The Zombies' Paradise
"On behalf of His Highness and the royal family, allow me to apologize."
Princess Molly bowed her head with flawless grace. Simon frantically waved his hands in protest.
"N-no, please! You don't have to, Princess!"
"I give you my word—my name on it—that my brother and Dresden will never trouble you again. I slipped out here without permission, so I ask that you grant me the chance to apologize formally at a later date. Until then, farewell."
With that, she departed, taking her maid-dressed attendant with her. Only then did Simon let out a long sigh of relief.
As long as she was around, Andre's revenge was the least of his worries.
This all happened after the Duel Evaluation concluded without incident, while Simon was busy repairing the Overlord in the clubroom.
"Hey, kid."
Benya, who had been helping him with the work, struck up a conversation.
"You're taking Professor Aaron's class, right?"
"That's right."
"What are you learning these days?"
Simon paused to think, then answered.
"Hmm, now that you mention it, we've set skeletons and the other undead aside entirely—we're focusing exclusively on zombies lately."
"……Zombies?"
At the word zombies, Benya froze mid-motion, her face going stiff. Even Dio, the second-year who was usually sprawled across the clubroom sofa, lifted his head ever so slightly.
"Yes? Is there a problem?"
"No, no problem at all. It's just, if you're learning zombies now, it won't be long before……"
Benya shook her head slowly from side to side.
"You'll be heading to that place soon enough."
"That place?"
"……AAAAHH!!"
A sudden shriek made both of them turn their heads.
Dio was clutching his head and thrashing around.
"……Ah, dammit, I told you not to bring that up! My first-year trauma's gonna flare up again!"
"I thought it was fun, though!"
"……Fun? Frozen solid, you are. Just *thinking* about it is horrifying."
Benya burst out laughing. Simon, utterly lost, could only let his gaze dart back and forth between the two of them.
"Professor Aaron's zombie course ends with a very important practical assessment."
Benya explained.
"It might have seemed pretty gruesome at the time, but looking back now, a year later? All fond memories~"
Over her shoulder, as she reminisced, Dio was making a pitying, you poor soul kind of face.
Not long after Benya brought up that story, a practical assessment was indeed scheduled for the Summoning class—and a hefty one at that, clearing out an entire day's worth of their timetable.
The meeting point wasn't the usual Summoning lecture hall either, but in front of the teleportation circle they passed through whenever they headed out on missions.
Which could only mean one thing: they were leaving Roc Island.
[How interesting! Take me with you!]
When Simon relayed the story he'd heard from Benya, Pier perked up with enthusiasm.
Why do you want to come, Pier?
[I've been meaning to check that place out anyway! I was planning to stop by during your break, without fail.]
For Pier to go this far, there could only be one reason.
[There is a high likelihood that the Legion's Zombie Commander, 'Prince,' resides there!]
The matter of a new Legion Commander.
Simon, of course, welcomed it wholeheartedly. Having squandered his chance to claim Big Kroom, he had no intention of letting even the faintest possibility slip away.
There was no mention of Kizen inspecting his subspace, and according to the upperclassmen, students were free to act as they pleased once the practical assessment began—so Simon accepted Pier's proposal.
And so, the day of the assessment arrived.
Simon packed Pier and a considerable number of legionified skeletons into his subspace and arrived at the teleportation circle, the designated meeting point.
Whew.
He'd already made the round trip to Pier's ruins since early that morning, and his stomach was growling.
He sat down in the shade of a convenient tree and was nibbling away at a wheat bun he'd bought from the campus store when—
"Simon!"
Camibarez came running down the hill, waving her hand.
Her face, always lit up with a bright smile, had a kind of magic to it that lifted the spirits of anyone who saw it. Simon smiled and waved back.
"Hey, Cami."
"May I sit next to you?"
"Of course."
She settled into the spot beside him, knees together, arms resting atop them, and giggled.
"You look happy today."
"I am! It's our first group practical assessment with everyone in ages!"
That was right. Aaron had made it clear that this assessment would follow the group composition from Jane's class, no changes allowed. A quick glance around confirmed it—all the Class A students were clustered with their own teammates, chatting away.
"I'm a little worried, though."
Simon said, chewing his bun.
"About what?"
"The club seniors said this practical assessment is brutal."
"Ah~ I heard that too. Apparently Class C went there before us, and everyone came back so drained they were sleepwalking through class the next day."
"Oh-ho! What's this, what's this?"
Simon looked up.
At some point, Dick had appeared, looking down at the two of them with a mischievous grin plastered across his face.
"You two are awfully cozy, huh? Wow! A couple spotted in the wild!"
"Dick!!"
Camibarez shrieked, her ears burning red. Simon, long since resigned to this, simply kept nibbling his bun.
"It's not like that!!"
Camibarez hopped around in front of Dick and clamped a hand over his mouth.
Dick managed to squeeze out a few words despite his muffled protests—'mmph, mmph!'—and the girl, her face now crimson as a boiled beet, smacked him repeatedly on the forearm in sheer embarrassment.
Like I thought, Cami's the only one worth teasing.
Just as Dick was basking in the rewards of his favorite pastime—
"Hey! Leave our Cami alone!"
Meilin came marching over, her sky-blue hair fluttering behind her. Dick shrugged.
"Slandering a man without hearing the full story first? That's a bad habit, I'd say."
"Yeah, coming from your track record."
"Whoa, that's cold, Meilin. Real cold."
Meilin shook her head slowly.
"I still die inside just thinking about how I got played by that tongue of yours back at the start of the semester."
"Oh! So you've built up an immunity these days, have you?"
"You bet I have!"
"Pretty confident, aren't we? Care to put it to the test?"
Dick suddenly hunched forward, planting a hand on his knee—and Meilin spat out, ice-cold:
"Ah, I've been standing in this *pose* so long my legs are stiff. Care to *massage* them for me?"
"……!!"
Dick's face froze solid. She'd nailed his next line exactly.
He scrambled to abandon the pose, pretending he'd never been in it at all, and this time dropped into a full split instead.
"That one? The whole 'might as well be sprawled out like this' bit?"
"No way—how did you……!"
"You're supposed to wring even a beef bone out in moderation, you know. This is milking it past rehash, past three-time rerun, straight into brain-fry territory."
"That was amazing, Meilin!"
Camibarez cheered, clapping her hands together. Before anyone noticed, Simon too was watching Meilin's counterattack with keen interest.
Dick wiped sweat from his brow like a man facing the greatest crisis of his life.
"Wow, damn. I was saving this one for a special occasion, you know."
"Stop talking crap and go prep for the assessment."
"Today, I shall perform the signature victory pose of Meilin."
"Signature what?"
A flicker of unease crossed Meilin's face.
"When Meilin wins a Duel Eval, she goes something like this, right?"
Dick crossed his arms. From there, his left hand settled above his navel while his right arm angled up toward his face. One leg stretched straight out, the other bent just enough to trace a curve—a crooked, artfully slanted stance.
And in exactly that pose, he swept his right hand through the hair by his ear and flashed a dazzling smile.
"Keep working hard~ peasant."
Pfft—!
Pffft!
The other students who'd been watching the whole spectacle couldn't hold it in either, and snorts of laughter erupted all around.
Simon spat the mouthful of bun he was chewing straight into the grass, and Camibarez hurriedly covered her mouth. And the star of the show herself, Meilin, went scarlet with helpless mortification.
"BAHAHA! It's spot on, isn't it? Now for a different pose—"
"Don't you dare, you lunatic!"
In the end, Meilin pulled her bag out of her subspace and beat Dick senseless with it. Dick took a bag to the face and went down into the grass, and a thoroughly one-sided beating ensued.
"Beaten-to-a-pulp ending, two for two!"
"Die!"
Cheerful laughter burst out from every corner of the hillside.
"Ha, unbelievable."
One of the girls in Hector's clique snorted derisively.
"Seriously zero situational awareness. They don't even know where we're going and they're acting all carefree like th— Stop laughing! You idiot!"
"YOWCH!"
She smacked the back of the head of the boy standing beside her.
While everyone traded lively banter—
"Attention, all of you."
Aaron finally made his appearance.
Every student's eyes went wide.
For once, it wasn't his usual rumpled t-shirt, shorts, and slippers—he'd shown up wearing a long coat trimmed with black feathers.
Whoa. So that's what they meant by his coat being wings.
He looks like a completely different person.
As the students murmured their quiet awe, Aaron spoke in his trademark languid drawl.
"No time for chitchat. Everyone, onto the teleportation circle. Now."
Classic Aaron—shipping his students off without a word of explanation. As they filed onto the magic circle, Aaron stepped into the center last of all.
Vmmmmmm!
The now-familiar sensation of teleportation. Simon felt his feet lift weightlessly off the ground and closed his eyes.
He opened his eyes.
Every image Simon had built up in his mind from upperclassmen's stories and rumors was being wiped clean in one sweep. This place exceeded anything he had imagined.
A black world.
Merely setting foot in this space and drawing breath made his skin crawl.
The sky was pitch black, and here and there red cloud-like masses drifted through it, forming currents of some unknown air. Weeds sprouted from the ground, and there were things that might once have been flowers—but every last one had lost its vitality and crumbled dry at a touch.
Simon decided the world's nickname, the Land of Death, was entirely accurate. The other Class A students who'd teleported in alongside him clearly shared the sentiment, their faces unmistakably rattled by the alien, desolate landscape.
Rustle.
Camibarez grabbed the hem of Simon's clothes, her face pale with fear. Simon murmured softly that she'd be fine and gave her shoulder a gentle pat.
"Attention."
Aaron, still in his black-feathered coat, stepped to the front. The students crowded around him.
"No need to gawk. This is the southern region of the Shahed Kingdom. A place called Deathland."
Aaron began his explanation.
"Deathland is counted among the continent's Ten Great Mysteries. A powerful curse laid down here, entangled with natural phenomena, produces all manner of strange occurrences—and the most famous of them is this."
Aaron plucked one of the withered flowers lying on the ground.
"Within this region, the concept of decay does not exist."
Tap.
When Aaron flicked the flower with his finger, it shattered with a dry crackle.
"When a living creature dies, its form does not rot and dissolve after a time—it simply persists as it was. And because of that, this place is known as—"
Aaron's lips curled upward at the corners.
"—the paradise of zombies."
The students' faces drained white. Even now, strange groans—presumably from zombies—kept drifting in from all around them.
"As announced beforehand, this Summoning practical assessment will be conducted as a group assignment."
Aaron said, glancing at the wristwatch on his arm.
"You've spent this time studying zombies, and you've even learned the magic circles used to raise them. The evaluation is simple. By the appointed hour, create the finest summon-type zombie you can obtain here in Deathland—and present it to me."
Simon's eyes went wide.
……A mission to MAKE a zombie!
Which meant hauling in any of the natural undead roaming Deathland was pointless. Only summon-type zombies raised by the students themselves with their own magic circles would count toward the grade.
"You'll be graded on the zombie's quality of craftsmanship, its originality, its combat capability—and the magic circle you used to raise it counts toward your score as well. There's no teamwork grade. Whatever zombie your group of four brings back, all four of you receive the same score and the same ranking."
Aaron broke into an eerie smile.
"I expect no crybabies sniveling over a mere zombie. You are necromancers. Conduct yourselves accordingly for this evaluation."