The Professors Descend

The assault of the white monsters grew fiercer by the minute.

The Kizen students were holding the line, quite literally pouring out jet-black mana, but they had reached their limit.

Had there been even a scrap of satisfaction in cutting the enemy down, morale might have held. But no matter how many they killed, the white monsters simply dropped from thin air and kept coming, and the students' spirits had sunk to rock bottom.

"Hold the line! Hold it even if it cracks your skulls open!"

And then there was the dormitory defensive line, on the verge of collapse.

It had been built with the dormitory building at its back, which meant there was nowhere left to fall back to.

"Four super-large ones incoming!"

"That's it. We're done for."

At the very moment every one of them was coming to terms with the end, black cubes were drifting down from the sky on the wind.

Clack!

One of them landed at the dormitory line as well. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠The cube that hit the ground broke apart, a magic circle unfolded in its place, and a figure burst up from within it.

The students, half-resigned to death, went wide-eyed. Some blinked again and again, unable to trust their own eyes; others erupted into cheers and tears.

"Professor Jane!!!"

Jane, dressed in a crisp black suit, was approaching with the measured click of hard-soled shoes.

"Everyone, fall back. Now."

The Vice Principal's order was absolute. The students abandoned the defensive line they had guarded with their lives and retreated in one motion.

Using Prima Materia for a terror attack this brazen — how vile.

Rage shot to the crown of her head, but rescuing the students came first.

Her bloodshot eyes swept the surroundings, and Jane spread a dark magic circle across the ground.

Fwoooosh—

Tens of thousands of black butterflies poured out of it like fireworks bursting. These artificial lifeforms, woven from dark magic, scattered across the battlefield at dazzling speed.

When Jane slowly spread her hand, more butterflies flocked into it, clustering and fusing until they took the shape of an enormous scythe.

Thap.

Chwak.

The tens of thousands of butterflies plastered themselves onto the bodies of every monster in sight — the super-large ones included.

Jane gripped the scythe in reverse. There, without any warning of its arrival, sat a straw curse doll. She rested the reversed scythe against the doll's neck, raised the blade — and cleaved straight through.

Fwoooooosh!

Fwoooosh!

At once, the thousands of white monsters encircling them had their heads severed, tumbling across the ground. The students' jaws hung open.

Whoaaa……!

What in the world is that dark magic?

Jane laid down a new magic circle. From within it, red chains surged upward like a waterfall, and the butterflies seized the chain ends mid-flight and carried them aloft.

Rssshhh!

Chwak!

As though raising a barrier, the butterflies dragged the chains across the entire dormitory defensive line, winding it through. The white monsters of Prima Materia tried to push through the chains — and the moment the chains touched them, they necrotized pitch-black and crumbled away. This time, it was a curse.

Jane turned to the students.

"Under no circumstances are you to step outside the chains."

"Y-yes, ma'am!"

Mounting the butterflies, she led the countless chains toward the next battlefield. The students stared after her, spellbound.

"……Dammit."

Aaron started cursing from the very first word.

"Why the hell are you following me?"

At his side, Bahil strolled along at an unhurried pace, a smile plastered across his face.

"Distance means nothing to a first-rate curse specialist, Professor. No matter where my target stands, the curse finds them all the same."

"That's not what I asked. Why are you following me?"

"Haha, no need to be so stiff about it. It's our first time teaming up in ages, isn't it? Brings back memories. How nostalgic."

"It was a dark chapter of my life."

Bahil chuckled and pressed on.

"We should divide the work, shouldn't we? Attack and defense. Which would you prefer?"

"Attack."

"Well, I'd like attack as well, so let's settle it with this."

Bahil drew a single coin from his pocket.

"Heads or tails. Call it."

"Tails."

"Then I'll take heads."

Amid the swarm of white monsters surging in on every side, the two men were utterly absorbed in the outcome of a coin toss. Bahil checked the coin resting on his palm and grinned wide.

"Heads, as expected! Senior, you always know how ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to look after your juniors!"

"……More of your pointless little games."

"Then I'll skip the pleasantries and go first."

Bahil raised both arms toward the sky.

Nothing appeared to change, at least not at a glance. But several of the students still fighting the monsters had turned their eyes upward.

"Th-the moon……!"

Two moons now hung in the sky.

The newer of the two, an enormous full moon, was gazing down at the entire Kizen campus from uncomfortably close range. Before long, the moon's body wobbled — and a blood-red eye burst from its center.

The moon itself was Bahil's magic circle.

"Allow me to demonstrate what a curse can truly do."

With a smirk, Bahil activated the circle.

The eye upon the moon blinked open, blood vessels surging across its surface. Red light poured down, as if the whole world had been dyed in blood.

This red light had the effect of stimulating every nerve in any mindless creature it touched. The monsters raised their heads, searching for the source of the phenomenon.

Crrrack!

Crack!

The instant their eyes met the moon's eye, the monsters' bodies hardened to stone and collapsed into powder.

Shaaaaa.

It was the same everywhere else. Helplessly, the white monsters turned to powder and drifted apart on all sides.

An ultra-wide-area curse. Just as he'd said, Bahil was striking down every monster spread across the campus in a single stroke.

"What the heck was that?"

Meilin, who had been fighting the monsters in earnest since finishing her broadcast, frowned at the sudden change. She tilted her head back.

"Wait, Meilin! Don't look up — it's dangerous!"

Dick shouted it as he cleaved through a white monster with his enchanted sword.

"That's Professor Bahil's curse! The famous Medusa's Eye!"

"……Huh?"

She brushed the hair back behind her ear.

"I already looked, and I already made eye contact with that moon, and nothing happened to me?"

"……Wha, seriously?"

At that, Dick looked up at the moon too.

It was true. Nothing happened to him. Meanwhile, the monsters around them were still turning to powder this very second.

Whoa. He's covering this whole range AND differentiating students from monsters through control alone? Haha! That's Professor Bahil for you……!

"Kyaaaaagh!"

Dick whipped around in alarm. Meilin was shooting up into the sky out of nowhere. Her body was clad in red Bone Armour.

"Hey, where are you going?"

"Like I'd go if I wanted to, you idiot!!"

Clank! Clank!

Before he knew it, Dick's body was clad in red Bone Armour as well.

"Whoaaaa!"

Dick's eyes went huge as he was hauled skyward.

Dozens — hundreds — of students in red Bone Armour were flying through the air around him, all of them equally bewildered.

Wait, these red skeletons — Professor Aaron's here too!

Watching the red skeletons blanket the sky like a plague of locusts, Dick clicked his tongue.

Just how many undead is he controlling at the same time?

Chwak. Thap.

The red skeletons in their Bone Armour deposited Dick, Meilin, and the other students on the rooftops of safe buildings, then set off in search of more.

Meilin landed on the rooftop looking green from motion sickness, while Dick threw both arms up and laughed out loud.

"Wahaha! Now we're alive! The professors are heeere!"

The other students finally caught up with the situation and let out cheers of their own.

It's been a while since I've had to pull off control on this scale.

Aaron, summoner, raked a hand through his disheveled bangs.

Above his head floated a colossal undead warship built of bone. And from that warship, the red skeletons stored within it poured forth, fanning out across the whole of the Kizen campus.

Students fleeing into the forest, students hiding in basements, students tucked inside classroom cabinets — Aaron caught every last one of them without a single gap and moved them all to safety.

"Ooh. Still not dead yet, I see. Senior."

Bahil grinned, holding Medusa's Eye aloft.

"If you'd majored in cursing instead of summoning, you'd without question be sitting in a far higher circle than you are now."

"Shut up and get the petrification off my shoulder. I'm dying here."

"Ah. You noticed."

Last of all to arrive, Hong Peng appeared atop a building's rooftop.

She closed her eyes and began a solemn ritual dance. Her sleeves fluttered as she stepped lightly and gracefully, but gradually the tempo quickened, her movements grew wilder, intricate footwork wove itself in, and she snapped her head side to side like a bird cracking its neck.

Chwak. Thap.

She finished by slapping her palms together, then slowly lowered herself into a cross-legged seat. Her hands came to rest upon her knees.

And then—

KUUUUUUNG!

A thunderous report. Wind whipped beside her, the very air warping and distorting around it.

Puck!

And a white monster hundreds of meters away crumpled to the ground, a gaping hole punched clean through its head.

Kung! Kuuung! Kung!

From the center of her seated form, cannon blasts detonated one after another. Heads and torsos of the monsters converging from across the entire campus began to burst apart.

She never moved from her cross-legged pose — only her arms blurred, hammering out afterimages too fast for the eye to follow. That alone was enough to send shockwaves rippling outward.

It was a scene that could only be called a human artillery battery. The heads of the incoming monsters burst one by one under firepower of unknown origin.

In the meantime, the evacuating students were clothed in Aaron's Bone Armour and ferried to the safe zones Jane had secured in advance. The monsters that survived Hong Peng's barrage turned to stone under Bahil's curse and were gone.

There were many wounded — but not a single death.

Thanks to the feats of the Kizen professors, Kizen had turned the corner back toward safety.

"It's been a while, Saintess of Purification."

Nephthys said.

Flema, riding atop her metal golem of Pure White Flame, wore no readable expression — yet she had frozen stock-still, as though someone had pressed a pause button. She was, unmistakably, flustered.

Nephthys smiled sweetly.

"Yep. It was a real pain to unwind, though. I paid ten years to get through it."

Nephthys extended her tiny hand.

"They are."

BANG!

Then she snapped her fingers like she was flicking someone on the forehead. Flema lurched sideways in a panic to dodge — but a colossal hole had been punched through the space directly behind her.

Flema lunged in and swung her sword of Pure White Flame. Nephthys spread her palm open.

Tick! Tick! Tick!

A clock-shaped ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠magic circle of golden light unfolded before her. When the sword of white flame touched it, the blade went limp and melty, dissolving back into divinity.

"Nothing in this world is free of time."

Nephthys said.

"Mana, divinity, jet-black — even the very sources of this world fade away given enough time. There is no such thing as eternity."

She nudged the golden magic circle forward with a fingertip.

The circle shot forward at tremendous speed, passed through the sword of white flame, and bored straight through the enormous body that made up Flema herself.

The metal golem peeled away, and Flema's body appeared in its place, one arm still outstretched. Her long-vanished right arm had returned, and so had the wound she'd taken from the Doom Greatsword.

Her time had been rewound completely into the past.

"Heh heh."

Nephthys smirked and wiggled her fingers. The magic circle, which had been flying past Flema, faltered mid-air — then reversed course, flowing backward the way it had come, and passed through Flema's body once more.

Her right arm vanished, and the wound from the Doom Greatsword reopened.

Flema, having lost her arm all over again, shrieked. At the same moment, from the magic circle on the ground, a colossal black hand — like something out of a demon's arm — reached up and seized her.

"Squeeze."

Nephthys clenched her tiny, fern-leaf hand into a fist.

"……!"

Simon, watching in a daze, turned his head away without meaning to.

The demonic hand bore down with its full strength, and with a wet puck, something burst.