The Necklace Gambit
This time, the pick was Hector. Meilin pouted her lips in obvious disappointment and leaned back against her seat, while Hector slowly rose from his chair.
Just as in the first lesson, Simon and Hector stood facing each other. A TA set a skeleton kit down at their feet.
"About ten minutes until the bell."
Aaron said, checking his wristwatch. Then he rummaged in his pocket, pulled out a cheap-looking necklace, and hung it around the neck of the skull model propped up in front of the lectern.
"Use your skeletons to get your hands on this necklace. Whoever is holding the necklace when class ends wins. Moving yourselves or using any other dark magic is forbidden—but beyond that, anything goes. Alright, get ready."
Aaron stretched out his arm. The two boys lowered their stances.
"Begin."
Simon and Hector dropped to their knees before their skeleton kits at the same instant.
I can do this!
Simon's eyes gleamed as he picked up the skull.
I can win this class!
He poured Jet-Black into the magic circle inside the skull, waking the undead. Dark light rippled through the eye sockets as the skull began to rattle, clacking like something alive.
Let's assemble the spine in one go. From number two to number seven...
Simon raised his head to look at the blackboard. And then—
"...!"
With an apologetic expression, the TA was peeling the bone-structure diagram off the blackboard.
Aaron spoke.
"'Cheating' is not permitted in this match."
Simon ground his teeth. Hector too flinched, his pupils shaking for a moment—but he soon turned his attention back to his own kit.
Simon steadied himself and sorted through the bones.
It's fine—the bones have numbers on them, don't they? I'll just assemble them one by one, in order from number one!
However.
No matter how carefully he examined them, there were no numbers written anywhere on the bone surfaces.
"What you used earlier was class material. The TAs painstakingly labeled every bone by hand. The skeleton kits sold on the market don't come with kindly numbered bones."
Aaron's flat voice rang through the room.
"I did say so, didn't I? A necromancer is expected to know all of it by heart."
It was the sound of the sky caving in.
Simon stole a glance at Hector.
Hector, who had already completed his self-study of every subject, was assembling without a moment's hesitation—clearly memorizing the order and structure of the Island Ratman's bones.
...Don't give up. I built one before, so the important bone order should still be in my head.
Simon found the second cervical vertebra and began assembling, piece by piece. Aaron crossed his arms and observed.
Special Admission No. 1 is handling a skeleton for the first time, I see.
He turned his head toward Hector.
Meanwhile, that big guy has the order and structure memorized. He's relying on knowledge and memory to build it.
Hiding the bone diagram from the very first lesson and giving no bone numbers—that was Aaron's deliberate design.
Naturally, this put those who had studied ahead at an overwhelming advantage, but who won or lost was never the point for Aaron.
His goal was to find the student with a true feel for summoning.
Hector, was it? He has the feel.
His pre-studied knowledge was certainly the foundation, but what kept him from making mistakes at every critical juncture was pure instinct. Given two confusing options, he chose the correct one with remarkably high probability.
Special Admission No. 1, on the other hand...
He was floundering from the start. Key bones were going in out of order, and the overall balance of the assembly was wobbling as a result.
Watching him jam bones together in a blind panic, it seemed his composure was half gone.
Aaron didn't think much of pre-studying in principle, but if a student's skill fell short, then at the very least their preparation should make up for it.
The only one in this class worth salvaging is Hector, I'd say.
Click. Click.
At some point, Hector's skeleton—legs complete—stood upright in place.
Applause erupted here and there. The four self-proclaimed members of his faction especially leapt to their feet, chanting Hector's name over and over.
I'm winning.
Hector began assembling the arms, sneaking a sideways glance at Simon.
His opponent was stuck at the torso. He looked to be in a full-blown panic.
And since I'm winning anyway, I'll grind him down so thoroughly he never gets back up.
Hector finished the right arm. He could have gone straight for the necklace, but he showed off, taking the time to assemble the left as well.
I have to turn him into the laughingstock of the class. I have to snap that Special Admission confidence in half and drop him all the way to rock bottom.
In a flash, the left arm was done too. Hector had completed an entire skeleton without once consulting the diagram.
Hector's skeleton began to move. It wobbled slightly, but each step forward was sure and deliberate.
As if taunting its maker's rival, the skeleton circled Simon round and round—then snatched the necklace from the model and hung it around its own neck.
Hector thrust his muscular right arm into the air. At the same moment, his skeleton raised its right arm in a matching performance. The seated students burst into raucous laughter.
"Five minutes remaining."
Aaron's cold voice cut through the noise.
"..."
Simon was still fumbling with the torso.
Was it nerves? Was it because of his opponent? The bone order that had hovered just at the edge of recall had evaporated from his mind entirely.
Stay calm.
Simon set down the bones in his hands.
Whenever the bone order or numbering from class wouldn't surface, Simon instinctively fell back on intuition—on feel—to piece things together. But that meant knowledge and intuition were crashing into each other, tangling together and churning through his head.
So Simon decided to give up on one of them.
Unless you were a memory prodigy, memorizing every last detail of bone order from a single lesson was impossible.
So he would abandon the knowledge learned in class.
This time, pure intuition. I'm assembling it however I please.
Simon knocked over his half-built skeleton with his arm, scattering it. Startled cries broke out around the room.
"He's giving up?"
"No skill and no grit."
"That's supposed to be Special Admission No. 1?"
Simon paid the jeers no mind. He refused to leave even a trace of regret within the time he'd been given.
He lifted skull number one. And in that brief instant, common sense and habit were already shouting at him to pick up the number-two neck bone next.
MY way!
Simon turned his back on the instinct and connected bones five, seven, and ten to the skull in rapid succession.
"Uh, didn't he get it wrong from the very first step?"
"It's over."
Simon clenched his jaw.
He didn't need to build the "correct answer." Aaron's demand was simply this: whatever the skeleton was, raise it and take the necklace.
No time. Throw out the complicated structures and simplify ruthlessly.
Build the front legs around number twenty.
Twenty-seven is core—I can't drop it. Take twenty-nine instead.
Aaron, who had been watching Simon's work in silence, felt his eyes go wide.
This is...!
What Simon was building was not a bipedal Island Ratman.
It was the shape of a four-legged beast—two legs and two arms braced against the floor, upper body lowered.
Impossible. Absurd. And yet...!
There was no mistaking it. The bone structure closely resembled the 'Gray Rat'—the large rat monster found in the great cities of the continent's west.
They belonged to practically the same biological category, and the Gray Rat was known to be what the Island Ratman looked like before it evolved.
He's assembling the bones differently to recreate the form the Ratman had before its evolution?
Of course, the anatomical features, ecology, and internal organs were all fundamentally different, so he couldn't reproduce a true Gray Rat.
But what he was building right now was an 'undead'—something far removed from the common sense of living things. Whether the body fit or not, making bones move through dark magic was entirely possible.
He grafted tail bone forty-nine onto the ribcage. It looks plausible.
How does he know eleven and sixteen are compatible?
He hasn't internalized this through concepts and knowledge—he's intuiting it, purely on instinct?
What was taking shape before his eyes was, by every measure, a defective product—endlessly far from the answer Aaron had presented.
And yet.
Aaron felt a shiver run through him, vast as the open sea.
Something strange is happening here.
Hector, too, felt that something about Simon was deeply off.
Simon's creation—arms and legs splayed against the floor, torso crouched low—was an eerie skeleton that could no longer be called an Island Ratman at all.
But one thing was certain: something was being made.
"You can do it, Simon!"
In the silent classroom, Cindy Vivace suddenly sprang to her feet with her fist raised.
"The shape's there! I don't know what it is, but finish it just like that!"
At some point, Dick had risen from his seat and was shouting too.
The other students watched Simon's work with tense expressions. Even Meilin, the ace of Class A, was half out of her seat.
Hector ground his teeth.
I'm the one who made the finished product.
In the shortest time, without ever looking at the diagram.
I'm the main character here.
So why is no one looking at me?
Hector's anxiety curdled into impatience.
Just like in the first lesson.
You think I'm just going to stand here and watch?!
Hector issued a command to his skeleton. Aaron had forbidden moving directly or using other dark magic—but everything else was permitted.
Hector's skeleton began charging at Simon. Simon, absorbed in his assembly, seemed not to notice, and frantic cries of "Look out!" rang out across the room.
CRUNCH!
And then it happened.
Hector's skeleton kicked Simon's skeleton and smashed it.
The torso crumpled first, bone fragments scattering into the air. Students clapped their hands over their mouths and leapt up from their seats.
I won. Simon Polentia!
Hector, sweat streaming down his face, broke into a victorious smile.
But—
...Why?
Simon was reaching out his right arm, a smile on his face—as if he had known all along.
Something had gone terribly wrong.
Time seemed to slow to a crawl, and Hector's pupils followed the direction Simon's right arm was pointing.
Among the bones flung up by that kick, an arm bone was spinning through the air in a graceful arc.
It sailed past Hector's skeleton—and executed a single, simple movement. But a single movement of utter precision.
Snick.
The hand closed around the necklace the skeleton wore and stripped it off. Then, as if losing all strength, the arm bone dropped to the floor.
Every mouth in the room hung open.
And at the same moment—
BAAAANG—
The clear chime of the class bell rang out.
"..."
"..."
A heavy silence settled over the classroom.
No one could speak.
Even Aaron could only stare, dazed, at the skeleton's fallen arm, still clutching the necklace.
"Th-that doesn't... count!"
Hector screamed, clawing at the ruling.
"Professor Aaron! You told us to get the necklace with our skeleton! That thing isn't a skeleton at all—it's just a meaningless pile of bone fragments!"
Heh.
A small chuckle rang out.
Every head turned toward the sound.
Simon, drenched in sweat and sitting on the floor, lifted his head and looked Hector dead in the eye.
"Doesn't seem that way to me?"
WHOOSH!
The arm bone holding the necklace flew to his broken torso as if drawn by a magnet.
Clack!Clack!Click!
The bone fragments scattered across the floor began attaching themselves to the collapsed skeleton's torso, one by one, of their own accord. The skeleton staggered upright, and in moments it had perfectly reconstructed the very form it had worn before being smashed.
Hector's pupils shook with disbelief.
The skeleton walked up to Simon, necklace still clasped in its hand, raised itself on its two legs—and hung the necklace around Simon's neck.
Staring back at Hector's sour, constipated expression, Simon flashed a grin.
"That counts, right?"
And with no need for anyone to go first—
The lecture hall erupted in a roar of cheers.