Necromancer Academy and the Genius Summoner-Chapter 310: Episode

On the way to the Mutants club room, Simon found Toto to be an easygoing friend with whom he could talk about anything. They were both majoring in the same subject, and with the solid common ground of Summoning, they never ran out of things to discuss.

"I think the final Summoning evaluation is way too hard!" Toto exclaimed, his expression deeply anxious as they walked side by side. "It’s hard enough to make a single skeleton mage that can create a tiny flame, but now they want us to be ’creative’! It sounds like they won’t give us any points unless it’s something new, and that’s making me nervous!" 𝒻𝓇𝑒𝘦𝘸𝑒𝒷𝓃ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝒸ℴ𝘮

After his passionate rant, Toto glanced over at Simon, trying to read his expression.

"Don’t you think so?"

Simon replied with an easy smile.

"I feel the same way."

"Right? I knew it!" Seemingly pleased that Simon agreed, Toto smiled with relief. "So, in that case, Simon! What are you going to make?"

Simon’s own smile widened.

"A lich."

With a clatter and a crash, Toto, who had been walking perfectly fine, tripped spectacularly and rolled across the floor.

"A-Are you crazy?!" His voice cracked as he jerked his head up. Two girls walking by heard him and giggled behind their hands. Toto’s face turned beet red as he glanced around before finally lowering his voice to a whisper. "A-A-Are you serious? I thought an Overlord or a Deimos was already pushing it, but that’s just...!"

Simon retrieved the book Aaron had given him from his subspace.

"I even brought the book. I’m going to take my time and give it a shot before we move up to the second year. The bigger the dream, the better, right?"

"...I think there’s a limit to how big dreams should be," Toto grumbled, getting up and dusting off his uniform. He peered at the book in Simon’s hand. "Lich and Life Vessel’? Where did you get a book like that?"

"Professor Aaron lent it to me. He said he’d take a look if I could at least create the basic form of a lich."

At those words, Toto’s eyes sparkled for a moment before his expression shifted to one of profound admiration and envy.

"...I-I wish I could just set foot in Professor Aaron’s lab one day."

"You should try visiting him," Simon said gently. "Professor Aaron might look like everything is a bother, but he’s surprisingly fond of students who are eager to learn."

"...That’s because you’re Special Admission No. 1 and the ace of Summoning. If I went, he’d probably—"

Simon clapped Toto on the back.

"Come on! Have some courage!"

"Whoa!"

It was just a light pat, but Toto’s small frame staggered forward.

"If you really can’t go alone, I’ll take you with me next time I visit his lab."

"R-Really?!" Toto looked at Simon, his eyes brimming with emotion. "You’re my role model, Simon! You’ve got the skills, the looks, and the personality... a triple threat!"

"...Please, don’t say things like that between friends. It’s embarrassing."

Before they knew it, they had arrived at the Mutants club room. No matter how many times he saw it, the exterior always looked shabby. A piece of paper was stuck to the door, fluttering as if it would fall off at any moment, with ’Mutants’ scrawled on it in crooked letters. Simon gently pressed the paper back into place.

"I’ll knock."

Toto was busy checking his hair in the reflection of a nearby window. Finally satisfied, he nodded.

’Knock, knock.’

"It’s Simon Polentia! Toto is with me, too. We’re coming in."

The two opened the door and were immediately greeted by a booming laugh.

"You’re here, my legions!"

The girl flashing a wide, bright smile was the club president, Benya Vanilla. She had a map of the continent taped to a portable blackboard and was passionately explaining something to a male student on the sofa.

’It’s been a long time since I’ve seen him.’ The student wore scholarly glasses and had a reserved, stiff demeanor. On his lap were two books: ’Why Do Men Have Nipples?’ and ’How to Explain Things to Idiots with a Smile’.

Simon greeted him cheerfully.

"Hey, Fitzgerald."

It was Fitzgerald, the bespectacled boy from Class M. Simon barely recognized him, but he had joined the club at the same time as Toto.

"Oh." Fitzgerald adjusted his glasses and looked at Simon. "Almost forgot your face."

"...I was about to say the same thing. I thought you’d left the club."

"I attend two or three times a week."

It seemed their schedules just hadn’t lined up. Fitzgerald placed his books on the sofa beside him and turned his head.

"Please continue your explanation, President."

"Alright! You’re full of passion, my spectacled legionnaire!"

It turned out they were discussing that bizarre ’world domination’ plan again. According to the map, their current target was ’Shahed’, one of the four great kingdoms.

"In the northern regions of Shahed, they can’t do anything on days with heavy snow!" she declared, slapping the blackboard. "That’s why we’ll conquer Shahed by creating undead to pull snow sleds!"

"What will pull them?"

"We’ll turn their reindeer into undead, of course! They should be resistant to the cold, right?"

"To expect cold resistance, wouldn’t a ghoul form that retains its fur be more advantageous?"

It was basically useless chatter. Since it seemed like it would take a while to talk to Benya, Simon decided to perform some maintenance on his Overlord while he waited. Placing his book on a nearby shelf, he sat on the floor, took out the Overlord’s tentacles from his subspace, and grabbed a cloth and some slime lubricant from another shelf.

"I’ll help you, Simon!"

"Thanks."

While Simon and Toto were working on the Overlord, Benya’s gaze drifted to Simon’s book.

"Hey! That book!" She rushed over and picked it up. "Lich and Life Vessel’! My grandfather wrote this!"

Her grandfather was the current chairman of the Vanilla Group.

"Senior, by any chance..." It was pure luck, but Simon wasn’t one to miss an opportunity. "Do you know about the first-years’ current Summoning assignment?"

"I heard from my spectacled legionnaire. Creating a magic-type undead, right?"

"Yes, and I want to try making a lich!"

Fitzgerald, who had been expressionless, blinked in surprise, while Toto just shook his head in disbelief.

"That’s my legionnaire!" Benya, on the other hand, clapped her hands together and laughed. "Isn’t your passion for world domination a little too fiery?"

"...Haha."

"Alright! Nothing is impossible to conquer! I’ll explain about liches!" She tore the map off the portable blackboard and picked up a piece of chalk. "Liches also have what’s called the ’Three Elements’."

She wrote ’Life Vessel (Heart)’, ’Skull’, and ’Staff’ on the board.

"The hardest ingredient to get is, of course, the heart that will become the Life Vessel!" she continued, drawing a cute little heart beneath the word. "Not just any heart can become a Life Vessel. You need a rather special one!"

"Could I possibly get one from Vanilla?"

"You probably could, but Life Vessels are almost all custom-made. There’s no stock, so you’d have to request one from what’s available. The cost will be substantial, too."

Simon nodded, and she immediately moved on to the second element.

"Next! The second is the skeleton that will become the lich’s body! The skull, in particular, needs to be special enough to withstand immense magical power. This one’s also a bit tricky."

Finally, Benya pointed to the staff.

"The third is the staff! Necromancers these days tend to avoid staves, but many older necromancers still use them. They even bring them out when preparing special black magic." She explained, wagging her finger rhythmically. "Whether it’s a lich or a skeleton mage, it’s an almost essential item for magic-type undead. An undead’s spatial awareness is quite poor, so using the staff’s magic stone to project spells provides the best balance."

"Understood, Senior." Fitzgerald nodded and pushed up his glasses. "So, in conclusion, you’re saying that just gathering the materials to make a lich is next to impossible."

"To be honest... yeah, pretty much. Even with all the ingredients, there’s no guarantee of one hundred percent success."

Simon thought for a moment before speaking.

"Senior, do you remember the skeleton skull I entrusted to you before?" He was referring to the skull of Manus, the Ancient Undead he had obtained from Death Land.

"Huh? Oh! I remember!"

"How about using that for the lich’s skull?"

She paused, lost in thought.

"Hmm... To be honest, I’ve already extracted most of the useful data. I was preparing it as a melee-type skeleton for you, but I’m not sure how it would work for a lich. Should I go get it?"

"Yes! I’d like to check it out. And as for the Life Vessel and the staff..." It seemed he would have to buy those. After a moment of thought, Simon spoke up. "By any chance, would Vanilla be interested in the carcass of a Gwoegong?"

"Huh?" Benya blinked.

---

During the dispatch to the Neutral Zone, he and Dick had discussed something while working at Vengeance.

"You know that Gwoegong," Dick had said. "You caught it, so you have the rights to it. Isn’t it a waste? It must be expensive."

It was about the creature’s carcass. Simon had caught the Gwoegong, but he figured it would be impossible to retrieve since it must have sunk to the bottom of the sea.

"If you hire a professional salvage company, I’m sure they can pull it up! These are people who can salvage old shipwrecks and stuff." Dick had been confident.

"It’s been in the sea for over a week. Don’t you think fish have eaten it all by now?"

"You’re going to use it as an undead anyway, right? We just need to recover the bones and special organs."

As his roommate, Simon knew well that if there was one thing Dick was good at, it was sniffing out money. Dick had offered to handle everything—from contracting the salvage company to preparing for the retrieval—in exchange for a five percent cut of the total revenue. It seemed like a good deal, so Simon had entrusted the task to him. Once the Gwoegong was salvaged, he planned to ask Vanilla to either buy it or put it up for auction.

"That’s a good idea! I’ll decide after I see the condition of the Gwoegong once it’s salvaged!" Benya’s reaction was favorable.

Whether Vanilla bought it or it went to auction, he would get money. And Simon planned to use this lump sum to purchase the Life Vessel and a staff for the lich. ’I’ll get this underway.’

Simon gently stroked the head of the teddy bear—in reality, the divine beast Akalion—which was posturing cutely on his dorm room desk. This was Kizen, but unless Simon imbued it with divinity, it was no different from a wild animal or a monster.

’Professor Parahan would be so surprised if he knew.’ He had planned to wait until his tutoring session, but Simon decided to make an appointment and visit Parahan early the next morning. He couldn’t neglect his divinity training, let alone the lich creation.

’If I ever have to fight Magnus...’ Simon quietly looked down at his own fist. ’Divinity might become the most important key.’