A True Necromancer's Fight
Ku-gu-gu-gu-gu!
A cloud of dust hung hazily in the air where Wichasha had been flung into the wall. Meilin let out a gasp of admiration.
"That was amazing, Kami! You've really been training hard, haven't you!"
Camibarez beamed and nodded.
"Yes! I just can't keep falling behind the three of you."
"Kami."
It was then that Dick, who had been staring straight ahead, spoke up.
"Nobody here thinks you've fallen behind."
His voice was unusually earnest, and everyone turned to look at him in surprise.
"You're the type who ties yourself up in knots too much. Have a little more confidence."
"Aww, thank you, Dick!"
Simon gave Dick's back a friendly, well-done thump. Meilin, on the other hand, snorted with disdain.
"Funny, I think you're the one who could use a sense of urgency. Sooo laid-back about everything~"
"Ah, but how could a mere racehorse ever hope to understand the leisure a cheetah enjoys?"
"Hey! Did you just call me a dog?!"
Pat, pat.
Through the drifting dust, they could see Wichasha pulling himself upright. He was rolling his shoulders and turning his head, looking not the least bit worse for wear.
The four of them had expected some impact, but with barely a scratch to show for it, their expressions stiffened slightly. Dick forced a casual tone.
"Ahem, alright. That's half a Hong Peng, officially recognized."
"Focus, or I'll fold you in half at the waist?"
Wichasha closed his eyes and spread both arms wide. Thick, dense Jet-Black flowed out like a spider's web and unfurled around him.
All four tensed at the sight of Wichasha using dark magic for the first time — but the Jet-Black never fired. Instead, it settled down over his body like a garment.
'There it is.'
The Black Clothes, the hallmark of a Magic Combat major.
Where most practitioners' Jet-Black transformed into a full suit of metallic armor, Wichasha's took a different form — as though he had draped himself in the fur of a beast from head to toe.
Tuh-up!
Planting both hands on the ground like an animal, he kicked off and launched himself forward with a thunderous crack.
KU-WUNG!
Simon was the first to react, sweeping his foot hard across the floor.
The bones scattered from the earlier battle floated up into the air and rotated to point their sharpest ends forward.
SHAAAAA!
The bones surged skyward wreathed in Simon's jet-black magical power. Wichasha scrambled up the wall on all fours, weaving past the barrage, then brought the whole wall crashing down as he charged.
At that staggering rush, all four dove aside at once. Wichasha, naturally, had his sights locked on his target — Simon — the way a colossal grizzly bear might come barreling down on its prey.
TAAANG!
But this time too, a strained tension snapped through the air as his charge stopped dead. A transparent shade had draped itself in front of him without anyone noticing, and Dick, Meilin, and Camibarez were gripping one end of the net with their Internal Jet-Black Operation pushed to the absolute limit.
"……You wretches!"
"You were staring right at Simon the whole time, so we figured, why not use that?"
Dick chuckled as he tossed a burning mana lighter. The floor where the three had retreated was slick with oil.
"A necromancer who doesn't take advantage of an opening doesn't deserve the title, right?"
But Wichasha's response was nothing to sneer at either.
Converting his Internal Jet-Black Operation into internal Jet-Black dispersal, he stamped the floor once and multiplied his charging force enormously. The three holding the net were dragged forward instead.
"WhoaAAH!"
Dick barely flung himself free to catch the mana lighter, while the girls tumbled to the floor in a heap. Wichasha, having punched clean through the barrier, reached Simon.
'Open Gate!'
All six of Overlord's blades came raining down, but Wichasha casually batted the attacks aside with his Black Clothes and drove a fist square into Simon's raised guard.
KRAKOOOOOM!
Simon's body was shoved back — no, launched — flying dozens of meters before smashing into the wall.
'Guh! No matter how I defend……!'
It seemed no exaggeration after all — that claim about having fought Hong Peng.
"Hey, commoner! Move it!"
Meilin ground her teeth and conjured ice spears one after another in midair.
"On it!"
As Dick dashed past, touching each spear once, the already-dark spears turned pitch-black as charcoal.
At Meilin's command, the ice spears shrieked off with a tearing howl — but Wichasha didn't even dodge. He simply trudged steadily toward the fallen Simon, and the black spears bounced right off the moment they struck his Black Clothes.
This time it was Camibarez's hastily prepared curse that came flying. Wichasha swung an arm behind his back, seized a handful of Jet-Black, and whipped it around.
CLANG!
He raised the Jet-Black in the form of a shockwave and shattered the curse to pieces — the work of a true professional. It was frighteningly polished.
'Heal.'
Simon sent his sluggish right arm behind his back and, unseen by anyone, summoned Divinity to mend it. He finished the emergency treatment in an instant and thrust his right arm forward again.
The moment he resumed the Jet-Black circulation he'd paused to use the Divinity, Wichasha was already charging in.
'Focus.'
Resolve hardened in Simon's eyes.
'Of all my techniques, the only one that can do real damage to that Black Clothes is Corpse Explosion.'
He drew a zombie out of subspace.
The man isn't trying to kill me. Punch, kick, body slam — as long as I don't black out, I can take one hit. Then the zombies pile onto him, and I detonate Corpse Explosion.
Once the Black Clothes was stripped away, the other three would finish the job.
The zombies fanned out to either side, and Simon stood tall at the center. Wichasha, clad in his Black Clothes, was charging at him like a war chariot that nothing could stand between.
'Please, don't let me pass out……!'
Simon hardened his gaze and stared down the incoming fist.
Tuh-UP!
In that instant, the approaching fist stopped impossibly — like a lie — right in front of Simon's face.
"Pushing yourself too hard, Special Admission No. 1."
At the sight of the woman flicking her tongue out with a grin, two pairs of eyes went wide at once.
Shaggy, gray-brown hair sticking out like a hedgehog's quills, clothing little better than rags, grime and stains blotching her all over — and, on top of it all, the reek of dangerous chemicals.
"Professor Byeolya!"
At that cry, the three who had been rushing to save Simon froze in their tracks too.
"B-Byeolya? You mean that's—"
"That's her?"
BRRRRR!
Wichasha's fist trembled. His wrist had merely been caught, and yet he couldn't move it an inch.
He instantly swung his free left arm at Byeolya.
THWACK.
She knocked that fist aside with her other hand as well. With both their arms locked together, Byeolya thrust her head forward and spat directly into Wichasha's face.
The moment the green spittle touched his skin, a hideous CHIIIIEEE! rang out, and a massive plume of steam billowed up like some runaway locomotive.
"GAAAH, AAAAAGH!"
Wichasha staggered back clutching his face, howling in agony, one strangled cry after another.
"So? How is it?"
Byeolya stuck out her tongue and placed her index finger on it.
Then, dragging the finger slowly down the length of her tongue and out into the empty air, she drew forth a sticky, viscous liquid that stretched into a glistening arc.
"How's the taste of my saliva?"
Drops fell from that viscous arc, landing on the floor and melting straight through it, hissing and steaming.
Wichasha, who had been writhing in torment, finally recovered enough to half his face behind one palm and gulp for air.
"……You filthy woman!"
"Oh, now that one actually stings."
Somewhere along the way, the Hoopa tribesmen around them had all been subdued by the swarm of rats and crows she'd brought along.
Simon, panting, managed a weary smile.
"You came, Professor!"
"Get over there with your friends, and keep your distance."
Simon rejoined the three. Meilin pulled a face of pure distaste.
"Spitting? A real Kizen professor pulls a trashy move like that?"
Camibarez hid her flushed face behind both palms.
"I-I'm so embarrassed."
And no wonder — from a student's perspective, Byeolya's outfit was a little… stimulating.
Like the savage she was, she seemed to feel no need to cover herself, having simply cinched her rags tight around her body. It wasn't revealing enough to expose anything crucial, but patches of bare skin showed here and there, and the curves of a woman's figure were plainly on display.
'That's not a style, that's just a shameless exhibitionist!'
Meilin's overall verdict.
"Well, good timing, actually."
It was then that Wichasha's Jet-Black began to surge upward with a terrifying ferocity none of them had seen before.
"Things have gone to hell in the messiest way, but in the end it comes down to this — a face-off between us. Student abductions, ambushes, all the tedious trappings aside, all I ever needed to do was put you down."
"Mm-hmm~ Sure. If you could, that is."
At Byeolya's taunt, Wichasha's Black Clothes rippled and began a second transformation.
"I will hold back my hand no longer for the sake of taking any of you alive!"
The aura he radiated now was nothing like the one he'd shown the students. The beast-fur pelt that had sheathed him sharpened into bristling spikes, sealing every gap across his body.
At the same time, he clenched both fists and swept them upward.
The instant his fists moved, Byeolya bent at the waist. The wall behind her presented a perfectly smooth cross-section and sheared away as though cleaved by a legendary blade.
She glanced back at the building wall crashing down with a tremendous roar and let out a hearty laugh.
"Isn't that Hong Peng's technique?"
"What nonsense — who can lay claim to the art of fighting itself!"
As Wichasha stamped the ground, Jet-Black rippled outward like rings spreading across water, and his body began launching off in every direction at once.
This time it was an upgraded form of Dark Step. Simon and his team pulled even farther back before they could get swept into the clash of two powerhouses.
Byeolya's eyes moved like a chameleon's.
"Wasteful tricks."
FWOOSH!
Wichasha, streaking through the air in afterimages, materialized behind her and brought down a straight punch — a thorough, no-restraint art of annihilation.
"……?!"
But suddenly, a high-mass cloud of smoke erupted from empty space and shoved his body away. As though swallowed by an inflating balloon, Wichasha was flung back without being able to resist at all.
'What?! No magic circle, no warning signs, nothing!'
Just as he was forced to retreat, something like a clump of bacteria came flying at his face — faster than he could pull back — and exploded.
BA-BOOOOM!
"Kuh!"
Bluish pus welled up all over the body that had taken the blast head-on.
Covering his nose and mouth with the Black Clothes to shield his skin did no good. The pus rising from his skin was pressed down by the armor and burst, bringing with it excruciating pain. Yellowish fluid streamed out through every gap in the Black Clothes.
"Damn you!!"
Deadly-poison-series dark magic.
Once struck, every second that passed made his position worse. Wichasha closed the distance again and swung his fist, but Byeolya simply swayed her upper body this way and that, dancing, and slipped every blow with ease.
"Ghhk!"
Purple phlegm trickled from between the groaning Wichasha's lips.
His eyes had gone half-unfocused, and his vision spun sickeningly. Every time he swung an arm, it felt as though the assorted diseases bursting from Byeolya's body were lodging themselves in his flesh.
Unable to endure any longer, Wichasha abandoned the offensive and fell back.
"……This is cowardice! What trickery is this?!"
"Cowardice?"
Byeolya raised a hand to shade her forehead and eyes, then arched her back, shoulders heaving, and cackled — kik, kik, kik.
At that witch's laughter, everyone watching felt chills crawl up their spines. Each time her shoulders shook with laughter, specks of iridescent, rainbow-colored grit rained down from her body and rolled across the floor.
Simon's eyes went wide.
'……Sweat?'
"Ahhh, that's hilarious."
When she swept back the bangs covering her forehead, the beads scattered away on the breeze like loose pearls. Wichasha didn't dare approach, and Simon and the others took another step back.
His body was throwing up an extreme rejection response.
He knew it viscerally, at a primal level.
That stuff is lethally, categorically dangerous.
"You don't have a clue, do you?"
Watching Wichasha stumble, Byeolya said,
"How you're supposed to deal with me."
"……!"
"Standardized patterns are a sin. No fun in them. You just charge in, improvise as you go, and hope to catch the other side's mistakes or miscalculations. That way, whoever came better informed, whoever prepared more, wins. Where's the fun in a fight like that?"
Byeolya's head turned toward the students.
"That's your first lecture. A necromancer has to be different. You can only land a hit the enemy can't even imagine — and if you keep at it, you become an 'eccentric.' What's wrong with being a little strange? A victorious weirdo beats a defeated corpse any day of the week."
"KUH!"
Wichasha wrapped himself even tighter in his Black Clothes and charged.
"Now take a look at this one, on the other hand."
Byeolya twisted nothing but her hips to leisurely dodge the surging fist, the corner of her mouth curling up.
"Punches. Kicks. Grapples. Any human born with two arms and two legs can do these — and that's exactly why anyone can see them coming. At the very least you should vary it up the way Hong Peng does, but this one's just too honest."
She ducked under a thrown punch and pressed her index finger against Wichasha's side.
"It's always the ones like this who whine about cowardice."
SHAAAAAK!
Like a match catching flame, the Black Clothes tore open along the path her finger had traced, and purple liquid burrowed into the exposed skin.
"GUAAAAAAGH!!"
"All so you can justify your own lack of individuality."
Even through the agony, Wichasha flung out a fist — but the ground under his planted left foot abruptly melted into sludge, tilting the terrain and twisting his punch wide.
Next he spread both arms and lunged to seize her, but her body dissolved into poisonous mist and vanished, reappearing behind his back.
"Kgh!"
The moment Wichasha saw her raise her right arm straight overhead, he snapped into a cross-armed guard — but the attack didn't come from the front. The grit that had fallen to the floor shot upward and detonated around him.
KOOONG!
At last, Wichasha dropped to one knee, blue fluid streaming from his eyes, his nose, his mouth.
"This is—"
She let a bewitching smile bloom across her face and rested a hand on her hip.
"—what a fight between true necromancers looks like."