The Great Purification Unopposed
The Prima Materia monsters were swarming the Kizen campus all at once.
Their appearance bordered on outright *creation*. The empty air would shudder, a white mass would drip down from nothing — and that was all.
No proper cause and effect whatsoever. Watching monsters simply come into being like that, the necromancers of a century ago would have called it a miracle, while the priests called it excretion.
"Run, now!"
The entire campus had erupted into chaos under the monsters' assault. Buildings were crumbling beneath the blows of creatures so enormous that, by Kizen's monster classification standards, they ranked as *super-colossal*. Students streamed out of the structures, screaming.
"No time to gawk! Move it, move!"
"There's an underground shelter under the Lecture Hall! Head that way first!"
Thanks to Meilin's broadcast, the very worst had been averted. If a building had collapsed while a class was in session, its sixty-odd students could have been wiped out in a single catastrophe.
The students, who had stumbled outside in a daze with no idea what was happening, were only now laying eyes on *them*.
White bodies with black eyes, noses, and mouths — and beyond that, every shape imaginable. They looked like a pack of doodles scribbled across a blank canvas by a child in the grip of some fevered anxiety.
Krrrrrroooar!
"Something's coming!"
A pale, medium-sized quadruped — its bare spine and ribs jutting from its flanks — was scaling the building wall, fixing its gaze on the students below.
The students thrust out their arms in a panic, rushing to ready their magic circles —
BOOM!
A cannon shot rang out, and an explosion tore into the monster's face. Its head punched straight through a classroom wall and was smashed flat, while a chain of blasts riddled its body hole after hole.
'Cannon fire?'
The students looked up. Four galleons glowing a pale green floated in the sky.
"Ah!"
"It's Elisa! Elisa's Ghost Ships!"
Just as they said — Special Admission No. 7, uniform coat draped over her shoulders, was striding onto the battlefield.
At her gesture, the ships' hulls swung about and unleashed a full broadside. The white monsters pouring into the campus were reduced to dust in a single volley.
Kachunk.
Her gaze swung around. A super-colossal white monster, bigger than the school buildings themselves, was lumbering toward the Ghost Ships.
The moment she moved to order the ships to turn their prows —
'Huh? Who's that?'
A figure appeared in her field of vision.
A blond male student climbing the monster's massive torso. He clamped himself onto its face, then activated the liquid bombs cradled in his arms.
KUUUUGUGUGUGU!
A deafening roar, and a grey detonation swallowed the monster whole. Elisa crouched low against the violent shockwave, one hand clamped on her uniform coat.
When the smoke cleared, both the monster's head and the male student had vanished entirely. The remaining torso toppled over backward.
"Ugh, what's all this racket? I was trying to take a nap."
Elisa turned. That same student — the one who'd blown himself up along with the monster — was strolling over, casual as anything.
"You're Malcolm, Special Admission No. 10, right? Even a dog with its tail between its legs is useful once in a while."
"...Go die, seriously. Say that after you beat No. 1."
THUD!
Malcolm slammed his staff into the ground. Doppelgängers rose wobbling from the magic circle, and he slung bombs at them one after another. The duplicates snatched them up and charged into the densest cluster of monsters, setting off explosion after explosion. With Elisa's Ghost Ships joining the bombardment, the smaller creatures were swept away in an instant.
Aaaaah.
Elisa raised a mana amplifier to her lips.
From now on, I, Elisa, will be organizing a corps to hold the line against these monsters. If you're a Kizen student, you don't run from a threat — you meet it head-on. Anyone willing to fight, gather at the open plaza in front of the Technology Hall.
Malcolm let out a hollow laugh. Even in the middle of all this, the girl had a itch for command, huh.
Elisa lowered the amplifier and said,
"You're coming too, obviously. It's the last train out."
"Get lost, you power-mad snob."
Much the same was playing out all across Kizen. Caught off guard by the sudden offensive, the students needed only a moment before they began their counterattack with cold precision.
"Disease curses and bleed effects don't work on them!"
"Share intel, fast! Weaken the big ones with curses, sweep the small fry with raw firepower!"
"Get out of the way. Building a barricade."
A male student swung both arms. The windows of the adjacent building shattered, and classroom desks and chairs came gushing out in a stream, piling up into a great hill. Students clambered atop it and held it like high ground, beating down the climbing monsters or erasing whole groups with area attacks. Curse-track students weakened the most dangerous colossi, pinning them so they couldn't strike the buildings.
"Any more Magic Combat kids? Send them up front!"
"Every skeleton out! Walls! Raise walls!"
Thrown into ruthless competition too many times to count, Kizen students responded with genuine speed and discipline. Even mid-evacuation, they slipped smoothly into counteroffensive, and the situation began to stabilize.
"Watch the six o'clock! One super-colossal coming over!"
The problem was the big ones. A super-colossal monster dozens of meters long was stepping lightly over the students' barricades, wading into the plaza. It shrugged off their dark magic and curses with nothing but its hide, and a single kick was enough to shatter their fortifications.
"Whoa."
"That one's dangerous...!"
Then five flashes streaked down from the sky toward the monsters.
Weapons and dark magic glinted — and the super-colossal's body was cleaved apart into a dozen pieces. The students erupted in cheers.
"It's the TAs!"
Brad, the Magic Combat teaching assistant who had tidied up the monsters with ease and touched down on the ground, was glaring at his communication crystal with a long, long sigh. No matter how many times he tried, it was useless. In a fit of frustration he flung the crystal to the ground and scratched at his head furiously.
"We are seriously screwed."
A fellow TA muttered under his breath.
"Objectively speaking, we're done for, aren't we?"
Every professor at Kizen was absent for Lang's funeral — and among the TAs, everyone senior enough to actually matter, the head-TA tier and above, had all gone to the Mausoleum with them.
All that remained now were students left to their own devices and TAs whose rank didn't warrant an invitation.
"Ah, shut it. Works out fine, honestly."
Brad flung off his outer coat and called up his Jet-Black. The Jet-Black Robe — the hallmark of a battle necromancer — flowed over his body.
"If even ONE person dies on our watch, assume I'm stripping off this TA uniform for good. If you want to stay at Kizen, start drafting your watchman résumés now."
Three more years of being jerked around by Simon, and now this crisis on top of it. Brad had simply given up. He'd drop the TA gig entirely and strike out as a freelance necromancer.
"Ohhh."
The junior TAs were staring at him with shining, moved expressions.
"I thought your brain was all muscle, but you can talk pretty too, sunbae!"
"He's got a point."
"The other sunbaes went to the Mausoleum, so let's focus on protecting the students!"
TAs, morale at two hundred percent, burst out onto the field.
"...?"
Brad, wondering what on earth was wrong with them, hurried after the group.
And so a large-scale counterattack was unfolding, centered on the TAs and the star students. But stamina and Jet-Black ran dry eventually, while the monsters born of Prima Materia kept coming in an endless tide.
"Four super-colossals!"
"Fall back!"
In the end, the western front — Elisa's, the first to engage — collapsed. She rushed her students aboard the Ghost Ships and retreated, but the super-colossal white monsters came sprinting after them, clawing at the hulls.
'Ugh, exhausting.'
Pushing the pace too hard in the opening minutes and dumping out so much Jet-Black had been a mistake. Keeping four galleons airborne while also manufacturing every cannon shell consumed an enormous amount of fuel.
"They're catching up!"
"Go faster!"
The students, feeling not a shred of speed, pounded on the ships' railings and harangued Elisa mercilessly.
Just as she was seriously contemplating dumping the lot of them overboard, she saw a boy in a Kizen uniform launch himself at the monsters.
POW!
A single punch from the boy blew a gaping hole through a monster's cheek. He stepped off the falling monster's head and leapt again.
POW! POW! WHAM! CRACK!
The remaining monsters toppled like dominoes under the boy's fists.
Elisa, watching from the railing, felt her eyes go round as saucers. Every other student was no different.
"How is he that strong? Is he a TA?"
"He's in a school uniform, though?"
As the five monsters crashed down in different directions, kicking up clouds of dust, a lithe figure descended neatly through the haze — Prince, dropping lightly to the ground.
[Ugh. Even watching a brat is starting to tire me out.]
Grumbling to himself, Prince scratched at his head as he watched the Ghost Ships pull away.
[What in the world is that Simon fellow even doing?]
The Command and Control Room.
The battle was sliding toward a one-sided rout. Simon, who had kicked off the wall and leapt, brought the Sword of Ruin down at Flema with everything he had.
FWOOSH!
The instant the blade neared her forehead, white flames surged up around the Saintess's body and formed a barrier. The greatsword was knocked away in futility, and Simon glimpsed her smiling, raising a single finger.
A blaze of purest white was igniting in front of Simon's abdomen.
KWAAAAAAAAAANG!
The Pure White Flame detonated, hurling Simon's body dozens of meters backward into the wall. The moment it touched him, Pier's agonized shriek rang through his skull.
Simon slid down the wall and collapsed to one knee.
"Kgh...!"
Then he clutched the abdomen the flame had seared and trembled violently. Both eyes shook with agony, and drool ran freely from the corner of his mouth.
Watching him, Flema smiled with satisfaction.
[Hurts, doesn't it?]
she said.
[This flame is the Goddess's power, meant to purify the impure. For undead and necromancers alike, even the slightest graze is lethal. A living hell unfolds from there.]
She spread her arms wide.
[It is proof of what you are at your very root — impure. The Pure White Flame heals the wounds of those who serve the Goddess, yet burns the followers of evil with merciless severity. Having witnessed this power with your own two eyes — can you still deny the Goddess?]
"..."
Simon drove his greatsword into the floor without a word and forced his body upright. She raised her fingertip, preparing to send another wave of the white flame at him —
CRASH!
Her eyes snapped backward. Kajan, who had charged in at full speed, drove his fist into her from behind. Of course, this too was stopped by the Pure White Flame that guarded her.
"Ghhaa!"
Kajan's face contorted in searing agony. Merely touching his fist to the white flame was enough to threaten his consciousness.
[How diligent. But you just can't rise, can you?]
She smirked and turned her hand toward Kajan.
[The image of yourselves overcoming me. It simply isn't there.]
FWAAAAAAAAAK!
This time the white flame exploded directly in front of Kajan.
"KGHAAAAAAA!"
Flung dozens of meters away, Kajan rolled across the floor as the Pure White Flame clung and burned, then slammed his head into the wall and vomited blood.
Flema smiled as though enjoying a pleasant diversion.
[I acknowledge your struggle — the way you held back the Desolators was admirable. But.]
Her gaze turned to the screens of the Command and Control Room. Kizen's students were fighting a desperate battle against the Prima Materia monsters, and the line was buckling as they exhausted themselves.
[The grace period has merely grown a little longer. No one — no one at all — will stop this 'Great Purification.']
THUD!
Simon wrenched the greatsword out of the floor, gasping for breath, and dragged his Jet-Black up once more.
At some point, Pier's Bone Armour — having absorbed damage beyond its limit — had forcibly deactivated, and its host lay sprawled across the floor. The only thing still properly attached was the right hand gripping the greatsword, bone and nothing more.
[Your grit, I'll grant you. But this is not a gap that stubbornness can bridge. Farewell.]
She extended her fingertip toward Simon —
Pit.
Interrupted, she frowned. Nestled in the very center of the Pure White Flame guarding her body were several strange, unfamiliar feathers.
And yet the feathers were not burning away — they were pushing apart her white-flame shield, forcing more than half of their length through it.
[Who's there!]
FWAAAAAR!
She raised the flame's intensity to its absolute peak and burned the feathers away.
"Hmmm~"
Soft footsteps sounded, and a girl with pale ivory hair sauntered in, hands clasped behind her back.
"Hello there, Simon. You look like you're having a rough time?"
"How did you even get in here—!"
Flutter!
A pair of dazzling wings unfurled behind Serne's back.
"I came to stamp my coupon for the third time, y'knooow~"