on the blackboard and explained how the mages and necromancers researching them had improved the runes.

Then, he smoothly moved to the solving of modern magic circles.

Why does this magic circle work?

And why doesn’t this magic circle work?

Eric carefully disassembled the magic circle and explained it. Up until now, Simon drew a magic circle with the rectifying tool without much thought, but now, he somehow realized how it worked.

While Simon was taking notes and catching up with the class, the bell rang, announcing the end of class.

“We’ll end here for today.”

Eric also announced the end of class.

“I have a task for you till the next class. Please take the magic circle you learnt as an example that doesn’t work. Write down the correction method, calculation formula, and the formula fixed till it works, and submit it to the next class. The three people I’ll call will come up to the front and present it in person.”

Maybe because Mechanics of jet-black was a required major class, fortunately, Simon wasn’t called in front this time.

Simon uttered yells of delight in his head.

“Gah! This class is so hard.”

Among the students leaving the classroom boisterously, Rick stretched his arms with an exhausted expression on his face.

“It felt like I was studying arithmetic with my dad back in the day. Can’t I just memorize the magic circle and use it just like normal? Why do I have to know all the details of invoking principles?”

“It was fine for me.”

Arms crossed, Simon replied,

“I didn’t understand half of it, but I liked how he explained it step-by-step from the beginning.”

“You like it as long as it’s from Kizen. You even scratched the soap in the bath with your nail because it was interesti—”

Simon hit Rick’s chest with his elbow. He stepped back, saying, ‘Ugh!’ but even in the midst of that, the burst of laughter didn’t stop.

“Hah! Getting scared of the bubbles coming out from the bathtub pfft! ‘Can I really go in here?’ Pfffffft!”

“I’m going ahead.”

Simon answered sulkily and walked first. Rick quickly followed after him, saying he was joking.

Class A had to prepare for the next class right away without a break.

After walking on foot for 20 minutes, they arrived at the location where the next class would be held. It was in the outskirts of Kizen, a plain, empty field.

“No one’s here?”

“Huh? Over there……!”

While the students of Class A were waiting while chatting, a cloud of thick dust was rising from the forest.

Rrrrrrrumble!

The ground shook as if an earthquake had occurred.

What was approaching was none other than a herd of many dozens of hippos.

The students stepped back while screaming in surprise.

“Ahaha! Hello, new students!”

Then a man was seen riding on a hippopotamus.

He had dark skin, thick lips, a slender body, was dressed in short sleeves and shorts, and was barefoot. He skilfully stopped the herd of hippos in front of the students and jumped off.

“Professor Hong Feng has decided that today’s class location would be Mountain Roke! Now, please get on the hippo!”

Professor Hong Feng Tun Sokum Marerat, professor of Combat Magic, was a well-known freak in Kizen.

Kizen provided her laboratory and home, but she spent her days wandering and camping on Roke island. Due to her tendencies, most of her Combat Magic classes were also outdoor classes.

“…Are you telling us to ride on that right now?”

A male student put up a disgusted expression on his face looking at the hippos standing with their nostrils flaring.

“Hey, minion! Don’t you at least have to put a rug on that beast?”

Hearing this, the man approached the student with a smile.

And,

“Ah! Aaaaaaaaagh!”

He grabbed the student’s face with one hand and lifted him up. A few surprised voices came out.

“Wh-What do you think you’re doing?!”

“How dare you! We’re the students of Kizen!”

A thick killing intent flowed out from the body of the man who was smiling innocently. The students who came to protest stopped in their tracks.

“Why are the freshmen these days so disrespectful? It’s supposed to be an assistant teacher, not a minion. Right?”

The male student who grasped the situation only then hurriedly shouted,

“Aagh! I-I’m sorry, Senior!”

If it was an assistant teacher, there was a high probability that he was a senior who had previously attended Kizen.

Moreover, as they were the closest person who assisted the professor, they definitely weren’t a person that a freshman could look down on.

“It’s not senior, but assistant teacher.”

“I’m sorry, assistant teacher!”

Seeing a huge commotion, Simon shook his head.

“Why the hell are they doing that?”

“They’re nobles, after all.”

Rick shrugged his shoulders and followed up on Simon's words.

“Since they grew up in a sheltered environment, they still have the habit of dealing with others as if they're their servants. This kind of situation will frequently happen at the beginning of the school term.”

“Alright, we’re running a little late. Everyone, please get on the hippo! Up to three people can ride on one hippo!”

The students got on the hippo with a lot more hurried movements.

Simon got on in one go with a skillful movement, followed by Rick slipping and whining a few times before finally getting on.

“Phew. The class hasn’t even started yet, but it’s already tough.”

Behind Rick wiping his sweat off with his sleeve, 

Simon saw a flustered female student hopping in place.

“Everyone onboard? Then we’ll start going now!”

* * *

* * *

The girl put on an urgent face when she heard the assistant. Simon willingly extended his hand towards her.

“Do you need help?”

“Ah…! Thank you.”

She approached Simon looking like she’d seen a benevolent being and took Simon’s hand.

As Simon pulled her with enough strength, her body was drawn like a paper doll, climbing onto the hippo’s back at once.

“Alright, we’re leaving now!”

As soon as the female student came up, the assistant kicked the hippo's hip. The leading hippo started running with a roar, and the rest of the hippos ran in unison after the leading hippo.

She sighed in relief as she was almost left behind and turned to Simon.

“Thank you for helping! I’m—!”

She was about to say something, but the sudden increase in the hippo’s running speed interrupted the conversation. The other students also stuck to the hippos’ backs in fright.

The feeling of vibrations coming up all over the body made the riding not that comfortable.

One student shouted out,

“A-Assistant teacher, I think I might fall! What should I hold on to?”

“Anything.”

“It’s too fast!”

“Persistence! Overcome with persistence! This is also part of training!”

Said the assistant teacher while balancing with only two legs, raising his right arm.

“Of course, if you fall right now and get trampled on by a herd of hippos, you would die, right? I mean, one or two accidents happen every year, you know?”

“…What?”

The students couldn’t believe what they’d just heard.

“Hold on! Hold on! Students who can’t even ride a hippo properly aren’t needed in Kizen!”

“Uwah! Uwaaaaaaagh!”

“Mamaaaaaaaa!”

“Hey, stop this! Fucking stop this right now!”

“Hahahahahahahaha!”

It was indeed a crazy outdoor class.

* * *

They finally arrived at the location where the class would be held.

They passed through the thickly grown trees, into a place where an open field spread out in the middle of the mountain. The sun was floating in the middle of the forest like it was welcoming everyone, and the chirping of birds and the sounds of insects played out harmoniously like an orchestra.

It was an incredibly beautiful place.

“Hufff… Huff… Fuck……”

“Ugh, Huuuuuuuugh……”

Of course, that was only if the people were ready to appreciate the scenery.

All the students were lying on the field with exhausted faces. The hippos went back down the mountain and the assistants handed out water bottles to the students lying around.

‘What’s this?’

It had a very strange flavor when Simon drank it.

A drink with a sweet but slightly spicy aftertaste. But as soon as he drank it, his thirst was quenched and fatigue was relieved. The other students’ expressions became more and more comfortable little by little.

Flap flap!

This time, a flock of white birds flew in and began to pass over the students’ heads. Everyone blinked and stared at them.

“Welcome to my class, everyone.”

Simon turned his head. Beyond the flocks of soaring birds, a tall woman walked towards them with her arms outstretched.

Healthy tan skin and a strong body with muscles exposed. Her hair was an unusual style, several layers tied by some kind of string.

The students got off their butts.

‘So that person is……’

Hong Feng Tun Sokum Marerat.

She was a legend in the world of necromancy who achieved a dramatic victory by breaking 100 necks in five days fighting alone against the super-larged undead monster ‘Kundar Hydra’ that devastated four territories.

After that battle, Hong Feng was scouted by Kizen and taught Combat Magic to this day.

She was a freak, but her skills were unquestionable, so her eccentricity was overlooked by the school.

Flap!

Forest birds flew and sat on her outstretched finger.

“Then, everyone, please stand up.”

She used a slurred pronunciation that seemed slightly out of line with the official language.

“Please gather up in four columns.”

“……?”

When the students were spacing out from not being able to understand her, Hong Feng’s assistants approached them and spoke like they were used to this situation.

“Please gather up in four columns.”

“Quickly.”

The students lined up with puzzled looks on their faces. Hong Feng was at the front, and the assistant teachers were at the left and right of the students’ lines.

“Then, we’ll depart now.”

I mean, when are we gonna begin the class then?

As soon as Simon thought that, Hong Feng started running forward. An unexpected running session started as the students in front also ran after her in a hurry.

“A healthy mind dwells in a healthy body! The basics of combat magic requires strong physical strength!”

Her tone was slurred like she had just learned the continental language, but what she was trying to say was pretty clear.

As she increased her speed, the leading students also struggled to increase their speeds.

And Simon, who was running in the third row, looked at her body in admiration.

‘That’s amazing.’

I’ve never seen anyone run like that.

The angle of the feet, the movement of the muscles, and the shaking of the shoulders and upper body while running. It was like a perfect, goosebump-inducing painting.

She ran with the same arms and legs, but why did she feel like an alien from another dimension? It was so ideal that a sense of difference was felt.

“Huff! Huff!

“Huuuuuh! Huuuh!”

While everyone was running frantically, Hong Feng started her lecture while slightly slowing down the running pace.

The fundamentals, mindset, and significance of combat magic.

To sum it up, Combat Magic was a class to learn combat techniques by wrapping your body with jet-black to strengthen it to the extreme and then using it to fight.

If you reached a certain level of combat magic, you could wear a ‘black robe’ in which silk-like jet-black oozed out of your body to form a garment. It was like a symbol of battle among necromancers.

It was a dream of many male students to use this skill, and there were many cases where they chose to major in Combat Magic for the sake of the black robe.

“There are a lot of trees. Be careful!”

The run continued over the thicket and dense forest terrain. As the 4 lines collapsed, everyone began to follow Hong Feng in their own way, avoiding the trees.

While most of them rushed through the bushes, a few students even climbed up and jumped on through tree branches.

All of those were aspirants of combat magic. They were showing off their forte as if waiting for it.

One of the assistants jumped up to the tree and gave them a thumbs up. The faces of the aspirants brightened up. 

“Whew! I envy those combat guys.”

Grumbled Rick as he was hit in the face by a branch of a tree.

“Hmm.”

Simon was observing them carefully.

He could feel himself getting interested in a dark magic specializing in combat that uses the body.

“Uhugh! Huuff! Hey Simon! You doing fine?”

Asked Rick, face red. Simon blinked and answered,

“Hm? Ah, I’m fine.”

“Hufff! Huugh! What kind of physical strength do you—! Cough cough!”

“Doesn’t everyone do this much running?”

It was Simon who ran around all over the rugged southern mountains of Les Hill like it was a neighborhood trail.

While sweat beads appeared on the assistants’ foreheads, Simon’s expression was as comfortable as ever.

‘This class is fun too!’

While Simon was enjoying being in his element, Hong Feng watched him, her eyes shining.

——