Reunion of the Legion
"Nice to meet you, you little runts! I'm Byeolya!"
Her voice crushed the audience and shook the Great Auditorium to its foundations.
"Looking at you lot, all I can think is what a damn sorry sight you are! Same clothes, same postures, huddled together like sick chickens in a coop, blinking like idiots—I'm about to lose my mind just watching! When I was your age, I was out roaming the world and raising absolute hell! That's what kids should be doing!"
A few students covered their ears. Her voice was already thunderous, and with the amplifying crystal orb stacked on top of it, it reverberated through the entire hall.
"Listen up! Education can't help but be uniform, so shut up and deal with it! What do you expect? Education is nothing more than a factory process for mass-producing goods that society can conveniently use! You're all injected with the same things in the same place—where's the inspiration supposed to come from? Where's the individuality? The finished products look airtight on the outside, but they're hollow shells! Nothing of their own inside—nothing of their own! And so I ask you!"
She stretched out her legs and stomped on the lectern's railing, then thrust her right arm toward the sky.
"WHO ARE YOU?!"
"……!"
"Kizen students? So-and-so's son or daughter? Residents of some kingdom or other? Heir to some faction or another? Forget all those positions assigned by social convention—who are you, completely and wholly? That's not something anyone hands to you. You decide it yourselves! You'd better be ready for at least that much before you go calling yourselves necromancers or whatever else!"
She roamed the stage freely as she spoke, and with every spray of spit and shake of her hair, liquids poured out that melted and burned the lectern. It was like a one-woman special effects show scattered in every direction.
"You'd better hope your eardrums survived and every last word got through to you! Oh, and if any of you wants to become the best—come find me! Hahahahah!"
She bellowed like a lightning strike. She didn't just overwhelm the students single-handedly—she flattened them, and by the time she finished, the moment for applause or cheering had long since passed.
The only one who had kept his composure, Aaron, picked up the amplifying crystal orb and spoke.
"Thank you for your efforts, Professor Byeolya. Please return to your seat."
"Ahem!"
She flung the crystal orb in her hand to the floor and went back. The ground in her wake was shattered, scorched, and half-melted—you could have justifiably called it a wasteland.
"Haahhhh."
From her seat on the faculty dais, Hong Peng's sighs only deepened.
Just then, Byeolya—in her rags—bounded over and plopped down next to her.
"Gyahahaha! Hey! Did you see me tear that stage apart?"
"……Please just go back to the steppes. You're embarrassing us."
Students who saw the twin sisters seated together whispered among themselves, comparing the two. Side by side, the auras they gave off were completely different, but outwardly, quite a few similarities showed themselves.
"That concludes the opening ceremony."
Aaron said.
"Classes begin tomorrow. You've all had an exhausting day with the exams, so don't wander off—go rest well in your dormitories. Remember that rest, too, is an essential part of training. Dismissed."
Simon and Dick parted ways with Meilin and Camibarez and entered the boys' dormitory.
Savoring that tingling, fluttering feeling of homecoming, the two of them climbed up to the fourth floor.
"Woo! Been a while, Room 409!"
Dick shouted, throwing both arms into the air. It was a welcome sight—the nameplate beside the door bearing the names Kajan, Simon, and Dick in a neat row.
Simon gave the door a light knock and went inside.
An all-too-familiar space spread out before him. The familiar beds, the familiar arrangement of furniture. And in the corner, up on the second level of the bunks, a familiar person sleeping with the blankets pulled over his head.
"We're back, Kajan."
Of course, even at that, Kajan in deep sleep wouldn't stir for anything less than a serious commotion. Both of them knew from experience that forcibly waking him resulted in monster-level rage, so they didn't bother waking him just to say hello.
They unpacked the luggage from their subspace pockets.
"Whew! Coming back to Room 409 really makes it sink in that we're back, doesn't it?"
Dick said, flopping onto his bed.
"It really does."
"Normal classes start tomorrow, huh~ Another full semester of fighting tooth and nail to survive!"
Simon arranged his textbooks neatly on the desk, then stretched with a long yawn. When he glanced out the window, night had already settled over the grounds.
"Dick. I'm heading out tonight—can you recommend a good route?"
"What?"
Dick made a face like he was looking at a complete lunatic.
"Sneaking out on the very first day? Rochest is probably still rebuilding all the collapsed buildings—why bother going?"
"Ah, there's someone I need to see."
Dick wore a baffled expression, but he dutifully flipped through his notebook where the patrols' schedules were written down.
"Hmmm, Kevin's stable route or the north hillside should be clear. But who's got you this antsy to go out? Wait—is it a girl?"
Simon just smiled and kept his mouth shut.
"Long time no see, Simon! Two whole months!"
Kevin, the stable keeper inside the Kizen campus, greeted him warmly. Simon had come and gone so often that by now they were both entirely used to each other.
Simon tossed him a few coins and made his way to the far end of the stable on his own.
At the straw-covered edge of the stable, a small hole had been bored into the ground. Slipping inside, he found a cramped tunnel.
Mindful of banging his head, he crawled along in a crouch until he reached the tunnel's end, lifted the cover, and climbed up.
Whooooooosh!
And just like that, he emerged into the middle of a forest with Kizen's towering walls visible in the distance. Simon carefully covered the tunnel entrance with surrounding dirt so it wouldn't stand out, then walked the Forbidden Forest for the first time in two months.
There was no chance of running into a Priest out here anymore, and that alone set his mind at ease.
With light, easy steps, Simon arrived at Pier's ruins.
-Kiriririririri!
Two corpse spiders guarding the ruins' entrance came scrambling toward him. Even they seemed to recognize who their Legion Commander was—one latched onto Simon's foot and nuzzled its head against him, while the other flopped onto its back like a dog, belly up.
"You all doing well?"
Hard to believe things like these were undead. Simon played with the spiders for a bit, then headed inside.
He picked his way carefully down the perilous stone steps, which had no railing to speak of.
From within the ruins came the intermittent echo of clattering bones and the voices of undead. Any ordinary person would have frozen in terror and trembled, but to Simon, it was nothing but a familiar, welcoming sound.
Barely had he descended the last of the stairs—
[LEGION COMMANDEEEER~!!]
Someone slammed into Simon with full force. The sheer strength of it knocked him flat to the ground.
"I—I can't breathe! Erze!"
Erzsébet, commander of the spider legion.
Pinned down by the raw power of an Ancient Undead, Simon couldn't move an inch.
[These two months without seeing you, Legion Commander, felt like cobwebs had grown over my mouth!]
"……Isn't that just something you say when you're starving?"
Erzsébet refused to let go. Still, rather than resort to an Absolute Order, Simon simply patted her on the back a few times and gently chided her—at last she descended with a satisfied look on her face. Simon brushed the dust off his back as he got to his feet.
"It's been a while, Pier!"
Moonlight streaming down from the ceiling illuminated the tall skeleton seated upon the altar. The skeleton's jaw opened, moving with all the freedom of a human mouth.
[KUAHAHAHA! Have you been well, boy!]
Perhaps it was because it had been so long since he'd last seen Pier, but emotion suddenly welled up in Simon's chest, and he ran over and threw his arms around him.
[What's this! You've turned into a spoiled brat in my absence!]
"I'm just glad to see you."
Simon said, lips jutting into a pout. Just then, with a clatter of bone on stone, the legionized skeletons came drawing near as well.
"Everyone doing okay?"
Clatter. Tap.
"There are a lot of new faces here too."
[KUAHA! We recruited fresh ranks while you were away!]
While Simon chatted with Pier about this and that, he belatedly remembered that one member was missing, and opened his subspace. From within, he pulled out a zombie, then spoke into the grey ring on his finger.
"Prince. It's been a while since everyone's gathered—want to come too?"
As he pressed the ring to the zombie, kr-r-rumble!—a bolt of black lightning came crashing down onto it. Before long, the zombie's form shifted into that of a young boy wearing a faded crown.
[AH! What took you so long! Deathland is SO boring!]
In truth, he'd apparently been waiting the entire time to be called.
Prince immediately raised his fist, and Simon, laughing sheepishly, bumped it and gave him the handshake he was after.
The moment it succeeded on the first try, Prince's eyes flooded with deep emotion and joy.
[Did you all see that? Huh? While you weren't around, Simon and I practiced this too!]
[Oh my. That would be—]
Erzsébet said,
[the idle hand-game Richard used to play with you back when he was Legion Commander, was it not?]
[N-no it isn't! I invented it just now!!]
And so the Legion Commander and the leaders of the Legion gathered.
Simon, Pier, and Prince each settled into their most comfortable positions. Erzsébet knelt at Simon's side, and before long lay her head on his thigh as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
It was unbearably embarrassing and awkward, but since this was what Erzsébet demanded as the price of her loyalty, Simon decided to let it pass.
Pier opened his mouth.
[Then let us hear each other's progress and achievements over these past months!]
"Yes, sir."
Simon opened his Divinity and explained how he had come to learn Corpse Explosion and the Priests' white magic.
When Simon mentioned that he had worn the crown during the engagement with the Divinity Train, Pier glared fiercely at Prince. Prince turned his head away, pretending not to notice, and started whistling.
And then the conversation moved on to the highlight.
[A sacred-holy zombie performing Corpse Explosion!]
Erzsébet shot to her feet.
[Is such a thing truly possible? Then could I too become a Holy Erzsébet?]
"Hmm, that I couldn't say."
Simon said, looking down at his left hand.
"I sanctified Pier, and I sanctified a zombie too, but for the life of me I can't remember how I did it."
[Indeed—it was the same when you used Corpse Explosion back in Deathland, one nobody ever taught you!]
Pier continued, arms crossed.
[There's no need to fret over it! That power is needed for engagements with Priests, so for the moment, now that Kizen life is beginning, there's nothing to stress over. You're at Kizen now—focus on the jet-black arts!]
"Yes. And finally—"
Simon sprang to his feet. As everyone watched to see what was going on, he grabbed the space behind his back and swung it open sideways.
KR-R-R-R-R-R-R-BOOM!
It was a colossal subspace, vast enough to recall an endless open plain. Everyone burst out in exclamations of awe.
"For my part in the Saintess incident, Nephthys granted me a new subspace."
[KUAHAHAHAHAHA!]
Pier laughed, his voice thundering through the chamber.
[Anyone can see that's a subspace built for operating a Legion! I heartily approve of that woman's foresight!]
Pier looked thoroughly pleased, even stepping in and out of the subspace himself to test it.
"That concludes my briefing."
Next came the turn of Erzsébet, who had spent the last two months in the Bug Tomb.
She brought something back from the ruins' lower level. They were enormous corpse spiders—easily ten times the size of ordinary ones.
[Aren't they adorable?]
The spider let out a hacking ghack and spat a glob of saliva congealed with animal bone fragments from its maw.
Simon's face scrunched up all on its own.
"What are they?"
[Queen-type corpse spiders. They can lay eggs. I tracked these down in the Bug Tomb and completed their legionization. From now on, we can multiply the corpse spider population by leaps and bounds.]
Simon nodded.
"Good work. Once the babies hatch, could you lend me a few non-legionized corpse spiders? I'd like to try using them in a Kizen exam."
[If it is your command, Legion Commander, I shall see it done. But be warned—spiders can be tricky to control without legionization.]
"I'll get used to them."
Next was Pier's turn to report on his journey to the Screaming Jungle.
[The reason I went to the Screaming Jungle was to seek out the commander of my former legion—the Ancient Undead, Akemus.]
Akemus had been the commander who led a host of powerful flying undead.
Undead born from the harpies—half-human, half-bird creatures. In necromancer circles, they were also known as Skullwings.
'A commander who leads flying undead!'
Simon's eyes sparkled as he listened to Pier's explanation.
"Having him join would really, really be a huge help, but…… I'm guessing you couldn't find him?"
After all, if Pier had found him and legionized him, he'd be standing here beside them now. At that, Pier spoke in a flat, indifferent voice.
[I found him.]