A Morning Ride on the Hippos
The next morning, Simon's new day at Kizen began.
Three classes were scheduled for the day.
The professor in charge of the first class, Jet-Black Mechanics, was a middle-aged man named Eric Aura.
Wrinkles ideally placed, a neat beard, a dignified look that suited his tailored suit perfectly, and a relaxed air that came from years of experience—everyone felt an instant fondness for him.
"Jet-Black is the foundation of every necromancer. No matter how much I stress it, it will never be enough."
Eric guided his students with seasoned skill.
His explanations were easy to follow, and his solutions lodged themselves firmly in the mind. He lacked the flashy theatrics of Bahil from Curse Studies, but the class itself was clean and refreshingly straightforward.
Before anyone realized it, every student in Class A had been drawn into Eric's lecture.
How does Jet-Black produce the miracle known as dark magic? The flow of Jet-Black. An understanding of Rune Script. Even the operating principles of magic circles.
"The origin of Rune Script can be traced back to the 'Ever-burning Sacred Fire' of Del Temple."
Eric did not limit himself to dry theory.
"People never questioned why the sacred flame never went out. To doubt a miracle of God was itself considered an act of impiety."
At times, he even reached back into ancient history to illuminate the runes.
"Eventually, they noticed that the ashes falling from the sacred fire formed shapes that looked uncannily like 'letters.' And they were stunned by the truth that mere letters were producing a miracle on par with the burning sacred flame itself. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the origin of Rune Script."
Eric drew the ancient runes on the blackboard and explained how the mages and necromancers who studied them had refined the script over the centuries.
Then, as smoothly as flowing water, he transitioned into the analysis of modern magic circles.
Why does this circle work? Why does that one fail?
Eric carefully took each circle apart and explained its workings. Until now, Simon had simply drawn his circles with a correction tool without a second thought, but he was finally beginning to understand a little of why they functioned the way they did.
While Simon scribbled down notes in a frantic effort to keep up, the bell announcing the end of class rang out before he knew it.
"We'll stop here for today."
Eric declared the class over as well.
"You have homework due by our next session. Choose one of the non-functioning magic circles you've studied as your example, and submit a document detailing the revisions required to make it work, along with your calculations and the formulas you used. The three students I call upon will present their work at the front of the class."
Perhaps because Jet-Black Mechanics was a required core course, Simon, mercifully, wasn't called up to the front this time.
He silently cheered inside.
"Wow, this class is brutal."
As students noisily filed out of the lecture hall, Dick, wearing an expression of utter exhaustion, stretched and groaned.
"This feels like when I studied arithmetic with my dad as a kid. Can't we just memorize the magic circles and cast them like usual? Why do we have to know every fiddly little detail about how they trigger?"
"I thought it was fine."
Simon said, arms crossed.
"I only understood half of it, but I liked how he explained things step by step from the fundamentals."
"You think everything at Kizen is great. You thought the soap in the baths was so fascinating you scratched it with your fingernails—"
Simon jabbed his elbow into Dick's chest. He staggered back with a yelp, but the laughter that had burst out of him wouldn't stop.
"Ack! You screamed when you saw the bubbles in the bath—'Am I allowed in here?' Pfft!"
"I'm heading out."
Simon stomped off ahead with a scowl. Dick hurried after him, insisting it was just a joke.
Class A had to prepare for their next class with no break in between.
A twenty-minute walk brought them to the next classroom: an empty, desolate field on the outskirts of Kizen.
"There's nobody here?"
"Ah, over there—!"
While the Class A students chatted as they waited, a thick cloud of dust was rising from the forest.
Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud!
The ground shook as if an earthquake had struck.
What came charging toward them was nothing other than a herd of more than thirty hippos.
The students cried out in alarm and stumbled backward.
"Ahaha! Hello there, freshmen!"
Then a man came into view, riding atop one of the hippos.
He had swarthy skin, thick lips, a lanky frame, short limbs overall, and he was barefoot. Skillfully bringing the herd to a halt in front of the students, he hopped down.
"Professor Hong-Peng has decided that today's class will take place on Mount Roke! Now, everyone, get on a hippo!"
Hong-Peng Thun Sokum Marlrat, the Magic Combat professor, was one of Kizen's most notorious eccentrics.
Though the academy had provided her with an office and a home, she roamed all over Roc Island, camping wherever she pleased. Because of her temperament, Magic Combat classes were mostly held outdoors.
"...You want us to ride that?"
One male student, eyeing the hippos flaring their nostrils, made a disgusted face.
"Hey, henchman! Shouldn't you lay down a cushion or something on those beasts first?"
The man who heard this smiled pleasantly and walked toward the student.
And then—
"Aaaagh!"
With one hand, he seized the student by the face and hoisted him into the air. Cries of surprise erupted from all around.
"Wh-what are you doing?!"
"How dare you lay hands on a Kizen student!"
A thick aura of menace seeped from the man, who was smiling with childlike innocence. The students who had marched over to protest stopped in their tracks.
"Why do freshmen these days have such terrible manners? Not a henchman—a Teaching Assistant, if you please?"
Only then did the male student grasp the situation and shriek in panic.
"Aagh! S-sorry, senior!"
A TA was, with high probability, a senior who had attended Kizen before.
Moreover, as the closest aide attending upon a professor, he was absolutely not someone a freshman could afford to disrespect.
"Not 'senior.' Teaching Assistant."
"I'm sorry, Teaching Assistant, sir!"
Watching the whole ruckus unfold, Simon shook his head.
"Why do they all act like that?"
"They're aristocrats."
Dick replied with a shrug.
"Raised like hothouse flowers, doted on their whole lives—they never lost the habit of treating people like their personal servants. Expect this kind of thing to happen a lot early in the semester."
The explanation was far too convincing, and Simon nodded.
A short while later, the TA returned to his innocently cheerful face and waved an arm.
"Alright, we're running a little behind schedule. Everyone, please climb aboard a hippo! Up to three per hippo!"
The students scrambled aboard with noticeably quicker movements.
Simon mounted in a single fluid motion, while behind him Dick slipped off several times, squeaking in protest, before finally managing to clamber up.
"Whew. Class hasn't even started and it's already brutal. So brutal."
Behind Dick, who was wiping sweat with his sleeve, a girl hopping helplessly in place came into Simon's view.
"Everyone aboard? Then we depart!"
At the TA's words, the girl's face turned desperate. Simon readily extended his hand toward her.
"Need a hand?"
"Ah—! Thank you."
She approached as if she'd seen her savior and took Simon's hand.
The moment Simon pulled with all his strength, her body came flying toward him like a paper doll, landing on the hippo's back in one go.
"Now, we're off!"
Barely had the girl mounted before the TA smacked the hippo on the rump. The lead hippo took off with a bellow, and the rest of the herd thundered after it in unison.
The girl, who'd made it aboard by the skin of her teeth, let out a sigh of relief and turned back to Simon.
"Thanks for helping me! I'm—!"
Whatever she meant to say was cut off as the hippos abruptly picked up speed. The other students, apparently frightened as well, pressed themselves flat against the hippos' backs.
Vibrations surged up through his entire body—the ride, to put it mildly, was not comfortable.
One student wailed at the top of his lungs.
"T-Teaching Assistant, sir! I'm going to fall! What am I supposed to hold onto?!"
"Anything."
"It's too fast!"
"Grit! Overcome it with grit! Consider this part of your training!"
The TA, balancing on his two legs alone, thrust his right arm into the air.
"Of course, if you fall off like this and get trampled by the herd, you'll die! We do have an accident or two like that every year, after all!"
"...I'm sorry, what?"
The students doubted their own ears.
"Hold on! Hold! A student who can't even manage to ride a hippo's back properly is of no use to Kizen!"
"Aaah, waaah!"
"Moooooom!"
"Stop! Somebody stop this damn thing!"
"Hahahahaha!"
It was a class trip straight out of a madhouse.
* * *
At last, they arrived at the classroom.
Beyond densely grown trees, in the very heart of the mountain, an open field spread wide. The sun hung in the middle of the forest as if to welcome them all, and birdsong and the chirring of insects flowed together in harmony like the music of a recital.
It was a place of matchless beauty.
"Hah... hah... damn it..."
"Uuuugh, haaaahh..."
—provided, of course, that the viewer was in any condition to appreciate the scenery.
All of the students lay sprawled across the field, drained of every ounce of energy. The hippos had descended back down the mountainside, and the TAs were going around handing water buckets to the collapsed students.
What is this?
When Simon took a sip, it was a strangely mysterious taste.
A drink that was sweet with a slightly spicy aftertaste. Yet the moment he drank it, his thirst vanished in one go, and even his fatigue began to melt away.
Little by little, the color returned to the other students' faces as well.
Flutter-flutter!
This time, a flock of white birds came flying in and began gliding over the students' heads. Everyone blinked up at the sight.
"Welcome to my class, everyone!"
Simon turned his head. Beyond the flock of taking-flight birds, a tall woman was walking toward them with both arms spread wide.
Healthily sun-bronzed skin over a firm, muscular frame. Her hair was styled in an unusual fashion, braided together in several layers with what looked like cords.
The students scrambled to their feet.
So that's her...
Hong-Peng Thun Sokum Marlrat.
The legend of the necromancer world who, facing the colossal undead calamity 'Kundar Hydra'—a monster that had laid waste to four territories—alone, snapped one hundred of its necks over five days and seized a dramatic victory.
After that battle, Hong-Peng was scouted by Kizen, and she had been teaching Magic Combat to students ever since.
An eccentric, to be sure—but when it came to sheer skill, there was no room for dispute, and that was precisely why the school turned a blind eye to her antics.
Flap!
Forest birds fluttered down to perch on her outstretched fingers.
"Now then, everyone up, please."
She spoke with a clumsy enunciation, as if her grip on the Continental common tongue were slightly off.
"Form up into four-rank colomns, if you would."
"...?"
When the students stood there blankly, unable to understand, Hong-Peng's TAs stepped in, accustomed to this by now.
"She means form four columns, please."
"Move quickly, everyone."
The students lined up, bewildered. Hong-Peng took the lead, with the TAs positioned on either side of the line.
"Then we're off!"
Wait, then when do we actually have class?
Barely had the thought crossed Simon's mind before Hong-Peng took off running. The students at the head of the line scrambled after her in a panic, and out of nowhere, a distance run had begun.
"A healthy body carries healthy discipline within it! The foundation of Magic Combat is a sturdy constitution!"
Her speech was awkward, as if she'd only recently learned the Continental language, but what she meant to say came through loud and clear.
As she began to accelerate, the students at the front strained to keep pace.
And Simon, running in the third row, studied her form and marveled.
Incredible.
He had never seen anyone run like that.
The angle of every footfall, the movement of every muscle, the sway of her shoulders and torso—it was eerily free of waste, almost like a painting. They had the same two arms and two legs, so why did she alone feel like an alien existing on a different plane? Her form was so ideal it bordered on the uncanny.
"Hah! Hah!"
"Hooah! Hooah!"
While everyone ran themselves half-blind, Hong-Peng eased her pace slightly and carried on with the lesson.
The fundamentals of Magic Combat, its mindset, its meaning.
In short, Magic Combat was a class in combat techniques that learned to coat one's body with Jet-Black to reinforce it to the extreme, and to fight using that power.
Once a practitioner of Magic Combat reached a certain level of mastery, silk-like Jet-Black would flow from their body and take the shape of clothing—the Black Clothes, a technique that stood as the very symbol of Battle Necromancers.
Many male students harbored romantic dreams of this technique, and it was not uncommon for them to choose the Magic Combat major for the sake of the Black Clothes alone.
"Lot of treej ahead. Watch out, everyone!"
The run continued through terrain thick with underbrush and leaves. The four-column formation fell apart as everyone began dodging trees in their own ways, each trying to follow Hong-Peng.
While most weaved frantically through the brush, a few students went straight up, leaping from branch to branch overhead.
Every one of them was a Magic Combat aspirant. As if they'd been waiting for this, they were showing off their specialties.
One of the TAs leaped up into the trees and gave them a thumbs-up, and the aspirants' faces lit up instantly.
"I'm jealous of the Matu kids. Hff!"
Dick grumbled, having just smacked his face into a tree trunk.
Hmm.
Simon watched the scene with keen interest.
It was a combat-focused branch of dark magic centered on the body, and he found himself genuinely intrigued.
"Ugh! Hah! Hey, Simon! You holding up okay?"
Dick asked, his face bright red. Simon blinked, then answered.
"Hm? Oh, I'm fine."
"Hah! Hrk! What is with your stamina...! Cough, cough!"
"Doesn't everyone do this much running?"
This was Simon, after all—the boy who treated the treacherous southern mountains of Leshill like a casual neighborhood walking trail.
Even the TAs had sweat beading on their foreheads, but Simon's expression alone remained utterly at ease.
This class is fun too!
Simon, enjoying his first physically demanding class in ages like a fish in water, had no idea that Hong-Peng was watching him with gleaming eyes.