A Map with a Skull Mark
Having given up on pretending he hadn't noticed, Simon turned his head toward the window. The girl's face promptly ducked out of sight below the sill.
"……."
Did she not want to be caught?
Simon turned back and pulled out a fresh chiffon cake. Sure enough, her face crept quietly back up over the windowsill.
Blink. Blink.
Her blue eyes flickered, and every time the chiffon cake drew near Simon's mouth, the blinking grew faster and faster.
Smiling to himself, Simon spoke.
"Miss Nephthys, why don't you come over and share it?"
At those words, the girl popped her face up over the ledge.
"Oh! How did you know? Can I, really?"
As if she'd only been waiting for the invitation, Nephthys vaulted the windowsill and slid over, settling down before the chiffon cake with her knees drawn together. Then she looked up at Simon with wide, round eyes.
She looked so much like a puppy wagging its tail in expectation that a laugh escaped him.
"Of course. Go ahead."
"Hehe, don't mind if I do!"
With her tiny fern-frond hands, she picked up the chiffon cake and began to munch away.
Watching her two small cheeks puff in and out, Simon felt a powerful urge to pat her head—ruler of Kizen or not.
"Would you like this one too?"
He kept pulling out more snacks he'd bought at the school store, and every time he did, Nephthys's eyes sparkled brighter.
"So good~!"
She said, mouth full of jam sandwich.
"At home I'm never, ever allowed to have sweets!"
"……Ahaha."
And so Simon found himself enjoying an impromptu dessert time with the great necromancer whom most people would never lay eyes on once in their lives. The two of them shared the snacks and traded all manner of stories.
It began with thanks for the subspace gift, moved on to talk of Lorraine, and then the conversation drifted naturally to school life.
"It's your first time at school, right? How is it?"
"It's fun!"
Simon answered without a beat's hesitation.
"The professors are amazing, my friends are kind, the classes are interesting…… I think I'm more cut out for school than I expected."
Nephthys nodded with a bright smile.
"Ahh, how nice. Talking with you here at Kizen like this reminds me of Richard."
"Of my father?"
"Yep! Your father was a Kizen student too, you know. You didn't know that?"
It was news to him. She chuckled and wagged a finger.
"Richard was something else, let me tell you. Unlike the well-mannered boy you are, he was a troublemaker of the highest order—a bona fide menace."
"……My father?"
Simon's mouth hung open.
That his composed, strict father had been a hellion in his school days—the two images simply refused to overlap.
"And on top of all that troublemaking, he was so brilliant that even while stirring up chaos, he ended up at the very top of his professors' lists. I lost count of the times I had to go drag Richard back after he'd skipped class and run off."
"I—I can hardly believe it. So my father graduated from Kizen safely, then?"
She shook her head.
"No. He dropped out in his second year."
"……Oh."
"He suddenly declared the school was too small for him and quit. There had never been a student like that in all of Kizen's history. Richard was a special case in more ways than one."
Nephthys rested both arms on the floor and gazed up at the ceiling.
Something deep and wistful passed across her face, utterly unlike her youthful appearance.
"Yes. I was young back then, too."
"……."
Simon wanted to raise some objection to that, but decided he probably shouldn't.
"Anyway! There's nowhere on Roc Island Richard hasn't been. Look closely, and you might just find traces of your father scattered all over the school!"
"Oh! If something like that exists, that would be fun."
She rose from her seat and patted the dust off her bottom with a few cheerful smacks.
"Well, I've got evening plans, so I'd better get going! If I'm late, I might get scolded again. Hehe."
"Already?"
The words left Simon's mouth before he could stop them, and then he startled himself.
Time with her had felt so joyous and so brief that his true feelings had slipped right out.
"We'll see each other again soon enough, Simon."
Nephthys smiled warmly.
"Thanks for the snacks! Bye-bye!"
Just as Nephthys swung herself over the windowsill, something small—like a folded note—fell from her clothing.
Simon picked it up and rushed to the window.
"Miss Nephthys! You left this behind—!"
Fwoooosh.
She had already vanished without a trace.
Scratching his head, Simon examined the front and back of the note.
"Judging by the circumstances…… it must be meant for me, right?"
Muttering to himself, Simon sat down on the edge of his bed and unfolded the half-folded note.
It was a map.
The route ran through the interior of Kizen and pointed to a location somewhere outside the academy grounds—the destination marked with a skull.
A skull? Shouldn't a destination normally be marked with a treasure chest icon or something?
Simon scrutinized the map carefully, but beyond the destination there was no other information to be found.
Why had Nephthys told him about this place?
'Look closely, and you might just find traces of your father scattered all over the school!'
Simon steeled his resolve and clenched his fist tight.
He would set out tomorrow.
* * *
The morning of his first weekend at Kizen dawned.
The place marked on Nephthys's map lay within the Forbidden Forest, so he'd decided to set out once darkness fell.
Dick and Kajan had vacated the room early, and Simon sprawled his Summoning textbook open, burying himself in catching up on the material ahead of his class.
He'd considered getting a head start on his other subjects too and had cracked one of them open, but found he couldn't concentrate.
With the upcoming group project requiring him to choose a single primary discipline soon anyway, Simon committed this entire weekend to Summoning.
'The difference between skeletons and zombies. First, obedience to commands. Skeletons are relatively compliant with a necromancer's orders, but zombies rely on instinct, and their hatred of the living intensifies over time, making them difficult to control.'
'So the stage after zombies is the ghoul. Fewer in number, but incomparably stronger than zombies. Wow—it can cover up to three hundred meters in a single leap?'
'And there's something called a patchwork golem! When will I ever be able to make one of those?'
He hadn't known studying could be this fun. Time flew by in a blur, and every time he glanced at the clock, Simon swallowed a pang of regret.
After pouring the entire day into Summoning, as the sun began its slow descent, Simon finally put his plan into motion.
On the overnight leave register, he had written: "Two-day, one-night trip to Rochest."
Rustle.
Simon stepped out of Kizen's main gate and reached the Forbidden Forest just as dusk was settling in. The reason Kizen restricted access to this forest was simple.
'Monster territory.'
Monsters roamed the Leshill mountains too, but what kinds of creatures wandered Roc Island remained entirely unknown.
Simon moved with careful steps.
'A stream flows to the east, and Kizen's walls are visible to the west. Okay, I'm on track.'
Walking while checking the map meticulously, things had gone smoothly so far.
But the deeper he pushed into the forest, the more frequently animal calls echoed around him, and he began finding droppings. When he poked one with a stick, it was moist and smeared—they'd been here until quite recently.
'……Hoo, I just want to go home.'
It would have been a lie to say he wasn't afraid, but Simon gathered himself. Even at a slower pace, he walked with his footsteps muffled as much as possible.
And then—
Grrrrrrr.
A growl sounded nearby.
Simon's body went rigid. Clapping a hand over his mouth, he dropped low.
His eyes, now attuned to the darkness, caught a black shadow standing in the shade of the trees. The thing was sniffing loudly, nostrils flaring.
'A monster.'
Just then, the flaring nostrils froze. The monster's head turned—and eyes glowing in the darkness locked onto Simon.
Scatter—!
'It's fast!'
Simon's hand flew desperately to the dagger at his waist. Eyes flashed in the darkness, and a silver streak came hurtling toward him with a sharp shriek!
Simon drew the dagger and swung at the oncoming streak.
CLANG!
Steel rang against steel, and Simon toppled over backward. The claws, swung a second time, carved a long scar into a tree as they passed.
'A werewolf!'
It was a creature so dangerous that encountering one amounted to a death sentence for any ordinary civilian. Fortunately, it wasn't fully grown—its frame was small.
'If I were still back home, I'd have run for it……!'
Simon gripped the dagger afresh and rose to his feet. With his left hand, he channeled jet-black into his ring and pulled an imaginary lever.
Grind.
A subspace opened at his feet, and from within, bones burst forth.
'Restoration!'
The bones scattering through the air began aligning themselves in orderly fashion around their skulls. In moments, two completed skeletons stepped down onto the ground before Simon.
'Got it!'
He pumped his fist.
A necromancer's art, deployed in real combat for the very first time.
It felt immensely reassuring. Leaving raw power aside, the simple fact that he was no longer alone brought him genuine relief.
And just like that, in the blink of an eye it was 3-to-1. Outnumbered, the werewolf flinched—but quickly bared its teeth, showing its will to fight.
Thud. Thud.
Simon had the subspace spit out two battered short swords as well. The skeletons caught the swords mid-flight.
SKREEEAAAAGH!
The werewolf pounced, and the battle began.
Whoosh!
A slash from a skeleton opened a long gash across the werewolf's belly. But the creature pressed onward, hammering its right fist into the skeleton's upper body.
BOOM!
A single blow sent half the skeleton's bone-built torso flying. Linked to the undead, Simon felt a stinging ache shoot through his skull.
But in that very opening, the skeleton that had circled around plunged its short sword into the werewolf's exposed flank.
SKREEEAAAAGH!
The werewolf unleashed a shriek of pure agony. Simon thrust his right arm out roughly.
'Restoration!'
The shattered bone fragments shuddered—then, as if time itself were flowing backward, they knit back together into the skeleton's frame. The restored skeleton wasted no time driving its short sword into the werewolf's chest.
"Now! Charge!"
The two skeletons, swords still buried in its body, dragged the werewolf as they sprinted forward and slammed it against a tree.
With a crash!, the tree shook violently and leaves came raining down.
'Now's my chance!'
Dagger in hand, Simon lunged in for the final blow. The werewolf, pinned to the tree, thrashed its arms wildly and blasted the skeletons apart—but—
Thwack!
Simon's blade found the nape of the werewolf's neck before the skeletons' grip could give out entirely.
The hideous sensation of flesh and muscle splitting ran up through his wrist, but this was a matter of life and death for both of them.
Simon bore down on the hilt with everything he had.
Crunch. Crack.
At last, the werewolf's body went limp. Backing away, heaving rough breaths, Simon soon felt his legs give out and landed hard on his backside.
'……Th-that was close.'
His lips trembled, still buzzing with the adrenaline of combat.
'No time for this. Clean up, fast.'
If the commotion and the scent of blood drew other monsters his way, he'd be in serious trouble.
Simon dragged himself upright and attempted Restoration on the skeletons. One had been damaged beyond recovery and the attempt failed; the other managed to rise, barely able to move.
He tucked the restored skeleton into his subspace and pressed onward.
'Come to think of it, this is my first real fight since entering Kizen.'
In a mere three days, Simon's fighting strength had grown enormously.
If he endured here for a year—no, three years—just how much stronger could he become? He couldn't help but let his imagination run with it.
After another twenty minutes or so of walking—
'Here it is.'
He'd arrived at the spot marked with the skull on the map. A glance around revealed nothing but bare, empty ground.
If anything was strange about the place, it was only this: trees and grass refused to grow here, and here alone.
'Guess I'd better dig after all, huh?'
Simon opened his subspace and pulled out the shovel he'd borrowed from the dormitory groundskeeper.
The shovel tumbled through the air in a spinning circle, and Simon caught it with a flourish. Rolling up his sleeves, he set to breaking the ground open.
Pak! Pak!
Anyone watching would have been impressed—his shoveling was remarkably skilled.
The work didn't take long. The blade of the shovel struck something hard.
Crouching down, Simon slowly brushed the soil away.
'A stone floor.'
It was a floor made of a special black-tinged stone.
As he cleared the dirt and examined the surface, Simon soon discovered a recessed indentation at its very center—carved in the shape of a human hand.
He tentatively raised his right hand to it; the size was roughly a match. But surely no artifact would open at something as simple as this.
Closing his eyes, Simon revved his core and poured jet-black out through his palm.
VMMMMMMMM!
The moment Simon's jet-black flowed into the artifact, fire lit across the floor. Then, as if by magic—grind, grind!—the stone floor split open.
'Stairs!'
A staircase descending into the earth had appeared.
A knowing smile spread across Simon's face.
Just what secret was hidden down here? And why had Nephthys lured him to this place?
Feeling his heart hammering against his ribs, Simon started down the steps.