Summoning Class
The students filed into the lecture hall without delay.
Unlike the stiff awkwardness of the first class, the atmosphere had loosened considerably. Friends chatted among themselves, the room buzzing with easy conversation.
And just as Dick had said, four male students clustered around Hector, laughing and talking at full volume.
Simon’s eyes shone with anticipation as he took his seat. Everyone else settled in, pulling out their textbooks and waiting for the lecture to begin.
A short while later the bell rang to mark the start of class, and the sound of dragging footsteps approached from the corridor outside.
Every professor they had met so far—Bahil of Curses among them—had been formidable, so the students waited with high expectations for whoever would walk through the door.
At last the door opened, and a man who looked to be in his early thirties stepped inside.
His hair was a disheveled mess, as if he had just rolled out of bed. A rough stubble covered a jaw that clearly had not seen a razor in days. He wore a loose shirt, shorts, and a pair of worn-out slippers—the very picture of a neighborhood uncle.
The professor shuffled up to the lectern at the front of the room, slippers scraping the floor the whole way.
“I’ll be teaching you Summoning Magic for the year. Name’s Aaron Deia.”
A lethargic voice rolled through the lecture hall.
Aaron walked over to the blackboard and slowly scrawled the words Summoning Magic.
One hand stayed buried in his pocket while the other wrote; the entire posture radiated pure, world-weary laziness. Even so, a few of the girls whispered among themselves with flushed faces. His features were handsome enough that he somehow managed to look good no matter what he did.
“Summoning Magic is the root of the Necromancer—history itself, you could say. Scholars hate to admit it, but it’s hard to deny that our origins lie with grave keepers, tomb robbers, and corpse fetishists.”
Aaron set the chalk down with a dark little smile.
“Anyway. If you’ve got ears, you’ve already heard all sorts of things about Summoning Magic. That it’s outdated. That it gets no respect. That it’s hard to study and comes with too many handicaps… All those prejudices you’ve picked up here and there…”
The students swallowed hard, waiting for what he would say next. A Kizen professor ought to have something special to offer, they thought.
“Most of them are true.”
“…?!”
Of course. Aaron clearly had no intention of sugarcoating his own field.
“In the classes you’ve already taken, I’m sure you heard plenty about how great your major is and why you absolutely have to take it. Personally, I’m against that approach. Students should be able to make a proper choice, so you need to hear the advantages and the disadvantages—clearly.”
Aaron returned to the board and picked up the chalk again. The students grabbed their quills, ready to take notes.
“First disadvantage of Summoning Magic: it’s expensive.”
He wrote the words on the board, then turned back to the class.
“I’m not just saying that. No matter how much material cost you imagine, the real number is higher.”
A sudden silence fell over the lecture hall.
“The material cost for Summoning Magic alone can exceed the combined cost of every other subject. Of course it does. Are you going to kill the person next to you every time you need a skeleton or a zombie? Raid a village? Hunt down animals one by one? No. Modern Necromancers use skeleton sets, or specially treated corpses that can be turned into zombies right away. And most of the undead you create that way are disposable.”
Several students’ faces darkened. The common-born students in particular looked noticeably pale.
“It’s not rare for the materials you burn through in a fight to cost more than the mission reward. If you’re going to major in Summoning Magic, give up on making money. Second point.”
Aaron wrote the next line.
“Extreme dependence on your summons. Obvious, right? Summoning Magic is the art of fighting with summons. If your summons are destroyed, a Summoner’s combat power drops by more than eighty percent.”
“……”
“These days especially, people prefer permanent undead they’ve modified over and over instead of disposable ones. So what happens when that undead gets destroyed in the field?”
The corner of Aaron’s mouth curled upward.
“Picture your classmates poring over maps and discussing tactics while you sit there sucking your thumb because you lost your summons.”
By this point a few students were starting to think he simply did not want any students at all.
“And that dependence ties straight back to the first disadvantage.”
Aaron drew a line from the circled word dependence over to expensive.
“Lose your main summons and a Summoner takes a critical hit—both in combat power and in finances. You’ll spend a long time scraping money together just to rebuild.”
A heavy silence settled over the room.
“And the third and final disadvantage. This one’s the most important.”
At the news that there was something even worse than the cost and the dependence, several faces went ashen. Of course, none of it applied to Ainz.
“Third disadvantage: Summoning Magic is weak against Priests.”
Even Simon’s eyes went wide this time. He was already interested in Summoning Magic, and now he was being told it was expensive, heavily dependent on summons, and weak against Priests. His head started to hurt.
Conflict with Priests was the most sensitive issue among the students. Every professor so far had emphasized their field’s advantages on that front. Aaron was doing the exact opposite.
“I titled it that way, but more precisely, Summoning Magic simply isn’t suited to modern warfare.”
“……”
“Summoning Magic shines brightest in total war. When tens of thousands clash with tens of thousands, a Summoner finally gets an endless supply of materials for undead. But under the current ceasefire, combat takes the form of local skirmishes against Priests on mission. Curse casters who can strike clean and vanish without a trace are the ones in fashion right now—that’s just the way of the times.”
Aaron was openly declaring that his own major was outdated. Even so, his voice never rose or fell.
“And yes, summoning magic really is weak against Priests. Imagine pouring money and effort into an undead army only to watch it collapse the moment a Priest chants a single holy spell. The matchup is just bad.”
He set the chalk down and looked over the students.
“There are countless other disadvantages I haven’t even mentioned. The judgment is yours.”
He really did look like a man who did not want any students.
After a brief silence, someone shot a hand straight up.
“Jamie Victoria! I’d also like to hear the advantages of Summoning Magic!”
“……”
Other professors might have found a student who helped them make their pitch endearing. Aaron was not other professors.
“I don’t recall giving permission for questions.”
A chill ran down Jamie’s entire body. The other students, who had been lounging comfortably, suddenly sat bolt upright.
Shabby clothes or not, Aaron was still a first-rate Necromancer holding a professorship at Kizen.
“I—I’m sorry!”
Jamie bowed her head.
Even so, as a professor he still had to answer a student’s question.
Aaron clicked his tongue and opened his mouth.
“The advantage of Summoning Magic is numbers. You don’t fight alone—you have your summons helping you, which lets a Necromancer deploy a wide variety of tactics on their own. That answer enough?”
“Yes!”
Aaron folded his arms.
“Whether you take Summoning Magic again in the second semester, and whether you choose it as your major, is entirely up to you. But remember this one thing.”
His voice turned serious. He was a completely different person from the man who had been half-heartedly conducting class a moment ago.
“If you don’t have the resolve, don’t even set foot in this field.”
Aaron was nothing like the other professors.
“Don’t come in here with some soft attitude where you whine, complain, wallow in self-loathing, and then show up for a major-change consultation in second year because of money problems or whatever. That’s what I’m saying.”
Whether Aaron himself had suffered through students requesting major changes or not, the teaching assistants standing behind him quietly sighed.
“Especially if anyone looks at the low competition rate and thinks they’ll pick Summoning Magic just to survive—I’ll expel you with my own hands. That’s all.”
Having issued what amounted to a declaration of war on the students, Aaron’s voice slid back into its usual lethargic drawl.
“…All right. Let’s start class.”
At his gesture the teaching assistants moved quickly, placing a skeleton set on every student’s desk.
The students opened the boxes. Inside were bone fragments arranged in order, each one numbered.
“What you’ve been given are the bones of an Island Ratman. The skeletal structure is similar to a human’s, but simpler and cheaper. Most beginner Summoners start with these.”
A Summoning Magic assistant pinned a detailed diagram of the Island Ratman skeleton—complete with numbered labels—to the blackboard.
“We’ll begin. Take out bone number one: the skull.”
Simon and the other students lifted the skulls onto their tables with tense faces. Ainz casually picked his up and set it down.
A few of the girls wrinkled their noses at the grotesque sight, but that was as far as it went. Girls who had made it into Kizen did not hesitate when it came to handling the bones.
“The skulls have already been assembled. There’s an opening at the bottom where you can insert your hand, and inside you’ll find a magic-circle calibration frame. Put your hand in and construct the circle.”
Ainz casually poured jet-black mana into his. The other students did the same, faces tight with concentration.
“And once the magic circle is complete—”
“Kyaaaaaaah!”
“Ugh! Aaaah!”
Screams erupted from every direction.
The instant the magic circles finished, the skulls suddenly came to life, jaws clacking against the roofs of their mouths with a rapid clack-clack-clack.
Students flung the skulls they were holding, toppled out of their chairs in shock. Dick clutched his chest, gasping for breath.
“‘Once the magic circle is complete, the undead will activate, so don’t be surprised.’ That was what I was about to say. A little late, I suppose.”
Aaron snickered. A few students shot him resentful looks, but none of them dared protest to a Kizen professor.
Ainz’s skeleton, by contrast, had light in its eyes but remained perfectly still from the start. It would not even think of moving without permission in front of Ainz.
“Stay still.”
Simon grabbed the head that was trying to roll off the desk and set it firmly back down. The undead quieted as if it had actually understood the words.
“…Simon, Ainz. Have you two handled these a lot?”
Dick looked disgusted, as if he did not even want to touch the undead. The skeletons belonging to Simon beside him and to Ainz—who had once again casually taken the seat next to Simon—were both perfectly well-behaved, which struck him as remarkable.
“Get used to it. You’re Necromancers.”
Aaron shoved his hands into his pockets and continued.
“And with the magic circle you just activated, the undead is essentially complete. Of course it can’t move without a body. Now it’s your turn to build the skeleton’s body.”
He tapped the Island Ratman bone diagram pinned to the board.
“A Necromancer must have perfect knowledge of the skeletal structure of any creature that will become a summon. A human has two hundred six bones; an Island Ratman has only fifty-three, so it’s much easier. First, find bone number two: the neck bone.”
The students rummaged through their skeleton sets. Simon and Ainz both located the bone marked with a two.
“Now connect bone number two to the skull.”
Ainz simply brought the bone up beneath the skull. It snapped into place with a soft click, as if drawn by a magnet.
“I’ll say it again: activating the magic circle earlier completed the entire magic that moves the skeleton. And a skeleton has the property of wanting to return to the form of its previous body.”
Aaron turned his head back toward the bone diagram.
“Next is bone number three.”
The students set the skulls on their desks and began connecting the numbered bones one by one.
“Continue the same way up through number eleven.”
“I—I did it!”
“Nice!”
Before long, cheerful exclamations were rising from every corner of the room.
“Be careful not to mix up the thoracic and lumbar vertebrae. The Island Ratman is a bipedal animal, and completing the spine that supports the rear of the body is the most important part.”
“If you assemble the bones in the wrong order, you won’t get smooth movement. It’ll creak, the motion will be off, and it’ll break down at critical moments.”
“Now go all the way to number sixteen in one go.”
Many students had been worried after Aaron’s opening remarks, but the Summoning Magic class turned out to be enjoyable enough for anyone to like.
Everyone was boasting about their finished products or asking questions in a lively free-for-all. Aaron made no particular effort to rein in the relaxed atmosphere.
“We’re almost there. Continue through number fifty-three. Anyone who’s stuck, raise your hand.”
“Professor! I can’t get the legs assembled properly!”
“Uwaah, Professor! My skeleton keeps running away!”
Ainz finished constructing his skeleton without any particular trial and error.
“Hey! Control your summon! This thing’s hitting me!”
“I told it to hit you.”
“Eek! Look at this! I can even make it dance!”
“…Why is this thing cute?”
Warm laughter rose from every direction. Students who had successfully completed their skeletons were completely absorbed in playing with their new summons.
Meanwhile…
“Simon! Please look at my skeleton!”
There were also students who were stuck. Dick was tearing at his hair.
“Why does this thing keep attaching its leg to its own arm?!”
Dick’s skeleton had attached its right leg to its shoulder in place of a right arm and was now lurching along on that single limb. The other students clutched their stomachs laughing at the sight.
Simon spoke as if it were nothing.
“You mixed up the mid-leg bone with an arm accessory. Number twenty-one is a leg bone, not an arm.”
“Ah, you’re right! Why do they all look so similar?”
Ainz, having finished his assembly the fastest, was now sketching something that looked like a blueprint.
He was designing an undead that would fill a specialized role within the Fifth Legion—something he had been planning himself.
Aaron approached him. Even with the student-protection period in effect, he felt he ought to say something. He walked over… and then found he could not open his mouth.
The skeleton Ainz had assembled knelt perfectly still right beside him, head bowed like a servant awaiting its master’s command.
That was not all. The thoughts being sent by the undead-type summons inside Aaron’s own subspace had subtly shifted. They seemed to want to submit to Ainz—as if wild monsters instinctively following the strongest alpha in the pack.
It was a phenomenon that had never once occurred even when Aaron faced Nephthys.
Fortunately—if one could call it that—the effect faded before his undead fully transferred their allegiance to Ainz.
Instead of criticizing Ainz’s attitude, Aaron looked at the blueprint the boy was drawing on the parchment.
It was less a blueprint than an anatomical diagram of some mollusk- or arthropod-type monster.
Even Aaron, who as a Summoning Magic professor had seen countless monster anatomies, had never seen a diagram quite like the one Ainz was producing. More than that, words that looked like a materials list were written along one edge of the parchment.
Aaron made a reasonably accurate guess: Ainz was already planning an original summon of his own.
Ordinarily he would have thought a student planning an original summon on the very first day of school simply had big dreams.
But after the strange phenomenon a moment earlier, Aaron found himself growing interested in that design.
It had been a long time since he had felt genuine interest in a student. With that thought, Aaron returned to the lectern.
Time passed, and Aaron declared the end of the exercise.
“That’s enough. Skeleton assembly ends here for today.”
Disappointed voices rose from every corner. Aaron picked up the attendance book.
“Finally, we’ll do a participation exercise. When I call your name, come forward.”
The inevitable moment had arrived. Simon swallowed hard, as if he had known this was coming. He had hoped they might skip it just once. Wishful thinking.
Aaron called Simon’s name. Simon stepped forward with a resigned expression.
And his opponent was Hector—the same Hector he had faced once already in Curses class.
Hector rose slowly from his seat, face set with determination to wipe away the previous humiliation.
Just like in the first class, Simon and Hector stood facing each other. A teaching assistant set a skeleton set at each of their feet.
“We have about ten minutes until the end-of-class bell.”
Aaron checked his wristwatch. He rummaged in his pocket, pulled out a cheap necklace, and hung it around the neck of a skeleton model standing in front of the lectern.
“Use your skeletons to get this necklace. Whoever is holding it when class ends wins. You’re forbidden from moving yourselves or using any other black magic, but anything else is allowed. Ready.”
Aaron extended his arm. Both of them dropped into low stances.
“Begin.”
Simon and Hector dropped to their knees in front of their skeleton sets at the same time.
Both poured jet-black mana into the skulls and glanced at the blackboard as if to start assembling—only for the teaching assistant to pull the bone-structure diagram down with an apologetic look.
“No cheating allowed for this match.”
At Aaron’s words, Simon bit his lip. Hector’s pupils wavered in shock as well, but he quickly turned back to his skeleton set.
“What you used earlier was classroom material. The assistants went to the trouble of writing numbers on every bone. Commercially sold skeleton sets don’t come with numbers kindly labeled on them. I told you, didn’t I? A Necromancer has to know all of it by heart.”
Simon’s face looked as if the sky had fallen, but he had no intention of giving up. Hector, having done prior study, assembled without hesitation.
Hector’s skeleton stood complete and upright. Applause broke out here and there.
The skeleton began to move and lifted the necklace from the model.
Simon decided to rely on instinct rather than memory and disassembled his skeleton. Surprised voices rose from every side.
After that, he began connecting the bones according to his own intuition.
“Uh, isn’t that wrong from the start?”
“It’s over.”
The students murmured as if the result were already decided.
But Ainz knew. You did not necessarily have to create the correct answer.
Aaron had told them to use a skeleton to obtain the necklace. He had never said they had to assemble a proper Island Ratman skeleton.
Simon swapped the positions of the arms and legs, boldly discarded the parts he did not need, and created a quadrupedal skeleton.
He was roughly recreating the skeletal structure of the Gray Rat—the ancestral monster of the Island Ratman.
In general, quadrupedal locomotion was far superior to bipedal. The only real advantage of a biped was the precise use of hands.
But all that was required this time was simply “to snatch a necklace,” so precise hand use was unnecessary.
And then something took shape.
“Nice work, Simon!”
In the silent classroom, a girl named Sindy Vivace suddenly shot to her feet and raised her arms.
“The form’s good! I don’t know what it is, but finish it like that!”
Before long Dick was on his feet shouting as well. The other students watched Simon’s creation with tense expressions.
Hector bit his lip. He was getting impatient.
Hector’s skeleton began running toward Simon. Aaron had forbidden them from moving themselves or using other black magic. He had not forbidden any other actions—and of course, interfering with a completed skeleton was allowed.
Simon seemed not to notice as he connected the final parts. Excited shouts poured in from every direction.
In the end, Hector’s skeleton kicked Simon’s skeleton and smashed it.
It collapsed from the torso outward, bone fragments scattering into the air. Students clapped their hands over their mouths and half-rose from their seats.
Simon immediately formed a new plan. This time he completed each arm separately, then finished the lower body.
He began moving the individual parts independently. The skeleton’s two arms scuttled toward Hector’s skeleton on busy fingers, while the lower body ran at it on two legs.
The remaining parts—including the skull—rolled or bounced their way toward Hector’s skeleton.
Hector’s skeleton resisted fiercely at first, but in the end a left arm that came flying out of a blind spot snatched the necklace away.
Everyone’s mouths fell open. Simon’s skeleton, driven by its restorative nature, returned exactly to the quadrupedal form he had first created.
At the same moment, the clear bell signaling the end of class rang out.
“……”
“……”
A deep silence filled the classroom. No one could speak.
Even Aaron stared blankly at Simon’s skeleton clutching the necklace.
Hector had no choice but to accept defeat.
If the bell had rung before the restoration, he might have tried to argue that the left arm that stole the necklace from his skeleton was nothing more than a bone fragment.
But when it was this perfect, there was no room for excuses.
Then a fierce cheer erupted through the lecture hall, and Aaron watched Simon carefully.